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The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula

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Would astronauts’ kidneys survive a roundtrip to Mars? (www.ucl.ac.uk)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The weight, and all the extra fuel it would take to get it into orbit, which would require larger rockets, which drives up cost...

Until we can start mining asteroids, it's probably a no go.

[–] threelonmusketeers 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Those sound more like financial and engineering challenges than physics. If we build something like an Aldrin cycler, all that mass needs to be launched only once. Larger and cheaper rockets are currently in development, with multiple organizations currently working on fully or partially reusable launch vehicles.

I'm not convinced that asteroid mining is a necessary prerequisite for a well-shielded Mars mission, though it would definitely be more efficient in the future.