Features Table of contents 1. Features 2. Letter from the Editor 3. The Pioneers 5. The launch of the Commercial Space Era 7. The Dreamers 9. NASA steps in 11. The SpaceX Revolution 13. Trajectories 15. We Choose to go to Mars 17. The Visionaries 19. Mars Cities
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Xplore Space World Space Club Magazine Letter from the Editor: If you’re a teenager like me, you've probably spent your life taking for granted that there are always astronauts in orbit on board the ISS, and cool rovers like Curiosity driving about on Mars, all whilst awesome probes embark on exotic journeys to the planets, to our sun, and out of the solar system entirely. But was it always like that? The simple and obvious answer is no. We live in a golden age of space activity, but the space age that we all take for granted is actually just in its infancy. In 1933, the oldest still-functioning space society in the world, the British Interplanetary Society, opened its doors for the first time when a group of enthusiasts like us started asking how to make space travel a reality. At that time, they and their ideas were regarded by most people as rather strange and far-fetched to say the least! That was 24 years before Sputnik, and 36 years before the Moon landing. Even Von Braun's V2 hadn't been seen or heard of at that point. But in 1933, in Germany, Von Braun was alive, and he was dreaming of the Moon and Mars, just like in England Arthur C. Clarke and the members of BIS were, and in the US Robert Goddard was. At that point, space engineers and and enthusiasts were not taken seriously by most people, but after World War II, the Soviets with Sergei Koroliev would change that. Over the years more and more people would be added to the list of both dreamers and space solution finders. And so now, here we are today, 50 years after what many consider to be humanity’s greatest achievement, the Apollo Lunar landings, and we’re still pushing our boundaries ever further into space. We currently sit on the verge of once more returning humans to the Moon, this time with permanently crewed Lunar bases, and then pushing onwards to the Red Planet. These are exciting times to be a teenager who wants to spend their life studying spaceflight and working on space missions. Or perhaps, even going into space. And so naturally, this edition of Xplore Space Magazine will focus on the future. We will be exploring some of the plans, past and present, to explore Mars, as well as both the organisations, and the people, that will actually be getting us there. So, let’s get right in, shall we? 2
By Clarence, @aerospace_guy © World Space Club
The Pioneers Early unmanned Mars probes This magazine is about the future exploration and eventual settlement of the planet Mars. But whilst we talk about sending humans to the Red Planet in the future, let us not forget those early robotic missions that allowed this to be possible. The first article in this magazine is therefore dedicated to those early explorers that gave us the knowledge we now have of Mars. The first Mars probes were Soviet, part of the USSR's Mars Program. They had truly the worst spacecraft names in history; 1M No. 1, 1M No. 2, 2MV-4 No. 1, Mars 1, and 2MV-3 No. 1. They also all failed, but to their credit it was the rockets launching them that exploded, not the probes themselves. The first series of successful expeditions were the American Mariners. Mariner 3 failed at launch, but Mariner 4 performed the first ever flyby of the Red planet on the 15th of July, 1965. Unfortunately, in doing so it proved once and for all that Mars was not the alien-inhabited world that most people had imagined, but rather a dead wasteland, which seriously depressed a great many space enthusiasts. It wouldn't be until decades later that scientists would realise Mars may have had life-harbouring conditions after all in the distant past. Nevertheless, Mariners 6 and 7 undeterred by either this or the failure of the recent Zond 2 and 2M No. 521 Soviet Mars probes, successfully performed more flybys of the planet in July of 1969, only days after Neil and Buzz took the most famous steps in history. Mariner 8 was meant to be the first spacecraft to enter orbit of Mars, but unfortunately it never made it there, as its rocket failed just after launch and it fell into the Atlantic. Mariner 9 had more success, becoming the first probe to orbit Mars. Then, the Soviets would again try to beat the West, and this time, their luck turned around. Not by much though. The 3MS No. 170 probe still failed like all the others, but the not quite as unromantically named Mars 2 and 3 did not. Both of them entered Martian orbit in late 1971, and both tried to deploy small landers. Alas, it was here that their luck ran out. When they arrived a large global dust storm was encircling the planet, and the probes expended a large amount of their film snapping photos of featureless dust clouds. Their landers didn't do much better. Mars 2's lander entered the atmosphere too steeply and failed to deploy its parachute in time, impacting the surface. Mars 3's lander was able to land successfully, but the sandstorm quickly built up enough static charge on the small metal frame of the lander to fry its transmitter after spending just 20 seconds on the surface, and unsurprisingly all subsequent attempts to reestablish contact with either of them failed. Attached to the sides of the Mars 2 and 3 landers were small ‘Prop-M’ rovers. Mars 2's was destroyed when the probe hit the surface, but whether Mars 3's successfully deployed is unknown. Even if it had deployed, it would have had no way of contacting Earth, and any data from it would have still been lost. The Soviets kept trying with the Mars 4, 5, 6, and 7 probes, but all of them except for five, which operated in Martian orbit for 9 days, failed. Despite their best efforts, the Soviet Mars program simply never managed to break free of their constant failures, in stark contrast to their extraordinary achievements in launching the first satellites and humans into orbit. The first age of Martian exploration ended as Mars 7 swung past the Red Planet, its lander having missed the atmosphere and been doomed to fly though deep space for all eternity. The story of next probes to endure the long journey to Mars would be very different, and much more successful. The vikings were about to invade Mars. NASA's Viking 1 launched in mid 1975, followed shortly by Viking 2 a few months later. Reaching Mars in 1976, they both snapped pictures of its surface, sending back data for many years to come. As well as a suite of orbital instruments, the Vikings also carried landers, like the soviet Mars probes had. These ones however, to everyones relief, actually worked. 3
Viking 1 touched down on Mars on July 20th, 1976, 7 years to the day after the Apollo 11 Lunar landing. It was followed by Viking 2 on September 3rd. What they did was astonishing. Both landers were massive, weighing half a ton each. Strapped to them was a whole host of scientific instrumentation, one piece of which famously suggested that a soil sample taken from the Martian surface had active bacteria in it, although that has since been strongly disputed. Nevertheless, it was a huge win for the scientific community, and told us a lot about the Red Planet we would one day be visiting. Despite this huge success however, the fact that it found no conclusive proof of life caused the general public’s interest in Mars to wane for many years, and with the exception of the only partially successful Soviet Phobos probes in 1988, and the failed Mars Observer NASA probe in 1992, the next missions to the Red planet would have to wait until 1996, when Mars Global Surveyor entered orbit, operating for the next 7 years. The Russians also tried to send a craft to mars in 1996, but apparently the universe insisted on not lifting its curse on them, and both the probe and the plutonium power sources powering it fell back to Earth as its fourth stage failed to reignite. Meanwhile in America, a third Mars probe was launched in 1996, this one much more ambitious than the Mars Global Surveyor. The probe in question was Pathfinder, and on Independence Day, July 4th, 1997, it touched down on the Martian surface, and unfolded itself, to reveal a small rover named Sojourner. Sojourner travelled a total distance of just over 100 meters, and operated for 83 Sols (85 Earth Days), despite only being designed for 7. The success of the Pathfinder probe and Sojourner rover proved to be the start of a new golden era of robotic Mars exploration, lead by JPL. On Mars, the rovers had landed. The same type of landing stage used on Pathfinder was later used for the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers, launched in 2003. They were both much more successful than anticipated, with Opportunity outliving its expected design life by a factor of 56. Landing in 2004, both rovers were only expected to last 90 Sols (about three months). Spirit died in 2010, and Opportunity died in 2018 - after 2208 and 5351 sols respectively, and both rovers were mourned by space enthusiasts all over the world. This pair of rovers were outstanding contributors to the scientific community, as they had both found huge amounts of evidence that at some point, hundreds of millions of years in the past, Mars had flowing water like Earth. As well as the Mars Exploration Rovers, many other probes were sent to Mars after Pathfinder - Nozomi, Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander, Deep Space 2, Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Beagle 2, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Phoenix, Fobos-Grunt, Yinghou-1, Curiosity, Mars Orbiter Mission, MAVEN, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, Schiaparelli, MarCO-A, and MarCO-B. Some of them have succeeded, some of them have failed. But they have all contributed to Mankind's knowledge of space, and of Mars. One day, we will have enough of that knowledge to go to the Red Planet ourselves. And when we do, we must not forget the role that these spacecraft, and the engineers and teams that built them, played in making that possible. 4
By Clarence, @aerospace_guy Š World Space Club
The launch of the Commercial Space Era Now that we have explored the history of robotic Mars missions a little, the next obvious topic to cover is manned ones. But before we begin, we still have something very important to contemplate: The space launch market. In 1957, the first ever satellite launch vehicle blasted off from a launch pad in the Bikanour Cosmodrome. In total, that rocket cost approximately 80 million 2019 dollars. The total payload to orbit was around 500 kg, so the cost per kg was $160,000. By 1980, that was down to $130,000 per kg. In 1995 it was $40,000 per kg. Today, on a government rocket, it is $8,400 per kg. On a reusable SpaceX rocket it is $2,700 per kg. Over the last 62 years, launch costs have dropped by a factor of 59. This is, needless to say, huge. This huge drop in launch costs has come about for a number of reasons. The first, is the decrease in the ratio of the rocket to the payload caused by the development of advanced alloys, more powerful engines, etc. The second is the explosion in the satellite launch market, which resulted in rocket builders adopting an assembly line style approach to building rockets - aka, build lots of them simultaneously instead of building just one at a time. And thirdly, the appearance of private space companies. The privatisation of space is very important for a number of reasons. Public organisations like NASA work by figuring out what the want to build, and then getting a bunch of subcontractors to build it for them. This causes a lot of money to be wasted, as multiple contractors might compete on designing the same thing, effectively doubling or tripling the preliminary development cost of that thing. Also, something people often forget is that the subcontractors are actual companies, so when they sell their product to NASA they add a profit margin on top. When you have hundreds of subcontractors you need to buy from, these profit margins add up quite significantly. And on top of all of that, everything often ends up tangled in politics that is quite hard to break free from. Private companies on the other hand don't really need to worry about any of that. By not having to deal with as many subcontractors, if any at all, they drastically reduce the complexity and the wasted money for a product, mainly by eliminating those excess profit margins on all of their costs. And if they make almost everything in-house, they can very effectively control how their products are made, more so than if they were working with a lot of subcontractors. This is of course a vast oversimplification, but it's close enough for our purposes here. That's not to say that public spaceflight organisations are bad however, in fact its quite the opposite. Public organisations like NASA have the advantage of being intertwined with their host country, so when that country's government makes a declaration to do something, the public spaceflight organisations will often end up getting huge amounts of funding to do it. That's basically what happened in the Apollo program back in the 60s. Public organisations also have proven to be exceptionally good at organising people, staging competitions, and directing spaceflight operations. They can also act as funding hubs, taking government funding and supplying it to various subcontractors to provide services they need. As a result of all of this, cooperation between public and private companies will prove critical in the future of spaceflight. One could easily imagine a future where NASA takes government funding for a project, and supplies it to a company which builds and launches the spacecraft, at which point NASA takes over controlling its operations in relation to the other spacecraft already flying, acting as a sort of air traffic controller. They could also provide the ground service equipment, launch sites, tracking stations, etc to private spaceflight companies that handle the spacecraft themselves. This is not to say that organisations like NASA would be completely removed from the spacecraft development process. NASA and other public companies have time and again shown incredible competence in designing, building and operating cutting-edge vehicles, but routine, bulk-production things like satellites or space launch vehicles would probably be left to the private sector. In this way, as described above, we can see that though the development of the private spaceflight industry over the past decade or so, launch costs have been pushed down, and spaceflight has been revolutionised forever.
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Rocket Launch Vehicles of the World - An Overview As of November 2019, there are currently 8 types of active space launch vehicles being operated by the United States. Europe operates an additional 2, Russia operates a further 5, and China, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, and North Korea all field SLVs of varying capacity. Of these, only 7 are classified as heavy lift vehicles, with 20 or more tons of payload. A further 4 are currently under development. These heavy lift vehicles are: Angara A5 Ariane 5 Delta IV Heavy Falcon 9 Falcon Heavy Long March 5 Proton-M
- 24.5 tons - 21.0 tons - 28.7 tons - 22.8 tons - 45.0 tons - 25.0 tons - 23.0 tons
- Russia - Ariane (Europe) - ULA (US) - SpaceX (US) - SpaceX (US) - China - Russia
Currently under development HLVs: Ariane 6 New Glenn Vulcan-Centaur Vulcan-ACES
- 21.6 tons, by 2021 - 45.0 tons, by 2021 - 25.0 tons, by 2021 - 37.4 tons, by 2023
- Ariane (Europe) - Blue Origin (US) - ULA (US) - ULA (US)
Additionally, the Falcon Heavy in its expendable configuration (where instead of being reused, the expended boosters are dropped into the sea), is classified as a super-heavy lift vehicle, with a payload capacity of over 50 tons. Specifically, 63.8 tons. 5 super-heavy lift vehicles more are currently being developed. Super-heavy lift vehicles: Falcon Heavy - 63.8 tons (in expendable mode)
- SpaceX (US)
Currently under development SHLVs: Long March 9 New Armstrong Starship SLS Yenisei
- 140.0 tons, by 2030 - Payload and Timeline unknown - 150.0 tons, by 2021 to 2024 - 95.0 to 130 tons, by 2020 to 2022 - 90.0 tons, by 2028
- China - Blue Origin (US) - SpaceX (US) - United States - Russia
- 140.0 tons, 1967 to 1973
- United States
For reference: Saturn V 6
By Clarence, @aerospace_guy Š World Space Club
The Dreamers Early Mars mission architectures As long as humanity knew of its existence, we have dreamed of going to Mars. It's no surprise then, that detailed plans for early Mars expeditions date back to the 1950s, even earlier in some cases. Lets start off with the original Mars Expedition plan: Wernher Von Braun's The Mars Project. Conceived in 1948, and first published in 1952, this book is considered the father of every planned Mars expedition since. In The Mars Project, Von Braun outlines an "enormous scientific expedition" consisting of a fleet of 10 spacecraft, each carrying 70 crew members. They would be assembled in low orbit using reusable space shuttles, before departing for Mars. Von Braun calculated that for the entire journey, the ships would each need 5.32 million tons of propellent. Once in low orbit over Mars, a manned, winged, landing craft would undock from one of the orbital ships and make the perilous journey down to the surface, landing on the smooth ice at Mars's poles. They would then travel, according to Von Braun, 6,500 km overland using tank like contraptions, before building a landing strip at the equator so that the rest of the crew could descend to the surface in their own descent ships (or "landing boats" as he called them). Using cables and a lot of work, the ships would then be turned upright, and their wings would be blown off. That would enable the crew to use the ships as conventional ascent rockets to return to low orbit and use the orbiting fleet to get home. The crew would end up spending a total of about 443 days on the Martian surface. While this mission plan was revolutionary at the time, only sections of it (admittedly big ones) hold up today. Mars's atmosphere turned out to be too thin to glide through, and the dangers of cosmic radiation were not known at the time. Nevertheless, The Mars Project remains the most influential conceptual Mars mission ever published. The next major work on Mars missions was carried out by General Atomics, with Project Orion. Project Orion was a proposal for a huge nuclear powered spacecraft that would use nuclear detonations behind the ship to generate thrust. The actual use of a so called "Orion Drive" was far greater than just Mars expeditions, with plans for giant space battleships and even voyages to nearby stars being drawn up. This project actually got very far into development, with several test flights using conventional explosives being performed. Unfortunately, the project only ran from 1957 to 1965, and was cancelled after the introduction of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Fun Fact: In a follow-up book to The Mars Project, Von Braun hypothesised that the title given to a leader of the new Martian colonies wound not be The President, but rather The Elon.
In the timespan from the early 60s to the late 70s, hundreds of varied Mars mission plans were drawn up by companies including TRW, North American, Philico, Lockheed, Douglas, General Dynamics, and many more, including NASA itself. After the success of the Apollo program, Von Braun started again advocating for Mars missions, using several Saturn V boosters to assemble an interplanetary spacecraft in low orbit, powered by NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications) nuclear rocket motors (not Orion drives, just conventional nuclear rockets). Nixon however made it clear that the Space Shuttle was the direction NASA was headed, and so Von Braun proposed a variant on his plan that used Shuttles to assemble the spacecraft, reminiscent of his original plans in 1948. But it was never to be. After all of his proposals were rejected, Von Braun retired from NASA in 1972, upset with the direction the agency was taking now that the Moon landing goal had been accomplished. By Clarence, @aerospace_guy Š World Space Club
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In 1989, the Space Exploration Initiative was announced, with the aim of establishing a long term plan for the exploration of space. Part of this was the development of an eventual Mars mission. While working for Martin Marietta, Robert Zubrin (who was working on designing interplanetary mission architectures) came to the conclusion that NASA's official space policy was fundamentally flawed. NASA wanted to perform a Mars mission by trying to make the most complex spacecraft possible, utilising as many advanced technologies as they could. Zubrin perceived this as "The exact opposite of the correct way to do engineering". (Quote from the documentary The Mars Underground, which can be found on YouTube and is highly recommended) Zubrin started looking into alternative mission architectures, and came up with one that he believed was considerably better than NASA’s. It involved extending the surface stay to allow the astronauts time to explore the Martian surface, switching to a conjunction class mission to reduce travel times, using In Situ Resource Utilisation systems to reduce the launch weight of the ascent vehicle by several orders of magnitude, and he thew out the orbital assembly approach completely, favouring a direct ascent strategy. His mission plan involved the following: The development of a super-heavy lift booster named Ares. This would utilise already-existing Space Shuttle (also known as STS) hardware as much as possible. The core stage would consist of a STS external tank paired with two STS solid rocket boosters, in the same configuration as on STS. The STS orbiter would be replaced with an engine pod with three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs), which would be slung on the side of the core stage to allow it to interface with the already existing STS launch pads. Mounted atop the stack would be a hydrogen-oxygen upper stage, and in total it could place 110 tons into low orbit, or 47 tons on a trans-Mars injection orbit. The entire thing would be comparatively cheap to develop since it would be based on Shuttle hardware. The plan would also require the development of a spacecraft named the Earth Return Vehicle (ERV), and another named the Habitation Module (Hab). Both would weigh 40 to 47 tons and would be designed with the intention of being mated to an Ares booster, sent to Mars directly, performing an aerocapture into low Mars orbit, and landing on the Martian surface. The ERV would be a two stage craft with a large teleoperated rover carrying a small nuclear reactor slung underneath it. When the ERV lands, it drops the rover which drives a few hundred meters away, and places the nuclear reactor on the ground, preferably with a small hill between it and the landing site. The rover is then used to scout out the surrounding area while the ERV sets to work collecting CO2 from the Martian atmosphere (which is only half a percent as thick as Earths). This CO2 is reacted with 6 tons of hydrogen brought from Earth over the course of 6 months to make methane and water. The water is electrolysed into hydrogen and oxygen, and you would then have all of the necessary materials to make methaneoxygen rocket propellant, which is used to refuel the ERV for the trip back to Earth. The Hab is a bit different. It's a tuna-can shaped module that will house the crew on their journey to Mars and during their stay on the surface. It has two decks, the upper one has living quarters and a solar-storm shelter, while the lower one has laboratories, workshops, and a "garage" for a large pressurised rover. Said rover is powered by a methane-oxygen internal combustion engine, and has a one way range of 1000 km, or a two way range of 500 km. Launch One, Year 1 - An Ares rocket boosts an uncrewed ERV towards Mars. It lands 6 months later and begins making propellant. Launch Two, Year 3 - Another ERV is sent towards Mars, arriving 6 months later. Launch Three, Year 3 - A Hab is launched to Mars. Unlike the previous two launches, this one is carrying a crew of four. The Hab is landed next to the ERV sent there on launch 1, and the crew settles in for a one year long stay on the Red Planet. If they land too far away from the ERV, the second ERV, launch 2, can be redirected to land next to them. As it is, the second ERV lands a few thousand km away, and starts prepping for the next mission. After the crew finish exploring the surrounding area in the pressurised rover, they use the ERV to return home. Launch Four, Year 5 - Another ERV is launched to Mars, arriving in 6 months. Launch Five, Year 5 - The second Hab is launched to Mars, and like its predecessor it also is crewed. Upon landing next to the ERV sent there in Year 3, they do the same thing as the first mission again, in a new location. From here on it repeats. To maintain this architecture would require 2 launches every 2 years, meaning there would be opportunities between launches to Mars where you could launch, say, a Lunar base using slightly modified versions of the same spacecraft. In the end, NASA chose not to follow Mars Direct because they considered Mars to be an end goal, with a Lunar orbiting space station, asteroid redirect mission, and an eventual Lunar base being more important in the short term. Zubrin felt modified versions of the ERV and Hab could have been used to support these things, but NASA decided against it.
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NASA Steps In NASA Mars programs
In 1989, president George Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative, with the goal of establishing a long term plan for the exploration of space. Part of this was the development for an eventual Mars mission, and this resulted in a number of NASA studies called Design Reference Missions (DRMs), with the goal of creating a baseline for other missions to be developed from. The original Design Reference Mission was completed in 1993, and was based on a modified version of Mars Direct, christened Mars Semi Direct by Robert Zubrin. It had many of the benefits that Mars Direct had, minimising the time spent in space and employing In Situ Resource Utilisation systems to fuel the ascent vehicle. But unlike Mars Direct, the DRM used an Apollo style mission plan, with the ascent vehicle rendezvousing with an orbiting return craft. It also called for the use of NERVA propulsion systems, and for a slightly larger booster than Mars Direct required. It concluded that while feasible, better approaches might exist. Design Reference Mission 2.0 in 1997 and DRM 3.0 in 1998 were focused on taking the DRM 1.0 architecture and turning it into something that could be easily adjusted to perform missions to the Moon, or to asteroids. It also featured a few small quality improvements, and a redesign of some of the spacecraft. DRM 4.0 looked at utilising solar electric propulsion systems as alternatives, and concluded that while using advanced propulsion systems was a promising concept, it still had a lot of flaws that were yet to be worked out. As well as Design Reference Missions, NASA has been quite busy with other programs. In 2005 NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and President George Bush came up with the Constellation Program. It outlined a huge and complex plan to land humans on the Moon, and eventually Mars, which a report ended up finding would have cost over 300 billion 2020 dollars. It was then promptly cancelled. When it was still being worked on, project Constellation involved the development of a new family of launch vehicles names Ares (not to be confused with Robert Zubrin's proposed booster), which would consist of two main vehicles; Ares 1 and Ares V. Ares 1 was designed to take payloads and crew to low orbit, while Ares V was designed to throw payloads to the Moon or Mars. The program also required at least two new spacecraft, namely Orion and Altair. Orion was supposed to be the successor to the Space Shuttle, and was very similar to Apollo, with a conical Command Module and a cylindrical Service Module. And if Orion was an Apollo CSM, Altair would be the LEM. Altair was a huge Lunar lander designed to ferry cargo and crew down to the Lunar surface (from Lunar orbit) and back. Orion and Altair would work together in an almost identical fashion to the old Apollo missions, with one major exception. Instead of launching Orion and Altair at the same time, Orion and Altair would be launched into low orbit (on an Ares I and Ares V respectively) and would then dock. The Ares V upper stage still attached to Altair would then send them both off to the Moon. From there on, it would proceed as a normal Apollo mission would, with the exception that the Altair lander could carry more cargo than an Apollo mission, and later flights might land at a Lunar base.
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That's how NASA envisaged Lunar flights would take place. In order to determine how a Mars mission would take place, NASA completed Mars Design Reference Mission 5.0 in 2009, which looked at using Ares I and Ares V boosters to perform a Design Reference Mission. It concluded that for Mars missions, four more spacecraft would need to be developed; an interplanetary transfer stage (ITS) using NERVA engines for propulsion, a cargo landing vehicle (CLV), a crewed landing vehicle (CRLV), and a habitat module (Hab). The CLV could carry either a surface habitat or an ascent vehicle. The transfer stages would be used to push everything out to Mars, and push the crewed habitat module back to Earth. Mars Design Reference Mission 5.0 would involve the following: Transfer stages would push a few cargo landers out to Mars, which would then land and start setting up a base, and also start using ISRU to make propellant for the ascent vehicle. Then, a transfer stage would push a crewed landing vehicle (but without a crew aboard) out to low Mars orbit. The crew would then depart in a habitat module being pushed by a transfer stage. Upon reaching Mars, they would rendezvous with the CRLV already there, and descend to the surface. After a surface stay of 500 days they would use the ascent vehicle to return to orbit, and use the Hab/ITS waiting there to return to Earth. After the enormous cost of this architecture was realised, the program was cancelled. However, certain aspects of it still remain. Orion remained in development, and is currently slated to start flying in 2020 to 2022. Altair was cancelled, but the design inspired many landers currently being worked on by private companies. And, most importantly of all, although Ares I was cancelled after just one test flight was performed, Ares V remained in development, but was renamed to the Space Launch System (SLS) and had its engine configuration changed. After all was said and done, the spirit of the Constellation Program was still intact, just slowed down a bit. Under the banner of the recently named Artemis Program, NASA plans to carry out a crewed Lunar landing before 2024. What their exact plans are for Mars are not yet completely known, but they are also there. Currently NASA has at its disposal the SLS booster, the Orion spacecraft, and several commercial Lunar landers that they plan to use. SLS currently has two variants available in the near-term; Block 1 and Block 1B. Block 1 can put 90 tons into low orbit and 26 tons to a Lunar transfer orbit, while Block 1B has a bigger, more powerful upper stage and can put 130 tons into low orbit and 37 to 40 tons onto a Lunar transfer orbit. It is estimated that it will cost 2 billion dollars per launch, so since NASA has an annual budget of 20 billion, they will probably only be able to launch at most 2 or 3 a year without diverting funds from other projects. For reference, at the height of the Apollo program, NASA was launching 3 Saturn V boosters per year. As for the Orion crew capsule, it weighs 26.5 tons and can carry a crew of up to 6, although at first it may only fly with 4. And as for those commercial landers, most of them are unmanned and can only carry a few hundred kilograms of payload. However, Blue Origin and SpaceX, two of the commercial partners NASA selected, are working on landers capable of being unmanned or manned, with 4.5 tons and 100 tons of payload to the Lunar surface respectively. But what about NASA's plans to go to Mars? Right now they haven't announced exactly how they plan to do that, but we do know they want to launch those missions from the Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway. Gateway is a small space station, like a mini ISS, which NASA is planning to build in orbit around the Moon. From the Gateway, NASA plans to use a spacecraft called the Deep Space Transport to ferry crews between Lunar orbit and Martian Orbit, or potentially to an Asteroid or the Martian moons. We do know that this vehicle will likely use a combination of chemical and electric propulsion systems, and will likely have habitat modules made from the same tanks as the upper stages of SLS. Other than that, no details are known. Any plans for a Mars orbiting station, or a Mars surface base, either don't exist or aren't public yet. Nevertheless, even if the plans don't exist now, they probably will soon. NASA has already committed to the Moon by 2024, and Mars is without a doubt getting closer every year.
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By Clarence, @aerospace_guy Š World Space Club
The SpaceX Revolution Private Mars programs
In the early 2000s, Elon Musk was looking to start a new compony. He had for a long time been a huge fan of space exploration, and was disappointed at the general public’s lack of interest in it. So, he came up with a plan which he called Mars Oasis: he would purchase a refurbished ICBM from Russia, and use it to launch a small greenhouse to the Martian surface. Seeing life grow on another planet, he thought, would prove to the public that colonising Mars was possible. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy, and getting Russia to sell him the rockets was harder than he expected. The lowest they offered him one for was 8 million, and Elon considered this to be too high. Allegedly as the story goes, while on the plane trip back from Russia, Elon did some quick calculations, and realised that the cost of an average spacecraft was about 30 times higher than the raw cost of the materials used to build it. He also realised that by doing vertical integration, and manufacturing as much as possible in-house, he could start his own space company and make rockets considerably cheaper than anyone else. And so, in May of 2002, history was forever changed, as Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, was founded. The first rocket SpaceX built and flew was the Falcon 1, which could place about half a ton of payload into low orbit. The first 3 launches failed, but Elon did not quit. Staring bankruptcy in the face he pushed on, and it paid off. The fourth and fifth flights flew perfectly. Against all the odds, the program had been a success, and led the way to a much larger lifter, Falcon 9. Falcon 9 first flew in 2010, and was much more capable, with an initial payload of 10.5 tons. By 2013 SpaceX had used a Falcon 9 first stage returning to Earth after staging to perform a retropropulsive landing test where the engines were relit and used to somewhat softly touch down the booster in the ocean. By 2014 this had been perfected, and in January of 2015, they tried landing the first stage on a barge in the middle of the ocean. Despite having a lot of practice from the ‘Grasshopper’ and ‘F9 Dev’ rockets that had been performing routine short hops, flying up to a few hundred meters and then landing again, the rocket when tasked with doing the same while returning from outer space, “landed hard”, and was completely destroyed. However, by the 22nd of December 2015 SpaceX had figured out the issues, and a Falcon 9 first stage successfully performed a soft landing at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral. By April of 2016 they had performed the same feat, but landing on a barge in the ocean. Since then many, many more flights have flown with their first stages being recovered, with the first stages themselves sometimes being flown multiple times. SpaceX had, in just a few years, completely revolutionised the entire launch market, and forced the price of getting stuff into space to plummet. But Elon wasn’t done. As well as Falcon 9, SpaceX was also developing a spacecraft named Dragon, which could carry supplies to and from the International Space Station. First flying in 2010, Dragon was and still is one of the best ways of resupplying the ISS, with some Dragon spacecraft even being reused many times. SpaceX is also currently developing a crewed variant, named Dragon 2, which has already made an unmanned test flight to the ISS and an inflight abort test, and will start flying properly around 2020.
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Even now, Elon still isn't done. SpaceX is currently working on a new family of spacecraft, named BFR (Big Falcon Rocket). The BFR will, when fully completed around 2021 to 2022, consist of two vehicles. The first is a gigantic spacecraft named Starship, which will be able to go from low Earth orbit all the way to the Moon or Mars, or even according to Elon (who has a delightful habit of aiming high), Jupiter or Saturn and back. To get the craft into orbit, a gigantic and fully reusable rocket booster named Superheavy will be utilised. For example, in a Lunar mission a Superheavy booster would blast a crewed or cargo Starship into orbit. Once there, fuel tanker variants of the Starship will be launched by more Superheavies to refuel it. Then, the Starship would depart to the Moon, land, and return to the Earth. It could also perform a mission to Mars, but that would require it to refuel on the Martian surface using ISRU. Right now a Starship prototype has already been built, and a second is almost complete. The rocket engines the craft will use have in fact already been flown on a flying test rig named Starhopper. The entire development process thus far has been extremely complex and constantly changing, but our best estimates say the craft will likely start flying (uncrewed) around 2021. With this rate of development, it seams like comparatively cheap spaceflight will soon start to become a reality.
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By Clarence, @aerospace_guy Š World Space Club
Trajectories Getting to Mars
Let’s now take a look at some of the actual science behind a Martian expedition. To get to Mars you basically have 4 options when it comes to your trajectory. You can use a Conjunction class mission, an Opposition class one, or a Cycling one. The final option is a Brachistochrone trajectory, which barring some unforeseen scientific breakthrough, will not be useful anytime soon. The first trajectory classes to look at are Conjunction and Opposition. In both classes, the transit time from Earth to Mars is around 180 days (198 for Conjunction, 177 for Opposition). It is possible to decrease that if you have a sufficient propellent margin, or more efficient engines, but that extra capability would be better used increasing your payload capacity. In an opposition-class mission, the spacecraft stays at Mars for 40 days, (you could probably stay for up to around 100 before your return Delta-V requirements became unworkable), before performing a trans-Earth injection manoeuvre. The return journey takes around 342 days, and features the spacecraft diving sunwards and swinging by Venus for a gravity assist. The total round trip would be a 560 day excursion, of which only about 40 would be spent at Mars. The amount of Delta-V required varies, but would be around 8 to 12 kilometres per second. In a conjunction-class mission however, the spacecraft would stay at Mars for around 558 days, followed by a return journey taking 197 days, making the total around 1005 days. Of that, just over half the time would be spent at Mars. The last option is a Cycling trajectory. In this mission profile, a spacecraft is placed into an orbit which leaves it performing flybys of Earth and Mars periodically. Once it has been injected into this orbit, it will continue swinging between Earth and Mars forever, (with small course adjustments every so often). There are many different cycling orbits to chose from, but the most popular one is the Aldrin Cycler, named after legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin who proposed the orbit in 1985, as part of his longstanding goal of getting humans to Mars. The Aldrin Cycler has an Earth-Mars transfer time of 146 days, after which it takes 480 days outside Mars’s orbit, before reencountering Mars and spending 146 days returning to Earth to start the cycle again. However, it cannot slow down to enter orbit, as that would break the cycle. As such, the Cycler would essentially act as an extra habitation module which a spacecraft going to Mars could utilise without increasing their propellant requirements. Which of these options is superior is a hard question to answer. Opposition class trajectories are very well suited to flag-and-footprints missions, and perhaps short-term scientific expeditions, if you take the hit on Delta-V and stay on the surface for a full 100 days. Plus, you get the added science from the Venus flyby on the return trip. However, a Conjunction class mission also has its own advantages, with a shorter amount of time spent in interplanetary space, and a much larger amount of time being spent planetside. This reduces the crews exposure to the deep space radiation environment, and gives them a much greater capability to explore the planet, but it comes at the cost of a much longer mission, meaning there is a higher chance of equipment failure. A Cycling trajectory is very similar to a Conjunction class mission, with a transit time of 146 days and a surface stay of 480 days. In fact, that mission profile could be flown normally, without using a Cycler, although it would have a slightly higher Delta-V cost. The advantage of a Cycler is it reduces the amount of stuff you need to lug around with you as you perform your transfer burns, basically giving you extra living space for free. However, it does dramatically increase the risk factor of the mission. Also depending on how your spacecraft is designed, you may have enough propellent to do the mission without using a cycling orbit, and bring your entire spacecraft with you. One thing is certain though, once voyages between Earth and Mars become commonplace, a Cycler will be very useful.
By Clarence, @aerospace_guy © World Space Club
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An Opposition class transfer orbit
A Conjunction class transfer orbit
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We Choose To Go To Mars The Martian environment, and a bit of politics The Martian environment is harsh. Temperatures vary between -153C and 5C. The atmosphere is 0.6% as thick as Earth’s, and primarily made of carbon dioxide. A large amount of solar and cosmic radiation hits the surface constantly, and meteorites are a major threat. But it gets worse. As it turns out, the real problems with the Martian environment, and space in general, isn’t what it will do to you once you’re there. It’s what it will do to you during the journey. Mars’s thin atmosphere is just thin enough to make using parachutes impractical for landing on their own, and is just thick enough to require that a spacecraft carries a heat shield. The thickness of Mars’s atmosphere can also fluctuate by as much as 10%, meaning performing pinpoint landings is next to impossible. The solar radiation environment during the transit between Earth and Mars is very dangerous. A solar flare could kill the crew. But those are all problems that can be solved. The temperature can be managed with heaters and well-designed insulation. The thin atmosphere can be navigated successfully with good enough spacecraft designs. The long-term effects of solar and cosmic radiation are still largely unknown, but the threat can be mitigated with large amounts of radiation shielding. Meteorites are a real problem, but the chances of one hitting a spacecraft or base is very low. Getting to the Moon was hard. Getting to Mars will certainly be harder. But it's not going to get easier the longer we wait. If we’re to go to Mars, we must do what the Apollo program did 50 years ago, and make a commitment right now. Only by pushing forward and no doubt making mistakes and learning from them along the way will we eventually get there. NASA, under Administrator Jim Bridenstine's watch, has announced a firm and clear commitment to returning to the Moon by 2024, under Space Policy Directive 1 signed by President Trump on December 11, 2017. It's also part of the announcement that we will not only go back to the Moon by 2024 with permanently crewed settlements on the Lunar surface, but that we will also keep pushing on towards Mars. However, as of yet that intention has not quite solidified into a clearly defined and detailed plan of action. However, NASA's commitment to returning to the Moon by 2024, and to establish a permanently crewed settlement there is clearly making excellent progress, and with SpaceX's unwavering commitment to getting to Mars, the prospect of humans on Mars by the 2030s seams very realistic. These are indeed exciting times. In our lifetime we have become used to knowing that there are always humans in space (on the ISS). The Moon is visible to every human being on the Earth. Imagine what it will be like in around 4 years time when we all look up at the Moon at night, and know there are humans living up there. And not just Americans, but an international community. This will transform our perception of ourselves as a truly spacefaring species, and make the dream of humans to Mars, and our becoming a multiplanetary species, much more real to all humans, not just todays space enthusiasts and professionals.
By Clarence, @aerospace_guy © World Space Club
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The Visionaries From imagination to reality All Science Fiction Writers Our story begins with writers. In particular, the imagination of science fiction writers. Starting in the 1800s with authors like Jules Vern, and H. G. Wells, through to the 1900s with the likes of Ray Bradbury, Kim Stanley Robinson and Arthur C. Clarke, and now into the 21 century. Science fiction has and most likely always will be where fantastical, and seemingly prophetic new ideas pop up. It's not surprising, then, that exploring Mars appeared in fiction long before any serous studies. And even then, after the 1940s, when serous scientific consideration was being given to exploring Mars, science fiction writers were still mostly responsible for the public’s interest in Red Planet. Their works inspired a generation of engineers and scientists, and so even though they didn't design the actual spacecraft, they still played an integral role in all aspects of space exploration.
Wernher Von Braun V is for Von Braun. V is for V2. V is for Saturn V. And V is for visionary. Von Braun was a man ahead of his time, coming up with plans for voyages to the Red Planet long before any would actually take place. And yet, even now, 50 years later, many of his projects and predictions still hold true. In 1948 Von Braun wrote a detailed study called The Mars Project, looking into the plausibility of a huge scientific expedition to Mars. Only three years earlier he had been working on the V2 missile, the first human made object to reach space, and 21 years later his creation, the Saturn V, would land the first humans on the Moon. That same year, in 1969, he would write another study on going to Mars. It would be rejected by NASA and congress in favour of continuing operations in low Earth orbit, and humanity's expansion to other planets would be delayed at least 50 years.
Buzz Aldrin A is for Aldrin. A is for astronaut. And A is for awesome. A is also for, American Hero! But not just an American hero, his space legacy will be appreciated by the whole world. He is, of course, a pilot, an astronaut, an engineer who made vital contributions to the Apollo program, a Moonwalker, but also for the last 50 years, he has been a tireless and influential campaigner and ambassador for humans to Mars. Buzz adopted a public role as a global space ambassador, which has enabled him to win the ear of every President since Nixon, giving him the opportunity to campaign for, and advise them on matters of crewed Mars missions, and the colonisation of the Red Planet. But not just advising Presidents. Buzz literally spends his life traveling around the globe, writing books, being interviewed, speaking at events, making films and games all promoting the case for humans to Mars, and even developing the Aldrin Cycler. 17
Robert Zubrin Z is for... well, actually we couldn’t think of anything that starts with Z. But that doesn't mean he’s not still awesome! The one thing Zubrin never does is rest from his quest to get humans to Mars, and that's putting it lightly. In the 1980s Zubrin worked at Martin Marietta and was instrumental in the creation of the Mars Direct system, alongside David Baker. He was also responsible for the invention of the Nuclear Salt Water Rocket, which someday might be the standard in-space interplanetary propulsion system. He is also the author of multiple great books detailing how humanity should spread out to the stars, including the hugely influential The Case For Space, and The Case For Mars. In the late 1990s he founded the Mars Society, which now has members and chapters across the globe. It has also developed various Mars 'simulations', where volunteers are stationed in the desert or the arctic and put through the same amount of isolation a real Mars mission crew would endure. They even commissioned a National Anthem for Mars.
Elon Musk E is for The Elon (page 7). Reusable rocket builder. Renewable energy supporter. Ultimate memelord. SpaceX was once on the verge of bankruptcy after its first three rocket launches failed. Now, it's literally building crewed rockets to go to the Moon and Mars. And on top of that, they are reusable. Against all odds, Elon has made commercial spaceflight a reality. But it's not just SpaceX. He also has the most iconic electric car company on the planet, Tesla, and a solar power company, Solar City. He's even pioneering braincomputer interfaces with Neuralink. Amidst all this, only one thing is for certain. Whatever the future for Mars exploration holds, it will probably have rather a lot to do with Elon Musk. 18
By Clarence, @aerospace_guy © World Space Club
Martian Cities The eventual colonisation of the Red Planet We have looked at getting to Mars and even exploring it. But if humanity is truly to become an interplanetary species, then we must also figure out how to stay there. Not for years, but for decades and maybe, just maybe, even centuries and millennia. One brilliant organisation that adopts a very holistic approach to looking into this is Mars City Design, founded by the visionary architect Vera Mulyani. Vera is commonly described as a Marschitect, and she created the organisation Mars City Design to run design challenges and workshops, exploring the concepts needed to make a long-term and large-scale thriving Martian city, where "people would be happy to live, work and love." What sets MCD apart from the others is that it is truly a global and fully inclusive competition, open to all ages, and nationalities, to students and professionals, individuals and teams. Not only that but the wide breadth of concepts developed include not just housing, transportation, food/crops, and other essential infrastructure you would expect, but also music, arts, and other seemingly 'non-essential' areas, that nevertheless are all vital to the wellbeing and success of any long term community. "More and more, we’re becoming aware that it’s essential to unite different disciplines together to collaborate instead of compete... We need to include the creative viewpoint in everything we do." - Vera Mulyani The first annual MCD challenge was held in 2015. The international challenges are hosted in a different city each year, attended by participants from all over the world. In 2016 the MCD competition received entires including global positioning systems, 3D printable and self-building structures, terraforming projects and even plans for entire bases and colonies. This year's Mars City Design challenge is all about urban farming on Mars, and looking for solutions to long-term sustainability. Vera herself was also the team leader on a project called Alpha 3.0 in 2016, which successfully got into the top 10 runners up for the NASA 3D printed Mars habitat challenge. The Alpha 3.0 habitat that they designed was based around the natural shape of a Barchan Martian sand dune, and was even envisioned to slowly be blown across the Martian surface, at about a meter per year. It was also designed to be easily 3D printable from available local materials. Mars City Design is also working on another very exciting project, the Mars Research Center which they plan to construct in the Mojave desert, where Martian habitats, labs, and all sorts of other things, even societal structures, can be tested in a sort of simulated Martian environment. You can find out more about Mars City Design by visiting their website: https://www.marscitydesign.com/
Vera Mulyani with Buzz Aldrin
The Mars Desert Research Centre
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Mars City Design 2017 - MIT Team - Redwood Forest For the 2017 challenge a MIT team submitted the Redwood Forest, a city design that mimics the way redwood trees grow on earth, with a number of domed habitats containing mini-ecosystems, placed on the Martian surface, and connected by a network of underground tunnels. The entire complex could house 10,000 people. “On Mars, our city will physically and functionally mimic a forest, using local Martian resources such as ice and water, regolith (soil), and sun to support life. Designing a forest also symbolises the potential for outward growth as nature spreads across the Martian landscape. Each tree habitat incorporates a branching structural system and an inflated membrane enclosure, anchored by tunnelling roots. The design of a habitat can be generated using a computational formfinding and structural optimisation workflow developed by the team. The design workflow is parametric, which means that each habitat is unique and contributes to a diverse forest of urban spaces.� - Valentina Sumini
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By Clarence, @aerospace_guy Š World Space Club
