posted 03-20-2013 08:58 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by dabolton:
How many young, married, flight-experienced couples do we have in the Astronaut Corps right now that could opt-in?

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On Tuesday Nyberg and the other two members of Expedition 37 held a crew news conference at Johnson Space Center, so I took the opportunity to put the question to Nyberg: Have she and Doug discussed it, and would they go?

Her response:

"No, we haven't discussed it per se," she said. "We have a son, and if he couldn't go then I don't think we would go. And there's my dog, and my friends. A question like that is hard to answer until the possibility arises, but right now I'd have to say no. But you never know until it gets down to it."

posted 03-20-2013 11:34 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by jiffyq58:
Can someone explain to someone like me who is not an expert on planetary orbits and launch cycles why there is such a big launch window gap between 2018 and 2031? I thought we had a good launch window to Mars every two years. What is different about the period between 2018 and 2031?

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My understanding is that it's because it's a free-return round trip. Sending a probe one-way only requires Mars be in the right place when you get there; this requires Earth to be in the right place when you get back.

posted 11-21-2013 05:17 AM               

Billionaire Dennis Tito, tired of being told that we can't send humans to Mars just yet, on Wednesday revealed his scheme for launching two astronauts to the red planet as early as December 2017.

Dubbed "Inspiration Mars," the flyby mission would exploit a rare alignment of Earth and Mars that minimizes the time and the fuel it would take to get to Mars and back home again. The astronauts would come within 100 miles of the Martian surface before being slung back to Earth.

"It would be a voyage of around 800 million miles around the sun in 501 days," Tito testified Wednesday at a hearing of the House subcommittee on space. "No longer is a Mars flyby mission just one more theoretical idea. It can be done. Not in a matter of decades, but in a few years."

posted 11-21-2013 06:50 AM               

But I agree that the chances of it launching in December 2017 are very low.

Tito noted there is a window for a mission by a different trajectory, a mission longer by 88 days that could be flown in 2021.

posted 11-21-2013 07:03 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
Whether or not that's the case, 2021 seems a more realistic chance for Inspiration Mars, unless they immediately receive the full backing of the U.S. government, which is not likely.

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But what does a manned crew flyby will add to what we know (or not) about Mars?

posted 11-21-2013 07:26 AM               

And I believe there's merit in that. As I've expressed elsewhere before, I feel the mission itself no longer matters. We just need to go somewhere. Once that gate is pushed open, other missions will become much more possible, if for no other reason than they won't have the burden of being first.

We've gotten to a point where we're treating every proposed mission as Apollo 11 rather than Apollo 7. In other words, we don't need to achieve our ultimate goal with the first flight.

posted 03-04-2014 08:10 PM               

By moving the Inspiration Mars mission from 2018 to 2021, NASA's deep-space exploration infrastructure featuring SLS and Orion will have more time for full development and critical testing to support such a mission. The 2021 window is the last short-duration free-return opportunity for a Mars flyby until 2033.

Today, the IMF remains fully committed to its vision to help provide America with a viable, challenging and inspirational mission to Mars as a way to help accelerate our nation's plans for space exploration. However, given the extensive use of NASA assets that are already funded and under development, the strategy to pursue the mission opportunity in 2021 would clearly be the purview of the Congress, the Obama administration and NASA.

As a result of the past year's exhaustive work to move the vision forward, I have become a firm supporter and advocate of NASA's evolving deep-space exploration infrastructure. SLS and Orion represent the capabilities we need to take us wherever we want to go in the solar system.