Request Welcome to Mars

[Graham2001]

While looking through a second hand shop I stumbled across the novel ''Welcome to Mars'' by James Blish. He completed it shortly after Mariner IV went past Mars which invalidated the cross between Antarctica/Himalaya version of Mars the author used (He acknowledged this in the afterword to the book.)

Having not read it since high-school I purchased it and started re-reading and thought it might make a fun add-on.

Plot-line.

Some time after 1978(!), a teen-age genius develops an Anti-gravity device and uses it to turn a packing crate into a spacecraft. His test flight to Mars results in him getting stranded there. His girlfriend uses his prototype anti-gravity device to turn another packing crate into a spacecraft and tries to rescue him, but crash lands on Mars as well.

As a consequence NASA ends up going to Mars before they get to the Moon!


Spacecraft

2x Flying Packing-crates.

3x Project Ares spacecraft (Any large ion propelled spacecraft NASA looked at in the 1960's)

At least one [ame=http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=467]Mars Glider[/ame]

 

[Sky Captain]

This thread made me ask the question. How fast s manned mission to Mars could be cobbled together in real life if absolutely necessary with money no longer an issue (say a landslide on Mars reveals buried alien ship or some other extraordinary event that needs a human investigation on site).

 

[T.Neo]

Well, we've done such a huge feat before (Apollo), and that took 10 years to go from no manned spaceflight experience to a Moon landing, so I'd say maybe 5-8 years from current tech to a round-trip Mars mission.

 

[Graham2001]

Well, we've done such a huge feat before (Apollo), and that took 10 years to go from no manned spaceflight experience to a Moon landing, so I'd say maybe 5-8 years from current tech to a round-trip Mars mission.

I'd say you are about right.

The novel takes place over at least one Martian year, but it's also indicated that NASA is proceeding with Mars-flight plans along with something called Apollo that's supposed to put people on the Moon ( ) before the story starts.

I've located some Albedo maps of Mars and I'll see if I can 'pin down' the region the author has the packing crates land, which at the moment seems to be somewhere west of the Viking 1/Pathfinder landing sites in a semicircle centered on 30º north of the Martian equator with a diameter of 800km (500 miles). The eastern border being the west side of Chryse Plantina (That is of course if I've read the map right)