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Mars Flyby Plan will cost 1 to 2 Billion dollars and will send Middle Aged Couple that Already had Children
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Dennis Tito provided details of the Mars Manned Flyby Plan
The mission, a “return fly-by”, in which the spacecraft would fly around Mars rather than land, would last for 500 days. It is expected to cost between $1 billion and $2 billion, which Mr Tito is hoping to fund partly through television rights and by selling data to Nasa.
His organisation, Inspiration Mars, is planning to select a middle-aged couple who may have already had children and would be willing to risk the potential risk to their fertility of being exposed to radiation for a prolonged period. (Note- A few days ago when details were not released and people discussed the problem of sending two people together, I noted that sending a married couple would make more sense.)
They would be forced to spend a year and a half together in a 14ft x 12 ft Dragon space craft, accompanied by supplies ranging from more than a tonne of dehydrated food to 28kg of lavatory paper.
They will use a private rocket (probably a Spacex Falcon Heavy) and space capsule (Spacex Dragon probably) and some kind of habitat that might be inflatable (Bigelow Aerospace), employing an austere design that could take people to Mars for a fraction of what it would cost NASA to do with robots.
A technical paper will be present in a couple of weeks with details on the mission.
The Mars mission will launch Jan 5, 2018 to enable a free gravitation return.
See more and subscribe to NextBigFuture at 2013-03-04 10:46:19 Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/02/mars-flyby-plan-will-cost-1-to-2.html
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