Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space

Center, episode 272, rendezvous with Mars. I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be your host today.

In this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to

let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight. We're continuing with

a reboot of our series that outlines a human mission to and from the Red Planet. This

third episode features Patrick Chai, PhD, and aerospace engineer at Langley Research Center

in Virginia. Chai covers the challenges and needs for getting humans to Mars and the

options for propulsion, duration, time, staging, and more that will need to be considered.

This episode was recorded on February 4th, 2020. Let's get started.

Patrick owns in on the challenges and needs for getting to Mars. The journey from Earth

to Mars will be long, somewhere on the order of nine months. And with that comes a series

of challenges, some complicated orbital mechanics, and a whole range of options that consider

things like propulsion, duration, timing, staging, and more. Yes, thanks to probes and

rovers of the past we've landed on Mars, but a human landing will be like nothing else

before. The transport will have to be much larger. And with humans on board, you're

limited on the kinds of routes you can take to get to Mars. Sounds like a simple consideration.

Yes, of course there will be humans, but it makes things a lot harder. Buckle up everybody

and all aboard to the Red Planet. Here we go. The challenges and range of options on how

to rendezvous with Mars with Patrick Chai. Enjoy.

Patrick, thanks so much for coming on Houston Wave of Pakistan today. Thanks for having

me. This is a really interesting and intricate discussion we're going to have about what it

takes to actually get to Mars. So I might go a little bit off track, but you're going

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