Re:Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
by me_me_me on Thursday June 06, 2024 @10:01PM
(#40604609)
That is debatable at best, a crewed flight to mars is 8 months, crew of 3
You have roughly 40t at best for a craft that needs to land there.
quick google. astronauts need around 1.7kg of food per day, x3 crew, x(8x30) days is:
thats 1200 kg of food - one way - just to get there food.
And then you are doing to do what exactly?
> the rest of the plan revolved around using Apollo hardware, with some modification, for both transport and habitats(re-use of empty stages featured prominently).
This is basically handwaving problems away, massive problems.
The best I can agree is that a crewed fly-by could have been possible. But landing on mars would mean death sooner or later.
Re:Super Heavy has splashed down in The Gulf of Mexico
by elsonrodriguez on Friday June 07, 2024 @12:33AM
(#40605381)
The Mars Direct plan is featured heavily in the book "The Case For Mars".
It's over 400 pages and contains some of the details you seem to be curious about.
The gist of it is that the Saturn V has enough delta v to get to Mars, on the count of Mars having an atmosphere, which can be used for aerobraking.
Given the capability of reaching Mars with a Saturn V, the rest of the plan revolved around using Apollo hardware, with some modification, for both transport and habitats(re-use of empty stages featured prominently).
Ultimately even if we had hit some roadblock with martian soil or what have you, in an alternate timeline we could have at least sent uncrewed test flights to Mars and back.