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Some useful Science Information in the current Scientific American, What a concept. And you get the usual Monthly fix of "MAN DESTROYS NATURE"
article too. I mostly buy Discover now, because atleast it doensn't pretend
to be a deep thinking pure science mag.
Cosmic rays. Fast moving Protons, (near Speed C) Tremedous ambilty
to penetrate flesh and and destroy DNA Strands. In an 18 month
trip withou protection, 1/3 of your body would be riddled with those
cuts. Not sure if body can repair damage. Daily Dosage of
80 REM in Deep Space.
Basically they Think It's a show stopper for Long Duration Trans Earth
Space Voyages. They are Hoping...err think, that it will stop a Mars Program.
Until somebody figures out a practical Solution.
They Talk about some attempts at theoretical solutions. Among them.
Super Ionize the Hull, to repell Protons, Wont Work
Magnetic Field to Deflect Protons, anybody have a 20 Telsa Magnetic coil??
And the really shocking part, If you use water as shielding, you need a water
jacket 15 FEET thick to fully protect a human being. To protect a crew cabin
of a cylinder Of Radius 30ft & Height 30ft, why you need, 202,000+ Cu Ft of Water. How much does that weigh???. 835 tons. This is probably 10x the mass of the crew cabin itself.
So maybe we do need a battlestar galatica approach, or much faster transit times. I think their numbers are overkill. They want ZERO emissions
for their protective water jacket and that's not neccessary.
I think a combo of 6 Ft Water & 1/2 foot graphite will do the job nicely, For
mars trip that is.
This could be done with Conventional Rockets, under two conditions.
1) Reliable solid rockets that Work in Deep Space After long cold Slumber.
2) Right Alingment of planets.
3) Proper Achitecture
There was a time in the 80's when the Planets WERE alinged so that in theory
a Ship sent on an Eliptical orbit, with Perehelion being just inside A venus Orbit,
would come close to ALL the planets on the outward journey, Except for Mercury. (not that you coundn't go Perehelion near a Mercury Orbit, but THAT would be Dangerous)
The mission shipware constists of Mothership + Mutliple Planetary landers
If we conceed that a Mothership with a crew of 8 can reach the last planet in 7 years on this orbit, We must realize that the return time is 6 years for a total of 13+ years, this would break mere mortals IMO.
What is needed once the Pluto rendezvous is reached is a Much Faster Return, Aiming for a 18 month y return Jouney.
What would be needed is a Powerfull cluster of Solids Awaiting Our Explorers in Orbit about Pluto. Because You see the only time the MOTHERSHIP will Slow to Orbit a Planet will be Aphelion, close to Pluto, since it will have the lowest energy near that point it's logical to fire onboard engines at that point, to be able to rendezvous with your Return Engines.
The Landers are actually Far more difficult to design, owing to their multipurpose.
They must:
1) have Life Support for two crew, for 3 weeks.
2) survive a Solid booster Kick to push it ahead of the Mother ship, (ahead by several days Since this will add to the Exploration time.
3) Braking, Deorbit, Re-Orbit, and Speed up to catch the Mothership.
4) The Landers must Reusable/refittable by the Mothership Facilties/Crew
5) Must be able to land and operate in Temps from 40C to -280C.
The Landers to be used for a Mercury and Venus Landing, ARE NOT Part of
the Mothership complement, they are lauched separately from earth orbit,
as they are USELESS for outer planet/moon exploration. Their paths would
be timed so that Astronauts on the mothership an easily taxi to them on
the Inward journey. Before you say that building a Venus Lander is Impossible,
let me remind you that NO ONE HAS TRIED to build one, given a very good
test facility (Yes one that is under 80 atmopheres and 900F hot. I am certain
someone would come up with a solution.
For both Venus and Mercury we are talking about a few hours on their surfaces,
admitedly, flags and footprints, but let see how long before someone else tries it.
what does the mothership look like? Why it's a rotating cylinder, with the
Crews working at the ends.
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Launched in 20 segments of 20 feet each. 40% of the Mass is Water Tanks, for shielding and supplies. 20% liquid fuel. For course corrections and Pluto Orbit insertion. The Central Portion has All the 4 of the Landers, and the Engines. and
maybe most important of all, A view deck which counter rotates. (the equivalent of
periscope time on old time subs.) The majority of the sections have their own Basic Lifesupport, capacity. This means heat,water,O2/CO2 exchanger, it's all set up so that even if 40% of the sections life suport fails the crew will still survive.
Now we need a crew....GNCRevenger...did I see you Raise your hand???
Maybe The chinese could develop something the USA or Russian never did.
In the short term, rather than wait to create HLV, realy quickly.
They could design and build a......
A Long march Launched expendable Trans-LOE propulsion module.
admitedly it probably would be pretty limited in it's thrust capabilities,
Assuming it weights about as much as Shezou + Science Module.
Now assuming this module could be sent to earth orbit and to Lunar Orbit.
I think It would give the Chinese the ability to a fairly quick "Flags & Footprint"
type mission. Though because of weight limits, my guess is that
the Lunar Lander would be a tiny, one-man Type. (think Science Module Mass)
The propulsion modules would have to be powerfull enough to not only break out of
earth orbit, but also be able to deliver a Big Delta Vee, to slow down your returning Shenzou vehicle. Tricky rendezous' but practice makes perfect.
Since the Chinese can hide Mishaps and non-critical Failures, they have
greater leeway in the speed at which they shake out their Space Operations.
Once they know their Spacecraft is Operational You can combine misson
Goals and go faster than Nasa/Russia. For example they may decide
to do space walk and do docking ops.
We will clearly see if we are in race if the Chinese ramp up to do missions
at 9 month intervals. By the looks of things it seems like they are waiting
on final check outs to Place their Space Craft Production on a faster track.
They still need a Lunar insertion/return Module + LEM. I guess if they use
a One Person lander both of those systems could be combined to form one
launch unit.
But Maybe the Chinese are dreaming of Greater Glory than just a Redo
of the LUNA show. Let's see how this "Space Station" is going to look,
Could it be a Spacial Trojan Horse aimed for Mars?
After all the chinese must know by now that there is limited science and
prestige to be gained from Space Station Operations.
How about a massively reinforced Vertical tube about 20 feet in Diameter
about 5 miles Tall, Placed in the deep ocean with the interior a vacuum.
You put your capsule with a modest sized rocket engines(read: cheaper) at
the bottom of this shaft, inside a elevator car of sorts that is moved by, Tons of
Atmospheric Pressure, as water is let in at the bottom of the car.
The Vacuum is gradually reduced During the last mile up. (I know what would happen to any passengers
if there was a SUDDEN transition from a vacuum to a full atmosphere at High G's)
4 things are bad about this idea.
1) you have to Pump out the water out of tube to lauch again.
2) Crew would need to breathe an Oxygenated fluorine liquid due to the bends.
3) G forces of Bone shattering amounts I would guess.
4) How much reinforcement needed for at tube 5 miles deep under vacuum.
Well, Interms of Feasability this Concept of elevators has gone thru a new
Stage: The first few being
1) Sheer Fantasy
2) An intractable Engineering problem
3) A project for the late 21st century.
And the next stage were at is feasability studies & materials development.
But one problem remains that I have not heard dissused and solved.
It is related to meteors.
I think the Micrometeorite damage problem is solved by having many redundant
Ribbons. You just replace them after a certain time in space in rotation.
That being said, there are a few strikes by larger meteors on the earth per year that go unoticed by the public, because they explode high up. These larger
bodies are not 1nm in diameter, they are more like the size of small house.
How is your Space Elevator going to handle these larger threats. Unless statistically the threat of a stike on the ribbon mass is not worth worring about.
If these are coming from deep space and are not periodic earth crossers, you could hardly do census of them now can you.
Sorry, to not be specific or accurate, But yes, the idea was to
stack Apollo Era Hardware Capsule+OME+SaturnIVB On top of a SRB.
The idea being to avoid as much of Man-rating activities as possible.
If Budget was allocated and there was a will, maybe an unmaned test flight
could be ready in 2 1/2 years.??.
Well, let be more techincal....
The thingie that the apollo lunar missions used for trans lunar orbital insertion.
Or is it too large?
If we are talking about 14 months for a new shuttle Flight, I think we need
to look at fully Automating the Shuttle ASAP, And get going on the Stick, now.
would an Apollo designed Jupiter IIC, Stage work, If we had the Plans??
Rip some of those capsules out from the Musems, "borrow them".
Time to use those apollo guys, before they go to the Nursing homes.
Collins: "There be no shirkers on this ship (holding a cutlass)"
Fearfull crewmembers: "But were in danger"
Collins: "Do you know how dangerous a hard vacuum is?" (motioning to the airlock)
The vertical shutle derived stack I saw seemed to require Larger SRB's Are these developed yet?
This Griffin dude seems in a hurry. If we wanted to get to
Mars I can think of few better ways of speeding the
process up. Being able to hurl 330 MT into space in 3 launches is just the ticket.
I predict, (barring a "fireball" on the pad incident) A Mars
mission will be launched by 2019-2020.
Is there another alternative to the SDV concept beyong the
Usual 2 versions?
In an effort to lower costs/per mission on the 110MT version
one can ask:
Is there a way to use 4 Upgraded larger SRB's around a Reinforced ET with only two Main Engines at the bottom of the ET's. Saves the cost of 2 LOX engines. You don't need
to extend the ET size too much.
I guess it's just a matter of the payload not being damaged
by: 4 SRB's starting up, being shaken to death, and not
getting squashed by the G's it's gonna be pulling within a minute or so.
For the "Stick" configuration. Is there an Option to place
Small-LOX Boosters on the sides? I am talking about
Boosters about 1/2 the size of the Solid Booster.
Would'nt that bring up the Launch Capacity to
something closer to 30MT.?
Why do I get the feeling that when large Human settlements
are created on the moon, they will be used as the commonwealth used Australia in the 1800's.
I can imagine a judge asking a convict, "Prison or the Moon settlement?" No violent folks just white collar criminals.
Mars: Many more volunteers for those new settlements.
Is possible to have an abort-safe landing for a shuttle
derived heavy lauch stack? In order to save the payload
pod I mean.
I would think that if you had the quivalent of a Abort to
landing site type malfunction with a cargo pod it would be easier to save it, than a manned orbiter. Obcourse trying to soft land a 80-100 Ton payload without large retro rockets would be PROBLEMATICAL.
Also maybe most of the LOST $$$ would be in the SDV
rocket itself and not payload pod.
You don't need the damn tethers. Are you assuming a 1 G Effect That is not necessary. All you need is about
.3 G's A MODESTLY long ship can do the same thing by
tumbling E-to-E. If you need to get the crwe into shape for return to earth, More vigorous exercise will get the job done
Also, I did not mention it on a such a tube shaped spaceship
it is easier to put redundancies into your design.
for example: The ship can have Two thrust plants
and two indepedent Crew Modules at each end of the
ship. You could possibly do that in a tether ship but
but during an emergency as the wise HAL 9000 once said.
"I am afraid without space helmet Dave, you are going to find
that rather difficult"
The public will shut down NASA if you have essentialy
long slow death for the crew. Everyday theere would be countdown to the end of lifesupport capacity by the press.
Add to that red meat the fact that the ship and dead crew
would be unretreivable, never to be seen again, at least in
most people's lifetimes.
So yeah, for those reasons I would not send a tether-gravity
ship out there. It has the potential to end manned US missions for a Decade or two.
My guess is if the SDV does not get approved a Mars Mission
will not be attempted with the current hardware/propulsion
system technology. Here is why.
While NASA HQ may approve of most of Zubrin's Plans for
a mars mission. I doubt that they will buy into it 100%.
Me, there is no way I would Tether two spacecraft to create
artificial Gravity. I am sure NASA believes It can safely be done with high reiliability, but the problem is Public Opinion. Once the public finds out what would happen in case of "Tether Failure" there would be strong opposition to it.
I think our mars ship is going to be a ship 120 feet long by 20 feet wide. It will weigh over 450 tons, bulk weight. it will spin for gravity. with the engines and crew compartments at opposite ends.
The fewer sections that a ship is assembled from the better.
SDV could do it in 4 Launches, 4 pieces. The other EELV's
would need 7 launches/pieces. This is even a low estimate
you may need 5 SDV launches. Which converts to 9 EELV's
launches. Don't the probabilities for a mission critical launch failure go up with more launches also?
Yes, it's the Shuttle hardware but mainly the engines, SRB and ET. it's a lobotomized shuttle program and Best of all NO TILES are required.
I've seen description of Alpha Centauri Probes that seem
promising, but they are 50 years Away, or Take 100 Years
to get there.
I think we need a new aproach If we are ever to send
probes to other stars. The Problem is what I call the Retroactive Obsolescense Paradox. and goes like this..
Even a probe that take 40 years to get to a star has a good chance at being overtaken by a probe built 25 years Later, so
why not wait a few more years, decades and oops we haven't sent it yet, or ever.
One solution seems to be to make the probe as small as possible so it can be sent as fast as possible, a 20 lb probe or some such. Obcourse after shielding it with a protective cover + Internal Energy plant.
You don't have much left for PROBING.
I think the only way to attack this problem is to break up your probe into about 800 20 gram Pieces. Launched from
the Moon, These pieces could be acclerated to .25 C. one after another. I envision about 8 paralell launchers. After
compensating for the lunar rotation, once in spacethese pieces would form a matrix of 8 x 100 pieces of probeship. Then magically i.e. nano-assembly-navigation) it would being to build itself up.
Obviously you don't need all the pieces to function, since
there is a good chance some of them will get damaged en route, a healthy amount rendundance is must.
Is this not better than trying to push a 100lb probe to
.25C? if that's even possible within 25 years.
With a future ratio of 115:100 men to women and coming wave of retirees being suported by that one child policy China has problems. I have'ent mention Big Time Corruption, Bad loans to many Industries that should have folded. And for such a large country they are (fortunately for the US) natural resouces deficient.
I don't doubt that China Will become the No. 2 economy in the world I just think that their GNP will even in mid century be Half of the USA's What many folk don't understand is The Expansion of the Pacific Rim Economies will be of great benefit to all, but the US will the one to Reap the largest benefit of all. The chinese are going to be able to afford a potent military and robust space program. They won't be able to afford DOMINANT in any those endeavours
I recall the same "the USA will besurpased" mantra when the Japanese were on top in the 1980's.
New problems with Shuttle readyness. Same old Same old,
It's the foam insulation harzzard during launch. This is going
to haunt NASA as long as the Shuttle program exists. They
know what would happen if another shuttle took a mortal hit
even if the crew aborted to the ISS. End of Program.
Maybe the old ESA Lab module could be modified into a Life Boat. IF it's totaly power independent and has it's own
Life support plant maybe it could be attached to a spare
docking space on the ISS.
These Emotional arguments for saving Hubble would not
have happened had NASA Been Keen enough to see it coming.
I could see it coming, Since I was disappointed with descision
to not service it and bring it down. Once you look at what is
replacing Hubble you realize it's a Museum Piece by now.
How much better would NASA's desicsion have been received if they said they were going to send up a Module
to Kick it up to PERMANMENT ORBIT as a Space Monument.
I think a 2,000 mile High Orbit would keep Hubble around for what 100 years?
Who knows maybe then It will considered an archaelogical Reclic of late 20th century high tech.
Is it easier to make a containment Vessel for Anti-Hydrogen?
rather than Anti-Protons.
This hybrid fussion-antiproton drive is worth testing soon.
Someone needs to invent a 1 cu FT containment device.
The amount contained in each Container should be a small
fraction of the anti-matter required to mars trip.
Assume each
container has 1/50th of the anti-matter required by a Mars
trip. While It might be somewhat clumsy, it would be safer.
The anti-protons harversted would not at first need to be
placed at so concentrated an area. Even if One container
failed the amount of energy released in each should never be more than say the equivalent of a 1,000 LB bomb.
Once an on orbit ship is configured for a Mars trip, THEN
you can assemble all the little containers and send them up in
one shot.
If you do it my way you do not need a very large Mars ship
containment Vessel, because each "bit" of anti-matter already has it's containment device.
A good design for a mars ship would naturally have an EJECTION system in the fuel storage area. Once again since the Fuel is in small portions only a small portion is lost if you need EJECT a failing containment device.
The cost building the containment devices lends itself to
ecomomies of so I would expect the Per/Mars ship cost
to go down over time.
Some folks are also forgetting that a Manned Transit vechicle to Mars doesn't need to weigh 500 tons, if there are waiting
facilties on orbit there. For a One-way 30 day transit I think
a 100 ton(the lighter the better) spacecraft with for a crew of 8 should do just fine.
Well, I don't know which is more Outlandish in harversting
Anti-matter.
1) that we use Spend 500 billion dollars building the facilities
and power sources to Create Anti-matter Factories. Colliders
and such, are known ways to do this.
OR
2) Harvest if from the only natural source in our neighborhood
the Solar Flares. Flares create about 1 lb of anti-matter/emission.
Can any man-made "harvesting probe" be desgined to survive
repeated encounters with the Solar corona?
3) Create Vacuum chambers with magnetic fields to separate
anti-virtual particles from virtual ones, to keep the anihillation
from happening. Somehow I think this would cost in terms
or energy and facilities as much as using colliders. No
free lunch here either.
Not Only is the moon a harsh mistress, she's probably poor one at that.
Notes:
Even if we find some water polar craters chances are it is
bound up in the lunar soil. If 3 tons of processed lunar
soil yields 1 gallon of water, think of the energy and facilities
drain a base relying on this would suffer.
Carbon and Nitrogen are also vital base elements required by
a larger base. If we don't find these in sufficient quanities, only scientific or Mining operations(I doubt this) and a little tourism will be the moon's "payoff"
Unless someone finds Lake Superior sized quanities of water
forget the moon keeep going to Mars.