Click on the flag below to change the language of the text on these pages.
SpaceFlights.us: Trip to Mars and Beyond Posted in: Mission_Control | by Brian Taylor | 2005 Nov 09
von Braun space station
Many people have speculated on making trips to other planets and on how long it will be before we actually get there.
I believe space travel is not as hard as everyone makes it out to be.
Most of the ideas and technology were designed as far back as 1952. One of the most promising designs was a space station proposed by a scientist named von Braun.
von Braun's space station illustrated on left in orbit around a planet, but this is a short view of the station's possibilities. If you stack up 4 or 5 of them and mount them on the front end of a rocket, you can make a space ship able to travel between planets.
The advantage of this design is that a trip lasting between 6 and 7 months can be done while it's entire crew experiences Earth or Mars like gravity. The G force experienced depends on how fast the station spins on it's axis. So, if you are going to Mars, the rate of spin would gradually be reduced until the G force equals what you find on the Martian surface.
Imagine this idea scaled up so that the station part can hold 500 crew members and the rocket part long enough to double as a barge able to carry all of the supplies to build a small city...
The barge is made by constructing a skeletal frame around the rocket. The cargo will be mounted on the frame like snapping together a bunch of LEGO blocks..
Both the station and rocket are so large they will spend their entire life in space as a shuttle system between planets.
Now if you had a fleet of these ships moving between the planets, colonization would not be far behind. Just remember a guy named Columbus that made a similar voyage in 1492...
