- #351
litup
- 258
- 17
Sure, more powerful rockets based on today's chemical rockets but there are others afoot, like VASIMIR and so forth, where you would need some kind of multimegawatt power source, most likely nuclear. At even 1/10 g trip time is about a week or two. One problem about Mars: Not much in the way of magnetic fields aroun Mars. That however can be solved if and when we develop room temp superconductors, I envisioned a superconductive loop around the equator, a few turns with about 20,000 amps flowing and you get a planet wide field like Earths only a bit weaker, maybe half gauss or so, still good enough to stop the bad guys coming from the sun Next would be to build up some kind of atmosphere. Not in my pay grade:) but with a planet wide field, the sun would not be stripping O2 from the atmosphere like it has for the past few billion years. If the superconductor loop was room temp plus a bit, the field would never go away unless somebody blew up the cable.mfb said:The usual two-way trip plans have 4-6 months in transit, about 1.5 years on the surface and 4-6 months back. Total mission duration ~2.5 years, more than half of the mission at the surface of Mars.
Changing those times significantly would need much more powerful rockets.As self-sufficient as possible, especially for bulk material, is certainly interesting to limit transportation needs. You don't want to produce computer chips on a Mars colony (unless the colony is huge already), but you certainly want to produce most of the goods you use there.A colony on Mars would tell us a lot about the ecosystem on Earth as one of many byproducts.