Now that the initial public reaction to Dennis Tito’s press release about his Inspiration Mars plan has died down, it’s time to take a good look at the nuts and bolts of this idea. In case you missed it, Tito and a group of aerospace manufactures and NASA scientists are proposing to send two people on a 1.4 year Mars flyby in 2018, using a combination of off-the-shelf hardware but with some needed development.
The detailed work, presented in a paper to IEEE Aerospace conference in March, shows that these people are serious, and have spotted an unusual (these 1.4-year solutions only appear every 15 years) opportunity for a remarkable adventure. It’s early days, of course, but I have mixed feelings about the mission as it stands. On the...
