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Planetary Society Pushes For Mars Orbital Mission Before NASA Landing

Posted by samzenpus on from the here's-some-advice dept.

MarkWhittington writes The Planetary Society announced Thursday the results of the "Humans Orbiting Mars" workshop that brought in a number of space experts to develop helpful suggestions for how NASA can fulfill its mandate to send humans to Mars in the 2030s and return them safely to the Earth. The plan is to send a mission to orbit Mars in 2033 in advance of the landing mission in the late 2030s. The workshop believes that this could be done for a NASA budget that increases about two percent a year after the International Space Station is decommissioned in 2024.

2 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Go all that way and don't get out of the car? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Really? You go all the damn way to Mars and then stay in the car when you get there? That just sounds wrong on the surface of it. Like going to the Grand Canyon and then staying in the car in the parking lot. Maybe just send the lander module on ahead, confirm it is orbiting properly, let the crew module come later and dock up and send down the lander. Anything but drive there and come back without getting out to look around.

  2. That is how we approached the Moon with Apollo... by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But this is a lot longer trip and a much greater up front cost.
    At the very least they should should have a remote-controlled lander to execute a land, launch and recover exercise to verify that they can pull somebody back out of the gravity well
    And, perhaps a series of launches with a 6 month separation so that they can create a Mars orbiting space station

    Oh, and just in case you didn't see this POS from Wired
    http://www.wired.com/2015/04/b...

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