RichWall's Mars One Update 2024

@TomKerbal LOL,

In developing this, I spawn in orbit also :-)

One of the reasons I made it so that if you spawn in Earth orbit and jettison the first stage you will be in the exact same position as if you had done all the re- fuel missions. And same spawning in Mars orbit if you jettison the first and second stage.

But the entire mission here is based on real solar system numbers.

@RichGWall
Great! A lot of fun.
"Did you go through all the re-fuel missions?"
Ah, I'm so sorry Rich, I cheated ;)
Placing the landing module directly into Mars orbit... I promise to behave better in the future :)

@TomKerbal
First retract the landing gear on the lander. Set it right on the ground. Open the cargo bay door and you might as well turn the lights on.
Go into the Hab and EVA one of the crew. He will appear in the cargo bay right next to egress ladder. Without moving the Astronaut, click on to the Rover seat and place him there. Do the same with the second Astronaut.

Change the command focus to the Rover and slide pitch up one notch.
Then hit AG 20. The Rover will roll right out and be ready to hit the brake slider. The pitch slider controls speed. The brake slider controls the brake, and the A and D keys control the steering. Stay around 10 m/sec and then go at 4x time speed. It will be fun. Do not drive with solar panels out. They are too fragile. They should only be out when the Rover is parked and then recharge.

This Rover was built from Futureby322's Vehicle Chassis 3.
https://www.simplerockets.com/c/bZ6B0M/Vehicle-Chassis-3

Great that you tried this out. Did you go through all the re-fuel missions?

@RichGWall Today I landed on the Mars for the first time with your Mare One. Great so far! How can I get the rover out of the lander and put the pilots in?

Great value

Great

@RichGWall Thanks a lot for your explanations !
"Using aerobraking at Mars maybe an atmospheric skip method might work. Do a shallow aerobrake maneuver every orbit to slow down just a little each time to go from a highly eccentric orbit to circularize and eventually sub orbit on down to the surface using fuel."
This was an essential part of my Mars mission, I tried to describe it on KerbalX a little bit.
I realize that only experts like you have an interest in it, because such missions are very complex and difficult, which I think overwhelms most players.
By the way, there is another way to increase the realism in KSP1: The “Principia” mod, which calculates more realistic trajectories, since more gravitational sources are calculated (e.g. in lunar orbit not only the lunar mass is taken into consideration, but also that of the sun and possibly that of the earth).
Did you know that the sun attracts the moon more than twice as strongly as the earth attracts the moon? The earth actually only causes a disturbance of the moon's orbit around the sun :-) Just as an aside :-)
When you arrive in the Mars system, you have to hit the main aerobrake maneuver very precisely, because you have to find the golden mean between:
a) plunging too deep into the atmosphere leads to a crash without the possibility of aborting
b) diving in too shallowly leads to leaving the Mars-system with an equally fatal end for the crew.
That's why a direct deceleration without aerobraking is of course much better, but I don't have the necessary capacities for this, since my ship has to be trimmed for maximum efficiency, as it operates without any support on the Mars.
The lander also goes down with parachutes, so you only need very little fuel for landing. The habitat is then jettisoned before the ascent.

Incidentally, I use fluorine engines from the 80s for the mission ship because I couldn't find anything better. This type of engines no longer exist, I know.
The obvious thing to do, especially after the company's current successes, is to try a Starship from SpaceX. There is always so much talk about a Starship landing on Mars. According to my investigations, which of course can only be realistic to a limited extent, but still, I have my doubts. But with refueling the Starship on Mars, it will be possible, but then you have to bring the necessary infrastructure for refueling methane to Mars first.
Have fun with your investigations into this exciting topic! Tom

@TomKerbal Thank you much Tom. I appreciate the interest, especially from one of your background and experience. I never tried Kerbal, but I just might.

I came up with this idea of using 1980s tech to build this ship. I made the decision from the outset not to use aerobraking in a fueled ship. I felt it would help me understand the mission steps and the capacity of such a mission as a precursor to working on a modernized ship with today's technology. I came up with this one for simplicity and redundancy for safety. Using one build of ship would solve many safety issues as well as production ones.

It seems you have moved beyond this in Kerbal already, congratulations.

The only way to reduce the size of this craft is to reduce the payload, and the crew as well. A married couple maybe. Just cut everything in half. Two people per mission.

Anything less than building a base is a waste in my mind and there would be a need to rotate crew after some years to return to Earth. A transportation system in both directions with the greater capacity arriving on Mars than leaving to maintain growth.

All other suggestions like a 'one way trip', like the real Mars One Company in the Netherlands was going to use would be a psychological disaster. Not all humans could endure the knowledge that they would never enjoy a glass of wine by the sea again.

After several landings and having many Habs linked I think smaller ships could be used for one way delivery and others specialized for return to Earth. It will be much less costly to build the first ships on the Earth's surface instead of trying to assemble these first ships on the Moon or Earth's orbit.

'Launch and refuel in Earth orbit' looks to be the safest and cheapest way. I learned the proportion of refuel ships to the manned ship is always 4 to 1.

Having the returning crew use the smallest CSM boat to rendezvous with the orbiting ship to return to Earth is the most efficient mass budget method.

Using aerobraking at Mars maybe an atmospheric skip method might work. Do a shallow aerobrake maneuver every orbit to slow down just a little each time to go from a highly eccentric orbit to circularize and eventually sub orbit on down to the surface using fuel.

I do want to finish this one because it is fun and then move on to a modern ship. I have no idea what form it will take yet.

I will now go have a look at to your ship. ;-)

@RichGWall That sounds great. They should have given WvB all the resources he wanted back then.
Do you think it will be possible to build a rocket weighing 15000 tons one day ? If anyone could do it, it would be you Americans, that's for sure. SpaceX ist at 5000t .

I wasn't with Juno for quite a while, but with KSP, where I also worked out a direct Mars mission - with just a single ship and lander - using the highly realistic mod “RP-1”. I also wanted to investigate fundamental problems. Above all, life support is simulated really well with the mod, which is really important for a 2-year mission.
My carrier rockets weighed 6600 tons, which is also immense, but not quite as gigantic as yours.
A very big problem was the aero-brake maneuver on Mars, which I worked on for a very long time until I came up with the “donut” ring solution for tail stabilization (prevents the tail from breaking away in the atmosphere and the whole thing from exploding).
My resources on the mission are much more limited than yours, so I can only slow down on Mars with the help of the atmosphere, which is extremely dangerous.

Regarding your “landing near the base”: that works very well for you; I have real problems to get closer than 10km because of the braking parachutes I have to use.
My payloads are much smaller than yours, so I only have the ingenious Apollo moon rover as a means of transportation on Mars.

But in any case, it's all very exciting and interesting.
I will continue to follow your developments with great interest. Tom

Here is the mission ship with mission explanations :
https://kerbalx.com/TomKerbal/MM2035v66

@TomKerbal There is an Earth to Mars launch window at 2 years 1 day in Hyperpatch's 2.1. I am still working on the other launch window dates.

@TomKerbal You got it. The orbiting ship will wait in Mars orbit.

The orbiting ship can bring back up to 5 other CSM boats. It works well but you have to release the capsules about every 12 hours just as you return to Earth so they do not re-enter at the same time. No way to control them all at once.

So, the idea is to send 5 ships during one window, 4 to land, one to orbit. The 4 landed Habs can link without a crane now since I put wheels on them. I can land within 1 km of a previously landed ship.

It's fun to try to get them so close.

Link the Habs and you have a 24 person base. I leave 8 men behind in the base, but you could leave more. Each Mars launch window you can grow the base or start a new one.

I want to try to build an eight man / single capsule ship that has no Hab, but a huge cargo bay for a much larger mobile Mars Bus. This ship will be unmanned to Mars to land cargo but also could get 8 men into orbit quick if needed.

An assembly line of ships launched to Mars from Earth orbit as a group each window to colonize Mars as Werner von Braun imagined. While waiting for a launch window to Mars is enough time to Orbit 5 ships and re-fuel them.

@RichGWall Big Baby! I just launched it into orbit. I like the tower camera view.
So I have to start another one, both go to Mars, the first will land, the second will wait for crew to return from Mars. Then second Big Baby will return to Earth.
O.K. great !

I'll just have to make sure I know how for my upcoming releases.
I still have the Refueler to revamp and adapt a Tower. I want to include Vizzy for Rendezvous, Docking and then a Tower for it.

I eliminated the need for a crane, but I will be looking at an eight-man capsuled ship for emergency evacuations.

Still some goals to achieve. Slow and steady. ;-)

@RichGWall The only way I know is to post the whole thing again. But that is of course unpleasant because of the comments and upvotes.

@FUTUREby322 I agree. I know how to put pictures in the body of the page but embarrassingly, I do not know how to change the cover picture.

@RichGWall I think you should take some more beautiful photos as the cover.
A good cover always attracts more people to this page.👍and there will also be more upvotes.🆙

@TomKerbal Thanks Tom, your tower work was invaluable to help me build mine. You are a clever man. ;-)

@RichGWall Great work again! You're back! Photorealistic picture of your landing on Mars, wonderful.

@FUTUREby322 Thank you my friend. ;-)

@CanadaDucK Thanks CD. Always appreciated.