Mars Colony Nuclear SSTO Approach to Touchdown by wblack
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Description
Mars Colony Nuclear SSTO Approach to Touchdown
This is a follow-up to my previous posts linked below.
Mars Colony Heavy Lift Nuclear SSTO
Mars Colony Nuclear SSTO Launch
Upper image shows the terminal-approach reverse-thruster firing.
Lower image shows the final glide to touch down.
Detail Note: Reverse-thruster nacelle’s shown irised-open in this view. (Reverse-Thruster Nacelle’s are the 3 tear-drop shaped pods top, and bottom (one to each side) of hull just foreword of the rear- stabilator fins).
The Martian atmosphere is too thin for winged flight --winged surfaces, delta-wings, and blended wing lifting-body designs provide no “lift.” Combination’s of aero-braking, parachutes, and terminal descent thrusters, or entirely powered landing are the only options.
The Mars Colony Heavy Lift Nuclear SSTO is too heavy for any use of parachutes. Fully loaded (with pallets of raw materials for the terraforming program) touch-down weight is 7.6 million lbs.
Only powered descent braking is effective to slow the massive vehicle. In the final moments thrust will be directed to the three spherical housings of the vector-control & touch-down thrusters – visible along each side of the vehicle just above the re-entry heat shield – landing thrusters soften the transition (read: prevent the landing gear from being crushed) from powered descent to touch-down and roll-out.
All models are my own Bryce creations. Models constructed in Bryce 6.5 and rendered in Bryce 7 Pro.
Background Mars textures use NASA rover imagery applied as surface textures.
As always thank you for your interest, thoughtful comments, and encouragement.
Comments (14)
MagikUnicorn
Stunning creation, WELL DONE
texboy
they need to put some drastic measures in place to get that atmospheric pressure UP.... good one, bud!
peedy
Fantastic, both images! Great lighting. Corrie
jmb007
bonne image!!
Bossie_Boots
Amazing superb work 1!
Bendinggrass
"Models constructed in Bryce 6.5 and rendered in Bryce 7"... Could you tell me why you do it that way? Fascinating images and commentary from you. Thanks
wblack
Thank you all for your great comments! Bendinggrass, In answer to your question: I construct my models in Bryce 6.5 because most of my work pushes the polygon limit of Bryce. Bryce 6.5 can handle larger polygon counts than Bryce 7 Pro and is less prone to crashing.
geirla
Great landing scene!
TheBear005
Really nice work!
dcmstarships
interesting spacecraft concept with great visual execution
flavia49
fantastic images
MRX3010
Nice concept
Hlynkacg
Potentially silly question but... Why bother with a run-on landing if you gain no advantage from lift. Is the ammount of proppellant you save using wheel-brakes or drogues to cancel you last few m/s of velocity on the runway really worth the added complexity? That said, it does look really cool.
wblack
Hi Greg, A very good question, and here I made a judgment call wrapped up in the context of the future history I am describing and the kind of men who would direct such an endeavor. In terms of esthetics this was my preference – it is hard to say, in terms of the context of a five hundred year duration project if one style of approach or the other would be more favorable. It is probably a trade off either way – on one hand you have the expense in weight of the touch-down fuel which you have to carry into orbit and back down again before you burn it and the impact that has on your payload capacity, along with the increased engine burn time, and wear on the engines themselves – and on the other hand you have a stretch of level runway which once constructed can be used again and again. The systems I am depicting would be run at a higher cycle rate than the SSTS and would do so for hundreds of years – I don’t think anyone has studied the long term economics of a program of such magnitude. For me it came down to esthetics which seemed to be in line with the long term vision of those who would be the architects of such a program.