At the 2017 International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia, Sep 28, 2017 Lockheed Martin officials presented their MARS Ascent Descent Vehicle or (MADV) while building on their MARS Base Camp idea presented a year ago at IAC 2016.
While we still couldn’t get hold of their full LIVE presentation yet, we did find, in the second half of this B-roll (without sound) a simulated mission of their proposed MARS LANDER vehicle. Using supersonic retropropulsion it is quite similar to the Delta Clipper vehicle McDonald Douglas built-in the 1980’ies, of which we also have some actual footage on our “Why SSTO’s are a good idea” page.
Lockheed Martin officials revealed their vision for what they believe is a sound, safe and compelling mission architecture to help NASA get humans to Mars within a decade.
For Lockeheed Martin’s September 26 website release, look below:
While the official press release with even more details, can be found here.
With SpaceX also presenting their vision for a more rational MARS colonial transportation architecture on Friday, the MOON village starting to get more support, and NASA, RUSSIA, ESA and China all investing in deep space expeditionary capability, it looks like we are warming up to a new space race.
At ONESTAGETOSPACE we dream of one day having the (marketing) budget of these Aerospace giants, so we can present our own MARVELOUS vision with all the accolades it deserves.
Come back tomorrow evening for our report on SpaceX’s revised architecture.