Keep the shuttle flying: Fwd: Human Spaceflight (and Mars in 501 days) News

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: February 28, 2013 7:09:57 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight (and Mars in 501 days) News - February 28, 2013 and JSC Today

Happy Sequester Eve everyone! L

Thursday, February 28, 2013

JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            Joint Leadership Team Web Poll
2.            Join IRD's Sessions on Teleworking, ACES and Mobile App Development Today
3.            Today: Learn About Nutrition in Space
4.            Starport's Spring Festival -- Tickets on Sale Tomorrow
5.            Starport Boot Camp -- Register Now
6.            The College Money Guys
7.            Toxic and Hazardous Substance (Asbestos and Cadmium) ViTS -- April 8
8.            Machinery and Machine Guarding - May 21 - Building 20, Room 205/206
________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY
" Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do. "

-- Lin Yutang
________________________________________
1.            Joint Leadership Team Web Poll
Half of us aren't worried at all that an meteorite might smash us, but about 13 percent are pretty concerned. I figure if I win the lottery, that's about the time I'll get destroyed by a random meteorite. You picked "Lincoln" for best picture, and it lost to "Argo". Daniel Day-Lewis did a great job, though.
This week I was wondering if you ever go outside and watch the space station fly over. Ever done it? Do it all the time? Question two is about all the stuff we have. I must have eleventeen TVs in my house, but I also have three kids. What do you have more of? Vehicles? TVs? Phones?
Yahoo your Google on over to get this week's poll.
Joel Walker x30541 http://jlt.jsc.nasa.gov/

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2.            Join IRD's Sessions on Teleworking, ACES and Mobile App Development Today
JSC'S Information Resources Directorate (IRD, code IA) invites JSC team members to come out and participate in several collaboration sessions throughout the day. Learn more about teleworking with PCs, Macs and tablets. Take advantage of a question-and-answer session with ACES in the Teague Auditorium. JSC mobile app developers: learn about the NASA internal app development process, and identify apps that are already being developed and/or investigated across the agency.
All are also welcome to test out IRD's service catalog prototype until May 2 by going to: http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/servicecatalog/SitePages/Home.aspx.
The service catalog provides a comprehensive list of IT services that IRD provides its customers. Each service within the catalog includes a description of that service, pricing information, points of contact (business, technical and contractor) and the service organization's mail code.
For a full list of events and how to participate, go to: http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/InfoPedia/Wiki%20Pages/IRD%20Expo%20and%20Forum%20Follow-Up%20Activities.aspx
JSC IRD Outreach x41334 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/default.aspx

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3.            Today: Learn About Nutrition in Space
Please join the Human Systems Academy for a lecture featuring "Space Food and Nutrition." This lecture will introduce attendees to the Space Food System and Nutritional Biochemistry Laboratory. Topics will cover food systems of programs past, present and future, and issues surrounding food systems and food safety. Additionally, nutritional biochemistry changes documented during spaceflight and nutritional concerns for optimizing crew health will also be addressed. Course ID: JSC-HSA-FOODLAB
For registration, please go to: https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Event Date: Thursday, February 28, 2013   Event Start Time:9:00 AM   Event End Time:10:00 AM
Event Location: B17/CR 1066

Add to Calendar

Cynthia Rando 281-461-2620 http://sa.jsc.nasa.gov/

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4.            Starport's Spring Festival -- Tickets on Sale Tomorrow
On March 23, Starport will have one big spring event at the Gilruth Center! Bring the kiddos out for our Children's Spring Fling, complete with a bounce house, face painting, petting zoo, Easter egg hunt and hot dog lunch! Tickets go on sale tomorrow in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops and the Gilruth Center. Tickets are for children 18 months to 12 years of age who will be participating in the Easter Egg hunt and other activities and having lunch. Adults do not need a ticket. Tickets are $8/each through March 15, or $10 the day of.
While you are there, do some shopping at our outdoor flea market for some hidden treasure and great finds! Then, visit our indoor craft fair for homemade crafts and goodies. Plus, enjoy some tasty mudbugs at our crawfish boil! The cost is $7/pound with corn and potatoes. Hot dogs, chips and drinks will also be available.
Event Date: Saturday, March 23, 2013   Event Start Time:9:00 AM   Event End Time:2:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth Center

Add to Calendar

Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/events

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5.            Starport Boot Camp -- Register Now
Starport's phenomenal boot camp registration is open and filling fast. Don't miss a chance to be part of Starport's incredibly popular program. The class will fill up, so register now!
Early registration (ends tomorrow, March 1):
o             $90 per person (just $5 per class)
Regular registration (March 2 to 10):
o             $110 per person
The workout begins on Monday, March 11.
Are you ready for 18 hours of intense workouts with an amazing personal trainer to get you to your fitness goal?
Don't wait!
Sign up today and take advantage of this extreme discount before it's too late.
Register now at the Gilruth Center information desk, or call 281-483-0304 for more information.
Shericka Phillips x30304 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/RecreationClasses/RecreationProgram...

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6.            The College Money Guys
The JSC Employee Assistance Program is happy to present Kris Lloyd with The College Money Guys. Lloyd will provide information on paying for college without going broke. If you're the parent of a high school student who plans to attend college, you must attend this free workshop on Wednesday, March 13, at 12 noon in the Building 30 Auditorium.
Event Date: Wednesday, March 13, 2013   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium

Add to Calendar

Lorrie Bennett x36130

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7.            Toxic and Hazardous Substance (Asbestos and Cadmium) ViTS -- April 8
SMA-SAFE-NSTC-0073: Toxic and Hazardous Substances (Asbestos and Cadmium)
This two-hour course is based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) CFR 1926, Subpart C - 1926.1101 - Requirements for OSHA General Safety and Health Provisions, Safety Training and Education. During the course, the student will receive an overview of those topics needed to work safely, such as exposure assessments and monitoring, understanding permissible exposure limits (PEL), respiratory protection, protective clothing and respiratory protection. There will be a final exam associated with this course, which must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit.
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Shirley Robinson x41284

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8.            Machinery and Machine Guarding - May 21 - Building 20, Room 205/206
This three-day course provides the student with an in-depth understanding of NASA and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requirements for machinery and machine guarding. It is based on the OSHA Training Institute Machinery and Machine Guarding course and provides the foundation for meeting our goal of contributing to improving the overall safety of NASA operations. The course also includes an overview of various types of common machinery used at NASA and the safety standards related to those types of machines. There will be a final exam associated with this course, which must be passed with a 70 percent minimum score to receive course credit.
Target Audience: Safety, Reliability, Quality and Maintainability professionals; maintenance repair supervisors; fabrication shop personnel; and anyone working around or with machinery.
Use this direct link for registration. https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
Event Date: Tuesday, May 21, 2013   Event Start Time:8:00 AM   Event End Time:4:00 PM
Event Location: Bldg. 20 Rm 205/206

Add to Calendar

Shirley Robinson x41284

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________________________________________
JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.

NASA TV:
·                     10 am Central (11 EST) - Expedition 34's Chris Hadfield with the CTV Network
·                     Noon Central (1 pm EST) - ISS Science Briefing
·                     1 pm Central (2 EST) - NASA Heliophysics Brief; "New Discovery from Van Allen Probes"
·                     2 pm Central (3 EST) - SpaceX/Dragon-2 Pre-Launch Briefing

Human Spaceflight News
Thursday, February 28, 2013

Inspiration Mars Foundation artist concept of what its spacecraft would look like

HEADLINES AND LEADS

SpaceX Test Tees Up Second Station Resupply Mission

Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily

SpaceX engineers are sorting through data from a Feb. 25 Falcon 9/Dragon launch pad "hot fire" test at Cape Canaveral, as they ready the company's second mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Funded as part of the company's $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA, the mission is due to lift off March 1 at 10:10 a.m. EST from Launch Complex 40.

Orion test flight still set for 2014

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

NASA is on track for the first test flight in 2014 of its Orion deep space crew capsule, and agency officials don't expect delays if automatic federal spending cuts go into effect as scheduled on Friday. Dan Dumbacher, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, said Wednesday that the agency is far enough along with preparations that sequestration shouldn't affect the September 2014 test flight. If enacted, NASA would take a 5 percent budget cut this year. That equals about $900 million. But the cuts at the agency would not be across the board. NASA would focus on funding its highest priority programs, which include the Orion project.

NASA readies crew-escape motor for Orion test

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

A critical part of the crew escape system for NASA's Orion spacecraft is being readied at Kennedy Space Center for a test flight to be launched in September 2014. Made by Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, the 17-foot-long solid rocket motor is a powerful part of the launch abort system that would pull an Orion spacecraft and its astronaut crew away from an exploding rocket. "I guarantee you astronauts will like it. I can say that from experience," said former NASA astronaut Brian Duffy, vice president of exploration systems for solid rocket motor maker ATK.

NASA Deep-Space Missions Take Aim at Mars

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

The announcement Wednesday of an ambitious new project to launch the first private manned mission to Mars in 2018 may suggest to some that NASA has lost a step in the pursuit of deep-space exploration. But the U.S. space agency is forging ahead with plans for a flexible new spaceship and rocket to send astronauts deeper into space than ever before. The nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation unveiled plans for a private Mars flyby mission Wednesday that calls for a January 2018 launch of a two-person crew — a man and woman, possibly a married couple — on a 501-day trip to the Red Planet and back. The mission would not land on Mars but bring a capsule and inflatable module within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the Martian surface before zooming away back to Earth. Just one hour after the Inspiration Mars Foundation announcement in Washington, D.C., NASA officials here at the Kennedy Space Center briefed reporters about the agency's own plans for deep-space missions, including an eventual Mars trek.

China's next manned space mission to launch this summer

Ben Blanchard - Reuters

China's next manned space mission will launch sometime between June and August, carrying three astronauts to an experimental space module, state media said on Thursday, the latest part of an ambitious plan to build a space station. The Shenzhou 10 and its crew will launch from a remote site in the Gobi desert and then link up with the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1 module, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Chinese astronauts carried out a manned docking with the module for the first time last June.

China to launch new manned spacecraft

Xinhua News Agency

China's new spacecraft will be launched sometime between June and August, a spokesperson for the office of the country's space manned program said in a statement released Thursday. Three Chinese astronauts will board the Shenzhou-10, which is expected to dock with the orbiting lab module Tiangong-1, according to the statement.

Could this proposed law fix what's wrong with NASA?

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

A proposed new law introduced in Congress Tuesday would change the way NASA's administrator is chosen, give that administrator a six-year term, and set up a board of directors to oversee a space agency some say is lost in space. Could it be the solution to NASA's problems? Rep. Frank Wolf issued a statement to open the hearing noting that since the Columbia accident 10 years ago, NASA has had three different administrators and "two completely different shuttle replacement programs." Wolf went on to describe an agency "adrift," "in turmoil" and "confused." Wolf said NASA doesn't know where it's going -- an asteroid? Mars? the moon? -- and sometimes the current White House sounds like it shouldn't be doing anything but developing technology.

New head of Russian Space Systems assumes office

Interfax

Roscosmos head Vladimir Popovkin introduced new Russian Space Systems General Director Gennady Raikunov to the corporation personnel on Thursday, a source at the Federal Space Agency told Interfax-AVN. "The new head starts to take over duties from Andrei Chimiris who has been the acting general director since late last year," the source said. Rosimushchestvo approved the Raikunov nomination on February 20. Before the appointment he had been the head of CNIIMash, a Roscosmos research institute. Yuri Urlichich had been in charge of Russian Space Systems until November 2012 when he tendered resignation for health reasons. Chimiris became the acting director general. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

We should drop the Apollo model in space, but keep the inspiration

Amy Shira Teitel - Aljazeera

The Apollo Moon landings are among the most recognisable events of the 20th century; stories from moonwalking astronauts and breathtaking images of the Earth from space remain a source of inspiration. But fascination with the lunar programme is often tempered with a sense of frustration. It's a very American narrative to wonder why we were able to get men on the Moon in 1969, but can't do the same today with our modern technology and better understanding of the problems involved. At some point in the past half-century, the Apollo programme became the model average Americans expect their nation's space programme to follow. But that's a dangerous expectation. The Apollo model wouldn't work today.

MARS AND BACK IN 501 DAYS…

Manned Mars flyby mission proposed

William Harwood - CBS News

A wealthy space tourist announced plans Wednesday to launch a high-risk manned flight to Mars in 2018, sending a man and a woman on a bare-bones 501-day round-trip flyby, passing just 100 miles above the red planet before heading back to Earth. Dennis Tito, the first private citizen to fly aboard the International Space Station, said he will provide two years of funding to support the Inspiration Mars Foundation, a non-profit he started to execute the proposed venture. Additional money will be raised from private sources.

Dennis Tito's mission to Mars:
Launching in 2018 for the children (and to beat China)

Brian Vastag - Washington Post

Millionaire space tourist Dennis Tito has a vision to send two Americans to Mars on a high-risk, budget-class, 501-day journey that would — if achieved — smash the barrier to deep space. The proposed passengers are a middle-aged married couple, handy with tools and not prone to claustrophobia. The Inspiration Mars Mission for America would launch, by necessity of orbital mechanics, on Jan. 5, 2018.

First space tourist sponsoring mission to Mars

Ledyard King – Florida Today

Two astronauts — preferably a married, middle-aged couple — crammed in a vehicle the size of a small Winnebago carrying 3,000 pounds of dehydrated food, drinking water recycled from urine and sweat, breathing the same re-filtered oxygen over and over and over again. Without ever leaving. For 501 days, 13 hours, and 47 minutes. At least that's the vision financier Dennis Tito laid out Wednesday during a news conference at the National Press Club.

Manned Mars Mission Announced by Dennis Tito Group
New venture will seek astronaut couple to spend 501 days in a space capsule. .

Marc Kaufman - National Geographic News

Wanted: A man and a woman in their early to mid-50s, preferably married. Must enjoy adventure, spending long periods of time together, and sharing space—as in 501 days in a 33-cubic-foot (0.93-cubic-meter) capsule and habitat. Interest in the planet Mars also a prerequisite. Warning to applicants: You will be exposed to unprecedented risks and your long-term health could be compromised. But if the effort goes ahead and succeeds as planned, you will become the first humans in history to journey into deep space and see Mars up close.

Going to Mars in 2018:
Concept is so crazy (and simple) it just might work

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

Millionaire space tourist Dennis Tito and his partners have had to tell questioners repeatedly that they're not "crazy" or "nuts" to think they can launch a man and a woman to Mars and back by 2019 — but if the Inspiration Mars Foundation's "Mission for America" succeeds, it may well be because it's just crazy enough. Other private space ventures, ranging from SpaceX to the Golden Spike Company and Planetary Resources, are depending on turning a profit someday through the sale of rocket flights, or missions to the moon, or water and precious metals mined from asteroids. Tito, in contrast, freely admits the 501-day mission is a "one-shot deal" that's unencumbered by a long-range business plan. He's committed to supporting the five-year development effort for the first two years, during which time he and the rest of the team will try to raise the money and perfect the technologies for the three more expensive years to follow.

Tycoon wants to send married couple on Mars flyby

Seth Borenstein - Associated Press

It's a road trip that could test the best of marriages: Mars. A tycoon announced plans Wednesday to send a middle-aged couple on a privately built spaceship to slingshot around the red planet and come back home, hopefully with their bodies and marriage in one piece after 501 days of no-escape togetherness in a cramped capsule half the size of an RV. Under the audacious but bare-bones plan, the spacecraft would blast off less than five years from now and pass within 100 miles of the Martian surface. The cost was not disclosed, but outsiders put it at more than $1 billion.

Man and woman, preferably married, wanted for expedition to Mars

Irene Klotz - Reuters

A nonprofit foundation wants to recruit a man and a woman - possibly a married couple - for a bare-bones, 501-day journey to Mars and back that would start in less than five years, project organizers said on Wednesday. The mission, expected to cost upwards of $1 billion, would be privately financed by donations and sponsorships.

Millionaire plans to send couple to Mars in 2018. Is that realistic?

Pete Spotts - Christian Science Monitor

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy charged NASA with putting humans on the moon within the decade. Now, the world's first space tourist, multimillionaire Dennis Tito, formally unveiled plans to send two humans to Mars and back on a nonstop, 501-day mission, with the launch envisioned for January 2018. The audacious project, which Mr. Tito is bankrolling out-of-pocket for the first two years, is driven by a mixture of motives: part America first, part research, and an enormous dash of what he and his partners hope will be inspiration to a nation whose government space program is caught between tight budgets and an unclear direction for its human spaceflight effort. NASA's current plans don't call for a human mission to Mars for more than a decade.

Private Mars mission: Inspiring or foolhardy?

Justin Ray - SpaceflightNow.com

The self-made millionaire who paid for his own trip to the International Space Station a decade ago as the world's first orbital tourist wants to send a two-person crew on a 501-day flyby of Mars in 2018, skimming a mere 100 miles above the red planet's surface before looping back for a high-stakes return to Earth. He just needs the money, spacecraft, launcher and two volunteers to mount the private -- and daring -- adventure.

The Crazy Plan to Fly Two Humans to Mars in 2018

Michael Belfiore - Popular Mechanics

At the National Press Club in Washington today, businessman and private space traveler Dennis Tito officially announced his plans to fund a private, nonprofit effort to launch the first human mission to the Red Planet, called Inspiration Mars. To take advantage of an alignment of Earth and Mars that happens once every 15 years and would allow the shortest possible travel time possible between the planets, the mission seeks to launch on January 5, 2018. The crew would return to Earth on May 21, 2019. Tito's spacecraft will be as stripped-down as possible. There will be no landing, and no need for a landing craft. Instead, the spacecraft will fly to within 100 miles of Mars to give humans the first close-up view of the planet without actually touching down. The crew would also be kept to a bare minimum for safety: just two astronauts.

Dennis Tito's 2018 Mars Flyby Is On The 'Ragged Edge Of Feasibility'

Alex Knapp - Forbes

In 2001, Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist after paying $20 million to the Russian space program. Now he plans on an even bigger space journey – to Mars. On January 5, 2018, Tito's non-profit foundation Inspiration Mars plans to launch the first flight carrying humans to Mars. But they won't be staying. The 501 day round-trip will only be a flyby of Mars, not a landing, but it will still be – by far – the longest space journey ever undertaken by humans.

First space tourist sets sights on a Mars mission

Nell Greenfieldboyce - National Public Radio

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/27/173056144/first-space-tourist-sets-sights-on-a-mars-mission

The world's first space tourist is financing a project that aims to launch an American man and woman on a mission to fly by Mars in 2018. Back in 2001, businessman Dennis Tito shelled out about $20 million to ride a Russian spaceship up to the International Space Station. Now he's unveiled a new nonprofit group called the Inspiration Mars Foundation. It's working to take advantage of a launch opportunity coming up in January of 2018. That's when the planets will be aligned in a way that would let people fly to Mars, loop around the planet, and return home in just 501 days — a pretty short trip.

Married to Mars: 9 Questions for Dennis Tito on Private Martian Trips

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

The world's first space tourist, Dennis Tito, isn't done with space. The American entrepreneur has founded a new nonprofit organization to work toward launching the first manned mission to Mars in 2018. The flyby mission, which wouldn't land on the Red Planet, would take advantage of a rare planetary alignment that would allow a speedy trajectory to Mars and back in about 500 days. Tito unveiled the mission Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington during the launch of the new nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation, which will oversee the audacious project. SPACE.com caught up with Tito to ask him some burning questions about the new private Mars mission…
__________

COMPLETE STORIES

SpaceX Test Tees Up Second Station Resupply Mission

Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily

SpaceX engineers are sorting through data from a Feb. 25 Falcon 9/Dragon launch pad "hot fire" test at Cape Canaveral, as they ready the company's second mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Funded as part of the company's $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA, the mission is due to lift off March 1 at 10:10 a.m. EST from Launch Complex 40.

Station commander Kevin Ford and flight engineer Tom Marshburn, both of NASA, will be posted at a control panel for Canada's 58-ft.-long robot arm in the Cupola observation desk of the six-person orbiting science lab, ready to capture the unpiloted Dragon capsule on March 2 at 6:30 a.m., EST. Berthing activities of the Dragon and its 1,300 lb. of supplies, most of it U.S., European, Canadian and Japanese research gear, are scheduled to follow at 8:40 a.m. EST.

The capsule will remain berthed to the station's Harmony module until March 25, under current scheduling.

During the Feb. 25 test, all nine of the Falcon's first-stage Merlin engines reached full power for 2 sec., concluding a full countdown dress rehearsal in which the Falcon 9/Dragon combination was secured to the launch pad, SpaceX said in a post-rehearsal statement.

Elon Musk, the company's CEO and chief designer, added a "parameters normal," comment on Twitter.

SpaceX completed its six-year, NASA-funded Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems cargo development initiative in May 2012 with a successful Falcon 9/Dragon demonstration mission to the ISS. The demo cleared the way for the first of a dozen supply missions under the CRS contract in October.

Though successful, the CRS-1 flight prompted an investigation into a computer-commanded shutdown of one of the nine first-stage engines 79 sec. into flight, as well as a modification to the sealing qualities of the electrical boxes that provide refrigeration to ISS biomedical samples returning to Earth aboard Dragon.

Orion test flight still set for 2014

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

NASA is on track for the first test flight in 2014 of its Orion deep space crew capsule, and agency officials don't expect delays if automatic federal spending cuts go into effect as scheduled on Friday.

Dan Dumbacher, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, said Wednesday that the agency is far enough along with preparations that sequestration shouldn't affect the September 2014 test flight.

If enacted, NASA would take a 5 percent budget cut this year. That equals about $900 million. But the cuts at the agency would not be across the board. NASA would focus on funding its highest priority programs, which include the Orion project.

Dumbacher said the real question for NASA's deep space human exploration program is 'How does it play into the longer term plan.'

"There will be impacts across the agency. But we're working to hold schedule, at least for the near term, and minimize those impacts."

Set for launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket, the $375 million mission will propel an unmanned Orion capsule 3,600 miles above Earth — the farthest any spaceship designed for astronauts has flown in space since the last Apollo moon-landing mission in December 1972.

Then, after two orbits of Earth, the Orion spacecraft will plunge back through the atmosphere at 84 percent of the velocity of a capsule returning from a moon mission — a speed thousands of miles an hour faster than a returning space shuttle.

Temperatures, too, will be deadly: 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 1,000 degrees more than space shuttles encountered during atmospheric reentry.

And so the mission aims to provide an early test of the systems most important to crew safety, those whose failure would present the greatest risk to U.S. astronauts.

"We're actually going to exercise seven of the top 10 risk areas in the Orion design, including the heat shield. But that also includes parachute deployment. It includes navigation and guidance. It includes all the software they are going to exercise," NASA Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer said.

Part of the Orion's crew escape system — a rocket-powered tower that would pull the spacecraft and its astronauts after from an exploding rocket — also will be tested.

It's the type of system the shuttle lacked.

"I guarantee you astronauts will like it. I can say that from experience," said former NASA astronaut Brian Duffy, vice president of exploration systems for solid rocket motor maker ATK.
"You know, it gives you this nice warm feeling that you're always going to have an opportunity to safely get back on the ground regardless of what happens."

Duffy flew four missions aboard NASA space shuttles. A telescoping bailout pole was added to shuttle orbiters after seven astronauts perished in the 1986 Challenger accident.

But the pole only was viable during stable, gliding flight, and most credible accident scenarios would have made it difficult or impossible to right an orbiter in an emergency.

The Orion crew escape system is similar to the launch abort towers that topped rockets during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs back in the 1960s and early to mid-1970s.

The system includes the ATK-built launch abort motor, which would provide 500,000 pounds of thrust in three seconds, blasting an Orion spacecraft and its crew a mile high and a mile away from an exploding rocket.

NASA readies crew-escape motor for Orion test

Todd Halvorson - Florida Today

A critical part of the crew escape system for NASA's Orion spacecraft is being readied at Kennedy Space Center for a test flight to be launched in September 2014.

Made by Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, the 17-foot-long solid rocket motor is a powerful part of the launch abort system that would pull an Orion spacecraft and its astronaut crew away from an exploding rocket.

"I guarantee you astronauts will like it. I can say that from experience," said former NASA astronaut Brian Duffy, vice president of exploration systems for solid rocket motor maker ATK.

"You know, it gives you this nice warm feeling that you're always going to have an opportunity to safely get back on the ground regardless of what happens."

Duffy flew four missions aboard NASA space shuttles, which lacked a robust crew escape system. A telescoping bailout pole was added to shuttle orbiters after seven astronauts perished in the 1986 Challenger accident. But the pole only was viable during stable, gliding flight, and most credible accident scenarios would have made it different or impossible to right an orbiter in an emergency.

The Orion crew escape system is similar to the launch abort towers that topped rockets during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs back in the 1960s and early to mid-1970s. It is designed to pull an Orion spacecraft and its crew away from an exploding booster rocket.

The system includes the ATK-built launch abort motor, which would provide 500,000 pounds of thrust in three seconds, blasting an Orion spacecraft and its crew a mile high and a mile away from an exploding rocket. The launch abort motor for the unmanned Orion test flight in 2014 is being readied in the former shuttle canister rotation facility at KSC.

A veteran shuttle pilot and mission commander, Duffy said the Orion system would be a life-saver in an emergency.

"I can tell you how valuable this piece is because in my past, I had the opportunity to fly the space shuttle four times, and we didn't have a lifeboat," he said.

"So the crew when they are onboard the Orion vehicle is going to feel very comfortable that this abort motor and the entire abort system that they'll be sitting beneath will be there, will be their lifeboat, their savior, should they need it."

NASA Deep-Space Missions Take Aim at Mars

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

The announcement Wednesday of an ambitious new project to launch the first private manned mission to Mars in 2018 may suggest to some that NASA has lost a step in the pursuit of deep-space exploration. But the U.S. space agency is forging ahead with plans for a flexible new spaceship and rocket to send astronauts deeper into space than ever before.

The nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation unveiled plans for a private Mars flyby mission Wednesday that calls for a January 2018 launch of a two-person crew — a man and woman, possibly a married couple — on a 501-day trip to the Red Planet and back. The mission would not land on Mars but bring a capsule and inflatable module within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the Martian surface before zooming away back to Earth.

Just one hour after the Inspiration Mars Foundation announcement in Washington, D.C., NASA officials here at the Kennedy Space Center briefed reporters about the agency's own plans for deep-space missions, including an eventual Mars trek.

"We know we're eventually going to Mars, and there are multiple destinations between here and Mars," Dan Dumbacher, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems, said in a briefing that did not address the private Mars project.

To do that, NASA is developing the new Orion deep-space capsule, the agency's first manned spacecraft since the space shuttle program ended in 2011. Orion is expected to launch on a new mega-rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).

Project Orion

Orion and the SLS form the core of NASA's deep-space exploration program. In 2010, President Barack Obama set a lofty goal for NASA's future — send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, then take aim at a manned Mars mission in the 2030s.

The aerospace company Lockheed Martin is building the four-person Orion capsule for NASA, with the European Space Agency providing the service module for the spacecraft. Orion's first test flight, called Exploration Flight Test 1, is slated to launch in 2014, and parts of the space capsule are being assembled at the Kennedy Space Center now.

Once the computers are in place sometime this summer, NASA scientists will power on the test capsule for the first time and check its systems on the ground, Orion project manager Mark Geyer said.

The NASA team plans to launch the capsule atop a Delta 4 rocket, sending it 3,000 miles (4,828 km) above Earth's surface. The main goal is to test the heat shields tasked with protecting crewmembers during Orion's manned missions, the first of which is slated to launch toward lunar space in 2021.

Giant rocket test

NASA's first SLS flight — the unmanned Exploration Mission 1 — is due to launch in 2017, officials said.

Currently, various components of the rocket are being built around the country. Starting in 2016, hardware is expected to begin arriving at the Kennedy Space Center for testing and assembly.

Orion and the Space Launch System won't launch together at first, but data from both flight tests will be used to help NASA scientists learn what improvements may be needed for each of the vehicles to boost safety and efficiency, project officials said.

"You want to make sure you've flown in that environment before you put anyone on board," Geyer said.

Scientists will also test Orion's launch abort system during a separate test after the 2014 launch. Like NASA's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules, the Orion spacecraft features an abort system designed to separate the capsule from its rocket during an emergency to carry its crew to safety. The agency's space shuttles had no such system.

During the launch abort test, NASA plans to stress the Orion capsule to its limits to replicate the conditions astronauts might experience in the case of a malfunction. The spacecraft will be ripped free of its booster and propelled 1 mile (1.6 km) away to safety through a series of intricate maneuvers performed by its abort system.

NASA is also preparing the ground facilities at Kennedy Space Center for the future missions. The Orion test flight will be run from a new firing room at the Launch Control Center, and NASA officials will be awarding a contract to a company that will reconfigure some of the structural models on the ground for the new rocket, explained Pepper Phillips, NASA's ground systems project manager.

China's next manned space mission to launch this summer

Ben Blanchard - Reuters

China's next manned space mission will launch sometime between June and August, carrying three astronauts to an experimental space module, state media said on Thursday, the latest part of an ambitious plan to build a space station.

The Shenzhou 10 and its crew will launch from a remote site in the Gobi desert and then link up with the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1 module, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Chinese astronauts carried out a manned docking with the module for the first time last June.

Rendezvous and docking exercises between the two vessels are an important hurdle in China's efforts to acquire the technological and logistical skills to run a full space lab that can house astronauts for long periods.

China is still far from catching up with the established space superpowers, the United States and Russia. The Tiangong 1 is a trial module, not the building block of a space station.

But this summer's mission will be the latest show of China's growing prowess in space and comes while budget restraints and shifting priorities have held back U.S. manned space launches.

It will be China's fifth manned space mission since 2003 when astronaut Yang Liwei became the country's first person in orbit.

China also plans an unmanned moon landing and deployment of a moon rover. Scientists have raised the possibility of sending a man to the moon, but not before 2020.

China to launch new manned spacecraft

Xinhua News Agency

China's new spacecraft will be launched sometime between June and August, a spokesperson for the office of the country's space manned program said in a statement released Thursday.

Three Chinese astronauts will board the Shenzhou-10, which is expected to dock with the orbiting lab module Tiangong-1, according to the statement.

The Tiangong-1 was sent into space in September 2011. It later docked with the Shenzhou-8 unmanned spacecraft in November 2011, and with the Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft in June 2012.

After years of testing, the new mission will mark the first formal application of the manned space transportation system, the statement said.

The objectives of the new mission include further assessing the performance of the docking system, the combination's capabilities in supporting life and work, and the abilities of astronauts on the job, according to plans.

Research on astronauts' abilities to adapt to the environment in the space module will also be conducted, in addition to tests on repairing orbiting spacecraft and other key technologies necessary for developing a space station.

China plans to build its own space station around 2020.

During the mission, astronauts will also give science lectures to teenage spectators back on Earth, the statement said.

The statement also offered information on ongoing preparations for the mission: general assembly has been completed on the Shenzhou-10, and the spacecraft is currently being tested; all tests have been completed on its carrier rocket, a modified model of the Long March-2F; astronauts are being trained according to plan; and the Tiangong-1 is in good condition.

Could this proposed law fix what's wrong with NASA?

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

A proposed new law introduced in Congress Tuesday would change the way NASA's administrator is chosen, give that administrator a six-year term, and set up a board of directors to oversee a space agency some say is lost in space. Could it be the solution to NASA's problems?

Rep. Frank Wolf issued a statement to open the hearing noting that since the Columbia accident 10 years ago, NASA has had three different administrators and "two completely different shuttle replacement programs." Wolf went on to describe an agency "adrift," "in turmoil" and "confused." Wolf said NASA doesn't know where it's going -- an asteroid? Mars? the moon? -- and sometimes the current White House sounds like it shouldn't be doing anything but developing technology.

The answer Wolf (R-Va) and four other House members have proposed (read the full bill here courtesy of spacepolicyonline.com) is a board of directors headed by "former astronauts or scientists or engineers eminent in the fields of human spaceflight, planetary science, space science, Earth science, and aeronautics, or other scientific, engineering, business, and social science disciplines related to space and aeronautics." That board, appointed by the president and Congress, would offer three candidates for administrator to the White House, and it would keep NASA on track.

The bill's co-sponsors are Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla), Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tx), Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wi) and Rep. Pete Olson (R-Tx). The measure introduced Tuesday is a revised version of a bill that did not pass in the last Congress.

We should drop the Apollo model in space, but keep the inspiration

Amy Shira Teitel - Aljazeera

The Apollo Moon landings are among the most recognisable events of the 20th century; stories from moonwalking astronauts and breathtaking images of the Earth from space remain a source of inspiration. But fascination with the lunar programme is often tempered with a sense of frustration. It's a very American narrative to wonder why we were able to get men on the Moon in 1969, but can't do the same today with our modern technology and better understanding of the problems involved. At some point in the past half-century, the Apollo programme became the model average Americans expect their nation's space programme to follow. But that's a dangerous expectation. The Apollo model wouldn't work today.

The first steps into space

Manned spaceflight was inevitable. In the early 20th century, science fiction writers explored possible and probable scenarios that became increasingly realistic as rocketry came of age. As pilots flew higher and faster, atmospheric flight started to give way to spaceflight. The Moon became a beacon for proponents of space exploration, a scientific, political, and even romantic goal. By the early 1950s, America's military was man-rating its missiles; German rocket engineer Wernher von Braun was teaching the nation how to go to Mars with the help of beautiful animation from Walt Disney's studios on national television; and Buck Rogers was showing kids just how exciting their space faring future was going to be.

But when America took its first steps into space they were reactionary, not proactive. In response to the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellites launched on October 4 and November 3, 1957, the military fast tracked its efforts in space. In 1958, the United States Air Force scrapped the sophisticated space planes it was developing and proposed a systematic spaceflight programme based on capsules culminating in a manned research site on the Moon within five years.

The Army sought to use the missiles it had available to send men in capsules on suborbital missions within a year. The Navy envisioned recovering its own astronauts from splashdowns at sea. These were all crash programmes, the simplest solutions to an immediate problem with no long-term plan. When the National Aeronautics and Space Administration opened its doors on October 1 that year - President Eisenhower wanted a civilian space agency to avoid any military uses of space - elements from these military programmes formed the basis of the Mercury Program.

Officially, NASA's purpose was to streamline the nation's efforts in space. Unofficially, the agency was created to use everything in the nation's arsenal to get an American in space before the Soviet Union. Beyond that, NASA didn't have a concrete plan. Generally speaking, learning to live and work in the hostile environment of space would surely come next; an orbiting space station was the logical step after an orbital mission. The Moon was sure to follow. In 1959, lunar missions launching from a space station were projected to fly sometime in the 1970s.

A wrench in the plan

But NASA hadn't been counting on the Soviet Union beating America into orbit, despite the success of the first Sputniks. Yuri Gagarin's flight on April 12, 1961, caught America off guard, and the national reaction was significant. Forward thinking engineers had already worked out the logistics of going to the Moon as a scientific interest, but President Kennedy saw it as the perfect finish line in a political race between technological superpowers.

When President Kennedy stood before Congress on May 25, 1961, and committed the nation to the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him to the Earth within the decade, he did two things. He gave NASA a definitive if short-term goal, and ensured that Apollo as well as the interim Gemini programme that followed Mercury would be another crash programme.

For NASA to meet Kennedy's deadline, the fastest and simplest solutions were necessarily the way forward. The intermediate step of a space station between the Earth and the Moon became impractical given the time pressures. Technologies like runway landing systems that would lower the cost of spaceflight by ending NASA's reliance on the Navy were abandoned. Anything that didn't directly push Apollo to the Moon was forgotten.

The tradeoff was financial. The cost of Apollo soared, peaking in 1966 when the agency had a whopping 4 percent of the nation's GDP at its disposal. It was an entirely unsustainable level of funding. As that reality sunk in, exciting post-Apollo plans of extended stays on the Moon, large orbiting laboratories, and manned missions to Venus and Mars were cancelled. As were Apollos 18, 19 and 20. The Saturn V rocket's life was cut short. The single-use Apollo spacecraft were abandoned.

Post-Apollo realities

Leftover hardware from the cancelled Moon landing was repurposed and launched on the short-lived Skylab programme , NASA's first space station, and the first multi-national Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission . The Apollo era ended without fanfare in 1975. When men returned to space six years later it was in the space shuttle, a ferry to a non-existent space station as part of a programme with no concrete goal. Americans have been vocal in their disappointment with NASA ever since. The shuttle's 30-year stay in low Earth orbit is often considered a step backwards from the pinnacle of the lunar landings.

And it's not just the shuttle. Everything since Apollo has paled in comparison. NASA achieved so much so quickly it has given the nation unrealistic expectations. What we seem to forget is that Apollo didn't go to the Moon because one man decided the time was right. Kennedy picked a technologically feasible goal and the political, economic, social, and technological climates were so perfectly balanced that we were able to rise to the challenge.

The model of Apollo - achieving a major goal with a crash programme - is not something we should try and repeat. Landscapes have changed, both in space and in the United States. Instead of looking at Apollo and wondering how NASA lost its edge, we ought to focus on the things the agency had hoped to do initially: lay a foundation for a systematic and lasting exploration of space. Because even if the model is different, the inspiring pioneering spirit that marked the Apollo era can remain the same.

MARS AND BACK IN 501 DAYS…

Manned Mars flyby mission proposed

William Harwood - CBS News

A wealthy space tourist announced plans Wednesday to launch a high-risk manned flight to Mars in 2018, sending a man and a woman on a bare-bones 501-day round-trip flyby, passing just 100 miles above the red planet before heading back to Earth.

Dennis Tito, the first private citizen to fly aboard the International Space Station, said he will provide two years of funding to support the Inspiration Mars Foundation, a non-profit he started to execute the proposed venture. Additional money will be raised from private sources.

"We have 50 years of experience," he told reporters during a news conference. "We can do things a lot faster, we just need a commitment. I'm not worried about getting this done from that standpoint. The vehicles are there, we have time to get it together."

In a statement, Tito said his organization is "engaging the best minds in industry, government and academia to develop and integrate the space flight systems and to design innovative research, education and outreach programs for the mission."

"This low-cost, collaborative, philanthropic approach to tackling this dynamic challenge will showcase U.S. innovation at its best and benefit all Americans in a variety of ways."

But building a reliable, affordable spacecraft in five years is just one issue facing mission planners. Spending nearly one-and-a-half years in the weightless environment of space poses a variety of health risks for the two-person crew, along with an increased risk of cancer due to the effects of space radiation.

And then there's the psychological stress associated with extended confinement in a vehicle the size of a motorhome.

Homer Hickham, author or "Rocket Boys/October Sky," said in a Twitter posting: "A married couple in a bathroom for 501 days? I love my wife but rather take my cat and some good books."

He joked that a book about the trip might be titled "Murder on the Martian Express."

But Jon Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon whose wife, Laurel Clark, perished in the 2003 Columbia disaster, said exhaustive screening procedures will be used to select candidates with excellent health, technical competence and psychological stability.

Pre-flight training and well-established exercise protocols will help offset the effects of prolonged exposure to microgravity, but space radiation remains a major concern. Clark said NASA will not consider a mission that could result in a 3 percent excess cancer mortality rate over a lifetime.

The proposed Mars flyby mission is "in that ballpark," said Clark, who is working with the Inspiration Mars Foundation. "So, the real issue here is understanding the risk in an informed capacity. The crew would understand that. Ultimately, that is going to be the decision based on that informed consent."

Taber MacCallum, the chief technical officer for Inspiration Mars and CEO of Paragon Space Development Corp., said it's "the kind of risk America used to be able to take."

"That's the kind of bold thing we used to be able to do, we don't do that anymore," he said. "We've shirked away from risk. I think just seriously contemplating this mission recalibrates what we believe is a risk worth taking for America."

As for the challenge of developing a manned flyby spaceraft in just five years, MacCallum said "American industry is up to this challenge."

"There are lots of options and ways to get this done," he said. "We have an amazing industrial base and it's about time America stood up and proved to the rest of the world we've got, bar none, the best industrial base in the world. Let's show it to them. Let's do this mission."

The proposed trip would take advantage of a relatively rare alignment between Earth and Mars, allowing a spacecraft to follow a fast "free-return" trajectory.

Assuming a launch on Jan. 5, 2018, the spacecraft could reach Mars in 228 days and simply loop around the planet, using gravity to fling it back toward Earth. The return trip would take 273 days and end with re-entry on May 21, 2019, at a record velocity of 31,000 mph.

The crew would rely on a closed-loop life support system, recycling water, urine and sweat using technology similar to that aboard the International Space Station.

While a specific mission architecture has not been established, the two-person crew likely will live and work in an inflatable habitat module attached to the capsule used for launch and entry. The idea is to utilize current technology with a minimum of automation, relying strongly on the crew's ability to operate the spacecraft and make repairs as needed.

Tito said a variety of launch vehicles should be available, including a proposed heavy-lift booster planned by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. The company also is working on a manned version of its Dragon cargo capsule, a variant of which might be suitable for the Mars trip.

Once on the way to Mars, the crew will not be able to abort and make a quick return to Earth if something goes wrong. They will be committed to the full-duration 501-day mission.

MacCallum said mission planners are considering a 1,200-cubic-foot spacecraft, half of which would be filled with food, water, life support equipment and spare parts. The crew would have about 600 cubic feet of living space.

Tito did not have a realistic cost estimate, but he said he expected it to be in the range of a robotic Mars mission. NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers cost about $400 million each while the more sophisticated Curiosity rover currently at work on the red planet cost some $2.5 billion.

"It uses low-Earth orbit architecture and we're just adapting it, in effect, to a very large Earth orbit that ... just happens to go out pretty far," Tito said. "But you're really flying this mission without a propulsion system on the spacecraft, it's in the most simple form.

"Compared to, say, the landing missions, even if you could contemplate what an overall landing mission to Mars might cost or even in today's dollars what the Apollo missions cost, you're talking a factor of a hundred (less). This is really chump change."

Whatever the final price tag of the proposed manned flyby mission, Tito said he welcomed the opportunity to raise money, joking that media rights alone would be worth a fortune.

"Dr. Phil solving their marital problems, it will be great," Tito quipped.

Dennis Tito's mission to Mars:
Launching in 2018 for the children (and to beat China)

Brian Vastag - Washington Post

Millionaire space tourist Dennis Tito has a vision to send two Americans to Mars on a high-risk, budget-class, 501-day journey that would — if achieved — smash the barrier to deep space.

The proposed passengers are a middle-aged married couple, handy with tools and not prone to claustrophobia.

The Inspiration Mars Mission for America would launch, by necessity of orbital mechanics, on Jan. 5, 2018.

There is no spaceship yet, and little notion of a budget. There is no funding beyond a two-year research and development commitment by Tito. But the wealthy former rocket scientist and financier has assembled a team of credentialed advisers and plotted a mission that teeters, outside experts say, on the edge of credibility.

"It's about inspiring the children," Tito said at a news conference Wednesday to announce the scheme.

Moments earlier, the onetime flier to the international space station — he paid $20 million to go there in 2001 — had lambasted what he characterized as a four-decade stagnation in the U.S. human spaceflight program.

Three years ago, President Obama touted a possible NASA Mars landing in the mid-2030s.

"I'll be 95 years old," Tito said. "I don't want to wait until that time."

But there will be no landing on Tito's mission. No footprints and flags in ruddy soil, no rock-grabbing, no search for Martian life.

Eight months after launch, Mars will loom, then vanish in the rearview mirror.

Tito said he will sell media rights. The Mission for America might become the Red Bull Mission to Mars, the Cool Ranch Doritos Mars Shot.

"I can imagine Dr. Phil talking to this couple and solving their marital problems," Tito said.

The nearly 18-month trip will cover 818 million miles.

Time spent within 60,000 miles of Mars: 10 hours.

Time spent pining for a bath: a seeming eternity.

"It's not nuts," said Taber MacCallum, chief executive of Paragon Space Development of Tucson, which is engineering the life support systems for the flight. "This is possible."

A celestial harmony makes such a plan feasible — a once-every-15-years alignment of Earth and Mars wherein a modest craft can shoot there and back with minimal fuel.

Tito won't fly. He's 72. But MacCallum, 48, and his wife, Jayne Poynter, 50, offered themselves as candidates for the most grueling marriage test ever conceived.

Two decades ago, the pair spent two years inside Biosphere2, the steel-and-glass sci-fi cathedral in Arizona conceived in part as a simulated space colony.

"We used to sit inside the Biosphere and just sort of fantasize about going to Mars," Poynter said. "Oh yeah, we did."

The risks of this mission soar beyond those NASA would allow, said Tito adviser Jonathan Clark, a former NASA space doctor now at the Baylor College of Medicine.

Beyond low Earth orbit, cosmic radiation rises dramatically, upping the risk of cancer. If illness or injury occur, there is no hospital for millions of miles, no chance to abort, and no escape.

Because radiation can damage sperm and eggs, Tito decided the world's first Martians should be older than reproductive age.

The new face of space travel will be wrinkled.

Other risks include missing a small "keyhole" in space near Mars and slingshotting to infinity, or vaporizing above Earth upon the fastest atmospheric reentry ever attempted.

Tito said a burgeoning new American space industry is on board. But this is, for now, largely a paper mission. NASA engineers are working on a heat shield. Paragon is building urine recycling and air purification systems. The life support apparatus will be kept simple, non-automated, and easily wrenched back to working order. There will be fecal sacks to change out, bulkheads to scrub. And plenty of time for both.

"A lot of this stuff is kind of MacGyvered," said Clark, a reference to the late-'80s-early-'90s TV hero who fixed problems with chewing gum and paper clips.

The required hardware includes a capsule for launching and landing, a habitat module, and a big rocket — or multiple small ones. Tito said several companies are in the running to build the components in time for the brief launch window.

While NASA is not funding the mission, Tito has briefed agency leadership.

"NASA will continue discussions with Inspiration Mars to see how the agency might collaborate on mutually beneficial activities," said NASA spokesman David Weaver.

This week, a boy who had heard about the project sent Tito — a fabulously wealthy man — $10.

"If you have a billion or two dollars, it's technically feasible," said Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society and a longtime proponent of colonizing that planet. "My main point of skepticism is not technical. It's, 'Do these guys have a billion dollars?'?"

They apparently do not. Tito did not crack the Forbes 500 billionaires list, and on Wednesday he shook a digital tin cup to begin fundraising for this "philanthropic" flight. The Inspiration Mars Foundation is in talks with the National Geographic Society and the Challenger Center for Space Science Education to bring the mission into classrooms and otherwise broadcast it.

"Imagine a 13-year-old girl and her classmates getting tweets from a female astronaut at Mars," Poynter said.

The mission — if Tito can pull it off — would reshuffle the possibilities for human space travel. Zubrin likened it to Charles Lindbergh's first flight across the Atlantic. "It breaks the mental cage that we cannot go interplanetary until we have miraculous new propulsion," he said.

The last time humans sailed beyond Earth orbit was the final Apollo moon mission in 1972. That was the final act of the Cold War space race.

The goal then, funded by tax dollars: beating the Soviets.

The goal now, funded by donations: beating burgeoning space power China.

"Wouldn't I want to do that?" Tito said when asked if besting China motivated his plan. "Wouldn't I want America to do that?"

First space tourist sponsoring mission to Mars

Ledyard King – Florida Today

Two astronauts — preferably a married, middle-aged couple — crammed in a vehicle the size of a small Winnebago carrying 3,000 pounds of dehydrated food, drinking water recycled from urine and sweat, breathing the same re-filtered oxygen over and over and over again. Without ever leaving. For 501 days, 13 hours, and 47 minutes.

At least that's the vision financier Dennis Tito laid out Wednesday during a news conference at the National Press Club.

A former NASA engineer who drew fame in 2001 as the world's first space tourist, the native New Yorker has created the non-profit Inspiration Mars Foundation to sponsor what would be humanity's first crewed mission to the Red Planet.

The astronauts would not land on Mars but would come within 100 miles before using the planet's gravitational shifts to boomerang back to Earth.

The ambitious plan carries plenty of risk, including radiation and re-entry issues, and would require compatible companions who could endure the psychological rigors of deep space confinement.

Tito said it's crucial to tackle those challenges quickly in order to meet a Jan. 5, 2018, launch date, when the alignments of Earth and Mars allow for the shortest trip. Otherwise, they would have to wait another 13 years for a similar launch window.

"Who wants to wait until 2031? By that time we might have company," he said. "There is no time to waste."

NASA is working on its own plans to send astronauts to Mars, but a lack of funding means that mission is not expected to happen for approximately 20 years.

The foundation has begun soliciting donations, and put together a team of experts to explore the issues confronting a trip to Mars: trajectory and payload requirements, life support, radiation, and thermal protection.

A report detailing some of those findings is due Sunday.

Tito, chairman and CEO of the investment firm Wilshire Associates Inc., would not put a figure on the cost but said it would be "much, much lower than you would expect" because it won't have to meet all of NASA's specifications and won't require the many expensive extras of traditional missions.

He also said it would lean heavily on existing hardware and technology. And he presumed the launch would probably take place from the Space Coast.

Tito said he would put up all the funding necessary for the next two years to get the mission rolling.

He spent a reported $20 million in 2001 to ride a Russian rocket to the International Space Station, where he stayed for several days. NASA tried to block him from going, saying the presence of an untrained visitor would pose a burden to the astronauts on board.

But if NASA harbors any ill will today, it was not evident.

Tito said NASA signed a Space Act agreement "in record time" to provide the foundation guidance on a re-entry system.

And agency spokesman David Weaver praised the proposal as proof that the administration's approach to explore space with private partners is the right one.

"It's a testament to the audacity of America's commercial aerospace industry and the adventurous spirit of America's citizen-explorers," he said. "NASA will continue discussions with Inspiration Mars to see how the agency might collaborate on mutually beneficial activities that could complement NASA's human spaceflight, space technology and Mars exploration plans."

Tito said the mission will be of mutual benefit to NASA and his foundation.

The Mars trip will give the space agency crucial data on the complexities associated with deep-space travel. Tito hopes to help finance the trip by making money off the experiments that will be conducted on NASA's behalf.

"Of course we'll charge as much as we can," he said.

Manned Mars Mission Announced by Dennis Tito Group
New venture will seek astronaut couple to spend 501 days in a space capsule. .

Marc Kaufman - National Geographic News

Wanted: A man and a woman in their early to mid-50s, preferably married. Must enjoy adventure, spending long periods of time together, and sharing space—as in 501 days in a 33-cubic-foot (0.93-cubic-meter) capsule and habitat. Interest in the planet Mars also a prerequisite.

Warning to applicants: You will be exposed to unprecedented risks and your long-term health could be compromised. But if the effort goes ahead and succeeds as planned, you will become the first humans in history to journey into deep space and see Mars up close.

Multimillionaire Dennis Tito, the world's first space tourist, announced today in Washington, D.C., that his newly formed nonprofit organization has taken up the challenge of sending the first humans to Mars.

"We've not sent humans beyond the moon in 40 years," Tito said at a press conference. "... And I think it's time to put an end to that lapse."

Tito argued that it is time for human space travel to catch up to the significant progress made in robotic and remote instrument exploration of space, from the Hubble Space Telescope to the Mars rover Curiosity.

"We have not made nearly the same progress in human spaceflight, particularly with respect to deep space," he said.

The Inspiration Mars Foundation aims to launch the mission in January 2018, when Mars and Earth are at an especially close point in their 15-year cycle. The plan is to send a man and a woman in a capsule around Mars for a flyby mission similar to the one that surveyed the moon before the Apollo landings.

Why a man and a woman? Tito and his team say the spacecraft they envision would accommodate only two astronauts. Once that was decided, they committed to having both sexes represented as the Earth's first ambassadors to deep space, saying that to do otherwise would misrepresent humanity.

A Daring Idea

Unlike any NASA human space mission, there will be no backup plan to rescue the astronauts if something goes wrong. The sobering reality is that even when it's close to Earth, Mars is more than 75 million miles away.

"Many people have told us this is the kind of daring idea that America used to excel at, but they say we don't do it anymore because of the risk," said Taber MacCallum, the chief technical officer for Inspiration Mars. He is CEO and co-founder of Paragon Space Development Corporation, which specializes in creating life-support systems for extreme environments.

"We are going to make the capsule and mission as safe as humanly possible, but it will undeniably carry more risk than what's come before," he said. "As we see it, this is the way forward."

In addition to the inevitable risks of launching into space and returning to Earth, the astronauts would be exposed to potentially harmful levels of both cosmic radiation and solar radiation.

Consequently, one of the foundation's highest research and development priorities will be developing methods of blocking as much radiation as possible—shielding the capsule with water-filled bladders, a special aluminum skin, and possibly the upper stage of the launch rocket. Inspiration Mars will also assess pharmaceuticals that might mitigate the health effects of the radiation.

Jonathan Clark, chief medical officer for the mission, added at the press conference that genotyping crew members to better tailor medications and radiation countermeasures was also a possibility.

Nonetheless, significant risk remains. MacCallum said that's partly why the Inspiration Mars group will be looking for experienced astronauts in their early 50s: An older man or woman would have statistically fewer years to live after their return than a young person, and so would be less likely to develop the cancers that radiation could bring.

MacCallum is also well aware of the psychological stress of being in such a tiny environment with only one other person. He lived in the Biosphere 2, a closed environment outside Tucson, for two years in the 1990s. Much of that time was spent with the woman who later became his wife and co-founder of Paragon, Jane Poynter, who will lead in developing the crew and life-support systems for Inspiration Mars. (Related: "Psychological Challenges of a Manned Mission to Mars.")

If the 501-day trip does take place and succeeds, it would constitute the longest time any person has been in space, and by quite a bit. Not surprisingly, one of the prerequisites for applicants is having lived in an isolated, confined environment for at least six months.

"In conditions like those going to Mars, you have to have a colleague who is also a companion of some kind, or else the pressure gets too great," MacCallum said. "We think a married couple would be ideal, but we haven't ruled out people who aren't a couple."

Can It Really Be Done?

The Mars project is extremely ambitious, but it is at least plausible because it is simple—at least in terms of rocket science.

According to a paper Tito will present this weekend at an aerospace conference in Montana, if the launch is on target, then the spaceship will need only one rocket burn to change course. With the right trajectory, it will fly to Mars, will pass within a few hundred miles of the surface, and then will be pulled around the planet and given a gravity-assisted fling back toward Earth.

Under the current flight trajectory, the capsule would spend about ten hours within 65,000 miles of Mars.

"In terms of the sophistication of what we want to do, it is absolutely nothing compared with the Curiosity landing on Mars," MacCallum said. "We have different risks because we'll be carrying two people, but the flight architecture is pretty simple—which makes it appealing."

The First Space Tourist

The man behind the private Mars push is no stranger to the red planet.

In 2001 Tito paid $20 million to become the first "tourist" to rocket into space. He spent six days on the International Space Station. (Related: "7 Ways You Could Blast Off by 2023.")

Though Tito made his fortune in finance, he has a master's degree in engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for eight years.

While at JPL, Tito worked on trajectory and flight issues for Mariner 4 and 9, which flew to Mars in the 1960s and '70s, respectively. Mariner 4 was the first successful flyby of the planet, and in 1965 it sent back the first pictures of another planet from deep space.

"I will not be one of the crew members on this mission," said Tito, now 72. Even if he were 30 years younger, he insisted at the press conference that he still wouldn't be on this mission because the criteria for selecting crew members will be so high.

Funding and Approval

While the journey will not be sponsored or controlled by NASA, MacCallum said officials from that agency have shown great interest in the project and have already provided substantial support regarding how to select the astronauts and how to make the spacecraft a livable place. The Inspiration Mars group has also entered into a Space Act agreement with NASA's Ames Research Center to come up with an Earth re-entry plan for the end of the mission.

"We would be fools to not use the unparalleled expertise of NASA when we can, and we see all our work as part of the agency's—and the nation's—effort to land humans on Mars in the future," MacCallum said. "NASA will pay nothing, but can get a lot out of this plan if it all comes together."

NASA is currently building a heavy-lift rocket and capsule system dubbed the Orion for future deep space exploration. But limited funding and a resulting change in development plans during President Obama's first term have left the agency without any immediate options for human space flight.

The only federal agency that would have to formally approve the Inspiration Mars flight is the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates all spacecraft launches and returns.

But MacCallum said that the foundation's board of experts—headed by Joseph Rothenberg, formerly a top human spaceflight manager with NASA—will have the final word on whether the Mars flyby plans are technically sound. If not, Tito's vision will have to wait until 2032, when the two planets align again.

Tito, who has declined to estimate what the effort will cost, has promised to personally supply the funds for its first two years. But he and others are already fundraising with what colleagues say is considerable success—especially in the past few weeks as word of the plan began to leak out on the Internet.

The National Geographic Society is discussing a potential partnership with Inspiration Mars Foundation centered around the 2018 mission. MacCallum said similar talks are underway with other organizations and businesses.

New Frontiers

The Inspiration Mars proposal comes at a remarkable time for the private space business. Boeing, the United Launch Alliance, and other private groups are developing rockets and capsules, and a group of former NASA leaders and entrepreneurs recently announced a private lunar expedition venture called the Golden Spike Company.

In addition, Bigelow Aerospace won a contract with NASA in January to send one of its inflatable space habitats to the ISS and attach it. The Inspiration Mars plan calls for a similar habitat to be attached to the capsule to provide an extra 25 cubic feet (0.71 cubic meter) of space, luxurious compared with the 8 cubic feet (0.23 cubic meter) of space in the capsule.

Another company, SpaceX, is scheduled to launch its second of 12 cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station on Friday, and founder Elon Musk has said in the past that he has his own plans for sending humans to Mars.

Early Inspiration Mars papers showed the launch rocket and capsule as SpaceX models, but Inspiration Mars officials now say that it's unclear which private space company would provide the lift and the ride if the project's many other daunting technical, financial, and scheduling challenges are overcome.

Going to Mars in 2018:
Concept is so crazy (and simple) it just might work

Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log

Millionaire space tourist Dennis Tito and his partners have had to tell questioners repeatedly that they're not "crazy" or "nuts" to think they can launch a man and a woman to Mars and back by 2019 — but if the Inspiration Mars Foundation's "Mission for America" succeeds, it may well be because it's just crazy enough.

Other private space ventures, ranging from SpaceX to the Golden Spike Company and Planetary Resources, are depending on turning a profit someday through the sale of rocket flights, or missions to the moon, or water and precious metals mined from asteroids. Tito, in contrast, freely admits the 501-day mission is a "one-shot deal" that's unencumbered by a long-range business plan. He's committed to supporting the five-year development effort for the first two years, during which time he and the rest of the team will try to raise the money and perfect the technologies for the three more expensive years to follow.

So how much is that going to cost him? "Who knows?" Tito said.

Tito expects to look in all the usual places for funding, including sponsorships, the sale of media rights, the sale of scientific data from the flight and private contributions. A 6-year-old boy has already sent in one of the first contributions, amounting to $10. "This is my Apollo," he was quoted as saying.

If Tito had a dime for every time the Apollo era was invoked on Wednesday, he'd be making a good start toward a fund-raising goal that is estimated to range around $1 billion. Some questioned whether the non-stop Mars flyby would be worth it, on scientific or economic grounds. But that's missing the point: Like Tito's eight-day trip to the International Space Station in 2001, the payoff would be purely inspirational rather than scientific.

"Inspiration Mars reminds me of Apollo 8 in 1968, going around the moon," software billionaire Charles Simonyi, who spent tens of millions of dollars buying two flights to the International Space Station, said in a Twitter update. "Inspiration is a goal for humans, science should be left to the rovers."

In a follow-up exchange of messages, Simonyi told NBC News that he wouldn't be spending millions more to support Tito's effort. He noted that his philanthropic foundation, the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, "has spent the $100M it had in 10 years, as planned."

"But I think Inspiration will have broad-based support," he said. "Very exciting."

NASA also voiced moral support, saying in a statement that the Inspiration Mars mission was "a testament to the audacity of America's commercial aerospace industry and the adventurous spirit of America's citizen-explorers." Inspiration Mars plans to pay NASA for access to the agency's know-how about thermal protection systems for re-entry, said Taber MacCallum, the foundation's chief technology officer and a co-founder of Paragon Space Development Corp.

Technical issues

In addition to the craziness about the money, there's the craziness about thinking that the rocket and crew capsule will be ready to launch on Jan. 5, 2018, when the planets literally align. A launch on or around that date would result in a straightforward, no-fuss trajectory that would come within 100 miles of Mars' backside on Aug. 20, 2018, and bring the spacecraft back to Earth on May 21, 2019. The mission plan is outlined in a feasibility analysis prepared for an aerospace conference, but Tito and his co-authors acknowledge that the space vehicles cited in the paper don't yet exist.

The paper says it'd be feasible to use the still-under-development SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and a modified SpaceX Dragon capsule, with a Bigelow-type inflatable module added on. But MacCallum acknowledged that Inspiration Mars was still talking with potential industry partners on what the launch configuration might be. He said choosing that configuration, as well as designing the life-support system and the thermal protection system, were high priorities on the to-do list.

MacCallum stressed that simplicity would be the key. "This is going to be a Lewis and Clark mission to Mars," MacCallum said. "Keep it bare bones, keep it simple."

Tito provided scant details about the five-year development timeline but said that the mission would rely upon technologies developed for flights to the space station. "It uses low-Earth-orbit architecture ... and we're just adapting it in effect to a very large Earth orbit," he said. Responding to questions about the tight time frame, Tito pointed out that Apollo 8's around-the-moon mission took place just a year after the first unmanned test launch of NASA's Saturn 5 rocket in 1967. (However, it took five years to design and develop the Saturn 5 in preparation for that first launch.)

The trajectory for the "Mission for America" is designed such that only minor course corrections would be required along the way. There'd be no engine burn required for the return leg of the trip, and no deorbit burn. However, the spacecraft's speed at re-entry would be 32,000 mph (14.2 kilometers per second), or almost twice as fast as the space shuttle's re-entry speed. And if the trajectory went slightly off for some reason, there's a chance that the capsule could slam into Mars — or miss Earth entirely on the way back, dooming the crew to another deadly circuit.

Who will go?

Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon who has served as an adviser for several space ventures, acknowledged that "there's no question this is a risky and bold endeavor." He estimated that there was a roughly 7 percent chance that one of the two astronauts on board would experience a serious medical issue during the mission. That's the big reason why it'd be a two-person trip rather than a solo flight: so that one of the astronauts could serve as the backup for the other. That, and the fact that it'd be an awfully lonely year and a half for just one astronaut.

Tito insists that the two-person crew should consist of a man and a woman, preferably a married couple, in order to combat the loneliness and reduce the risk of crew incompatibility. Tito joked that one of the mission's media deals might involve Dr. Phil giving "marital advice" to the couple while they're in flight.

Like most of the spacecraft components, the crew would be American, Tito said. He described the key attribute for prospective crew members as "the Right Stuff times 10." MacCallum, meanwhile, said the astronauts would have to have "an amazing mechanical skill" in order to keep the onboard systems running smoothly. MacCallum's wife, Paragon co-founder Jane Poynter, said they'd have to be "even-keeled" to get along for a year and a half while cooped up in the outer-space equivalent of an RV. (MacCallum has said that he and Poynter would be interested in taking the Mars trip themselves.)

Clark estimated that it would take six months to a year to work out the process for crew selection.

Tito faced repeated questions about why he was taking on this mission — and it was clear that American pride was part of the equation. One reporter asked whether Tito merely wanted to get to Mars before the Chinese. "Beat China to Mars?" he replied. "Wouldn't I want to do that? Wouldn't I want America to do that? Wouldn't you want America to do that?"

He also noted that if Inspiration Mars missed the launch opportunity in 2018, the next opportunity for a 501-day mission wouldn't come around again until 2031. "If we don't fly in '18, the next low-hanging fruit is in '31, and we better have our crew trained to recognize other flags," he said. "They're going to be out there."

Tito's plan has also gotten a vote of support from Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who is writing a book titled "Mission to Mars: My Vision for Exploration." The Washington Post's Brian Vastag quotes Aldrin as saying, "I've talked with Dennis, and I've strongly encouraged him. The purpose is to inspire, to say we're going to do something and then we do it." It doesn't hurt that the schedule calls for the round trip to end two months before the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Here's another vote of support from planetary scientist Alan Stern, president and CEO of the Golden Spike Company: "Very excited about Inspiration Mars and the way they and we at Golden Spike are both breaking the mold in human space exploration in this country — and around the world," Stern wrote in an email. Golden Spike is working on a plan to launch missions to the moon at a cost of $1.4 billion per mission (that's $700 million per seat for a two-person flight). The company is currently in the midst of an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign.

Tycoon wants to send married couple on Mars flyby

Seth Borenstein - Associated Press

It's a road trip that could test the best of marriages: Mars.

A tycoon announced plans Wednesday to send a middle-aged couple on a privately built spaceship to slingshot around the red planet and come back home, hopefully with their bodies and marriage in one piece after 501 days of no-escape togetherness in a cramped capsule half the size of an RV.

Under the audacious but bare-bones plan, the spacecraft would blast off less than five years from now and pass within 100 miles of the Martian surface. The cost was not disclosed, but outsiders put it at more than $1 billion.

The team of space veterans behind the project hasn't quite figured out the technical details of the rocket they will use or the capsule the husband-and-wife astronauts will live in during the 16-month voyage. But they know it will be an adventure not for the weak of body or heart.

"This is not going to be an easy mission," chief technical officer and potential crew member Taber MacCallum said. "We called it the Lewis and Clark trip to Mars."

The trying circumstances include: no showers, limits on toilet paper and clothing, drinking water made from the crew members' recycled urine and sweat, and almost no privacy. But the flight also comes with never-before-seen views of Mars. And there's ample time for zero-gravity sex in space, something NASA doesn't like to talk about.

As for why a man and a woman will be selected, "this is very symbolic and we really need it to represent humanity," MacCallum said.

He said if it is a man and a woman on such a long, close-quarters voyage, it makes sense for them to be married so that they can give each other the emotional support they will probably need when they look out the window and see Earth get smaller and more distant: "If that's not scary, I don't know what is."

The private, nonprofit project, called Inspiration Mars, will get initial money from NASA engineer-turned-multimillionaire investment consultant Dennis Tito, the first space tourist. The organizers hope to raise the rest through donations, advertising and media partnerships.

NASA, which has talked about sending astronauts to orbit Mars by the mid-2030s, will not be involved in this project. Instead, its backers intend to use a ship built by other aerospace companies, employing an austere design that could take people to Mars for a fraction of what it would cost the space agency to do with robots, officials said.

Even though some of the hardware hasn't even been built, Tito said he is confident everything will come together by 2018 with no test flights.

It will be a stripped-down mission when it comes to automation and complexity, meaning the couple will have to fix things on the fly like TV's MacGyver and do more piloting than on NASA vehicles, said chief medical officer Jonathan Clark.

The flight is timed to take advantage of the once-in-a-generation close approach of the two planets' orbits. The timeline calls for launch on Jan. 5, 2018, the Mars flyby on Aug. 20, 2018, and a return to Earth on May 21, 2019.

It involves huge risk, more than a government agency like NASA would normally permit, officials concede. For example, the spaceship will fly during a period when galactic cosmic rays will be high because of the sunspot cycle. That will increase the crew's cancer risk by about 3 percent, which is more than on any NASA mission, Clark said.

The ship would also re-enter Earth's atmosphere at twice the speed of ordinary space capsules, something Tito said still needs to be worked out.

"Life is risky," said Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon whose astronaut wife died in the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident. "Anything that's worth it is worth putting it all at stake for."

What may be most at stake is the crew members' marriage. The couple will be selected within a year.

MacCallum and his wife, Jane Poynter, hope to be picked. They were a couple when they participated in Biosphere 2, a sort of giant terrarium that was supposed to replicate a mission on another planet. Poynter said it was such a fraught experience psychologically that some participants wouldn't talk to each other for most of the two years.

But MacCallum said it brought him and Poynter closer together. He said the right couple going to Mars, if screened and counseled ahead of time, would come back with a stronger marriage.

Poynter said the husband and wife need to be even-tempered. Clark said they should be post-childbearing age because of exposure to radiation. Poynter is 50, MacCallum 48.

For the 30 years NASA has been flying men and women, it has avoided the question of sex in space. MacCallum said it will happen: "It's a man and wife. Private time. Let your imagination run wild."

In a statement, NASA spokesman David Steitz said the venture validates President Barack Obama's decision to rely more on private sector ingenuity to explore space, and is "a testament to the audacity of America's commercial aerospace industry and the adventurous spirit of America's citizen-explorers."

He said "NASA will continue discussions with Inspiration Mars to see how the agency might collaborate on mutually beneficial activities."

Stanford University professor Scott Hubbard, NASA's former Mars mission chief, said the team's technical paper outlining the flight is "long on inspiration, short on technical details. What is there is correct."

Other outside experts praised the expertise of the team but worried about the lack of testing.

Former astronaut and current MIT aerospace engineering professor Jeff Hoffman said: "Since they don't plan to land on Mars, it's really a question of keeping people alive for 501 days in space, which is not an impossible task."

Man and woman, preferably married, wanted for expedition to Mars

Irene Klotz - Reuters

A nonprofit foundation wants to recruit a man and a woman - possibly a married couple - for a bare-bones, 501-day journey to Mars and back that would start in less than five years, project organizers said on Wednesday.

The mission, expected to cost upwards of $1 billion, would be privately financed by donations and sponsorships.

Project founder Dennis Tito, a multimillionaire who in 2001 paid $20 million for a trip to the International Space Station, said he will pay start-up costs for two years to begin development of life-support systems and other critical technologies.

Currently, there are no U.S. human spaceships in operation, but several are under development and expected to be flying by 2017.

That leaves little time to take advantage of a rare planetary alignment that would allow a craft to loop around Mars, coming as close as about 150 miles (241 kilometers) to the planet's surface, before returning to Earth.

The launch window for the mission opens on Jan. 5, 2018. The next opportunity is not until 2031.

"If we don't make 2018, we're going to have some competition in 2031," Tito told Reuters.

"By that time, there will be many others that will be reaching for this low-hanging fruit, and it really is low-hanging fruit," said Tito, who set up the nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation to organize the mission.

Project chief technical officer Taber MacCallum said U.S. industry is up for the challenge.

"That's the kind of bold thing we used to be able to do," said MacCallum, who also oversees privately owned Paragon Space Development Corp.

"We've shirked away from risk. I think just seriously contemplating this mission recalibrates what we believe is a risk worth taking for America," he said.

Tight quarters

The spacecraft will be bare-bones, with about 600 cubic feet (17 cubic meters) of living space available for a two-person crew. Mission planners would like to fly a man and a woman, preferably a married couple who would be compatible during a long period of isolation.

The capsule would be outfitted with a life-support system similar to the one NASA uses on the space station, which recycles air, water, urine and perspiration.

"This is going to be a very austere mission. You don't necessarily have to follow all of NASA's guidelines for air quality and water quality. This is going to be a Lewis and Clark trip to Mars," MacCallum said, referring to the explorers who set out across the uncharted American Northwest in 1803.

If launch occurs on Jan. 5, 2018, the capsule would reach Mars 228 days later, loop around its far side and slingshot back toward Earth.

The return trip takes 273 days and ends with an unprecedented 31,764-mph (51,119-kph) slam into Earth's atmosphere.

Once the spaceship is on its way, there is no turning back.

"If something goes wrong, they're not coming back," MacCallum said.

The crew would spend much of their time maintaining their habitat, conducting science experiments and keeping in touch with people on Earth.

Tito said he expects the cost to be similar to a robotic mission to Mars. NASA's ongoing Curiosity rover mission cost $2.5 billion. A follow-on mission scheduled to launch in 2020 is expected to run $1.5 billion.

"You're really flying this mission without a propulsion system on the spacecraft. It's in the most simple form," Tito said.

NASA is working on its own heavy-lift rocket and Orion space capsule that could carry crews of four to an asteroid and eventually to Mars.

"We can just barely, every 15 years, fly by Mars with the systems we have right now," MacCallum said. "We're trying to be a stepping-stone."

Millionaire plans to send couple to Mars in 2018. Is that realistic?

Pete Spotts - Christian Science Monitor

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy charged NASA with putting humans on the moon within the decade. Now, the world's first space tourist, multimillionaire Dennis Tito, formally unveiled plans to send two humans to Mars and back on a nonstop, 501-day mission, with the launch envisioned for January 2018.

The audacious project, which Mr. Tito is bankrolling out-of-pocket for the first two years, is driven by a mixture of motives: part America first, part research, and an enormous dash of what he and his partners hope will be inspiration to a nation whose government space program is caught between tight budgets and an unclear direction for its human spaceflight effort.

NASA's current plans don't call for a human mission to Mars for more than a decade.

The Mars flyby mission announcement came Wednesday, shortly after the House Subcommittee on Space held hearings on the Space Leadership Preservation Act, a bill that would overhaul the way NASA is funded and how its leadership is structured.

During the hearing, Rep. Chris Stewart (R) of Utah spoke of goals for NASA and said, "It will be disappointing to some of us if Google goes to Mars before the government."

In this case, however, it's not Internet titan Google spearheading the mission, but the Inspiration Mars Foundation, a nonprofit group Tito and others established to execute the project.

A team from the foundation is presenting the results of a mission-feasibility study next weekend at an Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineering (IEEE) aerospace conference in Big Sky, Mont.

"All of the work done to date show the mission is possible, just barely," said Taber MacCallum, CEO and chief technology officer for Paragon Space Development Corporation and the Inspiration Mars Foundation's chief technology officer, during a press conference in Washington on Wednesday.

At the same time, however, the study also shows that it will take the Orion capsule and the space-launch system NASA is working on to pull off a mission to explore Mars with a crew of scientists, he said.

The Inspiration Mars mission is an austere one whose schedule is dictated by a very favorable alignment between Earth and Mars in 2018. The alignment allows a simple round trip to take 501 days, and the alignment won't appear again until 2031.

The two-member crew, a man and a woman, would launch Jan. 5, 2018, take one swing around Mars, coming to within 100 miles of the surface on Aug. 21, then return to Earth in an approach and reentry no one has tried before, landing on May 21, 2019.

In a version of the feasibility study papered for the IEEE presentation next Sunday, Tito and colleagues from three aerospace companies, NASA's Ames Research Center, and Baylor University's Center for Space Medicine in Houston envision a Spartan craft where sponge baths replace showers and the crew will recycle water and oxygen with technologies similar to those used on the International Space Station.

Simplicity is vital to keep the craft's mass to levels a large rocket can readily loft from Earth, explained Mr. MacCallum of Paragon Space Development Corporation, which specializes in environmental controls and life-support systems for spacecraft.

The craft will have no propulsion system of its own but will rely on the push it gets from the final stage of its rocket and gravitational assists to get to Mars and back. Like a submarine, the craft is being designed so that all systems can be serviced from inside, eliminating the need for systems to support spacewalks and bulky space suits.

The mission envisions using a rocket with capabilities similar to those of the Falcon Heavy rocket, developed by the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. Scheduled for its first demonstration flight later this year, the Falcon Heavy would be the most powerful rocket since NASA's Saturn V, which launched astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program.

Fully loaded, the Inspiration Mars capsule would tip the scales at about 10 tons, so it could be lofted by either the Delta IV or Atlas V, well-established workhorses for launching large satellites and robotic exploration missions. The capsule would host about 600 cubic feet of living space and 600 cubic feet of cargo space. The capsule could include an inflatable module to expand living space, foundation representatives said, although that would add complexity to the craft.

"There really are multiple options for basically every function we need" to pull off the mission, said MacCallum.

Already the foundation has signed a Space Act agreement with the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., to tap its expertise on heat shields and reentry approaches.

Still, the challenges are enormous. The schedule is tight, and the funding after the first two years – the least-expensive years, Tito acknowledges – is uncertain. And the risk to the mission's crew, likely a middle-aged married couple, is considerable.

From a physical standpoint, the biggest risk the crew is likely to face comes from the radiation hazards of interplanetary space – from galactic cosmic rays and from intense bursts of particles from the sun during powerful solar storms. The radiation exposure the crew would experience during the Mars mission exceeds the amount of exposure that NASA allows its astronauts to undergo, said Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon and an associate professor at Baylor's Center for Space Medicine.

And while this mission's radiation-hazard standard is not as stringent as NASA's, Dr. Clark said, "don't believe that we are looking at this lightly; this is a super concern."

Of particular concern are any acute effects from radiation that might impair a crew member during the mission.

In addition, the team is focusing on ways to offset, through preflight training as well as in-flight activities, the effects of prolonged weightlessness and on the psychological effects of long periods spent in confined spaces.

"The real issue here is understanding the risk in an informed capacity – the crew would understand that, the team supporting them would understand that," Clark said.

The mission won't come cheap, although Tito said it's too early to put an overall price tag to the project. His best guess would be less than what the US spends to send robotic missions to Mars.

"This is really chump change compared to what we've heard before" on estimates for landing a crew on Mars, he said.

Private Mars mission: Inspiring or foolhardy?

Justin Ray - SpaceflightNow.com

The self-made millionaire who paid for his own trip to the International Space Station a decade ago as the world's first orbital tourist wants to send a two-person crew on a 501-day flyby of Mars in 2018, skimming a mere 100 miles above the red planet's surface before looping back for a high-stakes return to Earth.

He just needs the money, spacecraft, launcher and two volunteers to mount the private -- and daring -- adventure.

Dennis Tito, who captured headlines in a controversial April 2001 flight to the station aboard a Russian Soyuz on his own dime despite NASA objections, has created the nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation.

"Sending humans on an expedition to Mars will be a defining event for humanity as well as an inspiration to our youth," the team says in its feasibility study.

"Social media provides an opportunity for people to meaningfully participate in the mission, likely making this the most engaging human endeavor in modern history. The mission will address one of the most fundamental technical challenges facing human exploration of space, keeping the humans alive and productive in deep space."

The goal would use the relatively rare alignment of Earth and Mars to send a spacecraft on a so-called "free-return" trajectory, essentially flying a manned boomerang around the neighboring planet and returning home without needing any major propulsion to get back.

But there will be no way to abort the mission once departure from Earth occurs, leaving the astronauts with only their own wits and ingenuity to fix troubles along the way.

Taber MacCallum, the chief technical officer for Inspiration Mars and CEO of Paragon Space Development Corp., said it's "the kind of risk America used to be able to take."

"That's the kind of bold thing we used to be able to do, we don't do that anymore," he said. "We've shirked away from risk. I think just seriously contemplating this mission recalibrates what we believe is a risk worth taking for America."

Reliability of the closed-loop life support system, limited knowledge of deep-space radiation and the high-speed re-entry are the three riskiest parts of the endeavor, officials said.

Lifting off on Jan. 5, 2018 atop a high-performance rocket such as the existing United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy or one in development like SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, the 10-ton capsule and its inflatable habitat will leave Earth for mankind's first human journey to Mars.

It will take 227 days to transit across interplanetary space, braving the dangers of radiation, prolonged exposure to microgravity, the worries of hardware breakdowns and the psychological impacts of being cooped up in the cramped craft for so long.

Bringing all the water and oxygen in big tanks would be prohibitive, so the crew will drink the same water and breath same oxygen over and over again through recycling urine and sweat and scrubbing carbon dioxide. There will be no need for spacewalks and controllers will rely on the astronauts instead of largely automating the spacecraft.

About 3,000 pounds of dehydrated food would be loaded aboard to feed the crew for a year-and-a-half in the spaceship that is roughly the size of a small Winnebago.

Calling the mission "austere" and "barebones" to keep costs down and the hardware simplistic, the foundation says it won't have to follow all of NASA's strict air- and water-quality rules. And they will rely on a mechanically-inclined crew to make repairs as necessary during the trek.

Tito is self-funding the project for the first two years, ensuring it gets a solid footing until external financial support can be found and pumped into the mission. Engineering work on "critical-path items" started last month.

If the early 2018 launch window is missed, the next opportunity for the free-return trajectory won't come around again until 2031.

Tito, now 72, holds a master's degree in engineering and worked early in life at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory designing trajectories for flybys of Mars and Venus using robotic Mariner probes and then entered the investment industry where he made made millions, also added that he would not be taking the trip himself.

"It will be quite a crew selection process," he said.

He wants the two-person, middle-aged crew to include a man and woman, preferably married, to take the journey that he calls a "sea change" to move beyond only talking about human expeditions to Mars into real action.

But Homer Hickham, author or "Rocket Boys/October Sky," fired back with a Twitter posting: "A married couple in a bathroom for 501 days? I love my wife but rather take my cat and some good books."

Jon Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon whose wife, Laurel Clark, died in the 2003 Columbia disaster, said exhaustive screening procedures will be used to select candidates with excellent health, technical competence and psychological stability.

The crew must accept the personal risks such a voyage would entail, including increased chances of developing cancer from the radiation they would experience. Clark said estimates put the excess cancer mortality rate over a lifetime "in that ballpark" of around the three-percent limit NASA has for its own missions.

"So, the real issue here is understanding the risk in an informed capacity. The crew would understand that. Ultimately, that is going to be the decision based on that informed consent," Clark said.

The 2018-2019 timeframe, however, will coincide with the 11-year solar minimum providing the lowest solar radiation exposure, the foundation said.

Still, the duo would give humanity its first adventure away from Earth and its moon, which was visited from 1969 to 1972 by Apollo astronauts.

"When nations boldly follow opportunities, rooted in curiosity and guided by technological innovation, they grow, prosper, learn and lead. And this is what makes a nation great," said Tito.

"Human exploration of space is a critical catalyst for our future growth and prosperity," he added. "This is 'A Mission for America' that will generate knowledge, experience and momentum for the next great era of space exploration. It will encourage and embolden all Americans to believe, again, in doing the hard things that make our nation great, and inspire the next generation of explorers to pursue their destiny through STEM education."

In the foundation's unveiling Wednesday in Washington, Tito cited private individuals, charitable organization, charging NASA science data fees for experiments run during the mission and even selling lucrative media rights would fund the mission.

"Dr. Phil solving their marital problems, it will be great," Tito quipped.

Although unwilling to disclose how much he is spending or how much the mission will cost in all, Tito said the project would be "much, much lower" than the conventional wisdom on Mars mission price tags and more in line with low-Earth-orbit flights.

"Compared to, say, the landing missions, even if you could contemplate what an overall landing mission to Mars might cost or even in today's dollars what the Apollo missions cost, you're talking a factor of a hundred (less). This is really chump change."

"It uses low-Earth-orbit architecture and we're just adapting it, in effect, to a very large Earth orbit that ... just happens to go out pretty far," Tito said. "But you're really flying this mission without a propulsion system on the spacecraft, it's in the most simple form."

After swinging around Mars on Aug. 20, 2018, going behind the planet on the "dark side" at closest approach, the spacecraft will head for home on a 274-day cruise without requiring any maneuvers and major propulsive engine firings to commence the trip back.

Then comes the harrowing re-entry, plowing into the atmosphere at a staggering 31,800 mph, an unprecedented speed for a manned spacecraft.

The foundation has signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA's Ames Research Center in California to work on a heat shield capable of withstanding the fiery plunge toward a landing.

Builders of the spacecraft could include the SpaceX Dragon, Boeing's CST-100 capsule or possibly Lockheed Martin's Orion. Bigelow's inflatable habitat or the Italian-made cargo modules from the Cygnus supply ships could be added to the spacecraft to give the crew added room.

Mission planners are considering a 1,200-cubic-foot spacecraft, half of which would be filled with food, water tanks, life support gear and spare parts. The crew would have about 600 cubic feet of living space.

Landing would be May 21, 2019, just months shy of the 50th anniversary of man's first walk on the moon by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and 500 years since Ferdinand Magellan set sail on the first expedition to circumnavigate the Earth.

"There are lots of options and ways to get this done," MacCallum said. "We have an amazing industrial base and it's about time America stood up and proved to the rest of the world we've got, bar none, the best industrial base in the world. Let's show it to them. Let's do this mission."

The Crazy Plan to Fly Two Humans to Mars in 2018

Michael Belfiore - Popular Mechanics

At the National Press Club in Washington today, businessman and private space traveler Dennis Tito officially announced his plans to fund a private, nonprofit effort to launch the first human mission to the Red Planet, called Inspiration Mars. To take advantage of an alignment of Earth and Mars that happens once every 15 years and would allow the shortest possible travel time possible between the planets, the mission seeks to launch on January 5, 2018. The crew would return to Earth on May 21, 2019.

Tito's spacecraft will be as stripped-down as possible. There will be no landing, and no need for a landing craft. Instead, the spacecraft will fly to within 100 miles of Mars to give humans the first close-up view of the planet without actually touching down. The crew would also be kept to a bare minimum for safety: just two astronauts.

The proposed mission would blast off for Mars on a free-return trajectory. This path would slingshot the craft past Mars and back to Earth with only minimal course corrections and no additional boost. Tito says the mission's major purpose would be to inspire the people of Earth the way that the moon landings did back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This particular mission is an analogue to Apollo 8, which sent humans to the moon on a free-return flyby in 1968, one year before Armstrong and Aldrin touched down.

Even without a landing, the proposed Mars mission is a daunting proposition both from a technical and a financial point of view. Tito acknowledged that even with his deep pockets, he's going to have to raise a lot of cash. He refused to say exactly how much money he plans to commit. Who knows?" Tito said in response to PM's question on the matter. He simply promised to fund the project for the next two years.

As for total cost, Tito, indicated that it would cost "a factor of 100" less than the Apollo missions. That would put it at about $1 billion. "This is really chump change," Tito said.

Joining Tito at the announcement was Taber MacCallum, head of spacecraft-life-support-system developer Paragon Space Development Corporation and chief technical officer for Inspiration Mars; Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon; and Jayne Poynter, president of Paragon. MacCallum and Poynter served on the crew of Biosphere II, a two-year experiment that kept eight people confined for two years in an enclosed habitat from 1991 to 1993. Poynter stressed the importance of sending a husband-and-wife team on the mission to Mars. Not only would the couple's relationship help them through the hardship of the mission, she said, but the pair would also serve as inspiration to young people of both sexes back home.

The team brushed aside concerns about the technical challenges of getting a manned spacecraft to and from Mars, focusing instead on what they called the greater challenge of keeping two humans not only alive but reasonably happy and functioning well for the 501-day duration of the mission.

Tito said he hired a team of experts to study the feasibility of the mission. The effort, he said, took three months, and the conclusion was positive. The results of the study will be presented in a paper at an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) conference on Sunday.

The paper, which is also available online, assumes a SpaceX Falcon Heavy as the launch vehicle and a SpaceX Dragon space capsule as the crew vehicle, though the team said at the conference that those elements were not set, and that they would consider any set of vehicles that were available by launch day.

The mission will also use an inflatable space habitat that would launch attached to the nose of the space capsule and expand to full-size living quarters for the crew once in space. Again, the team members wouldn't commit to a supplier for that structure, but they did mention Canadian company Thin Red Line as a possibility. That company has served a subcontractor to Bigelow Aerospace, which is currently under contract to attach an inflatable structure to the International Space Station.

Futron Corporation space analyst Jeff Foust tells PM he thinks the Inspiration Mars mission is doable—if only just barely. "The first, natural reaction is, that's impossible, you can't do that," he says. But, he says, after reading the study commissioned by Tito, he's concluded that it could conceivably succeed if everything goes just right.

In the mission's favor, Foust says, is that "there's no single point of failure here. If SpaceX stumbles, then you've got Boeing or Sierra Nevada with their vehicles," he says. "One of the lucky breaks is that it's happening right when there is this capability that wasn't available two years ago"—capabilities that could be mature by launch time in 2018.

Dennis Tito's 2018 Mars Flyby Is On The 'Ragged Edge Of Feasibility'

Alex Knapp - Forbes

In 2001, Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist after paying $20 million to the Russian space program. Now he plans on an even bigger space journey – to Mars.

On January 5, 2018, Tito's non-profit foundation Inspiration Mars plans to launch the first flight carrying humans to Mars. But they won't be staying. The 501 day round-trip will only be a flyby of Mars, not a landing, but it will still be – by far – the longest space journey ever undertaken by humans.

The foundation plans to send two Americans – a married couple consisting of one man and one woman – on the long journey. They're aiming for 2018 because the planetary alignment between Earth and Mars will make for the shortest possible trip. Additionally, the solar minimum during that time will also limit the radiation exposure to the astronauts. Even so, radiation is still likely to be a major hazard on the trip, so that's a technical hurdle that absolutely needs to be overcome – especially if a large solar flare or other event bombards the solar system with cosmic rays.

At a press conference today, emcee Miles O'Brien called their plan one of "simplicity, audacity and liqudity." He also noted that the target date for the journey not only marks an ideal planetary alignment, but is also the 500th anniversary of Magellan's voyage and also the anniversary of the Apollo 8 lunar flyby.

"The planets literally aligned," he joked.

One of the things that Dennis Tito emphasized at the conference is that this is not a commercial mission.

"Let me guarantee you, I will not come out richer from this mission," said Tito.

Instead, Inspiration Mars will look to raise the necessary money. "Funding is another challenge," said Tito. "I'm very excited about going out there and raising that money. I don't think that it's going to be a real difficult problem, though I imagine I will spend a great deal of my time doing it. We'll be raising from individuals, from charitable organizations."

In addition to fundraising, the foundation also plans to earn money for the trip by selling media rights and by selling data from the trip to NASA. Tito also announced at the conference he will be personally funding the first 2 years of the 5 year mission to get the trip launched.

The foundation has signed an agreement with NASA to help develop some of the necessary technology, however, they have not asked NASA for any funding for the mission.

Tito would not disclose an estimated cost for the mission, except to say that it will be "much lower than you would expect from a Mars mission. More like a mission to low Earth orbit. Not inexpensive, but at least in dollar range where we can raise money."

I spoke with Jeff Foust, a space industry analyst at Futron, and he estimated the total cost of the mission as being on the order of $1 billion – give or take a few hundred million. But most likely less than the Mars Curiosity mission, which cost $2.5 billion.

Like the Golden Spike company, which aims to take people back to the moon, Inspiration Mars will be relying on current technology to build their mission rather than working to develop anything new. They will be partnering with Paragon Space Development on designing the tech.

What is known right now is that the craft will be about 10 tons, and about half of the total space will be taken up by the life support equipment. At the press conference, Taber MacCallum of Paragon Space Development described it as being "about the size of a small Winnebago."

To get to launch, the most likely candidate would be SpaceX's planned Falcon Heavy rocket. At the press conference however, the foundation revealed that its only contact with SpaceX was assuring that the specs for the rocket on the website were correct. They are also looking at other potential options.

When I inquired SpaceX about the Inspiration Mars project, a company spokesperson told me that, "SpaceX does not have an official relationship with the Inspiration Mars Foundation. However, SpaceX is a space transport company and will always consider providing a full spectrum of launch services to interested customers."

Another challenge for the mission will be keeping the astronauts healthy in both body and mind. It certainly won't be the most comfortable trip – all they'll have to eat is "300 pounds of dehydrated food" according to Jane Poynter of Paragon, not to mention the endless recycling of their water and air. The crew will have to spend hours out of their day to avoid the physical problems of microgravity.

There will also be psychological issues. When people are confined and isolated in small space, a "constellation of symptoms" such as mood swings and depression can support. To that end, Poynter emphasized that the crew will receive constant psychological support, as well as training before the mission. Another key aspect will be the crew selection process for "resilient and upbeat" people.

Inspiration Mars has, without doubt, an ambitious proposal. But they may find that their main challenge isn't getting to Mars, but getting off of Earth.

Jeffrey Manber, the current CEO of commercial space company Nanoracks helped facilitate Dennis Tito's 2001 trip to the International Space Station when he formerly headed MirCorp. He told me that "five year timeframe is the most ambitious part of the proposed program."

"But the planets have aligned not just in an astronomical sense but we also have unprecedented liquidity from private markets for long-term ambitious projects," he continued. "Plus we have a NASA that has come to recognize that partnerships with the private sector are a viable way forward given the realities of the government budgets."

Another commercial space industry participant told me that what puzzled him the most was the lack of visible support from the commercial space industry. "There are lots of other commercial space companies founded by other wealthy people. But it doesn't look like there's a lot of coordination or commitment to be a part of this. It seemed odd to us that they've done all this work and they don't have a consortium on board. But maybe that's what they do in the next two years."

Jeff Foust, on the other hand, didn't find that odd. As an example, he noted that commercial launches for satellites are usually planned 2-3 years in advance. "I suspect that at this point they're talking to a bunch of potential partners now. They still have time to put a team together."

As for whether the foundation can pull it off, Foust puts this project on the "ragged edge of feasibility. It's something that can't be categorically ruled out, but requires a lot of things to go right, technically and financially."

Still, for all its challenges, Jeffrey Manber is optimistic about the project. "I spent a lot of time when I was with MirCorp with Dennis during the pushback from the second Bush administration towards his desire to fly first to MIR and then to ISS–if he is in the 'game' to get to Mars–he sees a winning strategy. I learned you don't bet against this guy!"

First space tourist sets sights on a Mars mission

Nell Greenfieldboyce - National Public Radio

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/27/173056144/first-space-tourist-sets-sights-on-a-mars-mission

The world's first space tourist is financing a project that aims to launch an American man and woman on a mission to fly by Mars in 2018.

Back in 2001, businessman Dennis Tito shelled out about $20 million to ride a Russian spaceship up to the International Space Station. Now he's unveiled a new nonprofit group called the Inspiration Mars Foundation.

It's working to take advantage of a launch opportunity coming up in January of 2018. That's when the planets will be aligned in a way that would let people fly to Mars, loop around the planet, and return home in just 501 days — a pretty short trip.

At their closest approach, the two space travelers would be within 100 miles of the red planet. "I mean, that's essentially being there," says Tito, who held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to announce his plans.

Tito, who made a fortune as an investment manager, is also an aerospace engineer who worked with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s, helping to plot trajectories for the Mariner robotic missions.

He hired a team of experts that concluded that sending people to loop around Mars in 2018 is doable with technology that either already exists or is nearly ready, and he's promised two years of funding for the project from his own pocket.

"This not a commercial mission. This is not a mission that, if it's successful, I'm going to come out to be a lot wealthier. Let me guarantee you, I will come out a lot poorer as a result of this mission," says Tito. "But my grandchildren will come out a lot wealthier through the inspiration that this will give them."

The 72-year-old businessman has no plans to do the trip himself. He wants to send a man and a woman, to represent all of humanity. Jane Poynter of Paragon Space Development Corporation, who is on Tito's planning team, said the two will have to be a "trusted, tested couple" who can provide each other with emotional support.

Poynter lived for two years inside Biosphere 2, a self-contained environment, in the early 1990s, and she says it was enormously helpful that one of the other inhabitants was the man who is now her husband.

"And so I believe that these two crew members that go on this, having that same backbone of their relationship will be of tremendous support to them during hard times," says Poynter. "After all, they are going to be millions of miles away from home."

The mission would be risky. The tight schedule means no time to test everything out. There'd be no abort. The crew would be exposed to radiation — plus the psychological risks of being crammed together, eating dehydrated food and watching Earth grow smaller and smaller, until it looked like a pale blue dot.

John Logsdon, with the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, says he's a little skeptical. After all, 2018 isn't that far away, and he notes that this team is still exploring options for spacecraft and launch vehicles.

"It's a big jump between an idea and reality," says Logsdon. "And I think Mr. Tito and his associates are at the idea stage and have a lot of challenges of turning it into a reality."

But he also says the team Tito has assembled shouldn't be underestimated. They're experienced people who are excited about adventures — and this would be a great one.

Married to Mars: 9 Questions for Dennis Tito on Private Martian Trips

Clara Moskowitz - Space.com

The world's first space tourist, Dennis Tito, isn't done with space. The American entrepreneur has founded a new nonprofit organization to work toward launching the first manned mission to Mars in 2018.

The flyby mission, which wouldn't land on the Red Planet, would take advantage of a rare planetary alignment that would allow a speedy trajectory to Mars and back in about 500 days. Tito unveiled the mission Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington during the launch of the new nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation, which will oversee the audacious project.

SPACE.com caught up with Tito to ask him some burning questions about the new private Mars mission.

SPACE.com: Would you consider going on this mission yourself?

Dennis Tito: Absolutely not.

First of all, I'm 72 years old. Even if I were 30 years younger, I wouldn't, because the one criterion that's very important for this crew is they will have to be really mechanically inclined. They will be overhauling this life support system if it breaks.

SPACE.com: So who do you think would make good candidates?

Tito: We're proposing a man and a woman, because this is humanity's first flight out to Mars, and humanity should be represented by both genders.

We hope that we can find a married couple. When you're out that far and the Earth is a tiny blue pinpoint, you're going to need someone you can hug. What better solution to the psychological problems you're going to encounter with that isolation?

SPACE.com: Do you think it will be difficult to find people willing to undertake the mission?

Tito: Over 600,000 people have applied over the prior 40 years to be astronauts, so I'm sure there will be a lot of applications for this mission. You really have to select the best qualified people.

SPACE.com: What do you think the conditions will be like for the crew?

Tito: There are cramped quarters for the crew. It's a Spartan mission. It's a bold mission. What we're doing is adding significant embellishments to the spacecraft so that it's capable of sustaining two people for 500 days. We have a lot of work to do.

But we'd use existing launch vehicles and we have several ideas about that, we're talking to industry about that.

SPACE.com: Have you decided yet whether you'll use SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Falcon Heavy rocket for the mission?

Tito: We used SpaceX as a reference in our study, but there's a lot we don't know about whether Dragon's going to be selected by NASA as a commercial crew vehicle. Falcon heavy hasn't been launched yet. There are a lot of unknowns. We don't want to put all our eggs in one basket.

SPACE.com: What is the scientific value of a manned mission to Mars, if the crew won't be landing on the planet?

Tito: At first, I thought this is not a science mission. This is for inspiration; it's a test flight to show we can get there. You're going to learn a lot about the engineering problems.

But then as I started learning more about the life sciences, apparently [the benefits] are huge. There hasn't been really any information on human behavior in this kind of environment. The impact of radiation, the isolation — the academics are all very excited. It'd be a huge scientific valuein the life sciences.

SPACE.com: But you're really aiming for inspiration?

Tito: My younger years were during the Apollo missions. The '60s for me were just really exciting times. It had a whole impact on my generation. I know the space program caused me to get my engineering degree. But what happened to the interests of this generation in science? It's really on a decline. And I think if we have this first mission to Mars, even though it's far from our goal of landing, I could see it jumpstarting interest in space. I could see the potential of recreating what existed 50 years ago during the space race. I think it will be a big step in America'sleadership role in the world.

SPACE.com: Is NASA involved in this mission?

Tito: We just signed a Space Act Agreement with them for at least one of the critical path areas. Rather than NASA funding us, we're funding NASA. That showed us that they're really willing to endorse the idea of public-private partnerships. They're not endorsing this mission, at this point, but they're certainly open to the idea of helping us with the technology, because that technology is going to benefit them.

SPACE.com: How likely is it that you'll actually be able to launch this mission in 2018?

Tito: I give it a good chance. We're seeing a lot of positive response from people. I can't make it happen by myself. It isn't like I can just write a check for the whole thing, or force the engineering to come out the way I want it to. But unless we run into showstoppers, I don't see why not. We can do this if we want to.

I can't tell you how excited I am. It's hard to sleep at night. My gut feeling is, we're going to make it.

END

Keep the shuttle flying

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight (and Mars in 501 days) News - February 28, 2013 and JSC Today

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