Two of the high-leverage propulsion technologies that have been proposed for human Mars missions—the Nuclear Thermal Rocket (NTR) engine and In Situ Propellant Production (ISPP)—show even greater potential when combined. Many previous studies have demonstrated the efficacy of manufacturing return propellant in situ to reduce the delivered mass requirement for the Earth launch and outbound transportation elements for any round trip mission. For human Mars exploration, this advantage may well be enabling, given current launch vehicle capability projections and reasonable expectations for a constrained program budget. NASA has proposed that the same LOX-Augmented NTR (LANTR) engine concept designed for use on lunar stages could also be used for Mars vehicle configurations, and that the tanks could be filled with propellants from Phobos for the return trip. This approach preserves the strategy of using a few common design elements for both lunar and Mars missions, while also making a significant mass performance improvement for the Mars return stage. We characterize the likely impact on performance of “steady-state” Earth-Mars transportation, as compared to Mars-only ISPP alternatives, and offer a preview of potential cost savings (work still in progress) for steady-state operation with Phobos propellants.
LANTR-based Mars missions: Go to phobos for propellant?
Space technology and applications international forum -1999 ; 1999 ; Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA)
AIP Conference Proceedings ; 458 , 1 ; 1255-1260
1999-01-22
6 pages
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
LANTR-Based Mars Missions: Go to Phobos for Propellant?
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