How SAIC tried to limit crew exposure on a Mars trip
SAIC’s 1987 proposal treated travel time as a crew-health choice, not just a scheduling choice. It called for a roughly one-year round trip, with 30 to 45 days near Mars and 10 to 20 days of surface excursions. The shorter trip was intended to reduce the crew’s exposure to weightlessness and radiation[1].
That health aim carried an engineering cost: getting a crew to Mars and back in about a year required so much energy that the propellant load threatened to become prohibitively large. SAIC therefore proposed sending an automated cargo vehicle ahead of the faster crew vehicle with propellant for the return journey. This reduced the launches needed, but made the crew’s return depend on meeting and docking with the cargo vehicle at Mars[2].
The proposal also called for research aboard the Space Station into how prolonged weightlessness affects astronaut health. That was a research agenda, not a finding from a completed Mars mission[3].
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