Joe: Low earth orbit is still deep inside the gravity well of the planet earth. In terms of energy the ISS is only halfway to achieving an orbit around the sun. It's still a long way uphill to get anywhere. DT Brent, Your answer touched on an issue I don't fully understand. How much thrust would it take to nudge the ISS, which is already in orbit, into another orbit that would sligshot it toward Mars? It's not as if we need to lift it into space. Thanks, Joe From: Erik Hansen <zaurak@digis.net> To: Brent Watson <brentjwatson@yahoo.com>; Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2015 9:58 AM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Last night's lecture The other issue is they have as yet been unable to store food for 3 years and still have it edible. Along with the fact the human record for residing in space is one year and that is regular resupply. Sent from my iPad
On Feb 25, 2015, at 10:40 AM, Brent Watson via Utah-Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> wrote:
Joe, I am no expert on orbits, but I do not think such an orbit would exist because of the differences in the orbits of Mars and the earth. Those differences are both in the difference of the plane of the orbits, the nodes, and the periods. Mr. Adamo was talking about different trajectories for each transfer to Mars. ISS is very massive and would take a huge rocket to get it to Mars. Alternatively a small rocket and a bunch of time may be used, but that is not practical for human travel because of the time involved. A trip to Mars is 300 days round trip, and you must stay there for an additional 500 days for the orbits to be just right for transfer. Those are his numbers. That makes the trip a total of 900 some odd days, and that is the radiation exposure issue. Like I said, I am no expert here. I am just repeating what I thought I heard last night. It was a great lecture.
On Wednesday, February 25, 2015 8:36 AM, Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> wrote:
Brent, speaking of the ISS, I have wondered if it could be put into an orbit that continuously cruised between Earth and Mars. When it swung by Mars it could drop off and retrieved crews. I don't see how the radiation would be any worse than the ISS crews are already exposed to.
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On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 8:18 AM MST Brent Watson via Utah-Astronomy wrote:
I attended the lecture last night on trajectories. It was really a good, stimulating talk. Thanks for passing the word along. There were some interesting side comments made about our launch capabilities and the Mars One effort. Mr. Adamo was not at all enthusiastic about the Mars One effort. His opinion is that the effort is doomed because there is not really a way to assure that folks going there would be safe - primarily from radiation. He has done some work with a former flight surgeon on designing a spacecraft to go to Mars. Their result is that in order to get sufficient shielding (using a water jacket), the spacecraft's mass would be around 380 metric tons. That is for a small crew, probably only about 5 members. For a point of comparison, the ISS mass is 400 metric tons. He made the comment that an astronaut who made this trip could only go to space
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