TWO WAY MANNED MARS FLIGHT POSSIBLE

(E-sail) electric solar wind sail could make two-way manned Mars flights possible by utilising the water mined from the asteroids. In this scheme is the electric solar wind sail (E-sail) which provides propellant-less transportation within the solar system, thus enabling economical asteroid mining.

The E-sail, that was invented in Finland by pekka janhunen in 2006, utilises long, charged tethers to convert natural solar wind momentum flux into spacecraft thrust and uses an electric field for deflecting solar wind protons and gains momentum from them.

According to Pekka Janhunen,a researcher in the Finnish Meteorological Institute, and colleagues the E-sail could provide essentially free logistics in the solar system outside of Earth’s magnetosphere.

After finding a suitable water bearing asteroid, a mining unit could be sent by the E-sail to extract the water from asteroid soil.

This can be done by heating the material and letting the evolving water vapour condense in a cool container. When the container is full, it is separated from the mining unit and transported with an E-sail in to the orbit of Mars or Earth, where it is split into hydrogen and oxygen and liquefied.

Where its split into liquefied hydrogen and oxygen fuels and these can be used to fill the tanks of manned vehicles travelling Earth and Mars.

 During the trip the mined water can be used as a radiation shielding of the manned module.

 Due to the exponential nature of the rocket equation, intermediate fuelling reduces the launch mass dramatically.

With cheap propellant available in Mars orbit, there is also the option of fully propulsive landing on Mars which eliminates the need of a massive and expensive heat shield.

And the Electric solar wind sail facilitated Manned Mars Initiative, EMMI which provides economically sustainable way to approach manned Mars flights and a researcher said that running costs of the EMMI is expected to cost less than maintaining the International Space Station.

The running costs of the EMMI are not expected to much exceed those of maintaining the International Space Station