The company is currently producing a deep-space crew module, called Orion, for NASA. The new proposal relies significantly on a timeline already in place that lays the foundations of the project.
There is plenty of skepticism from researchers in the field. “This doesn’t look terribly new in terms of a 12-year time line,” said an archivist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Science Center, David Portree. “In 1963, NASA engineers were seeing if they could land on Mars in 1971.”
Scott Hubbard, director of Stanford University’s Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation commented, “I give them kudos for being bold. This would really require a lot of things to play right.” He notes that Lockheed Martin doesn’t lay out a lot of specifics. “All I see is that the nice video says 2028,” he said.
One advantage to the plan is the orbiter. That would allow time to work out the logistics of descent and landing. “It gives one the opportunity to check out all navigation, life support, radiation protection—all the things you need to get to Mars and back without also accepting the risks that come with going to the surface,” says space policy expert John Logsdon of George Washington University. “There are good parallels between Apollo 8 and Apollo 11.”
Sources: NASA, National Geographic, Lockheed Martin