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A man on Mars - in just ten years and at a cost of up to 5 billion dollars

A group of Russian space experts say they are planning a privately funded manned flight to Mars. One of them, Giorgi Uspensky (Uspensky) from the Central Research Institute for Mechanized Construction, says that this may happen within ten years and at a cost of 3-5 billion dollars

man on mars illustration
man on mars illustration
A group of Russian space experts say they are planning a privately funded manned flight to Mars. One of them, Giorgi Uspensky from the Central Research Institute for Mechanized Construction, says that this may happen within ten years and at a cost of 3-5 billion dollars.
Aerospace Systems, a private company looking to finance projects using private capital, offered to integrate the flight into a reality TV show. However, the official Soviet space agency dismissed the project as 'nonsense'.

According to the plan, six astronauts will be launched on a round-trip flight that will last three years, and will include several months of exploration on Mars. The spacecraft will be equipped with a vegetable garden that will help supply fresh fruits and vegetables. The experts say that the spacecraft will use materials and equipment that have already been tested on the International Space Station. It will be assembled in orbit and in its center will be two cells filled with air that will be used for the crew's quarters.

Ouspensky said that the program, whose estimated cost is a fraction of the cost of the American program to launch a man to Mars, has excellent business potential.

For example, a real-time TV series could deal with the life of the team that would include men and women, and this could provide a return on the investment in the project, experts say. However, a spokesman for Russia's Federal Space Agency says that the project is impossible. "I do not believe that it is possible to carry a manned crew to Mars for such an amount of money and in such a short time frame," said the spokesman, Sergey Gorbanov.

Earlier this week, the American aviation authorities approved the granting of a license for the first time to a private company seeking to perform a suborbital flight with a privately funded rocket. The license opens an opportunity to try to compete in the X-prize - the competition to achieve the first flight to give a route by a non-governmental organization and with private funding that will carry a spacecraft with three people into space twice within two weeks.

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