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Do people have a view on the possibility of fungal life on Mars?
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/ … e-on-mars/
It seems to me something that should be investigated asap after our arrival on Mars. The photos of the rock crevice where there is something pale growing and then disappearing is credible in my view. That's unlikely to be caused by mineralisation over a few days.
Here are some vital first steps that will help build the Mars economy and can be undertaken within the first ten years.
1. Establish a satellite post grad campus - University of Mars (UoM) - with financial backing from an alliance of top Unis across the world e.g. Cambridge, Paris, Tokyo, Bologna and MIT. They would need to invest heavily - at least 100 million dollars up front and a continuing contribution of maybe 10 million dollars pa.
The UoM would be governed by a Senate drawn from the contributing universities under a Charter issued by the Mars Corporation.
UoM would specialise among other things in geology, astronomy, physics, solar energy and engineering. If life is discovered on Mars that would of course justify a whole department to itself.
Space X or the Mars Corporation will receive large rent, transit and life support payments for enabling UoM to get to and live on Mars.
2. Partner with Space Agencies. Not just NASA, but many other agencies around the world would welcome the opportunity to send astronauts to Mars. It would be much cheaper for them to get Space X to take their astronauts, rovers and science packages to Mars, instead of trying to fund that themselves. This could be worth 100 millions of dollar.
3. Establish a PV panel factory on Mars.
It differentiates between large scale and small scale battery storage. Power wall would definitely come under small scale. It breaks down distribution by state and ownership.
The document is an "analysis" of battery use but it does not say how or who let alone where these are. I got a feeling that its made up of the cooperate ups and other power wall devices that are there as power outage prevention for its single use applications and not to back feed the grid.....
You haven't defined your terms so I am not clear whether you are talking about early missions or a mature Mars colony. Obviously a mature Mars colony will be producing its own PV system using probably 98% Mars ISRU in the production process. PV rolls are easily deployed, particularly on Mars where there is no seriously inclement weather.
I see no reason why the Mars colony shouldn't begin PV panel production within the first 10 years of a human landing. It is already a highly automated process on Earth.
Battery storage is already being used in the USA for load management - ie power up the battery during the day and then use the power at night.
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/el … torage.pdf
I read also that the cost of battery power electricity has halved over the last couple of years and now stands at 15 cents per KwH - this is getting close to commercial viability I would say. If you can halve that again to 7.5 cents per KwHe many commercial applications will become possible.
louis wrote:Deployment time for batteries is way less than for nuclear reactors on Mars. As I see it deployment time on Mars arrival will be zero because the batteries will be primed to provide electricity if required immediately on landing.
A nuclear power system on Mars does require batteries unless you are going to have separate nuclear reactors for every vehicle, every robot, every mining ouput. Also, without energy storage you are on a roll of the dice. I think that any nuclear reactor will need back up. Nuclear reactors are not guaranteed to function 100% as we know from Earth experience. It seems to me the height of irresponsibility not to have a back up system. If you have lots of individual nuclear reactors, that is less of an issue. But you will definitely be adding mass that way.
SpaceNut wrote:yes a battery can be a ripple current feature that means you are doing direct near full conversion to use with little being saved into long term storage. The power wall is basically design for that purpose with a smidge of savings but not much...
One more measurement for the wonder batteries is the volume that they take up, how much assembly time to connect them together ect....
Nuclear does not require any batteries....as the input output of energy does not stop every 6 to 10 hours as solar does.Louis,
Deploying something that weighs thousands of tons, that has to be broken up into numerous smaller units that are easier to move, if not entirely separate shipments to Mars, is objectively not faster to deploy than deploying a handful of self-contained power generating units that weigh many thousands of tons less. The key difference is that we're not trying to store power for an entire base or colony, using batteries, merely to make it through the night. An ideology-free energy production and storage solution dictates that appropriate technologies are selected. Batteries are not used anywhere on Earth to provide overnight power to a technologically advanced human civilization. Electric cars work because there are well-established electrical grids that provide 24/7/365 energy, with or without any sunlight or wind. Nothing of the sort exists on Mars. Here on Earth, we use coal, gas, or nuclear reactors to power cities and combustion engines to power land vehicles, with a smattering of light low-duty-cycle battery powered vehicles.
Yes, I think the Mt Everest ascent holiday is the closest parallel in many ways, although it will be a lot less dangerous! Another comparison is the round the world cruise where people pay similar amounts for a "once in a lifetime" holiday experience.
I do think the status thing will be a huge draw because in the status game you can't really trump "We went to the Moon this year."
Space Tourism to the Moon will be fairly popular, and will remain expensive. Similar to a guided expedition to Mt. Everest, which costs $50,000 (actually more now--this number is several years old). There will be curious adventurers at first, but it's also not going to become a family vacation destination.
It will be "the holiday of a lifetime".
There are 7 billion people on Earth. If only 1% of the population are interested in a lunar holiday that's still 70 million, let's say about one million per annum if it's a once in a lifetime thing. Multiply that by say $100,000 and that would be an annual market worth $100 billion. I'm not saying that will develop immediately but that's the sort of commercial opportunity out there.
If you could launch 50 people on a Starship bound for the moon and the launch costs $2 million, then that's a starting point of $40,000 per person. I'd then estimate the rest of the costs around $60,000 (bearing in mind there would be quite a lot of pre-holiday training and medical testing). But costs would be coming down all the time as the lunar hotel becomes more self-sufficient, growing its own food etc, using lunar water etc.
Yes, luxury facilities would be expensive but there is the revenue to cover that. Water is going to be recycled. Swimming pool water will be recycled. Supplies such as chlorine would have to be brought in.
The structures for the hotel can be built on Earth and inflated or assembled on the Moon.
Are you really saying you wouldn't enjoy a lunar holiday? I think it would be fascinating to see the Apollo lander up close and to see Armstrong and Aldrin's footprints.
EVA suits would need careful consideration. Certainly Apollo era suits would be impractical. Moon walking, lunar golf and other games, lunar exploration, bringing back your own lunar rock etc etc would all be fascinating as well as you'd get the zero G ride, and see planet Earth. Come on! It would be fantastic.
For a lot people it would be a status thing - being able to impress friends and relatives.
You'd need a high ratio of staff to guests - probably 1 staff to 3 guests or something like that. Health and safety would be a major concern. You'd need a large medical unit attached to the hospital capable of dealing with a range of emergencies - a mini hospital really.
Over the years the lunar hotel would grow into a spectacular resort with, no doubt, a large domed area.
I think people will quickly get bored with space tourism. The novelty is going to wear off as more and more people do it. And when all is said and done, it is going to be difficult and expensive to build an orbital space station with all of the facilities that one would expect of a luxury hotel here on Earth. A Lunar hotel has the same problem. Right now it is exciting to people because it is a novel idea. But once the novelty wears off, the moon is a desert without air. And building luxury facilities there will be very expensive. On a world where water must be extracted from rock where its maximum concentration is 0.1%, a swimming pool would be a very expensive extravagance. Any EVA activities are risky exercises that are also expensive. I cannot honestly see this being a profit making enterprise. It is going to cost billions of dollars to establish a small base of the moon.
Hmmm I don't see things racially, the way you do. There are plenty of white wokeists. And even tactically, if you're interested in achieving Mars colonisation, presenting it as a racial issue is definitely the worst thing you could possibly do.
louis wrote:It was wise of Space X not to offer any comment. To my mind, the lesson to be drawn is get there as fast as possible and create a sovereign republic on Mars as soon as possible. Don't give the Democrats, the UN, or the planetary protectionists time to draw breath!
This is a very narrow window of opportunity.
Agreed. The people behind the planetary protection movement are basically enemies of western civilisation, who spend life looking for ways to undermine it in any way that they can. That is what the Woke movement is all about. Non-whites looking for ways of suppressing and undermining whites. Those people are natural Democrat supporters. Zubrin approaches their arguments with logic, but the people behind it aren't interested in logic. They are interested in vandalising western achievements in any way that they can.
I couldn't see any dates mentioned.
Is that right - no timeframe as yet?
It was wise of Space X not to offer any comment. To my mind, the lesson to be drawn is get there as fast as possible and create a sovereign republic on Mars as soon as possible. Don't give the Democrats, the UN, or the planetary protectionists time to draw breath!
This is a very narrow window of opportunity.
Lunar tourism is going to be huge and another huge earner for Space X who will be first. Maybe a 14 day trip. with 5-6 days on the lunar surface. There will be a purpose built lunar hotel. Probably located reasonably close to the Apollo 11 site which will be one of the main draws. Another draw will be playing sports like golf on the moon, kitted out in an EVA space suit. Rover tours and lunar buggy rides will also be popular.
The lunar hotel will be popular with honeymooning couples.
I did try to warn you all this was coming down the line! The fact it's appearing in the New Yorker now after Kamala Harris has taken control of US Space Policy is significant in my view. This is only going to get worse. The idea of a maverick like Musk being the first person to set up a settlement on Mars will be anathema to many including China and most US Democrats.
I don't agree there is no evidence of life on Mars - there's seems to be pretty strong evidence for some sort of fungal life forms. Certainly it's an open issue at the moment.
It's definitely been stated here by someone that rockets interfere with radio transmissions as the rocket approaches landing.
Louis-
All major airports have elements of what is called the WAAS system, which is the acronym for Wide Area Augmentation System. This is composed of several strategically placed transponders on the ground to aid and assist the onboard GPS navigation system. My airplane had a Garmin 550 on board and was "WAAS enabled." This system is essential for landing aircraft to know their altitude with a high degree of accuracy. The transponders are surveyed in place with exact altitude included. GPS is great for position in map coordinates, but not good enough to land an airliner.
Well you might not like what I have to say but it's all documented:
1. There are regulatory issues with launching nuclear reactors into space.
2. There are no Mars-designed nuclear reactors available for deployment.
3. The Kiliowatt units (designed for deep space primarily, but may be adaptable for Mars) are still in a testing phase and will likely weigh in at 1.5 tons per 10Kwe unit.
4. Nuclear reactors do not provide very flexible solutions for the initial colonisation phase when we might be trying out hundreds or thousands of mining sites.
When I read discussions on this site about nuclear power it sometimes feel like they are taking place in a reality vacuum.
Thanks Tom. I won't be leaving the forum. But my contributions may become more occasional for the next 6 months.
Louis, appreciate your contribution. But you have made the same points over and over on this topic for several years. And they have been shot to pieces over and over again. What do you think will be different this time? Has the technology changed in some fundamental way that will change the outcome since the last time it was last discussed?
I'm sure we've all had the experience of being hit suddenly by wind force when driving and also seeing overturned trucks in high wind conditions. If you didn't instantly respond, maybe within a couple of milliseconds, your vehicle would slide into the next lane. Has anyone ever experimented with laser beams in directing landings? I'm thinking the rocket would lock on to the laser beams. Perhaps they are unnecessary but I am not sure what is guiding the rocket to the landing pad - is it radio transmitters or a visual idendtification performed by onboard computer or maybe both? I know we've been told here before that radio transmitters cut out as the rocket gets close to the ground. Lasers might help in course corrections. Also, I was just wondering if you had maybe 8 weather vanes around the landing pad with a chequered circular guage painted on the ground that could help the rocket anticipate wind conditions in the next few metres as it got closer to the ground. The onboard computer could instantly convert the guage readings below to wind direction(s).
There are some coastal regions that are infamous for their crosswinds. I wonder if Boca Chica is one.
For Oldfart1939 re #1184 ... Thanks for your follow up regarding electronic response time compared to physical actuator response time.
The flight computer (in the case of the Super Heavy) has a lot to ** think ** about as it manages the forces at work in descending from rapid forward motion (to deliver the first stage to staging point) to arriving safely back at the docking tower.
It can use (and I expect will receive) floods of data about atmospheric conditions at all elevations through which it will be passing.
The issue we are addressing in this recent series of (to me quite interesting) posts is what effect (if any) a gust of wind at ground level might have on a multi-ton cylinder descending at a decreasing rate might have.
The flight computer can be given information about wind conditions upwind for as great a distance as is needed to insure it can compensate so that when the vehicle arrives where the predicted wind arrives it will have canted the vehicle just exactly right so that the wind blows it back to vertical.
My guess is that the engineers managing the descent programming will have accumulated a high level of confidence based upon (by now many) successful landings of the Falcon 9 first state.
So, in specific response to your (of course correct) observation, the flight computer can (and will) move the massive thrust machinery in plenty of time so that the predicted effect of wind is exactly compensated for at each point in the descent.
That does NOT mean a wind break would not be a good idea.
And, as the StackExchange correspondents pointed out (in the posts reported earlier in ** this ** topic) the flight can be postponed if wind conditions at the landing site would exceed the safety margin for the vehicle in question.
***
In re-reading your post, I noted the observation that a "real" intelligence (a human pilot) can learn how to deal with transient events through practice.The flight assist systems that exist today (I am confident) are programmed by humans who try to anticipate what the program will have to deal with, but (to the best of my knowledge) ** those ** programs are not designed to learn. True AI systems are coming, and I would expect Elon Musk to apply them to the SpaceX division just has he has (apparently) been doing in the Tesla division.
The "learning" by each descending Super Heavy can be immediately copied to each other vessel in the fleet (by copying the entire set of bits), so the entire fleet can accumulate experience at a faster rate than any individual vessel.
The Mars connection here is that the same learning capability could be designed into Mars landing systems.
(th)
Re landing aircraft on Earth I have certainly read before now that planes can land automatically - better than pilots on average - but public perception doesn't like it. I suspect that's right: the computer will beat the average pilot but maybe not the best pilot when it comes to landing in heavy cross winds.
RE: landing under automatic control in wind turbulence. --
I am no control systems engineer, but I did have to learn enough to talk with them in order to work with them. What I think you will find is that both the gains in the system logic and the forces required to correct attitude are much larger for the wind turbulence problem than for the general hit-the-mark control problem.
These gains will have to be adaptive (the control system must "learn" what gain to use from its prior experience, and they will be a function of azimuth (larger along the wind direction, smaller at other azimuth angles).
Screw that up, and your higher wind-direction gains applied off the wind direction could easily put you into overcontrol instability with positive feedback. Plus, there is the physical dynamic reaction time lag, when you have so little time actually available in a vertical propulsive rocket landing. A control that cannot keep up is worse than no control at all.
RE: windbreaks --
Such thing might help, but there is also a downside. Wind turbulence is a spectrum that varies with altitude, and not only is generated by terrain, but also responds to changes in terrain. Obstructions also generate turbulence that often has an organization to it, so your windbreak may control the gusts, but it also generates other turbulence, sometimes an alternating vortex "street".
Going from gusty air above the the windbreak to a different turbulence type behind the windbreak is going to act to upset the balance of the vehicle as maintained by whatever automatic flight control system it may have. Have you considered that?
RE: unrealistic expectations for capabilities of automatic control systems. --
Many newer airliners now feature very nearly automatic landing control features. So far these demonstrably cannot deal with a sudden gust upset at touchdown. If they could, we would have already developed and fielded such equipment. There is no such equipment out there. The successful landings in turbulent, high-wind conditions are still hand-flown by human pilots. Ones both experienced and practiced at it.
Plus, the runways are quite wide, so that there is room to miss the centerline without leaving the pavement. And gusty cross winds are exactly why they are designed that way.
GW
Deployment time for batteries is way less than for nuclear reactors on Mars. As I see it deployment time on Mars arrival will be zero because the batteries will be primed to provide electricity if required immediately on landing.
A nuclear power system on Mars does require batteries unless you are going to have separate nuclear reactors for every vehicle, every robot, every mining ouput. Also, without energy storage you are on a roll of the dice. I think that any nuclear reactor will need back up. Nuclear reactors are not guaranteed to function 100% as we know from Earth experience. It seems to me the height of irresponsibility not to have a back up system. If you have lots of individual nuclear reactors, that is less of an issue. But you will definitely be adding mass that way.
yes a battery can be a ripple current feature that means you are doing direct near full conversion to use with little being saved into long term storage. The power wall is basically design for that purpose with a smidge of savings but not much...
One more measurement for the wonder batteries is the volume that they take up, how much assembly time to connect them together ect....
Nuclear does not require any batteries....as the input output of energy does not stop every 6 to 10 hours as solar does.
I've never doubted that nuclear power could be used on Mars for a variety of tasks, and might in fact become important. Even after humans have settled, and prior to terraformation, there will be little danger to humans from having nuclear reactors on Mars - even if things go badly wrong, we won't see milliions of people driven from their homes or thousands of square miles of agricultural land made barren in effect.
However, I really don't think it is very likely for the following reasons:
1. Solar power is going to have a head start. Musk and Space X are committed to it and there are very serious regulatory barriers to launching nuclear reactors of sufficient size to Mars.
2. Nuclear reactor stations are people-dense locations. The one thing we can be certain of on Mars is that labour will be in very short supply. There will be 1001 things that we will want to do on Mars - not least things that generate large revenue. The last thing we will want is an energy system that deploys a lot of labour. PV panel systems that can easily be maintained by robots will be favoured.
3. Nuclear power is not that flexible for smaller tasks like establishing mining outposts.
4. Once PV power becomes established on Mars and the people of Mars are producing PV panel/film (which could happen within 10 years of the first humans landing I believe) then there is unlikely to be interest in developing nuclear power.
However, all that said, I can see that once terraformation becomes an active policy, nuclear power might come into its own more. I think by then - maybe 50 years after the first landing - it will be a question of whether solar power satellite technology has been matured...if it has then that will probably win out over nuclear but if it hasn't, then nuclear power stations might be the best way forward for the terraformation process which will certainly require huge amounts of power.
The role of battery storage as part of a solar energy system is not as you describe it. It's there to ensure smooth management of elecriciity supply and also emegency storage on arrival. For Mission One, 30 tons of batteries at 300 WhE per Kg will be more than sufficient. There will of course be even more batteries around - in the Starships and in rovers etc. All told, I wouldn't be suprised if there were 100 tons of batteries around on Mission One.
Baseload will be provided through a combination of direct solar power and stored power from manufacture of methane and oxygen.
If you want to pursue your line of thought, the fuel (photons) for solar energy systems have no mass at all, so are even better than uranium. In reality, the mass of a nuclear power solution is about the same as for solar power. Each 10 Kwe Kilowatt unit weighs in it about 1.5 tons. Remember also that a nuclear power solution also needs batteries or some method of energy storage in addition to the reactors.
Louis,
400Wh/kg is for the battery cell itself, which does not include any of the other packaging required to turn it into a functional battery pack / energy storage solution. Rolls Royce used 250Wh/kg Tesla-manufactured Lithium-ion batteries in their electric aircraft by stripping away nearly all of the battery pack packaging from existing Tesla battery packs, and arrived at an energy density of 186Wh/kg, IIRC. That's 74.4% of the battery energy density figure. Using 75% as the pack-level energy density, we arrive at 300Wh/kg for this new battery, which is an improvement of 50Wh/kg over the smaller cells. That gravimetric energy density improvement was arrived at by applying the same cell technology to a much larger "jelly roll" to provide that extra 50Wh/kg of gravimetric energy density improvement. The underlying electrochemical technology itself hasn't improved in energy density.
What difference do you think that makes?
Some more simple math:
9,000,000Wh / 240Wh/kg = 37,500kg <- 2021 Tesla Roadster pack-level energy density (240Wh/kg)
9,000,000Wh / 300Wh/kg = 30,000kg <- This is where you are with 400Wh/kg batteries that are 75% battery by weight, at the pack level
9,000,000Wh / 2,500Wh/kg = 3,600kg <- This is where you need to be
9,000,000Wh / 8,340Wh/kg = 1,079kg <- This is where the 60% efficient Mercedes-Benz hybrid internal combustion engine is, in terms of fuel weight
9,000,000Wh / 22,394,000Wh/kg = 0.4kg <- This is where U235 is36 years <- This is how long it took Lithium-ion batteries to achieve 400Wh/kg at the cell level
2,500Wh/kg / 400Wh/kg = 6.25 <- this is your gravimetric cell energy density multiplier (how long it actually took to achieve 400Wh/kg), relative to the length of time required to achieve
6.25 * 36 years = 225 years <- Unless magic happens, this is how long it will take for production-ready Lithium-ion batteries to compete with 18% efficient internal combustion engines. Every attempt to apply chintzy mathematics tricks won't change how long it actually took to go from prototype to 400Wh/kg.Maybe you still can't figure this one out, but any mathematics teacher worth his or her salt would have to, in order to make a city on Mars feasible in any sense.
If the battery can last through 5,000 cycles, then 2,009kg of U235 is required to supply 45,000,000,000Wh worth of energy, which is 15 times lower than a battery that supplies the same amount of energy through 5,000 charge / discharge cycles. Since current practical batteries supply about 1,000 cycles at 80% depth-of-discharge, you need around 150,000kg of batteries, which is around 75 times more weight devoted to batteries. If you scale up the power requirement, battery capacity scales linearly with weight. Reactor output power does not scale linearly with weight. 2,009kg of Uranium occupies a volume of around 1/10th of a cubic meter, so storage dimensions for Uranium metal are incredibly compact. A single light vehicle could feasibly move 763kg on Mars. 57,000kg is the weight a medium-class main battle tank here on Earth.
If batteries had approximately the same energy density as gasoline, then I would be here helping to make your argument for you. I can't do anything about the fact that they don't.
Interesting video (but full of annoying stock clips) about Musk's attempt to carve out his own city in Texas in the Boca Chica area...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2Nv7NdagBg
Musk moves on so many levels! So impressive...
He clearly has a plan to make this part of Texas a kind of new California, attracting the best and brightest engineers.
Here are some real world li-ion battery weight statistics for Tesla vehicles.
https://enrg.io/tesla-battery-weight-ov … ll-models/The 200kWh Tesla roadster battery weighs 1836lb, giving it a mass energy density of 0.86MJ/kg. That means that 9000kWh of batteries will weigh 37.7 tonnes, minus inverters, transformers, cabling, etc.
"The Battery Day announcements are largely in keeping with our forecast developments on EV batteries. Should Tesla fulfil all its ambitions on this front, it may catalyse faster uptake of EVs – both passenger and commercial vehicles. Success could spill over into adjacent transport sectors. For example, on the assumption of success on all fronts, Tesla will also more than achieve the critical battery density for short range electric airplanes – namely 400 Wh/kg with high cycle life. Indeed, Elon Musk recently stated this could happen within three to four years."
https://www.dnv.com/feature/tesla-batte … ition.html
Tesla state they are looking to increase battery output per weight by over 50% within 2 to 3 years.
So I am thinking that 300 Whes per Kg is definitely achievable by the time of the first human flight to Mars - no earlier than 2026. It's a reasonable supposition I think, especially as cost will not be an issue for Mission One.
Once a base is established on Mars, the "energy on arrival" issue becomes of little importance, so it's really just a Mission One problem...maybe Mission 2 to some extent as well.
Whether Musk chooses to bring solar panels with batteries or a nuclear reactor for early missions is his choice, as it is his money to burn. And burn it will. I have already shown his plans for a million person human society on Mars has zero prospects based on solar only energy. Solar PV just doesn't generate a high enough net energy return to make this level of industrial development possible on Mars. So far as long term energy needs are concerned, solar power is a dead end on Mars.
Two 1MW nuclear reactors going into orbit would be subject to much more regulatory control. It could take years to get permission and there could be worlwide protests. So it's not just a decision for Musk to make. And I don't think you showed any such thing!
This sort of thing isn't possible on Earth, either. Since the global financial crisis, interest rates have dropped beneath inflation. Those solar and wind capital costs, that looked so unaffordable before 2008, have now magically disappeared.
The same thing happened to those previously unaffordable shale oil capital costs. This has given a lot of people some very misleading impressions about what is going to be possible long term, when interest rates rise into positive numbers again, as eventually they must. It will be a very uncomfortable realisation for renewable energy enthusiasts. For anyone expecting shale oil to be a long-term solution as well.
As I have responded before - with evidence - these low below inflation rates are only available to governments. Any business wishing to borrow will be paying well above the national interest rate and above the inflation rate. I think the current standard borrowing rate for business is around 6%.
The reduction in solar and wind energy costs has been on a pretty steady downward path bar a couple of blips. It had been falling steadily for decades before 2008.
I think Space X will be pretty much in total control, at least for the first decade of colonisation. They will decide what goes on their rockets. It's not going to be nuclear reactors.
Starship is going to be tested many times before they go to Mars. Look at the rate of production and launches. I think there will be many more tests than preceded the Apollo moon landings - probably more like 30 langinds including landings on Mars. Most important of all, humans don't follow to Mars unless the cargo Starships make a good landing.
When it comes to Mars I think Musk will run with what works. Tesla or Solar City don't do "umbrella" space rated solar panels. He will go to those firms that can provide what is required.
Not again as space x can only control a mission that they are buying for its own destination.... They for the most part are going to be a rocket supplier and there for not in control....
first missions will not land starship without a test landing and if its with people be glad if a test vehicle is all you lose and not 4 of them full of just solar panels and batteries....
Why would elon for space x buy solar panels when they provide them to there ships so not ATK now Northrup Gruman for these or you are going to pay through the nose for them...
Crystalline solar panels have around 18% of efficiency level while the thin-film technology offers approximately 12% efficiency.
here is a video of a solar farm being constructed
https://www.absolutesolarandwind.co.uk/ … s-mackies/
This is a 1.8 mega watt system....
I was thinking about the old David Blaine "trick" (not actually a trick) where he jumped from a very high platform on to a pile of cardboard boxes which gave way collectively, layer by layer and broke his fall.
Is there anything like that which would work for rocket-catching? I'm thinking of maybe a network of steel cables, set at the right tension...and at the bottom the descending rocket breaks a glass wall to reveal the final stage: a pool of water to put out any fires!
Assuming a Space X mission, I don't foresee any difficulties. You'll have at least 4 cargo Starships in the vicinity. Each of those will have their own solar power and battery systems. Your human lander will be continuing to generate power from its substantial solar power arrays. If as I suggested you have robot rovers deployed at the surface (from lower storage points) if there is an issue with power, the robot rovers can deliver battery power to neighbouring Starships. I have also recommend you would arrive with perhaps 30 tons of charged batteries on board - so 9000 KwHes immediately available on arrival (exlcuding the Starship's internal battery array). ATK solar arrays could be deployed by robot rovers before humans move off the Starship.
I envisage the pioneers disembarking via pressurised rover. The rover, or a robot rover, could then tow the first hab, a Bigelow style inflatable hab, to the desired location, where it would be inflated. The first hab would be small and provide temporary or emergency accommodation. Maybe not all the crew would be living there. Maybe it would just be a 4 person hab. Some would stay on the Starship. The purpose of the first hab would be provide an operational base, from which construction of the solar power facilitiy and the second, much larger hab with double air locks could be undertaken.
I agree with oldfart1939's assessment in post #42 that power upon landing is the primary system that must be started immediately as the onboard batteries will begin to empty quite quickly.
Isn't there always a danger of someone falling asleep if it's just a single person watch especially in a zero G environment where you don't have standing or walking to keep you awake? I've always favoured a two person watch for both transit and during the surface stay.
watch". After assuming the watch, the duties of the watch are carried out and activity logs are kept to record any notable events. For Starship, I would expect all similar functions to be controlled from the ship's bridge, so only one person needs to be on watch at any given time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCF8I_X1qKI
Interesting in its own way!