Vehicles

Vehicles used to get to mars

(This evergreen list should have some exciting announcements in the future)

• Dragon (7 passenger) - to and from LEO for a ticket price of $20m per passenger.
• Stretch Dragon - my imagination for getting to orbit on a Falcon Heavy for $2m per.
• Amortized spaceship - goes from orbit to orbit once it's fuel tanks are filled. Two precursors sitting in LEO today. Makes the Orion capsule look like the junk it is (too much mass, too little internal volume.)
• Mars One Lander - mockups may exist (a modification of the red dragon mockups that certainly do exist) testing unknown. 2.5 mt of payload to mars orbit, then to surface (up to 4 passengers transferred in from mars orbit) for $150m to $195m.
• Mars Colony Transport - vaperware. Did it become a hyperloop train? Focus Elon!

Vehicles manufactured on mars.

• Tractor - use to move earth mars. Several types would include robotic, open and sealed cabin.
• Robotic tractors - could be sent ahead from earth to martian surface and used from mars orbit to prepare bases before any humans land. Later manufactured on mars.
• Open cabin tractors - see next heading. Later manufactured on mars.
• Closed cabin tractors - parts would be manufactured and assembled on mars once the industrial ecology has matured (not as long a time as some might guess.) This would provide a completely shirt-sleeve environment to and from a mars garage.
• Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) - until they do, they don't. Martians live on mars. Who wants to live on a heavy planet?

Vehicles manufactured on earth for use on mars

• Open cabin tractors - two could be supplied as parts from earth in a single lander. They would take a day for two colonists to assemble in a tent on the surface of mars. They would operate them while in suits like the lunar buggy (was that really over 40 years ago?) This allows them to bypass the time required to use airlocks during an excursion.
• Turtle - simple low mass tow vehicle that arrives with colonists: batteries, four wheels, a fifth wheel and wired remote control. Pulls trailer. 40 km range extended by deployment of thin film solar panels.
• Turtle shell - trailer that unfolds. Comes with turtle. Eye-hitch easily slides onto turtle fifth wheel which is just a capped vertical cylinder. Holds crew and supplies for surface transportation up to 20 kph (slow enough to be safe, but beats walking in a space suit.)