DELTA-SIERRA TOOL — MARS

Mars cargo-landing calculator

How many landings are required to deliver a chosen campaign mass?

Essential answer

The availability factor does not predict the reliability of a future lander. It simply exposes how a campaign assumption changes the required number of landings.

Every value below can be changed. Prefilled values are educational examples, not an official NASA architecture.

Calculator

N = ceil[Mass × (1 + reserve) ÷ (landed payload × availability)]
Edit the values and run the calculation.

Method and limits

The calculator deliberately shows intermediate operations. Keep units visible, state the calculation boundary and distinguish a chosen assumption from measured performance.

A numerical result does not prove an architecture is feasible: availability, maintenance, contaminants, storage, redundancy and failure cases still require separate sizing.

Sources and further reading

Downloadable scenario data

The prefilled values are documented in a versioned dataset. They are editable educational examples, not an official mission architecture.