dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (08/16/85)
People may someday travel to Mars. More on one possible way to get there -- after this. August 16 Pinwheels to Mars No other world entices prospective space-travelers more than the dry desert planet Mars. Though we couldn't survive on Mars without spacesuits, still the planet is the one most like Earth in our solar system. In the last few years scientists and engineers have been figuring out just what it would take to send people to Mars -- and how to get them back to Earth. One possibility is to build a spacecraft for Mars in Earth orbit -- from materials brought up from Earth and assembled in space. Such a scenario was proposed at the second Case for Mars conference held last year in Boulder, Colorado. The spacecraft might look somewhat unusual -- since it wouldn't be designed to land on the planet. The Case for Mars designers proposed that the spacecraft be built in three similar segments -- each with a small shuttle and fuel and living modules. Each segment would launch separately into an Earth/Mars trajectory -- then all three would connect into a "y"-shape pinwheel. This giant pinwheel structure would rotate to provide artificial gravity for the crew enroute to Mars. The spacecraft would stop rotating shortly before it started to swing past Mars. Shuttles would detach from the larger structure and ferry crew and cargo down to a base established on the Martian surface. Other shuttles would launch from the base -- possibly using fuels manufactured from the carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere -- to rendezvous with the interplanetary vehicle for eventual return to Earth. Script by Diana Hadley. (c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin