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[i]The co-founder of a rocket launch firm has proposed an audacious plan to send astronauts on a one-way trek to Mars using a pair of tethered U.S. space shuttles that would parachute to the Martian surface. Inventor Eric Knight, a co-founder of the rocket firm UP Aerospace, detailed the plan - which he's billed "Mars on a Shoestring" - in a thought exercise designed to encourage unconventional thinking for future human spaceflight. "My thought paper is a mental exercise to encourage new ideas," Knight told SPACE.com in an e-mail interview. "I also hope it spurs a re-evaluation of the timeline for human exploration of Mars. Twenty years seems like an eternity, given that we were able to get to the moon in less than 10 years - and we were essentially doing so 'from scratch.'"[/i]
[i][b]Assuming we can get the orbiter pair to Mars, how would the crew descend to the surface of the planet?[/b] The atmosphere of Mars is, of course, much too thin to support a fly-in descent. The Martian atmosphere is only one percent of earth's atmosphere density. What I propose is the development of a very large parachute system that would be stowed in each of the orbiter's payload bays. The orbiters would detach from the tether and crew-transfer conduit. Each orbiter would then enter the Mars atmosphere and descend ballistically (like Apollo and Soyuz capsules), deploy its parachute system, and land wheels down with surely a pretty good thump -- even with the planet's gravity just 38% of Earth's. The vehicle's airfoil surfaces and orbital-maneuvering and reaction-control thrusters would provide only a small degree of assistance during the descent; however, the subtle assistance could be helpful during the final few thousand feet in nudging each craft to the clearest landing location.[/i]
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