You have been hired to plan a mission to Mars. Your employer knows very little a

Question

You have been hired to plan a mission to Mars. Your employer knows very little about space travel; he simply wants to be the first individual to send a mission to Mars. He has vast but not unlimited resources. Your first step is to educate him about the realities of space flight and the pros and cons of various options. A. Give at least one advantage for each option. For example, answer both “what is an advantage of one-way over round trip travel?” and “ What is an advantage of round trip over one way?” Try to be as specific as you can. (a) One way vs. round trip (b) Manned vs. unmanned (c) Hohmann vs. fast transfer (d) Landing vs. orbiting B. Your employer says “If you were to send a mission to Mars, what kind would it be? Describe it for me.” C. After listening to your presentation, your employer says “What I really want to do is to land a spacecraft on Mars and dig down into the surface to find water. Can you tell me how to do this with minimal cost? Also, once I have the water, how might I use that to benefit future Mars missions?” What is your response?

Explanation / Answer

A. Give at least one advantage for each option.

(a) One way vs. round trip: IOn a one-way trip, you don't need to worry about landing a vehicle to get you back to orbit, or the transfer vehicle to take you home - a great savings of weight and cost. Supplies could be landed by unmanned vehicles for the duration of the mission, so no life-support systems needed on supply vehicles.
Round-trip (assuming you land on Mars) will need a transfer craft with twice the lifespan of a one-way vehicle - twice the food, oxygen, and other supplies to keep the crew alive to *and* from Mars. Landing on Mars will mean you'll need to have a return-to-orbit vehicle as well; that's a lot of weight if you carry it with you, and cost whether it lands independently of the crew, or if you take it with you... it's gonna be expensive.

b) Manned vs. unmanned

unmanned Mission:Robotic space exploration has become the heavy lifter for serious space science. While shuttle launches and the International Space Station get all the media coverage, these small, relatively inexpensive unmanned missions are doing important science in the background.

Manned Mission: Humans are really useful for handling surprises – situations that were not anticipated at the time of launch. Humans are good at improvising and are able to carry out a wide range of tasks; robots tend to be designed for more specific purposes.

(c) Hohmann vs. fast transfer

Hohmann Transfers:The main advantage of this orbit is that minimises the acceleration required at both ends of the orbit to match speed with the target object. It's worthwhile getting a slight overlap with the target orbit just to make sure that you DO get there. But large overlaps can be bad news - particularly in the inner solar system. You can end up encountering the target planet at very high speeds.

Fast transfer: Fast Transfer is more than 50% more expensive than a Hohmann Transfer that achieves the same result. However, it is also nearly twice as fast.

(d) Landing vs. orbiting

Landing : A Mars landing is a landing of a spacecraft on the surface of Mars. It gives opportunity for touching down land.

orbiting: orbiter spacecraft is a type of spacecraft that enters and stays in orbit around a planet. Here, the private investigator doesn't do a drive-by; instead, he drives towards the house and then begins circling it over and over again to take pictures and videos, measure distances, use heat sensors to see if anyone is inside, and collect other data.

Anyways, the advantage of an orbiter is that you can collect a lot more data and get more detailed information about the object you're investigating, namely a planet.

B. “If you were to send a mission to Mars, what kind would it be?

: It would be unmanned as it doesnt involve risk to life of space travellers. and second by Robotic space exploration you get all the data required at International Space Station with the help of robots.

C. “What I really want to do is to land a spacecraft on Mars and dig down into the surface to find water. Can you tell me how to do this with minimal cost?

Oh, well... if you're after water - land it at the border of the polar icecaps. The Phoenix lander found water ice just beneath the surface; finding it in one spot means there's likely *lots* of it in that area, and you wouldn't have to dig very far at all.
Place diggings in a soil/water separator, purify it, and you can have all the water you'd need for the mission..

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