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commission by unusualsusspects

original ship design property of Mars One

So for the late comers, the end-state of this blog is to eventually give you the readers, the ability to download a working spaceship; getting to space is up to you. Early on I’ll stick to components that have worked, or what is on the market. Over time I’ll break it down so that they are more simple and accessible. I’ll mention things that are in development, but most likely they won’t bleed over into designs posted. I am not the only one doing this, but this is a solo blog for now.

A year ago a Dutch company called Mars One announced that it would start taking applications for people to go to Mars for the rest of their natural lives. This is not about their program (look it up, it’s awesome!), this is about their ship. The thing about Mars One is that it limits itself to only using existing technologies, unless one is absolutely vital and is so near-term that it can be counted on existing in time for the mission. At the time of this writing only one such technology remains, the Falcon-Heavy rocket. I will mention it here only to say that it has an advertised payload to Low Earth Orbit of 53,000kg.

For perspective the total mass of Apollo 11 was 46,678 kg (Command-Service-Module mass: 30,320 kg, of which Command-Module was 5960 kg, Service-Module 24,360 kg Lunar-Module mass: 16,448 kg , of which ascent stage was 4985 kg, descent stage 11,463 kg). That trip lasted two days and we are in the ball park of seven months. So if you factor in that you are only landing once one launch of a Falcon-Heavy can give you about 23000kg of play. Not knowing the eventual weight of the completed ship, I bet for two launches of either Heavies or 9’s .

The original concept needed to be assembled in space prior to departure. The above concept takes advantage of existing abilities to skip in-flight assembly. The Dragon Version 2 is designed so that it can park itself at the ISS without the Canadian robotic arm. The Genesis stations 1&2 can use small vernier rockets to reposition themselves, to make an approach very easy.

No specs have been released on the new Dragon V2.0 so for now all we do have are those for V1.3: 6,000kg at take off and 3,000kg on return; 14m^3 trunk space; & an 11m^3 pressurized cabin. The size of the planned inflatable habitat is completely up to the discretion of Mars One. The main engines are interesting, ultimately you have to push everything to Mars from Earths orbit, keep yourself on course, and line yourself up for the final approach to a predetermined landing point somewhere between the 43rd and 45th parallels, all while limited with the expense of lifting fuel.

So if you do two launches, the way this concept is set up, you’ll end up with a booster on each end. The booster on the Dragon’s side fires first and detaches, the whole ship swings a 180 and fires up the second booster. This makes less mass for the second booster to push. It is also unknown at this time if the trunk of the next version of Dragon will have its own engines. There exists a possibility that the boosters may utilize the new Raptor LOX Methane engine to gain flight data for SpaceX’s planned yet not discussed Mars Colonial Transport (MCT).

The trunks built in solar array makes it too advantageous to discard so with or without engines, it will play a part. Mars One plans to launch a satellite with every crew that goes out, this would definitely be the place for one.

What has yet to be determined is the point of separation of the crewed Red Dragon (the not yet built Dragon V3+) and the station. After that point the station is effectively thrown away and the capsule focuses on touching down gently in its tiny oval landing zone. Meanwhile this very expensive piece of space debris might just be able to tackle one more mission, landing on Phobos.

Depending on how much fuel is left in the main engine and vernier’s, it might be possible to either crash or land softly on the Red Planets closest moon. At an altitude of only 6,000km the station only needs to avoid going faster than .0057m/s^2 away from the surface and it will not fly away. The main hurdle will be approaching slowly and not braking too fast. If we can knock that out, for 0 add on cost we gain an additional observation platform, years of flight time for the companies that put the station together, and in the event of an indigenous Martian space program-easy access to hardware without the cost of launch.

But why bother with a stop on Phobos at all? Remember the MCT? That boat is supposed to make round trips, coasting to Mars and back takes WAAAAAAY too long. If you can cut down the time in-between with a floating gas station you can avoid pesky things like muscle atrophy and radiation poisoning, and if there was ever a place to refuel near Mars, that place is Phobos. Further re-usability could be included in later versions by having the first booster push the station to a half way point to Earths moon (otherwise known as a Lagrange point) so that after it detaches it can either orbit the moon to be sent back, or angle its orbit for a free return without burning any more fuel-just like Apollo 13.

In closing, the original plan calls for the transit vehicle to be left behind and orbit the Sun. Essentially it becomes space trash. If no changes were made you could steer it to a free return to Earth to practice for the MCT and validate equipment for extended time in open space. Or you might be able to set it up as a relay satellite so that even when Mars is behind the Sun you can still maintain communication. But then at the end of either journey it just burns up on re-entry of whatever body it hits. On Phobos this discarded station would provide advanced hardware, remote observation capabilities, and bulk material for a thriving micro-gravity ecosystem.

Sources:

http://www.mars-one.com/technology/mars-transit-vehicle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_%28moon%29
http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?title=GFDL:Apollo_11
http://www.spacex.com/falcon-heavy
http://www.spacex.com/falcon9