Author: Rainbow Kursk
At 12:41 on July 23, 2020, at the Wenchang Cosmodrome in Hainan, the "Long March 5 Yao-4" carrier rocket sent China's first Mars exploration mission "Tianwen-1" probe to space.
Tianwen Rushing Fire has taken the first step in China's independent planetary exploration, and also allowed the scientific army of Mars to have the figure of Chinese probes.
If all goes well, "Tianwen-1" will reach the vicinity of Mars after flying in space for about 7 months, complete mars capture through "brakes", enter the orbit around Mars, and choose the opportunity to carry out landing, inspection and other tasks to carry out Mars scientific exploration.
Photo: Wenchang launched the "Long March 5 Yaosi" rocket to open Up China's Planetary Exploration Road, Targeting Mars!
People's curiosity about Mars has existed as early as ancient times, and the first modern idea of using rockets to send probes or humans to Mars came from the famous German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun after World War II, who was a god-level figure who developed V-2 rockets for Germany during World War II.
At the end of the war, Braun and his research team surrendered to the United States, and in 1955 he became a citizen of the United States.
Braun continued his rocket, missile, and aerospace research in the United States, where he received a series of medals, medals, and honorary titles. In 1969, he led the development of the Saturn 5 carrier rocket, which sent the first manned lunar spacecraft, Apollo 11, to the moon.
The first successful test flight of the space shuttle in April 1981 was also invented by Braun. As a result, he is known as the "father of modern spaceflight." In June 1977, Braun died at Alexander Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Photo: Von Braun, the father of modern spaceflight.
Image: The landing on Mars envisioned by early human beings.
Von Braun conceived the first possible human mission to Mars in the late 1940s, sparking public interest in space exploration. In the decades since, scientists and engineers have dreamed of going to Mars, but their imaginative plans have never left the drawing board.
In the 1950s, von Braun studied and wrote The Mars Project, but interestingly, it was a novel about manned Mars exploration, and according to later researchers, the rocket pioneer wrote such a novel just to enrich his spare time, although the novel was still full of engineering otaku.
The novel's detailed technical appendices describe a series of physically feasible spacecraft, routes, and even launch dates.
Photo: Von Braun envisioned a spaceship to Fly to Mars in 1952.
Von Braun describes in the novel that in 1985 the United States would launch a plan to land on Mars, when it envisaged launching 10 4,000-ton spacecraft and 70 astronauts.
After months of cruising, the space fleet will send a landing team to land on the Martian ice cap in a landing capsule and explore using gliders with skis. The astronauts will then travel 4,000 miles on the surface of Mars to build landing fields for the rest of the spacecraft near the Martian equator.
In 1957, von Braun and former V-2 colleague Ernst Stellinger collaborated with Walt Disney on the space-themed television show Disneyland, which featured an episode about humans on Mars.
Although this idea is only the idea of von Braun, the god of leisure time, but under the promotion of Disney, the American public has aroused great interest in space travel, perhaps this is the value of science fiction!
Image: In his spare time, von Braun, the god of science fiction, depicts a space fleet conquering Mars.
At this time, in the Soviet Union on the other side of the ocean, a real Mars plan was in the making.
In February 1959, Korolev, a well-known rocket expert in the Soviet Union, together with the president of the Academy of Sciences at the time, sent a letter to the Soviet leadership, requesting the development of heavy rockets, the launch of manned spacecraft for interstellar exploration, and the development of the TMK program.
The scheme plans to use a huge N-1 launch vehicle to launch the TMK heavy manned interplanetary spacecraft into orbit. Arrived on Mars after a 10-and-a-half-month flight. According to Korolev's plan, Soviet astronauts would begin their first trip to Mars on June 8, 1971, and return to Earth on July 10, 1974.
Image: The magnificent Soviet N-1 heavy carrier rocket, which was later unreliable led to the demise of the Soviet Moon and Mars landing programs.
For this purpose, the three astronauts even entered the NEK Closed Earth Environment Simulation Training Facility for a full year in March 1967 to test their long-term living conditions in space.
Later, Soviet scientists thought it was unrealistic to launch a spacecraft to Mars with a single rocket, and later developed the TMK-E project. That is to say, the living module, propulsion module, landing module, return module, etc. will be launched into space in batches with rockets, assembled into a space station in the earth's orbit, and then start the journey to Mars.
In May 1966, the Soviet Union's Mars program was merged into the KK program, the "Manned Mars Exploration Space Complex".
However, the ambition and patience of the Soviets were destroyed by the unreliable N-1 rockets, which fired four times, but all failed. By the 1980s, the Soviet Union's national strength was insufficient to support the costly and promising Mars program, and it eventually died.
Image: Soviet model and restoration of the TMK-E Mars spacecraft.
The United States began preparing for a landing on Mars in 1959, and its first plan was to design a nuclear rocket, just six months after NASA was established.
Such rockets use fission reactors to heat hydrogen into plasma exhaust gases for propulsion.
Throughout the 1960s, the U.S. government conducted ground tests on these nuclear rockets, and since then they have been popular with NASA mission designers. But sending nuclear weapons into space has proven politically troubling.
In 1965, NASA's Mariner 4 probe flew over Mars and found that the barren surface of Mars was full of craters and its atmosphere was much thinner than previously thought, which ruled out the possibility of cruising by Martian plane.
Photo: American "Sailor" series of space probes.
After the end of the Cold War, the United States stepped up its mars program.
In 2012, after 8 months of flight, the US "Curiosity" Mars rover successfully landed on the surface of Mars and began to send back photos, which was the first time humans saw a picture from the surface of another planet, causing a global sensation!
NASA later issued an announcement on the trip to Mars, and began recruiting a group of astronauts to prepare for the U.S. trip to Mars. Including the Netherlands, many multinational companies and private companies have begun to look forward to the wonderful prospect of flying to Mars, and even recruit volunteers to fly to Mars online.
Image: Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars.
But, like the Soviet Union, the United States was cautious about sending people to Mars.
Traveling to the Red Planet is like going to a much less habitable Antarctica, where the breathless atmosphere is as thin as only 2 percent of the summit of Mount Everest. If you don't mind having to travel in a spaceship for at least a year to get there, and it might take the same amount of time to get back.
"It's an option, but it's not a necessity." John Logsden, a professor emeritus at george Washington University's Space Policy Institute, said, "Mars is far away, it's hard to get there, and it costs a lot of money. ”
For decades, imaginative engineers and policymakers have dreamed of ways to leapfrog technological barriers and move humanity to the Red Planet. Some designs were designed to inspire, and there were plans like the Soviet TMK, KK, etc. to enter the implementation phase of the project, but until now it has not been able to finally achieve.
Photo: Painting: The Soviet TMK-E spacecraft carrying astronauts flew into orbit around Mars.
At present, the "Tianwen-1" probe is already on its journey to Mars and is expected to arrive on Mars early next year, which will be another time for humans to send their own space probes to explore Mars.
From this point of view alone, China's aerospace footprint has been ahead of many of the blue star space powers, perhaps in the foreseeable future, Chinese astronauts can really take the lead in setting foot on Mars, becoming the pioneers of the upcoming magnificent era of great space navigation!
And if you had to choose, would you set foot on this path, heading deep into space, to Mars?
Image: Navigator space station in the movie The Wandering Earth! The road ahead must be in the sea of stars!