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I went over my math last night and determined the following:
If Atlas-Barbarian launched from Kennedy Space Center, it could place 33 tonnes on a fast conjunction trajectory for Mars--which is all that is needed for Mars Direct.
If Delta IV Common Booster Cores were used instead of Atlas V CCB's, the mass sent to Mars would be reduced to 22 tonnes.
Of course, my calculations were simple and did not account for losses due to drag and other factors. But a launch from French Guiana would give the rocket some additional speed over a launch from Florida. I like the concept and I hope that somebody at Lockheed-Martin gives it some serious study.
Does someone know where one can download the show or a transcript of it?
???
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell
It should be on the website somewhere.
As a thought exercise, I did some simple calculations and I believe I have come up with an alternative rocket to the Ares that can lift 176 tonnes to a 100 km orbit. In tribute to the "Barbarian" studies of the 1980's for a space-laser booster, I will refer to the rocket as "Atlas-Barbarian."
The Atlas-Barbarian consists of seven Atlas V Common Core Boosters, clustered together. A nuclear thermal rocket sits atop the stack. I used the following assuptions to arrive at my conclusions, and I would appreciate any efforts by the other members to verify them.
Stage 1: 7x Atlas V CCB, specs from Encyclopedia Astronautica
Stage 2: Nuclear thermal rocket, ISp=900 s, 33% of weight is structure and engines
Booster thrust-to-weight ratio is 1.1, no delta-V assist from earth, delta V = 7,848.7 m/s
The Rocket Equation:
Delta V= 9.81*ISp*ln (gross weight/dry weight)
Night Owl, I first wanted to say that I too harbor the same desire to treat the Afghan prisoners as cruelly as possible, but that is another topic for another time.
I believe that bin Laden is dead, but it's too early to live according to that assumption. And I still believe that we have not seen the end of terrorism in the United States. Airport security is still a joke, it's just that it now forces innocent people to wait longer and put up with intrusive searches.
And as long as the United States is occupied with "the big bad bin Laden" and trying to solve the unsolvable chaos in the holy land, we will not go to Mars. The United States could easily pay for Mars Direct. The $11 billion saved by cancelling the Crusader artillery system would go a long way towards developing the hardware to do so. But until the U.S. has some national impetus to go to Mars, or until the international community invites us to join them on a joint venture, we will not see humans on the red planet.
I listened to the last two hours of the show this morning and I thought it was very good. Hoaglund turned down his Cydonia rhetoric and Zubrin led most of the discussion.
The most interesting point came when Hoaglund asked Zubrin how the discovery of water would change the propellant production scheme for Mars Direct. Zubrin replied by saying that Mars Direct 1 would be built according to plan, but future Mars Direct missions could extract hydrogen from the water instead of bringing it from earth. Zubrin also seemed enthusiastic about methanol fuel cells and nuclear power for Mars exploration.
The show got really interesting during the last ten minutes. Zubrin blamed the failure of the Space Exploration Initiative on Richard Truly, Hoaglund talked about a cryptic phone call about "a major announcement" from a NASA official, and he called for NASA to release the infrared photos of Cydonia that were taken in May. Hoaglund also wants to present his "Mars Tidal Model" paper (see my last post) at the Mars Society convention this summer.
Quote for the day--Zubrin: If we do not go, we'll never know!
I have to say that I find Hoaglund very fascinating, even if I find his methods less than scientific. I've never hard his theory about humans being Martians, but his prediction that the face was half-lion was shockingly correct. One of his major theories is that Mars was a moon of a planet that once inhabited the asteroid belt. This planet collided with another one, releasing Mars into a new orbit, creating the asteroid belt, and causing the cataclysm that killed the dinosaurs.
Perhaps Hoaglund remains so popular because everyone loves a storyteller.
Vasectomy/Tubal Ligation would be a good idea for an elective surgery, but I'm certain that many of your potential astronauts would take themselves off the mission instead of having the surgery. The first humans to travel to Mars will want to resume normal lives when they return; having chidren may be a part of that.
Of course, we still have issues about conception in a low-gravity, high radiation environment. I don't know if conception is possible at all in zero-G, and it's probably more difficult in Martian gravity. The second question will hopefully be answered by Translife when it gets off the ground.
For the first mission to Mars, wouldn't it be better to order the astronauts involved to just keep their pants on, rather than loading them up with birth control? The mission has enough risk involved, and the astronauts would not need the added complication of monkeying around with each other. A relationship that has soured would damage the group dynamic, and with a crew of four or six it would be devastating.
As far as I know, the astronauts on board the ISS do not use birth control, so it should not be required for a Mars mission. Of course, NASA is in denial about its experiments about sex in space, so I could be wrong. But I still think that the first crew to land on Mars should be prudent about the matter for the sake of the mission. We can worry about procreation when we begin to colonize Mars.
Phillip Bono's "Project Deimos" required the single launch of his ROMBUS SSTO rocket, which would collect fresh propellant tanks in earth orbit from an awaiting satellite. After the propellant transfer, ROMBUS would fly to Mars and the crew would land in a small Mars excursion module, a la Apollo.
The Borowski plan, which is similar to NASA's baseline but uses artificial gravity and a propulsive capture at Mars, would require six Magnum launches plus a Space Shuttle launch. I can see the STS being replaced with a crew taxi mounted on an EELV, but it's still pretty expensive to get everything into LEO.
Admittedly, H2O2 is not a high-performance monopropellant. It only has an ISp of 160 seconds. But it makes sense to use it for your RCS if the propulsive rocket engine uses H2O2 + Kerosene, which has an ISp of 300 seconds.
I couldn't agree more. Even though people don't believe it, there are a lot of strict environmental regulations in place in the USA.
I can say from experience that Phobos isn't bluffing. The establishment where I work has very stringent policies on disposing of chemicals. Everything has a proper place and procedure.
I also think that the United States has done a commendable job at environmental protection over the past thirty years. The Endangered Species act has been a prime example. Of all the endangered animals that we are bent on protecting, almost none of them are native to the United States. I cite the examples of the rhino, the Panda, and the tiger. In the past thrty years, the bison, bald eagle, and Peregrine Falcon have all made a comeback within the United States.
Our air and water quality still have a ways to go, but most businesses know better than to pollute the air and water, or they will be hit with heavy fines. Ethanol additives in the gasoline will reduce air pollution in the near future, and hopefully the country will shift to a pro-nuclear energy policy that reduces our need for fossil fuels.
I like Cindy's suggestion of books that deal with political thought. Perhaps "The Crisis," "The Federalist Papers," "The Anti-Federalist Papers," and "The Wealth of Nations" should be added to the list.
I'd also like to see the first Martians have some sort of folklore so they could say to each other, "How did we get here in the first place?" and "What did the people on earth think Mars would be like?" I submit the following to the reading list for future explorers of Mars:
1. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
2. Lost Moon By Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger
3. Red Mars, Green Mars, &Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Sir Arthur C. Clarke
And I'd also like to add two of my favorite misanthropic novels:
5. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
6. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
It's too early to say what role religion will play on Mars because nobody's worked out a plan for colonizing the planet yet. There might be groups of Pilgrims who set out for this new world to escape persecution and establish a colony where they can practice their own lifestyle. On the flip side, there might also be zealots who will attempt to create a theocratic government at any cost, even through "holy war."
But the most likely scenario is that the first colonists will be financed by a government space agency, and they will not practice any organized religion, as most scientists would. Religion will only come after the Martian frontier is opened to the masses (no pun intended.) It will be interesting then to see what the major religions on Earth do to reach out to their followers on Mars. Will the Catholic church appoint a Bishop for the diocese of Mars? At this point, who can say?
Don't despair, GOM. I feel the same way. The best that a space enthusiast can do right now is to lobby your government officials and support grassroots efforts at space exploration, like the Mars Society. The Mars Society, with its three Mars habitats, is probably doing more work in support of a humans-to-Mars initiative than NASA is. It is easy to give up now, but I think that we owe it to future generations to stay in the fight.
Hydrogen Peroxide was a common monopropellant for RCS thrusters in the early days of the space program--the X-15, NF-104, and Mercury capsule all used it. Now "The Rocket Guy" Brian Gardner will use it when he attempts to launch himself to an altitude of 30 miles in 2003.
It is simple to use Hydrogen Peroxide as a monopropellant. You simply need to pass it through a catalyst to break it into H2O and O2. Because the molecule is unstable, almost any material will catalyze it at high concentrations. Silver and platinum will work extremely well. Peroxide can also be combined with a hydrocarbon like kerosene or gasoline, serving as an oxidizer.
How could you make hydrogen peroxide on Mars? For a start, the soil contains peroxide ions (don't quote me on this, as I'm not an expert in Martian geology or chemistry.) Hydrogen could be obtained from subsurface water/ice. It would also be possible to simply electrolyze the water/ice and recombine the H2 and O2 into hydrogen peroxide.
I'm glad that I was able to explain the benefits of hydrogen peroxide as a rocket propellant to one more person. There are a lot of people who believe that Hydrogen Peroxide was a poor propellant because it was used on the explosive Me-163. But the problem was that the Me-163 used a very poor, unrefined grade of Hydrogen Peroxide, and it used toxic hydrazine as well.
Has anybody been paying attention to the Space Launch Initiative ? I've been looking at the designs and I see some exciting possibilities, for both expanding the ISS and going to Mars, being opened up by this program.
Almost all of the SLI designs use a small crew taxi as the final stage to orbit. What if we accelerated the development of this taxi? It could provide us with a crew rescue vehicle for the ISS, and a crew return capsule for Mars Direct.
The same goes for the winged, flyback boosters that are being designed. The inherently unsafe SRBs on the Ares can be replaced with safer and more powerful flyback boosters when we finally build the Mars rocket.
I'm particularly intrigued by the Northrop Grumman proposal that uses a large flying wing as the first stage. This eliminates the need for fixed launch pads, enables more flexibility in choosing launch sites and times, and it makes it easy to ferry the booster back to the launch site.
The hydrogen peroxide in the drug store is not the same as rocket-grade peroxide. Commercially-available hydrogen peroxide is incredibly diluted--it's approximately 1% peroxide mixed with 99% water. I have access to a small rocket engine that uses a 50% solution of hydrogen peroxide, which is quite strong, but still available through scientific supply companies. The peroxide that is used in real rockets is at least 90% hydrogen peroxide.
Another difference is chemicals called inhibitors. Because the hydrogen peroxide molecule is so unstable, chemical inhibitors are added to commercial peroxide to prevent it from breaking down into steam and oxygen. Rocket grade hydrogen peroxide doesn't have these inhibitors, so it must be stored in a specially-designed tank made of materials that won't break it down.
Translife is the Mars Society's effort to create an artificial gravity environment for mice in space. The mice will stay in space for one gestation period, and the offspring will be studied. The experiment seeks to prove two things: it is possible to use centripetal force to simulate gravity, and it is possible for organisms to live a somewhat-normal life in Mars's reduced gravity.
The Bell rocket belts became quite popular in the 1960's after they were demonstrated at fairs, on television, and in the introduction to "Thunderball." The Army became interested in them, but the rocket belts obviously never became a standard-issue item (probably because they were difficult to fly.)
I don't see any obstacles to the use of rocket belts on Mars. The original Bell design used safe, storable Hydrogen Peroxide as a monopropellant. Because it would not be difficult to produce Hydrogen Peroxide on Mars, this would still remain the fuel of choice.
I'm glad that the ISS will be used for the Translife mission, because it should cut down on the cost and risk of the mission, as well as giving the space agencies a link to the Mars Society.
However, this also presents a new engineering problem. As I understand it, the Translife centrifuge will be connected to an experiment rack on the ISS main truss. Although the spin rate of the experiment will not be high, and it will not have a large amount of angular momentum, it will still cause some rotation on board the ISS, as the station rotates in the opposite direction to conserve angular momentum. What is the Translife team going to do about this?
I've actually found a website describing fuel cells that run on methanol, with no need to break it down and extract the hydrogen. You can find it at http://fuelcells.sae.org/
After some cosiderable thought, I think that nuclear thermal rockets are a bad idea for the earth return vehicle. In order for the rocket to reach Mars orbit and return to earth, it will need two or possibly three stages. It is also true that a nuclear thermal rocket using carbon dioxide as a working fluid actually has a lower ISp than methane/oxygen chemical rockets. The extra weight of the nuclear thermal rocket then becomes a bane. Putting it all into the rocket equation, it means that it would be more difficult to build a nuclear thermal ERV.
Right on, Phobos.
The environment should not be the highly-politicized issue that it currently is. Fair and objective studies need to be done, followed by an appropriate bipartisan response to the problems that the studies find.
One of the problems with global warming theories is that they are just that--theories. They can never be proven, aand it is doubtful that the theory's supporters will allow it to be disproven.
Still, the world community is convinced of the theory's veracity and has drafted the Kyoto Protocol in response. The treaty dumps the burden of reducing emissions on the United States and other western countries that have taken great steps to fight air nd water pollution. But countries like China, which continue to flaunt air pollution standards, are exempted because they are "too poor" to comply.
I'm still skeptical about global warming and its alleged ties to carbon dioxide emissions. Although there are signs that global warming is occuring (the breaking up of the ice shelves,) it is also possible that these events are linked to other phenomena. There hasn't been any consistent increase in global temperatures over the past thirty years, and I have yet to see studies indicating that the air is more saturated with carbon dioxide than it used to be.
I'm of the belief that the atmosphere, in thermodynamic equilibrium, would be comprised of much more carbon dioxide than oxygen. But oxygen is predominant because plants shift the equilibrium of the atmosphere so that 18% is oxygen and 1% is carbon dioxide. We have yet to saturate the atmosphere with enough carbon dioxide to overwhelm the plants.
Here's an alternative explanation for global warming: black body radiation. Simply put, manmade structures do a better job absorbing the infrared radiation of the sun. By covering the earth's surface with concrete and steel, we can raise the temperatures in the troposphere.