MODULATED DEBARQUEMENT
From a safety and cost perspective, the landing of the equipment in the form of a module to be built is inevitable. The different possibilities for sending material on the surface of the planet are known. Could cite methods that have proven themselves such as the combination of parachutes and a balloon surrounding the capsule in the event of opportunity. More recently, the Phoenix probe has landed using a parachute and a retro-flare. With a mass of 350 kg, the demonstration of the feasibility of this method is a success. Unlike the Earth, the atmosphere of Mars is not dense enough to allow a landing with the help of a shuttle. So the marsonautes will have to settle for either of the two methods mentioned previously.
A successful landing will require a combination of several methods, as a marsonaute is more fragile than an aluminum plate and the budget for colonization must be kept as low as possible. For example for material such as Beams, the shock of the amarsissage could be higher than that of electron microscopes, so could opt for parachutes only or reduce the amount of gas from retro rockets. The cost of the two main methods should be similar, but we could favour the balloon method because the difficulty factor is less. The past missions were carried out using a single launch, in the case of the mass landing which will mark the beginning of the first steps of mankind on Mars, the material is launched from the Earth as the personnel will be launched from vessels in orbit. It is to be hoped that the accuracy of the amarsissages will be at the rendezvous.
The concept of modulated landing is the dispatch of the material constituting the modules of the Mars base into a multitude of small fragments which will have to be welded or assembled on the surface by the marsonautes. This way of doing it has several advantages, but also major drawbacks.
The principals advantages will be:
- The limitation respectation of the maximal parachute surface
- The flexibility of the base location
- The optimization of the volume required in the spaceships
- The cost will be reduced
- The lost of one part, won't be significant
- The mathematics of dispertion will be great