• Question: What type of rocket ship would it take to get to mars?

    Asked by Claire M to Aisling, Colin, Laurence, Ned, Niamh on 3 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Laurence O'Rourke

      Laurence O'Rourke answered on 3 Mar 2016:

      A very powerful one. To escape Earth’s gravity you need to be travelling at 11.1km/second which can only be done by a few rockets e.g. Ariane 5, Delta IV Heavy.

      You are also limited by the size of the satellite to go to Mars because the heavier the satellite the bigger the rocket and at a certain point if it is too heavy then you can’t launch it.

      To send a man to the moon they used the Saturn V which was a mega rocket. They are now trying to produce something similar to repeat the same thing and also to send people to asteroids and to Mars. But then you can ask if you can send a satellite to mars, why can’t you send a person? Well, it’s the weight thing again – people are heavy but also people need food, drink, life support and other facilities which all lead to a heavy spaceship. This heavy spaceship can’t be launched by the big rockets existing so they need to build a bigger one.

    • Photo: Ned Dwyer

      Ned Dwyer answered on 4 Mar 2016:

      As Laurence says a big one. Material Engineers are working all the time on trying to come up with lighter and very strong synthetic materials. So if they can manage that it means that the weight problem could be solved and it would be easier to send a spacecraft to Mars. They have already sent satellites to observe its surface and they have slso landed small robots there do we already know a lot about Mars

    • Photo: Colin Shirran

      Colin Shirran answered on 8 Mar 2016:

      As the other guys have said, we really need a big one. But the majority of that is so that we can get off the earth. So what happens if we don’t worry about that and we build a spacecraft in space so that we can avoid that each time we launch? This is something that we have actually considered and has been included in current mars mission designs, just like the HERMES in the movie the Martian. The main problem with this approach is that it involves the build up of a lot of infrastructure in space which will cost a lot of money over many years. I personally think this would be the way to go as it commits us into being in space, just like having the international space station did. If we build it we will have to make use of it.

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