New Mars Forums

Maybe we could dig deep enough so we would get to the permafrost? And after that, we could maybe recycle that water..

Protein sources would come from plants (soy, beans, nuts) and from animals (fish, chicken, rabbits, goats, cows). That is unless we wouldn’t grow anything on Mars. In that case the protein sources would come from the canned food.

No, I am going for: "What a good idea. Let us launch and land rockets on the balloons. What could possibly go wrong?"

Have you looked at the size of rockets here on earth? Well.. take another look, since you would need them to be the same size. If the “designers” are so infallible, how come they explode so frequently? Let me guess.. this is part of my “far-fetched disaster scenarios”.. Unless you know how to do it better in which case I think there will be people lining up to pay you the big bucks.. but wait, since the balloons are so safe this would not really be a problem.. if anything else fails, you simply float to the ground. But, why do I have a feeling this might not be such a good idea on the Venus.

And all of this to do what.. so you could build balloons and live on them? If you want to live "near" (floating is near the surface, right?), why not “float” a little higher, with enough speed to not fall to the ground (also known as “low Venus orbit”). What is on the Venus, that you could not get anywhere else with a lot less effort. Even 0,9 g can be easily created with large rotating space habitat.

Venus would be nice place to live on if you striped all of the atmosphere from it and cool it down quite a bit. Until then the first question you would get asked on Venus would be: “Would you like a nice therapeutic swim in a molten lead bath?”

Would this be something like the RussianSpace mirror. The plan to iluminate Siberia..

Of course its $20 million per seat. I was just humoring all those in the “Ares I/Orion rox!” crowd in their persuasions about the whole costs and capabilities thing. If any of them checked out that number, they would have noticed, that is the price to bring TWO people to orbit. Or, to be more precise, $43.8 million to bring Jeff Williams to and from ISS and for a ride home for a Bill McArthur.
http://www.space.com/news/060105_nasa_russia_soyuz.html

The production costs for the whole 3 man craft and a rocket to carry it into LEO is approximately $28.6 million or there about. That is how much it costs the Russian government. If they get one tourist flying, they can send two of their cosmonauts to space almost for free. It's a good deal for them. Oh yeah, that’s $9 million and some change per seat. By selling the seats for $20 million they get a little extra money for those flights (nothing to write home about, though).

Ok, first of all.. It really costs $20 million per seat (the Russian government gets it cheaper, but since they were the one who spent the money to design it in the first place, its only fair) to send a person to space. That would make a price for 3 persons - $60 million. Oh, and we are not talking about "marginal costs". That's how much the NASA pays for the whole flight.. That covers everything..

It's actually approximately $28.6 million in whatever the ruble exchange rate is.. PPP is usefull only if you compare to something outside of Russia..

Sure.. the poor Russians.. they are broke.. It's not like they have $386.3 billion in foreign currency reserves, budget surplus in the first quarter of 2007 of $18.2 billion, and the money from all those oil exports is still flooding in (and will be for a long time). Yes, you are right. Those $20 million per seat deals will bring soo much money to their space program. Without it the whole Russian space program would come crashing down, since they don't have any money..

I see no confusion. You can buy the commercial Soyuz rocket for $40 million, and they make a profit on that. Everything needed is already designed and the development costs have been paid for long time ago. The true marginal cost of a Soyuz is what it is. They have it that way by building 10-20 of them. And this is small rate of the production and launch. They used to build a lot of them, since they are simple and cheap. They have small ground crews and simple procedures. Where do you thing the number for 1700+ flights came from.

With that kind of production rate your rockets can be cheap. And that’s not because of the “cheap ruble”. Check out the prices for Delta II compared to the production rate..

Of course. That’s why they have sold all the seats for the next few years and are increasing the number of Progress/Soyuz TMA built.

Of course it doesn’t. Just compare the “cost” of a shuttle to the “true cost” of a shuttle flight. You know.. the marginal costs and all that bussines..

Ok, let us stop talking about the Soyuz and concentrate on the Orion..

To launch the Orion, you have to first spend money to design the new rocket (Ares I) and a new capsule (Orion). Then you have to buy new equipment to actually build both of them and launch them. And when everything is tested and works ok, then you can actually spend money to build it. If you build a lot of rockets, then the price per rocket pays for everything (salaries). If you build only few rockets, then you can’t pay for those workers and factories that you need to build everything. That means you must subsidize your factories so they don’t go out of business.

Let me put it another way.. The incremental per launch costs of a Shuttle is $60 million per launch.. But the whole Shuttle infrastructure costs $3 - $5 billion dollars to mentain. If the Shuttle would fly once a week it would be cheap system. If it flys few times per year (or doesn’t fly at all) it’s expensive as it can be. You must have high launch rate if you wan’t to have small per flight price. It's simple economics...

Space Shuttle is partly reusable. It’s also the most expensive rocket that you can find. What does that tell you about the whole “reusable = cheaper” logic?

Well.. good for them. It must be "hard" to build a 25 MT rocket to bring 4 people capsule to LEO for that kind of marginal costs..

But, you still didn’t explain to me, why the Orion has to be 25 MT, why it needs a special (low flight rate) rocket that will not be used for anything else and how much are “other than the marginal” costs for it…

hold on.. $126 million? Where did that number come from? Is that like what.. 3 x $42 million? Don’t compare apples and oranges..

$42 million deal will buy NASA one dedicated Soyuz rocket with Soyuz TMA capsule, with training. If NASA astronauts could fly Soyuz they would get three seats, but that way they only get one. The marginal cost for Soyuz is in the range of $20-40 million. You can bet that they are making profit even on that kind of low price.

$126 million will almost buy you an Ariane 5 rocket that can deliver 20 MT to LEO. That Ariane 5 is built and launched with “real wages”. $40 million for 7 MT is in “real wages”.

Marginal? Sure.. let us ignore billions spent to keep everything running.. low or high flight rate makes no difference in the price of a rocket, right?

We must, since we are not even comparing the same things..

You expect me to believe that a new rocket and a new capsule that has never flown before is 20 times safer then the rocket that has flown for the past 40 years 1700 times is flight proven and didn’t loose a crew after all the bugs were ironed out decades ago?

No, it costs more because it has small flight rate and costs a lot of money to run. Safety has nothing to do with it.

Statistics are funny things..

Like for example..

That would appear that they fail the same amount of times, right? Well, by that account the Mississippi’s averages depth is around 1,5 m. Therefore, nobody can drown in Mississippi, right?

Soyuz failures were at the beginning. After all the problems were sorted out it managed to deliver crews back to Earth alive. Shuttle failures were random. One problem was fixed, the other can’t be fixed. One design is good, the other is not so good. Guess which one is which. If you look only at flights in say last 20 years, you will get different statistics.

Who cares how many rockets exploded 50 years ago? What is important how many rockets explode today? And it’s not even technology. It’s the design and economics..

So, Soyuz could not get to LEO, dock to EDS, get to LLO and return to Earth?

It’s like talking to a wall.. Oh mighty Orion.. Soyuz sux..

They do the same job (or could once they would be built). The only difference is that one weighs 7 MT for 3 people for $40 million and the other 25 MT for 4-6 people for $200 million.

Why do you bring up that Kliper?

It’s crappy, expensive and heavy design that nobody will fund. It can cost $20 billion for all I care. Sure, Energia would love to get that kind of money, but who will fund it? They were so sure Europeans will until they told them to take a hike. The Soyuz did cost a lot of money to design – 40 years ago. Now, it’s cheap since you only have to build it and keep it up-to-date. It’s being upgraded and will stay in service for a long time. Maybe it will even evolve into 4 seat design.

If you would design it right now it would cost the same amount as would cost to design Orion. The difference is only in the design. Oh, yes, and in the "why fix it if it ain't broken"..

Since we are making up numbers.. Why not make it $500 million? It’s a nice, round figure.. That way you could “prove” that the Orion is better, cheaper, lighter, safer..

Yet, somehow they can put people in LEO for peanuts and havent killed nobody doing that for decades.

That's strange. I thought that it was designed for (never implemented) moon missions. And that it can stay 6 months in orbit. And that it can be easily upgraded...

The Russians and the Chinese have built it that way not because they don't have bigger rockets, but because they don’t NEED bigger rockets to put people to LEO. Russians could have easily used Proton if they wanted, but Soyuz is cheaper.

Why have cheap transport when you can have expensive transport, right?

Yes, and check out how they try to find anyone that would give them 1,5 billion $ to build it. And don't forget. Kliper can't enter from TEI..

Meanwhile, the Soyuz TMA is being upgraded to stay one year on orbit (TMAT) and having it modified to carry moon missions (with Europeans).

That is my point. NASA should do this. But will it? Do you see anything reusable in the curent NASA plans? Everything is done Apollo style. Burn it and dump it.

Yes, but you then have to develop whole new reusable systems to replace "we just built it few years ago" expendable system. Mars is 20 years away. Why not go for reusable system. Make it limited at first, but have it designed to be reusable.

When I look a how the "LEO base" (ISS) was handled I am not too optimistic about that.

Every part of the federal government has some purpose. DoD gets the money to “build us an army to win wars” while NOAA gets the money to “tell us the weather”. NASA has no such specific thing. After Apollo it got money to “do space research”. That is a wide topic. Not something that you can asses that easily like you can DoD (Did they win?). Now they have new target. “go to the Moon”

The Moon part is more specific, but the way they are doing it is not long term. They are the government. If anyone can look long term it’s the government. Are they? Where is the ISRU in those plans? Where is reuse?

No, they are the only sane and realistic means to get to LEO. From LEO to other orbits you don't have to use chemical reactions (which are limited) for energy. You can use NEP, SEP, NTP, STP,..

I actually like Soyuz TMA, because it is a better design. The price is just a bonus.

Orion has two sections. First has tanks and everything else and gets dumped. Second is a large crew section. That part has everything needed for medium term (days) survival and a big shield with parachutes to return the crew safely to Earth. It can return from TEI, land, escape from exploding booster,.. it’s a solid design.

Soyuz TMA has three sections. First has tanks and avionics like in Orion. The second is a small crew section. The third is a lightweight medium size crew section with everything needed for medium term (days) survival. Since Soyuz TMA can dump most of the “medium term” stuff before it enters Atmosphere, it can have smaller shield and smaller parachutes. It still can do TEI, land, escape from exploding booster.. it is a superior design, since you need smaller rocket to put the whole thing into LEO.

Soyuz TMA weights 7 MT. How much does an Orion weigh?

And there is another thing that I like about the Russians. They have “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” policy. Since there have been no major advances in rocketry in the last decades, they use the same thing as they did before. Soyuz has flown 1700 times. They keep upgrading it, but it’s the same basic design. That means the whole design and tooling has been paid long time ago. They can build them cheaply since they can afford to build them cheaply. They are not perfect in their manufacturing, but their philosophy is good. It’s not like they are short of money right now, yet they will not even spend money to build Kliper. Why should they? Just build one more Soyuz for peanuts. You need 6 people in LEO? Send two ships. Problem solved.

They kept Mir operational for 200 million $ per year. What can NASA do with 200 million $?

You start it by:

- building enough infrastructure for a LOT of people
- building transport system from LEO to Mars that can transport a LOT of people cheaply and safely

Since none of these two things are achieved by DRM III, you basically start by designing everything new and throwing everything from DRM away. Good start, right?

It depends on how you look at the word "valuable". If the cost of extraction is less then the value of the product then it is valuable. If the cost is more, then it is “worthless”. Value is defined by supply and demand. More supply, lower the price and value. More demand, higher the price and the value.

But you can’t look at the Phobos dirt from the Earth perspective. You have to look at it from: “how much would it cost to bring this material from Earth”. And since the cost of everything delivered to LEO is more than its weight in gold, that means everything is very “valuable”. Even the dirt that has few percent of metal in it is valuable if you can get it without too much trouble. At least you have enough energy in space (sun).

If you can get your iron from some metallic asteroid, then your dirt is worthless. If you can’t it is very valuable, because you would need that much energy to extract the same amount of metal from the “dirt”. So, what your fictional Phobos mine would extract depends on what else is going on in space. If nothing else is going on, then it will extract everything. If a lot, then only water and maybe carbon to make propellant.

What if, you became a CEO of a company, that would get 15 Billion $ subsidy (adjusted for inflation) for the next 50 years. That money could be spent on anything, as long as it is connected with space. You could use any launcher or technologie that is already developed (no matter which country has it), could develop any new launcher, new propulsion technologies,..

You could do anything in space and any profit you made, you could reinvest. After 50 years, you would be on your own and would have to support everything without any new subsidies, only the profits from space operations.

What would you do? What problems do you see in plans made by others?

Orion is not too big. It allows either NASA or the Russians to support the full 6 man crew of the ISS. If anything, the ISS is too small. Even the Orion with tanks full of propellant (otherwise needed for Moon mission) would not be “wasted” if the Orion would use it to raise ISS orbit. That would allow the progress/ATV to carry less propellant and more supplies. NASA could then “barter” Orion’s propellant for deliveries onboard of ATV (it could then fly with less propellant and with more dry cargo).

NASA can deliver 6 crewmembers from Earth and return them back. Soyuz can deliver only 3, but the Russians are working on extending on-orbit life of a TMA to one year. That way they could always keep two docked on the ISS with flights every 6 months to replace the oldest one. And there is no way the Russians will stop their flights, since it is the only destination in their manned space program at the moment. That way the number of crews on ISS could easily be expanded to 12 if some of the crews stayed more than 6 months. One Orion could come every 6 months and change 6 crews and one Soyuz could come every 6 months to change 3 crews. At times there would be more people on board, but there would always be guaranteed 12 seats for return to Earth. Extra “tourists” flights would add extra flexibly for crew transfers.

The problems with ISS stem from the limited number of crews there now. They are only able to keep ISS working and nothing else. The size of the crew is limited by the supplies (food, water, oxygen, clothes,..) right now, but this could be solved by more flights and preferably better recycling. They could (gasp!!) grow food in space. That would give everybody the confidence and practice that it would work outside of the LEO on a long term missions. They would simply first test it on ISS, work out the bugs. That would actually be something usefull for a change.

So, even if Orion/Ares I would cost more than the Soyuz TMA, it could carry more people and do more things. And since ISS will become “national laboratory” there is no way it will be deorbited in 2016 with nothing that would replace it. If some parts become too old, they can always replace them.

Report for the launch of a manned Soyuz TMA from French Guyana.

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/gsp/c … 7030FR.pdf

ESA would have to build ground handling and transport equipment for Soyuz TMA with the price tag of 40 M euros. It would also have to organize sea rescue capabilities in the case of an abort. Other than that, there are no tehnical problems for a Soyuz TMA from Guyana.