See Zubrin's piece in the Wall Street Journal about a $500 million manned mission to mars. He uses some highly optimistic numbers in his architecture, but even if his estimate is an order of magnitude off, it's still a vast improvement from all schemes considered by NASA. The assertion that going to Mars requires thirteen times ISS's mass is ridiculous.
Who the heck asserts that? NASA's DRM 5.0, which is bloated, is about 900mT, or just a bit over 2 ISS masses, which is about what even the much-maligned 90 day SEI study concluded. DRM 3.0 got it down to 400mT, or 1 ISS mass.
1 Mars Mission = 12 Space Stations = 37 Saturn V Launches.
Quote from: strangequark on 06/20/2011 01:18 amWho the heck asserts that? NASA's DRM 5.0, which is bloated, is about 900mT, or just a bit over 2 ISS masses, which is about what even the much-maligned 90 day SEI study concluded. DRM 3.0 got it down to 400mT, or 1 ISS mass."Human Mars Exploration: Low Earth Orbit Departure Mass Requirement" -- Bobby BraunQuote1 Mars Mission = 12 Space Stations = 37 Saturn V Launches.My mistake, it's 12 ISS masses, not 13. That's without all the new technologies that DRM 5 assumes -- the "present day" Mars mission.http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/553607main_APL_Bobby_5_27_11_DW2.pdf
I don't think it could be achieved with current technology outside of a government program. With future technological breakthroughs, it could come withing the realm of private explorers and universities but that is a long while off, decades.Government has an advantage in that it can tax everybody in a country against their will to raise funds for a mission. The person's personal interest in the program is not required, so the pool of people to tax is huge. Donation based missions require people's charity and concern with the subject. The pool of people to get money from is much much smaller. And the amounts of money involved without a return on investment or tangible personal benefits is going to turn a lot of people off. Sending people to Mars is going to be low on most people's priority lists as far as philanthropy goes. With the levels of unemployment in the States at present, I think people would almost actually prefer if it was a giant jobs program because at least that solves a problem here on Earth.
Would it be feasible to establish an international foundation which purpose is to do a manned mission to Mars? It could have several advantages over a goverment-lead program:- Reduced byreaucracy- Not dependent on the congress or the president and changing policies, only on the members of the foundation- No politically driven decisions related to jobs, just obtain everything needed with the best quality and the lowest price possible- Easier to get international partners and new companies along- Many other I suppose, you name it ...Here is a small plan:There could be individual members and company members. Let's say both are divided into regular silver and gold members with different annual cost. The basic membership fee should be something that ordinary person who wants to support this effort is willing and capable of paying, for example $200/year. Silver would be $2000/y and gold $20000/y for wealthy individuals willing to contribute more.For company members the basic membership fee would be $20000, for silver members $200000 and gold members $2000000 per year. The membership would be required to get any contract from the foundation. Probably silver or gold membership would be required to get bigger contracts. Advertisement would be the other thing to attract companies, as well as summits that this foundation would organize etc.How many members would be required? I saw $25 billion from the web as a price for Mars Direct mission. This seems to be a price for government-lead mission but on the other hand this is probably very optimistic so I'll use this as an example.So assuming $25 billion over 10 years, here's an example what you'd need:Individual:regular ($200) x 2000000 members = $400Msilver ($2000) x 200000 = $400Mgold ($20000) x 20000 = $400MCompany:regular ($20000) x 20000 = $400Msilver ($200000) x 2000 = $400Mgold ($2000000) x 200 = $400Mplatinum/founding members ($20000000) x 10 = $200MTotal $2.6 billion per year, $26 billion over ten years. I don't know if this is too many members to be required Some of those look quite optimistic but who knows, this would be a world-wide organization. It is much less money anyway that Bernard Madoff got with his fraud and he only promised more money, this foundation would promise a manned trip to Mars! Most likely this 'campaign' would start so that some founding members, top companies and people in this field (I wouldn't deny also individual members to donate $2M/year or more if they want), would give some seed money and offer detailed plans and cost estimates to give confidence for smaller companies and ordinary people to join. Naturally all spending would be completely transparent to all members and to the general public too (there would be many futere members there).Probably there should also be some other motivation for ordinary people to join the foundation. One possibility could be a lottery for a trip to orbit in every year. Let's say we would spend $50M in each year to this prize, this would be enough to send at least one (probably more, don't know if Spacex has given any prices for a manned flight?) winner to orbit. This would reduce the budget to just $500M over 10 years. Ordinary members would get one ticket for this lottery, silver membrs 10 and gold members 100 tickets. So besides supporting this Mars effort, individual members would get a chance to win a spaceflight!So here was a proposal If there are any more detailed plans for this kind of effort (in this forum or elsewhere) please send a link. Does Mars Foundation this kind of plans?
