Cycling Pathways to Occupy Mars

From Buzz Aldrin.com:

Like during the 1960s for the Apollo Program, an inspiring and an audacious goal—a Unified Space Vision is needed for space exploration to establish a permanent human presence on Mars. The proposed architecture establishes pathways of progressive missions to cis-lunar space, asteroids, Phobos, and eventually to the surface of Mars.

Missions begin 2018 launching 1st generation inflatable exploration modules (XM1), Bigelow BA330s, which are flown to Low-Earth Orbit, and to cis-lunar space (L1, L2). Orion’s crew including several scientists supported by BA330 reaches an asteroid in 2026 simultaneously with a low thrust exploratory robot for 60 days; Earth return totals one year. Flights then test rigid XM2 exploration modules at manned lunar stations, remotely assembling and connecting the international lunar bases, and initiate tele-robotics for in-situ resources, asteroid exploration and sample extraction. Once lunar far-side and nearside bases have been assembled and vital experience gained, beginning in 2028 (before first humans to Mars) and by 2034–nine unoccupied 3rd generation exploration modules (XM3) would be launched to Mars and two habs to Phobos.

One unique innovation of the mission architecture is to use “cycler” spacecraft that would travel between Earth and Mars perpetually, every two synodic periods in S1L1 cycler orbits. The two cyclers, outbound and inbound separated by synodic periods are identical and at a first outbound Earth encounter, three landers intercept the cycler via hyperbolic rendezvous, carrying two crew members each. The outbound cycler carries three landers with six crew members total. [read more]

Interesting. Would be cool if America could go. I first heard about this when he talked about it during his CPAC speech. I didn’t go to the conference but watched the video among others on YouTube.com. He didn’t get a very big applause during the speech because not very many people understood what he was saying.