Abstract
Several proposals exist for human Mars mission architectures. An important question to resolve is to determine the most appropriate size of the launcher to minimize the costs, without compromising with risks, efficiency and future developments. Strategic choices are proposed. A fundamental choice is the direct to surface option, one that greatly simplifies the architecture of the mission and avoids a complex and costly LEO assembly of a giant vehicle. The second is aerocapture for Mars orbit insertion. The third is the choice of the EDL systems with highest TRL in order to minimize the risks of the mission and at the same time to avoid possible cost overruns due to qualification issues. Minimization is achieved for a crew of three. It is shown that an LEO capacity of the order of 100–110 tonnes is sufficient to carry out a Mars mission using 5 heavy launchers. This result is of particular interest for the countries currently developing super heavy launchers with such capacity, like the Starship and SLS in the USA, Long March 9 in China and similar developments in Russia. If Europe were also interested in the design of a super heavy launcher, it is shown here that it could be based on Vulcain or Prometheus engines. As the mission is rather simple and optimized with high TRL, the mission could be affordable. A roadmap is also suggested with appropriate preparatory missions for a human Mars exploration program.
Highlights
Elon Musk recently proposed a new architecture for human missions to Mars [14]
An important task is to determine the most appropriate launcher capacity for a mission to Mars, taking into consideration the development and production costs, the risks, the usefulness of the rocket for other missions, possible international collaboration and future trends. This question is especially important for all countries in which a super heavy launcher is under development for human missions beyond low Earth orbit, such as the SLS and Starship in the US, the successor of the Yenisei program in Russia and Long March 9 in China [6,12,13,14]
There is no launch backup system in case of problems during the descent and landing on Mars. Another option, which was considered by Zubrin and NASA for a “semi-direct” architecture, is to send an Earth return vehicle (ERV) to Mars orbit and to land only a small Mars ascent vehicle (MAV) on the surface, the latter being used at the end of the stay to join the former [7,8,21,27]
Summary
Elon Musk recently proposed a new architecture for human missions to Mars [14]. It is based on a super heavy launcher and a single giant spaceship that could be sent directly to the surface of Mars, refuel using local resources and come back to Earth. An important task is to determine the most appropriate launcher capacity for a mission to Mars, taking into consideration the development and production costs, the risks, the usefulness of the rocket for other missions, possible international collaboration and future trends This question is especially important for all countries in which a super heavy launcher is under development for human missions beyond low Earth orbit, such as the SLS and Starship in the US, the successor of the Yenisei program in Russia and Long March 9 in China [6,12,13,14]. In order to address the question, several important assumptions are made in the paper about the architecture of the mission: The objective is to send at least 3 astronauts to the surface of Mars and to bring them back to Earth This number has been suggested in the literature as a minimum required to reduce human factor risks to acceptable levels [19,20]. A possible roadmap and an estimation of the development costs are provided
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