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Well I didn't think there were so many coming up. They better get a move on as there are only 9 months to go!
There's only one Heavy launch specified here - for June 2022...
https://ihrpoe.co.in/spacex-launch-schedule/
Another Defence Department load.
Louis,
Maybe so, but it's a real rocket that's been to space and there are 5 Falcon Heavy launches scheduled for 2022.
I was referring specifically to FH9, my point being that there aren't a load of FH9 rockets lying in some warehouse ready to go. I suspect if you really wanted an FH9 launch you might find it has a very long lead-in time and you'd find there were all sort of cancellation and substitution clauses in the contract. I don't believe the FH9 is being pursued as a commercial proposition by Space X - it was a great PR success, that is all.
No, Louis, the launch costs are not "notional". They're a matter of public record.
Soyuz 2.1 can deliver up to 8,200kg to LEO at a cost of $4,268.29/kg for comparison purposes. Soyuz is cheaper than most American rockets before they hike the prices to fund their crumbling space program. Ditto for the Chinese rockets. Ariane is either on-par or more expensive than comparable American rockets.
Except for commercial satellites, governments are the most frequent customers. Sometimes they bid contracts because they want the lowest costs and sometimes they bid based upon track record or national pride or other things that don't have much to do with getting the job done at the lowest possible cost to the tax payers.
The $150M that SpaceX charges US DoD for a national security launch is due to the fact that the US government refuses to purchase launch insurance for their missions. To compensate, the service providers purchase insurance at steep rates to cover their rear ends if something goes wrong. Naturally, the tax payer foots the bill. If a corporation had to foot the bill, that otherwise intractable problem would be resolved the very next day.
ULA and the US government painted itself into a corner to "assure" the availability of a rocket for national security launches.
The solution has always been to mass manufacture rockets from cheap materials, make the boosters reusable as SpaceX already has, and to make the upper stage as cost-efficient an expendable proposition as is feasible.
All the SSTO nonsense that's had money thrown at it for decades has utterly failed to produce anything usable, much less something less costly than a two-stage conventional orbital class rocket using an energy-dense booster fuel and a high-Isp upper stage (LCH4 or LH2).
Two stage rockets with reusable boosters or engines are here to stay. Whether an upper stage that has to do a reentry will ever be as cost-effective as SpaceX is hoping remains to be seen. I certainly hope it is, but let's see where that takes us.
The use of nearly any kind of steel will always be cheaper than Aluminum or Magnesium alloy and Carbon Fiber composite. The engines are forever and always the most expensive subsystem to manufacture. The propellant tanks, if made using robots on an assembly line, wouldn't cost much more than the tonnage of base material consumed. The CFRP tanks that Rocket Lab makes for Electron are already made that way- 12 hours total fabrication time vs 400 hours of hand-layup work. If they used Lamborghini's "Carbon Forging" technology, that could be reduced to mere minutes.
SpaceX knows a thing or three about complex mass-manufacture, so I expect tankage fabrication times to be reduced to a minor footnote in the fabrication cost breakdown structure in the next 5 years or so. Similarly, the steel balloon tanks that ULA makes for Centaur are a minor fraction of the fabrication and assembly time of the machined Aluminum core stage fabrication time.
Rocket Lab Electron is 300kg to LEO at $25,000/kg. They seem to have a crazy amount of launch facilities overhead baked into their launch costs, though. Firefly Alpha, a very similar rocket, is 1,000kg to LEO at $1,500/kg. Both rockets use very similar technology sets. So, that's how cheap robotically-fabricated CFRP propellant tanks and 3D-printed engines can make a LOX/RP-1 rocket. Both rockets cost $100M to develop, so that's your "price of entry" for playing in the orbital space flight market. For comparison, Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne cost $700M to develop, can deliver 500kg to LEO at a cost of $12M, so $24,000/kg (not much better than Electron).
Moral of the story?
Big rockets cost less money per kilogram delivered to wherever, because the cost to design and fabricate any kind of reliable rocket is quite high, the materials and propellants are all relatively cheap by way of comparison, and what you're really paying for is salaries and facilities. The rockets are almost an afterthought. Elon Musk was absolutely correct when it said that "the machine that builds the machine" is the most complex and expensive part of the manufacturing process.
Isn't the FH9 price a bit notional. How many orbital flights have there been? 2 maybe 3?
SpaceX lists the 2022 price for 22,800kg to LEO for $67M aboard Falcon 9 (expendable), or $2,938.60/kg of delivered payload.
SpaceX lists the 2022 price for 5,500kg to GTO for $67M aboard Falcon 9 (reusable), or $12,181.81/kg of delivered payload.
SpaceX lists the 2022 price for 8,000kg to GTO for $97M aboard Falcon Heavy (reusable), or $12,125.00/kg of delivered payload.
SpaceX lists the 2017 price for 68,000kg to LEO for $150M aboard Falcon Heavy (expendable), or $2,351.10/kg of delivered payload.
ULA lists the 2016 price for 8,900kg to GTO for $153M aboard Atlas V 551 configuration, or $17,191.01/kg of delivered payload.
ULA lists the 2016 price for 18,814kg to LEO for $153M aboard Atlas V 551 configuration, or $8,132.24/kg of delivered payload.
The SpaceX prices are for brand new build rockets. SpaceX charges $12M less for a refurbished rocket, or $55M. GTO prices are for new build reusable configuration vehicles. LEO prices are for fully expendable configuration vehicles.
ULA only flies expendable rockets, so all of their rockets are brand new at the time of launch.
The supply of Russian-made RD-180 engines will be gone within a couple of years (all existing RD-180 engines within our supply chain are allocated to upcoming launches) and unlikely to ever return to production due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, so Atlas V will be forced into retirement as ULA's new Vulcan launch vehicle takes its place. Vulcan uses American-made Blue Origin LOX/LCH4 engines, rather than Russian-made RD-180 engines, a similar but new GEM-63XL solid rocket strap-on boosters as Atlas V's GEM-63 boosters (significantly higher thrust but shorter burn time by 10 seconds), and a similar but new Centaur-derived upper stage with 2 RL-10 engines. First launch of Vulcan-Centaur is scheduled for 2022. Payload to LEO is anticipated to be 27,200kg to LEO, 26,200kg to ISS, 14,400kg to GTO.
National Security Launch requirements are 6,800kg to LEO, 17,000kg to polar, 8,165kg to GTO, and 6,600kg to GEO. I believe both Falcon 9 Block 5 and Vulcan Heavy (Vulcan with 6 GEM-63XL strap-on solid rocket boosters) meet or exceed those requirements when flown in expendable mode, with the possible exception of GEO payload tonnage for the Falcon 9 Block 5. Falcon Heavy exceeds all requirements when flown in expendable mode. There are no other active launch vehicles certified for national security launches. Antares and all other smaller launch vehicles fall woefully short of US DoD requirements.
Antares 230+ is approximately $85M per launch and thus far is used exclusively for launching Cygnus resupply spacecraft to ISS. Antares also uses Russian-made RD-181 engines, now unavailable due to the war in Ukraine, and it delivered a 7,689kg Cygnus spacecraft payload to ISS on 19 February, 2022- the heaviest payload lifted to date. That works out to $11,054.75/kg. The launch vehicle is supposedly capable of lifting 8,200kg to LEO in its present configuration, which works out to $10365.85/kg.
I don't think so. He was still into face painting when nearly 30.
Canadian Prime Minister is Generation X. Born December 25, 1971 (age 50). Whether he's mature and able to handle the duties of Prime Minister is debatable.
Will there be the same settlement hierarchy on Mars as on Earth?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16Da9bBBYvU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKT7cSFf2ic
Musk seems determined to create a city first, which is not normally how things happen on Earth (unless a Government decrees the building of a city).
I think what a river is to settlement on Earth so a central Life Support Infrastructure will be on Mars. This will mean people tend to congregate in large settlements ie cities. It will be a matter of economies of scale. The Mars City will be able to deliver life support in all its forms cheaply.
It is quite possible that on Mars we will see far fewer "towns". Settlements will tend to fall into three categories:
1. Large urban settlements ie cities with one huge megacity where most Aresians will live.
2. Mining settlements - that might equate to villages in the hierarchy but they will be highly focussed on the work task and not really be settlements enabling family life.
3. Individual isolated dwellings. One can imagine homesteaders with agricultural facilities, sending their produce to the main urban settlements.
I see less need for small or large towns, villages or indeed hamlets. However tourist locations e.g. Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris may have small or large towns built on tourism.
Very true.
We have to accept that the putting humanity on Mars is a venture into the unknown.
As you observe, we are home to billions of bacteria, will these take up residence in the general environment of Mars?
How will our immune systems respond? Do we need to stimulate them artificially by ensuring Mars residents are exposed to low pathogen loads. If we don't do something like that might the Mars community become highly vulnerable to diseases brought from Earth?
How far are bacteria important to soil on Mars?
There are lots of questions and I don't think we have the answers yet.
Mars maybe but humans are not and after a 6 to 8 month journey we will have plenty of bacterium to spread to mars.
"Mars is also a sterile and lifeless environment" - think that needs a "possibly" somewhere.
Interesting. Changes in gut bacteria are making it more difficult for human beings to digest fibre. These changes are associated with high rates of degenerative disease. Worse still, as western diets become multi-generational, healthy bacteria are not easy to restore, many are actually at risk of going extinct. Even if we adopt healthy diets, there is a point of no return with this problem.
http://m.nautil.us/issue/30/identity/ho … -evolutionMars is a new beginning in so many ways. On the one hand, we have the opportunity to change our diet to be more compatible with this new and challenging environment. Maybe there will be health benefits along the way. Unfortunately, Mars is also a sterile and lifeless environment. There are no bacteria there that we do not bring with us. This raises the risk of poor gut health and degenerative disease. More research is clearly needed.
Autism diagnosis has tripled since 2000 in the USA. Tripled!
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2020/us-au … cdc-report
Is it really your contention that there was such ignorance of autism a mere two decades ago that doctors were under-diagnosing it by 200%?
I don't think that's credible.
This is another reason why I am an Elon fan!
It's not ideology, it's market analysis.
If you are going to quote figures, it's best to give links. I don't recognise the figures you are quoting. Of course you might be quoting irrelevant figures ie the historical cost of green energy. That's of no consequence. What matters now is how much will it cost for whoever to replace their existing power generation system with a new one.
I love the way you nukies lie! Nuclear power stations do not provide 100% solutions. They need downtime maintenance like nearly every other system and that can be v significant. Depending on their coolant systems extreme weather effects can cause them to close down. So let's get away from the nonsense idea that nuclear power stations pump out electricity 24/7 all the time.
Cheap energy storage is always ten years away? Lol. Unlike nuclear fusion, energy storage is already here and you can follow the price graphs for storage costs. You will see (as with PV power) a very steep decline in cost, a product of technological advancement and economies of scale. There are some physical limits to energy storage but there are also huge potential for technical improvements and economies of scale.
Louis,
You can repeat your ideology until the cows come home, but you haven't told me anything I don't already know. I know your ideology back-to-front because it gets repeated on a daily basis like some sort of religious incantation. You may think your repetition is casting a spell or something, or perhaps praying to the "green energy" gods, but to people counting dollars spent per kWh delivered, well... They just think it sounds like more ideological malarkey. The issue is entirely related to the reality of achieved results, not the idea itself. Ideas are great, but then there's objective reality.
Cheap energy storage is always 10 years away, and it always will be, in the exact same way that fusion energy is always 20 years away. Lithium-ion battery storage is over $100/kWh. Iron-air batteries will theoretically decrease the storage cost to $20/kWh. Reality has never matched theory, but don't let that get in the way of a bankrupt ideology. Solar or wind plus battery storage is already over $100/kWh MORE THAN NUCLEAR. Nuclear provides a 100% solution without a half dozen complete backup power plants or storage units that all cost money to operate, whether they're generating revenue from usage or not. That means you, the consumer, WILL pay for those assets, because that's how Economics 101 works.
It is very likely that it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference how theoretically cheap solar could become since it utterly fails to provide ANY energy 75% of the time. Since we know that solar panels affixed to the surface or a rotating planet will forever and always stop producing any energy at least 50% of the time, that means storage is always required. Lithium-ion battery storage is currently over $100/kWh. You and I will have long since been dead and buried before any type of battery stores power for $1/kWh.
It makes no difference what technology might be. National energy grids are not run on "might bes", "could one days", or "will theoretically bes". London's electricity costs are already well in excess of what nuclear actually costs to build and operate.
You buy a nuclear reactor every 50 to 75 years. You buy new solar panels every 20 to 30 years. You buy new batteries every 10 years. All that stuff requires energy to make and money to buy (and lots of it). Someone is going to pay for it. That someone will be whomever is purchasing electricity from the power plant operator. If you get your electricity from the electric grid, then that someone will be you.
Stop telling me about theory and start showing me tangible results where something actually costs less than nuclear power after all the ifs / ands / buts / wheretofores are taken into consideration. If you can't, then stop regaling us with fantasies.
Nothing in what you write is an argument against vaccine causation.
The first thing you have to do is explain the potential causes of the "autism epidemic". Alternatively you have to deny there has been an autism epidemic. It might be that as aluminium has been withdrawn from vaccines (why? no reason?) we will see a decline in the autism epidemic. But equally it may be that playing Russian roulette with the brain through multiple vaccinations with or without aluminium being involved is dangerous to infants.
I'm open to debate and research on this. Sadly the Big Pharma-corrupted medical establishment are not. They just repeat Animal Farm type slogans: "Vaccines safe, vaccines good, multiple vaccines even better".
Scientists identify overgrowth of key brain structure in babies who later develop autism
researchers from the Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS) Network, used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to demonstrate that the amygdala grows too rapidly in infancy. Overgrowth begins between six and 12 months of age, prior to the age when the hallmark behaviors of autism fully emerge, enabling the earliest diagnosis of this condition. Increased growth of the amygdala in infants who were later diagnosed with autism differed markedly from brain-growth patterns in babies with another neurodevelopmental disorder, fragile X syndrome, where no differences in amygdala growth were observed.
not vaccines....
We know storage is the key issue and storage is being addressed. But even now within the limits of a green energy solution you don't need 1 for 1 back up. For one thing, hydroelectric installations (even without pumped storage) can be used effectively as storage units. Waste to energy can be ramped up when wind is low. Continental grids can compensate. And already we have lithium battery storage.
I am confident that the solutions for energy storage are already here: green hydrogen and iron-air batteries.
We will probably see a green energy solution (slightly different for each part of the world) that has as key features:
- Wind and solar as the principle means of power generation. (Probably accounting for something like 80% of all power)
- Geothermal, heat pumps, tidal, wave, sea current, energy from waste, biofuels and osmosis power being used as supplementary power sources.
- Lithium batteries being used for short term storage up to 2 days.
- Green hydrogen, hydroelectricity and iron-air batteries being used for longer term storage, to cover worst case weather scenarios that happen (low wind and low solar).
It won't happen overnight of course. This change may well take 30 years. But once the economics of green energy dominate power generation there will be no point in pursuing other power sources.
It is very likely PV power generation is going to get down to the 1 cent per KwH mark. No other system will be able to compete with that. We might see wind get down to 3 cents per KwH. All that is required to make this really work is a relatively cheap energy storage system. If you can get green hydrogen stored power down to 20 cents per KwH, you have a workable system.
The reason that wind power probably isn't that useful for Texas, is that for every MW of installed wind generating capacity, a MW of GT plant must be built to back it up when wind isn't blowing. So you end with higher capital costs and higher operating costs. But the wind turbines may save some fuel cost. Basically wind power is natural gas power, with wind turbines marginally reducing the fuel bill. At the expense of inflating all other costs, given that you are paying for two power plants instead of one. Renewable energy looks affordable in isolation. But it is rarely used in isolation. Storage will not help the situation, because a storage system is really just another kind of power plant that uses intermittent electricity as fuel. So you are stuck with two power plants and two sets of capital and operating costs again.
We definitely need machines like this on Mars from Sol 1.
My understanding is that 3D printing is used extensively in F1 racing now. That would suggest that issues over metal strength have been resolved.
YouTube videos
Phillips Corp: Now Introducing Phillips Additive Hybrid Powered by HaasMeltio:
3D Printed Metal Single-piece Axial Compressor Blisk - Meltio Engine Robot Integration3D Printed Metal Engine Manifold for Motorsport - Meltio Engine Robot Integration
Meltio Engine Robot Integration | Large-Scale Metal 3D Printing Explained
Meltio Engine CNC Integration | Hybrid Manufacturing Explained
Think of it this way: Kamala Harris is the person who will or won't say "Go Launch".
Remember, the Dems hate Musk. He is everything they despise: White male heterosexual South African, individualistic, entrepreneurial and a non-woke person who is cool with the kids.
U.S. FAA extends environmental review of SpaceX program in Texas to April 29.
The FAA noted that completing the environmental review does not guarantee a vehicle operator license will be issued, which must also meet FAA safety, risk and financial responsibility requirements.
The FAA said it "is currently reviewing the Final (Programmatic Environmental Assessment) and completing consultation and coordination with agencies at the local, state, and federal level."
The FAA is deciding whether the planned build-out in Texas poses a significant environmental impact to the area - including an adjacent wildlife reserve - and must therefore undergo a far more extensive study before expanded operations at SpaceX's rocket production facility and spaceport in Boca Chica can be licensed.
Even in a "worst-case" scenario, in which a full environmental impact statement were required or legal wrangling over the issue threatened to drag on, Musk said SpaceX has a fall-back plan.
The company would shift its entire Starship program to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where SpaceX already has received the environmental approval it needs, Musk said.
Such a move would cause a setback of six to eight months, he added.
The concern is the site growth....
No, I wasn't advocating for this - just pointing out that you don't need lasers. The advantage definitely lies with the defenders on Mars. The invaders will have given away their position for six months. Mounting a large expeditionary force from Earth sufficient to overwhelm a colony of 10,000 would be prohibitively expensive. Probably only a few Starship equivalents could be afforded as part of an armed invading force.
I think it would be easiest for the Mars Republic to immediately disable the invaders on landing. I think the most effective weapon would be something that generated disturbing vibration which would make unloading of the invaders' rocket impossible and disrupt life on board. So something that could send high energy sound waves towards the landed rocket.
I suspect any invading force would simply surrender within a few hours. If the invader rocket was capable of firing explosive shells etc at Mars units, then I think after a warning you would deploy drones in considerable numbers to destroy their craft. There would unlikely be any survivors from such a drone attack. That would only be in extremis. But are Earth States really going to send war rockets to take on the Mars colony?
If a Mars Republic were to be established in the way I suggest, I think war would be very unlikely to break out. There would be tensions but not necessarily war. The USA would likely play along with a Mars Republic that had at its core Space X involvement. They wouldn't necessarily recognise the Mars Republic's authority but they would be happy for NASA to use the Republic's facilities, maybe providing a platform for further prestigious exploration of the outer solar system. The Republic would I am sure license lots of scientific expeditions by Earth states. Maybe a licensing system wouldn't be required - it would simply be declared that purely scientific expeditions of under 50 people were allowed. What it would not do is allow Earth States to set up their own colonies without prior approval of the Republic. No doubt some Earth States would test the boundaries but as long as the Mars Republic was growing at the sort of rate envisaged by Musk, then their colonies are still going to be puny by comparison. The Mars Republic can exert its own pressures e.g. declaring a PV field or other energy facility in that area un authorised.
A Mars Republic growing to 10,000, 100,000 or a million will just be too big for Earth States to challenge in my view.
I would have thought a rocket with an explosive system on board would be the most effective way of destroying incoming spacecraft. But if it is a limited expedition of anything up to 1000 people. I think an established Mars Colony of say 10,000 would have no problem preventing them being able to operate after landing. Essentially you would attack their energy system, whatever that was, whether nuclear power or solar or whatever.
Wait. I thought you wanted to keep war *off* Mars? And now you're advocating for it as a matter of course?
Or do you just think that they'll accept being slaughtered?
There are huge numbers of Arabs living in London and even more followers of Islam in the UK (millions now)!
Musk is a trinational. His place of residence does not affect that.
It's not at all clear that American laws apply on Mars. Via the Outer Space Treaty the USA has relinquished any claim to the land of Mars, so it's not at all evident that whatever happens on that land on Mars can be subject to US law. US Courts are known as being very aggressive when it comes to extending jurisdiction to other countries on Earth but this is another planet and it could within a few years be a planet with a self-governing entity. Musk has stated previously he hopes Mars will be a democracy. It can hardly be a democracy if it's ruled by the USA, without representation in Congress (remember your own history!). Other Earth based countries will be highly suspicious of any attempts by the USA to extend their legal authority to the planet. There might be some tenuous hold over US Citizens but Musk is not intending to limit colonisation to US citizens. Why should a French citizen be subject to American laws while living in a self-governing transnational community on Mars, on land that the USA has formally relinquished all claim to?
Louis,
Does Elon Musk live in Canada or South Africa?
Yes, his companies are registered in America. That makes them American corporations, subject to American laws.
Since all of SpaceX's technology was funded in part by the US government, that government gets to decide what he can and cannot do with the technology.
You're right, I don't understand Arab culture. Neither do you, I suspect, since you live in the UK.
No, you really can't overcome technical problems with money alone. No amount of money can make people choose to devote their lives to a specific task. That's been proven again and again and again. You should probably ask the Chinese about why you can't simply "copy success". Why can't they make a jet engine that lasts as long as our jet engines do? They have plenty of money and engineering talent to throw at the problem, over many decades at that, but they still haven't come up with a home-grown jet engine design that comes close to matching something that General Electric or Pratt & Whitney or Rolls Royce produces.
We have nuclear fission power but all such power systems to date have been very expensive. It's much more expensive than gas - about twice as expensive. Whether smaller automated fission reactors can be developed remains to be seen. If they were and they could be buried in the Earth, with very secure monitoring and anti-terrorist defences, then they might operate more cheaply. But I haven't yet seen anything that is past the experimental phase.
Fusion power remains where it always has been - 20 years away.
Green energy and green energy storage are here now, and getting cheaper every year. Once storage is sorted then green energy can go toe to toe with nuclear and I think we will find that nuclear power remains just too expensive to be viable in the long term.
I'd like to launch this new topic with a specific idea that arises from the work of Calliban in the "Nuclear is Safe" topic, and a comment by a member of Reddit.
I know that some in this forum are skeptical of Reddit, but in my experience, everything I have seen is suitable for PG 13 audiences, so I'm giving the comment the benefit of the doubt.
The subject of the conversation was the possibility that nuclear fusion may never be achieved, if the mechanism is magnetic confinement.
Ma Nature provides only ** one ** example of safe fusion production, and that is achieved using Gravity Field Confinement.
It would appear that humans are some way distant from achieving successful Gravity Field Confinement.
That noted, the comment I'm thinking about observed that humans have been successfully harnessing nuclear fusion since 1952.
An interesting space propulsion system was proposed in the 1950's.
Apparently the idea itself was published even earlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_O … ropulsion)
The concept of ** this ** post arises from the work of Calliban, who has reported thinking about using very ** small ** atomic devices to generate propulsion for space craft. The small size of power packages is suggested by the work of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the United States.
Tiny fusion packets are compressed and ignited by powerful laser beams, in the national ignition facility at Lawrence Livermore .
In a recent post, Calliban reported that his studies seem to indicate that power packets must be larger than those used at Livermore, if there is hope of achieving useful propulsion.
Since we know that small nuclear explosions are possible (given production of atomic artillery during the Cold War), the only question that Calliban may be addressing is: Where is the sweet spot? Artillery shell sized explosions would generally be regarded as too robust for a commercial power facility, or for a space craft. It remains to be seen whether a marble sized package (about a centimeter in diameter) might perform well enough to be tested by experiment.
However, for the purpose of ** this ** post, I'll toss out the suggestion that a sufficiently ** small ** power packet might be able to drive a (very large) piston, in a modern equivalent of the 1890's era one cylinder steam and gas engines.
Here is a YouTube video that shows the restored 1917 Snow Machine at Coolspring Power Museum in Pennsylvania.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3nvPQPR9ko
What I am imagining is a version of this machine, adapted for small atomic packages such as those Calliban is studying.
The exhaust would be radioactive, so it would be captured, cooled and processed for long term storage.
However, if production of the power packets is reliable, then operation of the machine itself would be reliable.
The machine would inevitably become radioactive, so it too would end up in whatever solution is found for disposal of radioactive waste.
(th)
Covid vaccines have failed everywhere which is why mandates are being removed just about everywhere. The idea that you can vaccinate people three or four times a year to keep up with this evolving virus is not credible.
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the … lready?s=r
Recent studies of medical errors have estimated errors may account for as many as 251,000 deaths annually in the United States (U.S)., making medical errors the third leading cause of death. So health care, however well intentioned. is no guarantee of freedom from harm.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28186008/
I'll wager my 20 years in health care and lab systems against your dumb word vomit.
You are a twat. Anyone that thinks you know what you are talking about is mistaken. You are quite literally what is wrong with a world full of people with a command of literacy but a lack of education.
American, Canadian and South African I believe...
His company is registered in the USA I understand.
But Musk has made it pretty clear that his Mars community will be self-governing operating under its own laws, not those of the USA.
You really don't understand the culture of the Arabian region. All the countries I referenced seek to promote the Islamic religion - they are all completely explicit about that. They have very little interest in "scientific curiosity" for its own sake.
I made clear it wasn't simply a question of money. But with enough money you can begin to overcome the barriers to a successful mission. If UAE want to make their project a reality they would probably have to pay incredibly high salaries to the sort of people who can make it happen. But they don't have to be first. Why not wait until Space X solve all the problems and then just copy their solutions?
Louis,
When last I checked, Elon Musk is an American.
The governments of UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar have almost zero interest in going to Mars. It's a scientific curiosity for them.
If going there was simply a matter of money, then someone would be there already. Since no human has set foot on Mars, I think we can safely conclude that merely having a lot of money to spend does not confer the capability to go there.
You can certainly attact a lot of people who want your money if you wave a bunch of it under their noses, but whether or not they're dedicated to achieving what you wish to achieve is another matter entirely. The people who work for Elon Musk don't do it for the money. They can go somewhere else and make better money while working fewer hours. That's not how his engineers get hired, though. So, no, this is not a matter of money. It never was.
I would have thought a rocket with an explosive system on board would be the most effective way of destroying incoming spacecraft. But if it is a limited expedition of anything up to 1000 people. I think an established Mars Colony of say 10,000 would have no problem preventing them being able to operate after landing. Essentially you would attack their energy system, whatever that was, whether nuclear power or solar or whatever. You could probably get them to surrender even before they deployed their energy system if you moved in quickly and just used vibration on their landing craft to prevent them unloading their cargo. Imagine being subjected to non-stop disturbing vibration just after landing as you try to adjust to the change from zero G to 0.38 G!
Ground based lasers would be an effective way of destroying an incoming spacecraft a long way out in space. Multiple lasers could increase the surface temperature of the spacecraft above boiling point. Effective range is a function of beam coherence. If there is need to destroy hardened incoming warheads, then rail guns or coil guns could be mounted on Tharsis volcanoes. Few things are more devastating to an incoming target than a lump of iron accelerated to 10km/s.
Why we would need to do any of this is another question.On Mars, the low gravity and thin atmosphere would make firearms more effective: greater range and accuracy. However, recoil would be more difficult to handle without losing balance in the weaker gravity. Maybe smaller calibre but higher velocity rounds would work better. The lower gravity would make it easier to more heavily armour space-suited personnel. Rifle bullets will be armour piercing - basically Teflon coated steel, with muzzle velocity exceeding 1000m/s. Calibre would probably be around 4mm.
Back in the 1980s there was a lot of research into the use of plastic bullets (the casing, not the projectiles). This is already standard for shotgun cartridges. It would effectively half the weight of ammunition. Does anyone know what happeneded to this line of research? Other options for boosting muzzle velocity and reducing ammunition weight, would be:
1. To inject liquid propellant into the combustion chamber, instead of solid cordite charges;
2. To use a light gas gun;
3. A coil gun or rail gun, powered by a flywheel or combustion powered linear generator.With such a thin atmosphere and no magnetic field, Mars could make use of plasma based weapons. These could fry the electronics of spacecraft or electrocute human targets.
Musk is probably going to get to Mars on an expenditure of perhaps $20 billion max. UAE, Saudi, Kuwait and Qatar can all afford that...but of course it is difficult for them to co-ordinate the technological development in the way Musk can (people plus knowledge). But if they were prepared to throw money at the project - invest say £500 billion...well, who can say. You'd be able to attract the technical expertise with that sort of money.
Louis,
I agree. The plan is not convincing. Nobody else has any plans, period. Does anybody else have closed loop life support? If not, then we can end the discussion there. Argue over the number of angels on the head of a pin all day, but it's not convincing anyone of anything. China is rapidly becoming an old folks home that can't feed their own people or keep the lights on. UAE Mars colonization? Seriously? Okay.
Definitely! Hot fresh food is best but on Mars we may need to compromise with hot prepared food imported from Earth and cold salad style food to begin with. Beansprouts are very nutritious and grow quickly, though.
One skill set we've tended to overlook , is that of COOK! If we're going to be doing hard physical tasks, having good meals will keep morale at a proper level.
I recall being on a 10 day field exercise at Fort Carson, Colorado in 1961. There was snow on the ground, we were bivouacked in 2 man pup tents, and everyone was cold and bitching about conditions. We were there during Thanksgiving, but we all had the Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner with mashed potatoes and green beans brought out to us and served piping hot. The Commanding General of the post was there to supervise that we all received a good, hot meal. That improved everyone's attitude and morale.But food and sanitation go a long way towards keeping everyone functional. Adequate and well-prepared meals, coupled with hot showers, will help maintain peak effectiveness of all involved.
Lack of Vit D from sunlight will seriously compromise your immune system.
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f … 04621ea-lq
The image just does go to show that even when all we have are a few resources that man can adapt to a Mars under ground living with near to no issues.
Man's requirements to sustain life are simple
Air, Water, food, shelter and even the smallest amount of power all while salvaging materials from the ship we came in.Calliban wrote:If colonists are prepared to live on dried foods, that are rehydrated using Martian water, then an adult consuming enough calories to maintain a stable healthy weight, can survive off of a few hundred grams of food per day. A single Starship payload of dried food, delivered every 2.5 years, could sustain about 400 people.
Our first colony could therefore be almost completely underground. We can produce oxygen by electrolysis of water, using the hydrogen liberated to reduce iron oxides to make steel. We can recycle most water and convert human wastes into feedstock for plastics and fuels. We don't actually need to start growing stuff for quite some time. But I imagine that agriculture will begin scaling up from day one.
An actual underground city can be built by pushing Martian regolith over a steel frame that is constructed on flat ground. The nuclear powered vehicles that Kbd512 introduced in another thread would be perfect for the task of pushing huge volumes of soil, continuously, 24/7/365. Building in this way would not be practical on Earth, because precipitation and ground water would make the underground space damp and uncomfortable. Rain would run through the dirt roof. Water would seep through the piled earth walls. But Mars has not precipitation and ground water is frozen. So a simple arrangement of heaping soil over a braced frame is adequate to produce a pressurised space. It would work even better if the frames could be assembled in a natural depression, as you wouldn't then need huge soil dams at the edges, to keep pressure in.
Such underground spaces need not be dark and cramped. Supporting columns can be made from thin steel or cast iron, with dampened regolith heaped into them and compressed to provide a concrete like filling. Columns like this could support a high ceiling, maybe 100m or more off of the ground, especially if the columns are braced against each other. The roof can be sprayed with plaster made from wet, fine regolith. After this dries, it can be painted with blue pigment to simulate a sky. Buildings can be constructed from simple, unfired, mud based brick within the pressurised enclosure. To introduce light, aluminium plated tubes would pass through the regolith roof. These would be capped on the inside with thick glass domes, which would transfer pressure load into the regolith overburden. The top of the tubes would be covered by thin glass, to prevent dust from entering the tube.
Nice calculations of required food levels and how to make it last.
The former democracies* should always have prioritised energy independence as a collective. Funnelling gazillions to countries like Russia and Saudi has allowed them to use that money to infiltrate and corrupt a whole series of our institutions including academia, scientific research, sport, the arts and the media (all vital to our cultural life, from which springs democratic principles).
This is why I have always stressed the vital importance of energy independence and developing green energy.
Our strategy during this world emergency should be to (a) maximise production of methane as a stop-gap and (b) develop green energy and green energy storage as our major energy source within the next decade. We need to put ourselves on a war footing to achieve this in that timescale. While iron-air battery storage looks promising in the long term, I think our safest bet is to follow the Danish plan and go for green hydrogen utility scale storage. For countries with good wind resources out at sea, this means creating energy islands out at sea.
* I use the term former democracies because many have now transformed themselves into semi-totalitarian countries where you can be imprisoned for expressing your beliefs or failing to undergo state-mandated medical procedures, where legitimate protest is violently suppressed, where elections are not conducted on a fair basis (e.g. deliberate covering up of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal by the MSM and Big Tech, keeping voters in ignorance) or where elections are actually stolen through corrupt practice.
"If America has to use force to prevent that from happening, then so be it. " The USA doesn't even have a convinicing plan to get to Mars so the idea that they will be acting as Policeman on Mars is absurd.
You might think the discussion is academic. I don't think so. Any effort to set up anythng more than a scientific expedition will be highly political.
If Musk's vision comes true, his million person city will dominate Mars and will probably have an American flavo(u)r to it.
However that may just redouble the will of countries like China and UAE to build their own colonies.
Louis,
Common consent is the best kind of consent. When you don't have to force anyone to do something at the point of a gun, that minimally confers acceptance, if not agreement as well. I don't want America to ever have an official language or official religion or official politics. We have generally accepted principles or standards of behavior, along with a comparative handful of radicals who want to turn the board over instead of playing the game like everyone else does. I happen to like the fact that you can speak any language here, have any religion or none at all, and so long as you can pass a citizenship test, you're in. You have to swear loyalty to the law and the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands, but that is the extent of our "official indoctrination". If you read the words, it's a fancy way of saying, "Do unto others as you would have done unto you." Those are words to live by. The "Golden Rule" is the gold standard for a reason.
Not one single human being has so much as set foot on Mars, so this discussion is rather academic at this point. However, whoever has the resources to go to Mars and set up a colony there is free to do so, sames as all the research stations on Antarctica, same as access to orbit around the Earth and the moon. They're not free to attack another colony simply because they can. If America has to use force to prevent that from happening, then so be it. Thus far, no scientists living on Antarctica have attacked each other, unless person-on-person violence over petty grievances counts. Basically, there's no organized violence there, and that's probably because they're all far too busy doing their work to engage in such self-destructive behavior.
The principle seems to escape all of our so-called "world leaders", and it's a funny thing, but when you give a man a job to do, food to eat, and a roof over his head, he's pretty content. Similarly, the majority of soldiers really seem to love peace. The ones who don't, well, some of them don't come back. At some point, it's really a question of "leadership in first principles".