"Even the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, weighing 775 kilograms (versus MER at 175.4 kilograms each) requires an entirely new landing architecture. Too massive for airbags, the small-car sized rover will use a landing system dubbed the Sky Crane. "Even though some people laugh when they first see it, my personal view is that the Sky Crane is actually the most elegant system we've come up with yet, and the simplest," said Manning. MSL will use a combination of a rocket-guided entry with a heat shield, a parachute, then thrusters to slow the vehicle even more, followed by a crane-like system that lowers the rover on a cable for a soft landing directly on its wheels. Depending on the success of the Sky Crane with MSL, it's likely that this system can be scaled for larger payloads, but probably not the size needed to land humans on Mars."
From the article linked by E.P
The article confirms what said before regarding Mars and the myth of it requiring lower mass requirement for Manned missions than compared to Lunar mission. And as it said in the article if Mars had no atmosphere it "could" be easy to land crew [require less total mass].
I wonder if they have considered trying the engineering solution used by SpaceShipOne.
Space/Science » in reply to Skycrane will land large payloads
re: Skycrane will land large payloads
The whole thread (33 posts)
- No way to land large fast payloads on Mars
- I still think they should revive the original Project Orion
- re: No way to land large fast payloads on Mars
- If only..
- Quite True Currently
- Falling into Mars.
- Did my reply get deleted?
- Nuclear rockets
- Very interesting!
- If it means a brief stopover in martian parking orbit, before descending, I don't see the problem.