How is he going to do the landing? Human manned craft are going to be too big fo...

warpspeed · on March 20, 2012

Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BudlaGh1A0o

edit- Parachutes are probably more practical. They work if you make them big enough.

ballooney · on March 20, 2012

Your mass scales with the cube of linear dimension. Parachute drag scales as a square of linear dimension.

What this means is that the chute gets bigger much more quickly than the payload as you increase lander mass, to the point that you quickly get outlandishly large and impractical chutes for manned landers. Hence the research into alternatives.

samstave · on March 20, 2012

This is why I said we first need to conquer the moon. Send robotic building machines to the Moon, let them build habitable structures there first.

Then send these to Mars, have them remotely operated and autonomous and build a habitable setup there first without humans.

Then ship fuel pods to orbit mars which would allow you to go there with an empty lander - fill it up in orbit then land.

I think we need to take logical steps before we shove humans in a pringles can and launch them to mars.

blueprint · on March 20, 2012

Glider?

Delphiki · on March 20, 2012

I haven't gotten a chance to read the article yet, but is he planning on landing at all? I would imagine it would be much easier to just go there and back, without landing...? Much more fuel efficient and technically still "round trip."