School project – design a spaceship for inter-planetary

[Big Ant (Anthony)]

Hi I’m Anthony and I am in year 5.

I have a school project on designing a spaceship to go to Mars and back. It has to carry 3 people for a journey of up to 3 years.

1. Could you please recommend any other good websites or information sources, apart from NASA.
2. Do you have any specific thoughts or comments that I could use?

Yours sincerely
Anthony Sarcasmo Gerdes

[traveller (Bo)]

There is currently a program on SBS on Arthur C Clarke called Prophets of Science Fiction, might give you a few ideas!
Bo

[omegacrux (David)]

Hi Anthony
I watched a doco on that exact subject tonight
Voyage to the planets -Mars on abc1 try there i-view might give you some ideas
But Damn that's a tuff project next they will get you to design a cold fusion reactor !

Good luck with that David

[TrevorW]

Be bold Anthony think outside the circle 3 years is whats based on current technology

think by the time you have grown up and it's a reality we could do it there and back in 6 months or less

1. Food
2. Water
3. Air
4. gravity
5. Protection
6. Power
7. propulsion

are some fundamentals which need to be taken into consideration. Visit the Mars Society web page as well.

All the best

[Poita (Peter)]

Some simple things to consider.
Having 3 people in a confined space for 3 years could drive them all crazy. Little things might really start to bug you after all that time together. So make sure you make personal space available and think about how to keep everyone happy and occupied so they don't just end up fighting all the time!

The ship will have to be able to land on Mars and take off again. Will you take enough fuel for the trip there and back, or take some means of making the fuel when on Mars or extracting it from Mars in some way.

The Martian atmosphere is really thin, which means parachutes don't work as well to slow down a landing craft, and not enough atmosphere to glide to a landing like the space-shuttle used to when landing on earth, so you will need to have rockets to slow the descent, like they did on the moon.

You might have the rocket built in orbit and launched from the international space station, that way you don't have to have the spaceship be so huge as it doesn't have to launch from, or return to the earth. It could leave from and return to the ISS in orbit.
It also means the space-ship wouldn't have to be as streamlined or aerodynamic.

It will need to be shielded from solar radiation/solar storms so that the astronauts/cosomonauts/aussinauts don't get fried by radiation.

You will need a way to recycle all the bodily wastes, 3 years x 3 people is a lot of poo!

Just a few thoughts, make sure you ask more questions of everyone and steal the best ideas from them. (and remember to mention where you got your ideas in your resources section of the assignment)

[Big Ant (Anthony)]

Thank you everyone for your information so far.


Anthony