MOSCOW. (Yuri Zaitsev for RIA Novosti) - No one doubts that humans will one day fly to Mars. The flight will last 350 days, 20 to 30 days will be spent on the Martian surface and the return journey will take another 350 days. But the exact date remains unknown.
Yury Koptev, head of the defense industry department at the Ministry of Industry and Energy, thinks "the mission could start tomorrow, because the technical capability is there. Russia has been working on the concept since 1960 and done a good deal," he stressed.
Ex-Energiya president Nikolai Sevastyanov believes the Martian project could be realized after 2025 and would consist of three stages: a trial expedition around the Moon, a non-landing manned expedition to Mars and then a manned Mars landing.
Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Space Agency (Roskosmos), said: "We are planning a Mars mission after 2035." The ultimate decision is likely to be made at the top. Before the year is out the government must approve a program for the development of the space industry until 2040.
However, work concerned with Mars is already under way and forms part of the current Federal Space Program.
Mars interests many countries. The Americans want to fly to Mars from Moon. In terms of time and energy this project is the most costly. First, they will have to deliver the elements of a Martian expedition to Moon, make a soft landing, assemble them and blast off towards Mars overcoming lunar gravity.
The Russian project provides for a start from a near-Earth orbit.
The timeline for both is after 2035.
The first European intends to walk on the Red Planet as early as 2024, which is unlikely. China, too, has announced its Martian ambitions, although barely launching its first taikonaut in 2003.
In 2005, Russian specialists prepared blueprints for a manned expedition to Mars. One of the project developers, Vitaly Semyonov, chief engineer at the Keldysh Center, said that the work brought to light one important fact: the deadlines and costs of a Martian expedition mainly depend on the type of the propulsion unit.
Specific thrust, or the ratio of thrust to fuel consumption per second, is a key characteristic of any rocket engine. The faster the gas exhausts the greater the thrust given by the same amount of fuel. The engine is made more economical.
Despite the near-perfect performance of existing chemical rocket engines, the low exhaust speed of the combustion products is creating an impenetrable barrier, which cannot be breached, but can be "walked around."
What are proposed alternatives to the usual rocket engines? One alternative is to heat super-light gases (hydrogen, helium or methane) to a high temperature and force them to flow through a nozzle at velocities two and a half times faster than in chemical rocket engines.
This can be done by means of either a compact-sized nuclear reactor or a heating element powered by solar batteries.
Nuclear rocket engines for manned missions to Mars were actively developed both in the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. back in 1960-1970, but the work was stopped before the projects got off the ground.
Plasma and ionic electric jet engines are even more economical and "swift." In them a stream of charged particles is whisked to high velocities by means of an electro-magnetic field, almost as in a charged particle accelerator.
Another factor increasing their thrust is the capacity of the equipment creating the field and speeding up the particles.
Russia's experience in developing and operating power reactors in space is unique. From 1970-1988, Russia launched a total of 32 spacecraft with nuclear propulsion units and thermo-electric converters of 3 kW and 5 kW capacity.
Most of these vehicles performed reconnaissance operations and remained in orbit in an activated state for several months at a time.
By comparison, America had only one such craft, with a SNAP 10A nuclear reactor and a 0.5 kW thermo-electric power converter, which was launched in 1965. It did not survive long, lasting a mere 43 days and is now part of the space junk orbiting Earth.
Then the efforts became pure research and did not resume until 2002.
Russia is also an expert at making the so-called "stationary plasma engines," which have a thrust one order of magnitude greater than the traditional chemical ones. Their first space tests were carried out in 1972 on the Russian Meteor weather satellite, and the regular operation of serially-made vehicles began in 1982 on geostationary satellites to correct their orbits.
At present, practically all countries, including the leading space powers, are making active use of various types of Russian-designed electric jet engines. The power of these engines is such that they can adjust the orbit both in longitude and inclination.
Additionally, they can make inter-orbital jumps along energetically optimal multi-revolution trajectories. For example, they can move from a low orbit to a geostationary one and they also serve as a vehicle for interplanetary travel.
In preparing the manned expedition to Mars, the developers considered many options: liquid rocket engines burning oxygen and hydrogen; nuclear rocket engines with liquid hydrogen as a working agent; and a nuclear and a solar installation to power electric jet engines.
For the core equipment they selected the solar-powered unit with thin-film elements based on amorphous silicon.
As a prospective alternative, consideration is also being given to a nuclear power unit as it is developed to reach an operating stage. The main problem in using such units is nuclear and radiation safety during every stage of operation, including emergencies, which requires further research.
Preoccupied with the nuts and bolts of the interplanetary ship and its propulsion, people tend to forget about many other problems, including physiological and psychological ones. These and other problems must be addressed before humans set out on an interplanetary journey, but that is the subject for a separate discussion.
Yury Zaitsev is an academic adviser at the Academy of Engineering Sciences.
Continuation of the article will be posted soon.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
