Mars Flight Q&A

This article is not finished (I have been called away to deal with other more-pressing issues)

Questions & Answers

• Will Americans put humans on Mars before China?
  • I doubt it. Capitalistic English speaking societies rarely do anything unless (1) there is money to be made (2) military use (3) political pride. The USA only went to the Moon to beat the Russians during the so-called Space Race. After 6 successful landings between 1969 and 1972, American politicians lost interest then cancelled the remaining flights. No government funding was ever made available to go back to the moon until China announced their intention to place taikonauts on the moon before 2030. Even today in 2026, Trump cut NASA's budget from US$20 billion to US$9 billion but still expects NASA to return to the moon by 2028 to coincide with his last year in office.
• Will Humans put humans on Mars before 2199?
  • I doubt it. The energy demands are too great and this will not change until humanity moves beyond chemical rockets.
• Why are the energy demands too great? Don't we just scale-up our lunar technology?
  • No. An Earth-Moon mission is totally different than an Earth-Mars mission.
  • Moon
    • Since the Moon orbits Earth, humans can move between the Earth and Moon any time they wish.
    • The travel time will average 3-4 days (average distance: 240 thousand miles (386 thousand km)).
    • To move from Earth to the Moon, you need to partially climb out of Earth's gravity well, then partially coast down into the Moon's gravity well.
  • Mars
    • Since Mars orbits the Sun, humans can only travel between the Earth and Mars during a five month launch window every two years. There are times when the Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun.
    • The travel time will average 9 months
      • shortest distance: 34 million miles (56 million km)
      • longest distance: 250 million miles (401 million km)
    • To move from Earth to Mars, you need to totally climb out of Earth's gravity well, then partially climb out of the Sun's gravity well before dropping into Mars's gravity well
    • Read this article for more details:
      • https://therocketscienceblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/01/how-to-get-to-mars/

Rocketry Basics

All rocket technology begins with Newton's Second Law of motion:
     F = ma
Legend:
     F = force, m = mass, a = acceleration.
Since "a" is defined as change in velocity over change in time, F=ma can be rewritten as:
     F = m (dv / dt)
alternatively:
     F = m (Δv / Δ/t)
This algebraic equation can be rearranged further to produce a quantity known as Impulse:
     F * dt = m dv
alternatively:
     F Δt = m Δv
So to get any rocket moving forward, you need to eject a reaction mass in the opposite direction.
The rocket's mass should be as low as possible while the reaction mass must be as fast as possible.
With chemical rockets, the reaction mass is, obviously, a chemical.

More to come very soon

Links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky