A revolutionary interplanetary rapid transit concept for transporting scientists and explorers between Earth and Mars is presented by Global Aerospace Corporation under funding from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) with support from the Colorado School of Mines, and Science Applications International Corporation. We describe an architecture that uses highly autonomous spaceships, dubbed Astrotels; small Taxis for trips between Astrotels and planetary Spaceports; Shuttles that transport crews to and from orbital space stations and planetary surfaces; and low-thrust cargo freighters. In addition we discuss the production of rocket fuels using extraterrestrial materials; aerocapture to slow Taxis at the planets; and finally describe a number of trade studies and their life-cycle cost results.


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    Title :

    Interplanetary Rapid Transit to Mars


    Additional title:

    Sae Technical Papers


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    International Conference On Environmental Systems ; 2003



    Publication date :

    2003-07-07




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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