A cost and risk analysis of human exploration missions to Mars

The Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) initiated a renewal of America's space exploration efforts which had come to an end following the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. SEI was a massive proposed program which was to culminate in a permanent human settlement on the Moon and a base for humans on Mars. Russian space agencies have also proposed human exploration missions, culminating in the 1991 signing of a joint exploration agreement between the former Soviet Union and the United States. However, these mission proposals soon floundered as total cost estimates approached ;The objective of this research has been the development of techniques to estimate cost and risk of preliminary designs for the human exploration of Mars in order to address the fundamental questions, "How much does it cost?" and, "What is its chance of success?" A systems engineering approach to the quantitative analysis of mission cost and risk is presented here. We demonstrate that a quantitative determination of cost and risk for a mission design, including the identification of cost and risk drivers: (1) enables accurate comparisons to be made between alternative mission designs; (2) provides the necessary insight to improve baseline mission designs; and (3) assists in selecting a best design.;Our analysis incorporates probabilistic methods in order to model accurately uncertainty in modeling input parameters and in available data. The risk analysis builds on the techniques of the nuclear power industry (fault trees and event trees), modifying and extending available tools where required in order to incorporate mission design information more effectively. Aerospace parametric cost models are similarly modified to enable probabilistic cost modeling. Comparisons with historical values of cost and risk for the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs are made to build confidence in the results.;The resulting values for mission cost and risk show that with appropriate modifications, human exploration missions to Mars can be designed to achieve reasonable levels of risk and cost.