Travel in Space

Travelling to Mars was a ridiculous idea if you born in 1900, when no life was thought to be able to exist outside the atmosphere. However, the increasing development in the technology of spaceflight will make this ridiculous dream a reality.

“According to NASA, a vessel with humans on it would take roughly six months to travel to Mars and another six months to travel back from Mars. In addition, astronauts would have to stay 18-20 months on Mars before the planets re-align for a return trip. In all, the mission would take roughly 2 1/2 years”¹.

Figure 4²
The figure above shows the practice run where a crew will travel past the moon and use its gravitational pull to “slingshot” back to Earth. The figure breaks the trip down into 11 separate sections that help simplify it.

The trip will be long, but is still a relatively small amount of time. The spacecraft will travel around Earth twice to build up speed and then use MTLI, multiple departure burns, to make it to the moon³. The spacecraft will then go around the moon once and do a figure eight before returning back to Earth⁴. This trip is simply to get average citizens used to making space trips and to see how they behave/cope with space travel.  

Meantime, some scientist and companies already started a project one year before. The Dutch-based Mars One project has shortened its list of candidates from more than 200,000 to just 50 men and 50 women, a third of them Americans⁵.

People who accept this mission will get to go to Mars but must live the rest of their lives there. There is no way back for back them and this may be scary for some. Thirty-three Americans have been chosen to be the candidates to take on the challenge of colonizing the Red Planet ⁶.

¹Infoplease Staff Writers. (2016). How long would it take to land a manned spacecraft on
            Mars?.
            Retrieved December 3, 2016 from
            http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/long-mars.html
² Daines, G. (2016, December 2). NASA’s First Flight With Crew Will Mark Important Step on
            Journey to Mars.
            Retrieved December 3, 2016 from
            https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-first-flight-with-crew-will-mark-important-step-
            on-journey-to-mars
³ Daines.
⁴ Daines.
⁵ Farberov, S. (2015, February 17). Meet the 33 Americans who could live on MARS – and
            never return: Mission reveals final ‘longlist’ for first manned one-way journey to
            the red planet.
            Retrieved December 3, 2016 from
            http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2957309/Meet-33-Americans-live-
            MARS-never-return-Mission-reveals-final-longlist-manned-one-way
            -journey-red-planet.html
⁶ Farberov.