NASA's Mars plans unrealistic

I checked into it last night and yes, you can reduce the size of the launch rocket considerably if you don't lug around a bunch of equipment that you don't always need.

For example, during the Apollo Era, the capsule went to the moon and back.  You only need it for re-entry.  You don't need it to go all the way to the Moon.

There was a reason why they did this, of course.  The reason is that they would have had to find a way to slow down the re-entry and that would have been complicated.  Much simpler just to do it the way they did it.  As a result, the mission was set up for safety, and simplicity.  Not for optimization of mass.  This is why the rocket was so big.  If you are going to send tons of equipment to the moon and back, you are going to need a very big rocket to do it.

What this means is that an attempt to go back to the Moon does not require a Saturn V type rocket.  It may be possible with just two launches of a Falcon type rocket either existing today, or will exist soon.  Probably for the majority of the equipment needed, a Falcon Heavy will do.

If you used a Nuclear Thermal Rocket, a single launch of a Falcon Heavy should suffice.

In addition to that, it should explain why a trip to Mars is going to be frightfully expensive in terms of hardware and launches.  If the government insists upon safety above all else, it is going to cost a bundle.

The best way to deal with this is to send everything up before sending people and have it in place in advance.  That would include fuel depots.  This technology will have to be perfected before a reasonable mission can be attempted.  That's the bottom line.

If they don't do this, and send all the equipment at once as they are apparently planning, it will take up to 20 launches of the big SLS rocket in order to get to Mars.  No wonder Constellation was canceled.  This is wildly impractical.

My prediction is that there will be no Mars mission attempted until NASA changes its thinking.

Update:

I have to apologize here.  I relied totally upon memory for this post and there is probably an error.  There won't be 20 launches, as mentioned just above.  It may take as few as 7 launches.  The idea is probably not that unrealistic after all.  My mistake, sorry.

That's the second time this kind of thing has happened recently, but the other did not result in a post.  I have to be a bit more careful.

Here is what I remembered incorrectly, as I wrote about it recently.

But I do stand by what I said about sending "everything at once".  This is indeed a lot of launches and equipment going up that might be done in another way.