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Assume there's a spaceship in earth orbit that its crew of 24 want to get to Mars, the crew are all humans and possess all of modern day knowledge & equipment, is it possible for said ship to make the (one way journey) without any electricity while the crew get there alive?

Necessary assumptions list:

• The ship has been designed from the ground up without any electricity


• How it got to earth orbit doesn't matter, it's already there


• No magic


• Modern day tech


• No electricity can be used, this journey is sponsored by a super rich man in order to win a bet (the rich do some crazy shit)


• Price & efficiency is not an issue, it just needs to get there with the crew still alive


• It doesn't need to land, Mars orbit is enough

I tried thinking of it by each component of the spaceship and this is what I got so far:

• Rocket engine - shouldn't be much of an issue as it can be controlled with mechanical valves to control fuel flow with a chemical/mechanical ignition


• Direction control - small puffs of compressed air to point the ship to the right direction should still be possible


• Lighting - ideas?


• Air life support - biological plants or algae air recycling? one of the biggest things I'm not sure of how well it will work


• Waste disposal - mechanically powered vacuum pumps airlock & throw it all away


• Food - it might be a months long journey but it's still short enough to allow non perishables canned good & other dry kept food to be the only source of food needed so no cooling needed


• Water - Some recycling andor purifying should be possible with muscle power alone, will likely still need to carry more water from the start to compensate but seeing how price is not an issue the extra fuel costs are acceptable

Yes! And I shall do it by totally violating the low-tech spirit of your question!

The biggest part of the challenge is your desire to go to Mars. Mars is a helluva long way away. If you were going to the moon from Earth, then I'm pretty certain you'd be fine. But a trip that far, with this kind of challenge? Doesn't appeal!

Here's the key thing: no electricity doesn't mean no mod cons! Let me take you back to the old days of scifi, back when calculations were done by hand because there were no computers, and no solar panels. Classic Heinlein. Atomic rockets!

What you want is a bimodal nuclear rocket. Nuclear reactors don't actually need electricity to operate. Sure, they make things easier, but actually you can wheel the control rods in and out with hand-driven mechanisms. Nuclear rockets are decades old technology; almost as old as nuclear reactors themselves, which predated electronic control systems.

A nuclear rocket will give you excellent thrust (needed to move all the stupid rubbish you need instead of using electrical and electronic equipment) and good specific impulse (so you won't need too much fuel, and won't need to take a really long, boring, slow and probably fatal journey). Really, you just twizzle the control rods a bit, and twizzle the fuel flow valve a bit, and woosh. You'll need a good chronometer, a good space sextant, and probably a slide rule or two. Careful monitoring of core temperature (doesn't need electronics!) and timing of carefully pre-calibrated engine burns will get you where you need to go. Heinlein would be so proud of you.

A simple nuclear rocket will not, however, be running all the way to mars. You'll be doing two burns... injection into your transfer orbit, and injection into martian orbit. Maybe a mid-course correction because you're flying by the seat of your pants and didn't finesse your initial injection burn well enough. The rest of the time your rocket will sit idle, so you may as well bring a nuclear rocket that can be reconfigured to operate as a plain old thermal nuclear reactor when it isn't generating thrust and make use of all that uranium.

Given a supply of hot coolant from your reactor, suddenly you have access to chemical processes that require decent amounts of heat. One such process is carbon dioxide scrubbing, whereby you can regenerate your CO₂ absorbing medium by heating it up whilst exposing it to vacuum, causing all the absorbed waste to outgas. No muscle power needed! You can generate hot, high-pressure steam for use in a reaction control system. Hell, if you really wanted to go all gonzo steampunk, you can use a steam-driven motor to rotate an artificial gravity centrifuge.

You've got a ready supply of heat for cooking and sterilising stuff or distilling and reclaiming water from your biological waste products.

Lighting has an easy solution: the sun! Your ship will be in full, bright sunlight for almost its entire trip. You can set up some big Mylar reflective panels outside, focussing light through windows in the hull. That's gonna be more than bright enough for all your needs... in fact, you'll need to bring some shutters or curtains with you because you'll want some dark places to sleep well. For emergencies, and for any occasions at departure or arrival when you'll be shaded from the sun by a planet, consider beta lights. They'll last more than long enough for your flight, and can be made in a range of colours and sizes, and fit the nuclear theme.

(iou could doubly cheat by using a big reflector as a heliograph and a telescope to keep an eye on earth for flashing laser return signals. communicate via Morse, get ground control to do your computation for you. not essential, but, y'know, I feel like I have to point out extra opportunities to break the spirit of the rules!)

Yes

You can replace everything with either a chemical reaction or muscle power.

• Ventilation: muscles




• CO₂ scrubbers: muscles + chemistry




• Oxy: more tanks.




• Heat: chemistry




• Lights: chemistry




• Computers: Babbage machines + sextants (although this one's a lot harder to swallow, you probably could do it)

Why on Earth would you want to?

Jack Ryan : Could you launch an ICBM horizontally?

Skip Tyler : Sure. Why would you want to?

(The Hunt for Red October)

You have all the modern-day tech but want a ship that's the equivalent of an interplanetary Kon Tiki? Why? Why, why, why, why, why? It would be easier to justify a hand-crank power generation system than this. Even Benjamin Sisko had solar power. I suppose you could write a "teenagers save the world again!" story about some kids who figure out how to get into orbit and make it to Mars without the help of electricity (or educated/experienced adults), but why?

In reality, I don't think it's possible to build the ship without electricity. I don't think you can manufacture even the hull plating to the specifications required for safe space flight without electricity. Or the space suits. Or the oxygen tanks. Or anything else. But, technically that's not what you asked.

Nevertheless, I think the weight required to replace all the electricity-requiring stuff would be astronomical. You need to carry the chemicals that are used for lighting, heat, ignition, etc. Those chemicals are consumed. That means weight — and a lot of it — at the beginning of the mission. And you had to get all that weight out of Earth's gravity well.

And it would need to be a very slow voyage because without decent computers you're having to figure everything out by hand. Even a (very heavy!) Babbage machine can only do so much, so fast (hand cranking!). That means slow, gentle course corrections. Heaven help you when it comes time actually get down to Mars. But, I suppose you could pull a Felix Baumgartner and drop everything via parachute from low orbit (very low orbit... as in "don't get hit by the flaming space ship on your way down" low orbit).

And considering what it takes to do the limited space stuff we do today (with electricity), I would hope your passengers are both the luckiest people in history and good Church-going people.

Why on earth would you do this?

Oh, yeah... some idiot with more money than common sense wants to win a bet. Implausible. I'd bet the bet was for a whole dollar.

EDIT: BTW, I think the real problem is whether or not your space suit has enough oxygen for the walk between where you landed on Mars and where your equipment landed.

They say the devil is in the details.

is it possible for said ship to make the (one way journey) without any electricity while the crew get there alive?

Living organisms, human included, use electrical signals to transmit nervous signal. The absence of electrical signals from a brain is proof of death.

The only way to do what you ask is to carry no living creatures. But since you want a human crew, what you want is impossible.

Rocket Engine

Direction control

Both of these are chemical processes. While we use electronics to control them, there is no reason you couldn't use mechanical things like valves. The result might make Rube Goldberg blush, but it is not impossible.

Lighting

There's a big fusion plant at the center of the Solar System that is constantly producing light. If you want light, you can use windows and mirrors (to concentrate the light where you need it).

Also, fossil fuel lamps work.

Air life support

Same way you manage it now, only without electrical controls. This might lean more towards using plants, as the windows will keep them producing oxygen twenty-four hours a day. But you could use chemicals instead.

Waste disposal

Compost it or incinerate it. Maybe incinerate then compost it.

Food

Plants in a greenhouse. Maybe some animals. Freeze dry or can stuff. Note that if the stuff starts cold and then gets exposed to space, it will stay cold. Pull it in as needed.

Albert Einstein was a coinventor of a heat powered refrigerator. Not much point in our world, but it was designed for a no electricity world.

Water

Look at seawater greenhouses. These use sunlight to evaporate water and then condense clean water from the vapor. This process uses no electricity and can be used with sewage water instead of seawater.

All this may waste space more than we would choose, but there's plenty of space. Given enough money and fuel, any amount of mass can be moved.

If you have a problem with heat, you can radiate it away. Conduction and convection won't work but radiation will. This will happen naturally. If that's not fast enough, you could take along ice (outside the ship) and bring it into the ship for cooling. Dump hot vapor to get rid of heat immediately.

If you are too cold, burn fossil fuels. You're in space. More trouble with getting carbon dioxide than getting rid of it.