90 Day Study (original) (raw)

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90 Day Study

Part of American Mars Expeditions

90 Day Study Lander
Credit: © Mark Wade

American manned Mars expedition. Study 1989. Following the Ride Report, the Bush administration indicated a willingness to support a new manned space initiative after completion of the space station.

Status: Study 1989.

To provide alternates for presidential consideration, NASA management completed a 90-day study in October 1989. This estimated the cost of going to Mars as $ 258 billion (including $141 billion contingency). The plan used the then-current collection of planned NASA infrastructure hardware - Space Station Freedom, Orbital Transfer Vehicles, aerobraking to accomplish the mission.

One result of the Ride Report was the Space Exploration Initiative. As part of this an Outreach Program solicited competing ideas from industry, government labs, NASA centers, and academia. This produced a large number of conflicting ideas. NASA's vision of the future was embodied in its 90-day study. But other players were making the their voices heard at the White House, including Lawrence Livermore Laboratory with a plan for a quick, cheap landing using inflatable technology, and Los Alamos National Laboratory with a call for a return to the nuclear thermal technology of the 1960's.

90 Day Study Mission Summary:

Summary: Large integrated NASA/Contractor effort, results well documented, includes design, schedule and cost
Propulsion: Nuclear thermal
Braking at Mars: aerodynamic
Mission Type: conjunction
Split or All-Up: split
ISRU: ISRU
Launch Year: 2017
Crew: 4
Mars Surface payload-metric tons: 23
Outbound time-days: 200
Mars Stay Time-days: 600
Return Time-days: 200
Total Mission Time-days: 1000
Total Payload Required in Low Earth Orbit-metric tons: 1300
Total Propellant Required-metric tons: 840
Propellant Fraction: 0.64
Mass per crew-metric tons: 325
Launch Vehicle Payload to LEO-metric tons: 140
Number of Launches Required to Assemble Payload in Low Earth Orbit: 3
Launch Vehicle: Shuttle Z

Family: Mars Expeditions. Country: USA. Agency: NASA. Bibliography: 1989, 591.

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