Vehicle Team Weekly Progress Report 1

Mars IPRO

Vehicle Design Team

Over the past week each team member did individual brainstorming about the best overall strategy to get to Mars. We then met and each proposed and debated the elements of each plan. The plan illustrated below will be our guide for the rest of the semester unless compelling reasons are presented against it.

Current Plan

· Vehicle will be launched in segments or modules via the Russian Proton rocket and/or the American Space Shuttle (each lifting 25 tons).

· Two manned vehicles will be built and launched during the same launch window (approximately every 2.3 years).

· Each vehicle will have very similar capabilities and be able to complete a reduced mission and return should a vehicle be destroyed or disabled.

· Together, the equipment, crew, and resources of both vehicles will complete all of the mission objectives planned by the On Planet team.

· Each Manned Vehicle will utilize Aerobraking or Aerocapture techniques to their maximum potential.

· We strongly encourage the development of on planet resources for fuel for the return trip.

· Assuming both manned craft reach Mars, only one ship will return home with the crew (there will be room for them after the cargo is removed).

· It is very possible that a single unmanned cargo mission will also be needed and will depart one launch window prior to the manned launch. This may carry satellites, rovers for landing site exploration, and automated equipment for fuel processing.

· While more research is needed, we are assuming that the transit time between Mars and Earth will be limited to ~120-150 days each way.

· Using a high efficiency transfer orbit the transit time is approximately 270 days.

· With a target mass in low Martian orbit of 50-75 tons per craft and assuming we are able to fully use Aerobraking we will require a mass in low Earth orbit of 150-250+ tons.

· We also decided to explore the possibility of constructing generic fuel/engine modules that could be mass-produced to save cost. This is important because the Russian Proton has a documented failure rate of about 10%.

We decided that two individual manned vehicles would be the most reliable way of getting to Mars. With the communication delay (~40 min.) due to the distance it does not allow for any human reaction to a landing. We decided that landing a 100,000-LB ship in a changing environment would require human control. To further increase the reliability, each ship will be able to operate independently and carry half the crew and experiments. We are open to the possibility of additional launches (unmanned) for cargo but we would like to make them not “Mission Critical”.

In the next coming weeks we are working on the following things:

· Better orbit information.

· Dimensions and design of launch payloads for Proton and Space Shuttle.

· Aerobraking/Aerocapture research.

· Initial design of Vehicles.