He cited a case where the sample canister, rather than sent on an Earth entry trajectory to make a hard landing in the Utah desert, would instead be transferred to a spaceplane to return to Earth on a runway, subjected to far lower g-forces. “If we can reduce the g-loading on the sample canister colliding with the surface of Utah,” he said, “the sample canister can get lighter and everything upstream gets easier and better.”
What spaceplane would be used? Dream Chaser? A new custom vehicle? Starship isn’t really a spaceplane, but it might be able to offer a similar lower-g option.
If they’re going to “transfer to a space plane”, that to me sounds like a LEO rendezvous, so at that point why not just rendezvous with a crew/cargo dragon instead of designing a brand new spaceplane?
In order to get the samples inside Dragon, they would either need to bring a docking adapter or depressurize the cabin a la Polaris Dawn. Both options seem like a bit much, like using a limousine to transport packages. That being said, I’m not sure Dream Chaser has any unpressurized return capabilities either.
I’ve just remembered of another existing spaceplane. The X-37B has a 2.1 × 1.2 m payload bay, and a capacity of 227 kg. Would the military let NASA borrow one?
Good point, actually the X-37B would make a lot of sense: it’s uncrewed, can obviously be up for a long period of time (years), and can go to pretty high orbits as well on a Falcon Heavy, plus it has an arm right? So it’d just be a question of getting the USSF on board
It looks like NASA has flown payloads onboard the X-37B before, so I think it is well within possibility that they could get some room on board for Mars samples during a return. They might not even need to “book” a whole flight as long as the mission has room/capacity for the samples aboard, and the sample container could probably hang out in a medium orbit for a while after getting back to Earth, awaiting an X-37B mission to come up at its own leisure since the orbiter could do all of the rendezvous maneuvering on its own
That picture suggests that Mars will become a militarized dystopia within my lifetime. =_=