The future of human spaceflight

After the Apollo Moon program, the international space station represents a further milestone of humankind in space. International follow-on programs like a manned return to the Moon and a first manned Mars Mission can be con sidered as the next logical step. More and more attention is also paid to t he topic of future space tourism in Earth orbit, which is currently under i nvestigation in the USA, Japan and Europe due to its multibillion dollar ma rket potential and high acceptance in society. The wide variety of experien ce, gained within the space station program, should be used in order to ach ieve time and cost savings for future manned programs. Different strategies and roadmaps are investigated for space tourism and hu man missions to the Moon and Mars, based on a comprehensive systems analysi s approach. By using DLR's software tool FAST (Fast Assessment of space Tec hnologies), different scenarios will be defined, optimised and finally eval uated with respect to mission architecture, required technologies, total co sts and program duration. This includes trajectory analysis, spacecraft des ign on subsystem level, operations and life cycle cost analysis. For space tourism, an expected evolutionary roadmap will be described which is initiated by short suborbital tourism and ends with visionary designs l ike the Space Hotel Berlin and the Space Hotel Europe concept. Furthermore the potential space tourism market, its economic meaning as well as the exp ected range of the costs of a space ticket (e.g. $50,000 for a suborbital f light) will be analysed and quantified. For human missions to the Moon and Mars, an international 20 year program for the first decades of the next mi llennium is proposed, which requires about $2.5 Billion per year for a mann ed return to the Moon program and about $2.6 Billion per year for the first 3 manned Mars missions. This is about the annual budget, which is currentl y spend by the USA only for the operations of its Space Shuttle fleet which generally proofs the affordability of such ambitious programs after the bu ild-up of the International Space Station, when corresponding budget might become again available. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.