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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