New Mars Forums

Two questions:

1. What about the 2x2 cubes which are inside the 3x3? You state there is a total of 28 cubes, a perfect number. But 1 + 8 + 27 makes 36, a perfect number. What about that? Or is that mathematic relativity the real bottom of special and general relativity?

2. Our alphabeth counts 26 characters, but Greec counts 24, Russian 33 (or so), Swedish 28, Chines, Japanese I do not know but much more. What about that?

About superstring: If i've right understood Hawking it's also possible that there are 10 string-dimensions. Hawking proposes extremely curved 6 dimensions that shut themselves to a futile space-time-like somewhat. The remaining 4 dimensions form our spacetime. What about that??

I've not read very precisely, but I've just read Hawking, and he explains something about the unification of the four forces. (Gravity, electromagnetism, weak force and strong force, not sure if this is correct English). Unification of electromagnetism and weak force is nearly obtained, unification of this force with the strong force seems reasonable, unification of gravity is yet speculative, but it could be possible. If unification of these powers is possible, technics can be imagined to convert electromagnetic force into gravity and create 'virtual masses' maybe also negative ones. We'll see.

This makes space-flight a more interesting job.

I don't think our procedure will matter, when they are able to come to us, they will also have their procedure. There are yet stories about UFO with capture's and so on, difficult to verify. Yet I don't think our procedure will matter. We have to choose to go to them or to run away. I think it doesn't matter much we do the one or the other.

According to the website, one Proton was enough to boost the Soyuz to the Moon. I don't know the launch-cost of a Proton, but comparing to the Soyuz-launch it should somewhat more expensive, about $40 ?

The stuff required for the flight will also cost. I don't think $50 million will be enough.

BTW: The astronaut and cosmonaut that leave the ISS have to go with the space-tourist to fly around the Moon. A tourist with 2 taxi-drivers?

I´m a little surprised that the volumetric Oxidizer to Fuel ratio is less than 1 to 2 while for stoichometric burn (which gives about the best result with this combination) the  volumetric ratio is  about 1  to 1 (a little more oxidiser). What would be the explanation?

Mabe for some manouvres there´s only hydrazine used? (Can be used as monopropellant.)

Yeah, non-metric properties can drive you crazy, I think. I think they meant  American Gallons (It´s NASA) and  the volume should be 200 l or dm3 or .2 m3.  Maybe the tank is not a perfect cilinder. The  thicknes of the  wall, some places .02 inch it is .5 mm. Yet I can imagine more about the  tanks.

Beside that, I can´t imagine the isp of such an  engine is useful. The exhaust is a powder, so the Isp is low.

Copying a Zond is launching a Proton-rocket with the stage needed for the Soyuz (or manned Zond) to make a shot around the moon. This requires just 7 days and there's no landing ar even no orbit. Cost's will be higher due to more hardware and the extra cosmonauts that have to be paid vfor their taxi-tour. But eventually their mission can be fruitfull for other reasons. If this cannot, then the moon-tourist has to pay the whole smash, I guess about $100 million. I think there are candidates.

For me as psychologist, I think the most important factor is the crew in the cramped space. People have to live together without any possibility for distance. Also the small variety of sensory stimuli. I don't know exactly what are the bio-psychological effects of microgravity, but I don't have the impression they are severe. I think lack of sleep, which was also reported on Apollo, is more due to the lack of a day-rythm, that is not maintained by the natural way of sunrise-sunset. This is the same reason that depressions occur in northern scandinavia. Melatonine is in some sense responsible, but it's not sure that's the whole story. I think a day-rithm with regulation by light is very important, more than artificial gravity in this case.
Beside that, I think the stress could be severe, when there are problems in deep space. I'm afraid this factor is underestimated.

The Nikolayev effect: I think Soyuz 9 was the crew that suffered most from weightlessness ever. Nikolayev broke two duration records. Interesting cosmonaut.

I think unavoidable risks like cancer the best remedy is to shorten the mission: That's why I prefer the via-Venus design. The total time is less than 2 years. Most of the older designs do this mission.

The risks not only become less by shortening the mission, the expected time to handle troubles decreases also. So this is a kind of quadratic dependence of risks and duration.

Luigi -- that was also the name of the green guy Scott and Irwin met on the Moon!!

I can't find Earth in the poll