New Mars Forums

It really is a shame that the Jitterbug went out of fashion. Back in November our school musical was Grease and I had an absolute blast during the dance scenes. The problem is that, even when a great song for jitterbuggin' comes on, nobody knows how to dance to it, it takes longer than five seconds to learn how. It's an important skill, to know how to jitterbug, just in case of an emergency. After all, everyone already knows how to macarana and electric slide, would one more decent dance be so hard to learn?

Then again, this is coming from someone who's idea of nice music consists primarily of disco and video game soundtracks.

The problem with trying to scale up from entry-level suborbital travel to orbital flight is that there is very little of practical commercial value in between the two ventures. Mach 4 suborbital flight is great for tourism, and mach 25 orbital flight is good for launching satteltites, orbital tourism, maintaining space stations, colonization, etc. If a good, viable market can be found in between the two delta-V extremes, it will be much easier to scale from suborbital as is being done right now by Scaled Composites to real low-cost orbital.

A good next step after SpaceShipTwo-class vehicles might be two-stage semi-reusable launch vehicles. The first stage, probably a spaceplane like Black Colt or the X-34, achieves a delta-V of around mach 15 at 100 miles, where it releases an upper-stage that gives the payload the rest of the kick it needs to reach orbit. That's nearly two-thirds of orbital velocity, and around one-fourth to one-third of orbital energy. Another possibility for such a vehicle would be rapid point-to-point travel for military or airline applications. There's actually probably a good amount of marketability to a Mach 15-capable rocketplane, so this might be a good next step for the alt space industry.

From there it will be much easier to develop the technology needed for orbital travel. That is, much of the technology could be reused from the previous vehicle for the new orbital version. This is another possibility for the alt space industry to consider.

Assuming that the Falcon I can operate as cheaply as is claimed by Spacex it should be the death of all competition in the commercial small sattelite LEO market. The problem is that this is an extremely small market as it currently stands. If miniturization technology progresses far enough perhaps some of the current market on slightly larger LVs can be grabbed, and Spacex might be able to convince customers to forgo launching multiple payloads on larger launch vehicle and use the Falcon instead. Without government-sponsored payloads, however, it will be much more difficult for them to stay afloat.

For example, the Vega will be far more expensive to operate and probably less reliable than the Falcon I, but will automatically have 100% of the market share for ESA-sponsored light payloads. Spacex must grab the American market from Orbital Sciences and the Pegasus or else they'll never see much of a return on their investment. Or perhaps having such a low-cost launch vehicle will open up a much wider market for commercial payloads. It's a possibility, but I'm rather skeptical of it happening right now.

I wouldn't worry if I were you. English is intellectually considered a Germanic language, but that doesn't really do justice to the language. There are hundreds if not thousands of intricate dialects of English scattered throughout the world, each of which has assimilated and incorporated other nearby languages. Just as the US is considered (at least by us Americans) as the political "melting pot" of the world, English is the linguistic melting pot. Pretty much everyone knows what a "valley girl" is, so long as they live around Southern California or Arizona. Outside of that region very few would recognize that piece of slang. As for deadhead, I'm not quite sure myself what that means, but it's part of a song, so whatev.

"Take it easy,
Take it easy,
Don't let the sound of your own wheels
Drive you crazy,
Lighten up, while you still can,
Find a place to make your stand,
And take it easy"
-The Eagles

Heh heh, I love that song. Hey, speaking of odd pieces of slang, a while ago in English we had a discussion on synecdoches. We of course covered the usual synecdoches you hear in everyday coloquial conversation (like car=wheels, clothes=threads, where a whole is represented by one of its parts), and my teacher mentioned one I had never heard before, girl=skirt. Of course, nowadays if you called someone a "skirt" a lawyer would jump from behind a bush and put you in court for sexual harrasment fast enough to make your head spin, but has anyone else here heard this idiom before?

I know it's a bit late, but here's another chance to go analyze someone's dreams. What exactly does it mean when you have a dream in which you walk into a poorly-lit subway car, sit down with a friend and have a nice conversation about absolutely nothing (ie in Seinfeld) for about five or six hours with her? It beats me. I can't remember a single thing we talked about but I do know that it was pleasant and went on for hours and hours dream time, though I imagine it was a couple of minutes real-world time. I do remember that the conversation strayed over to the subject of me needing to be more spontaneous just as I woke up. Odd, eh? :;):

Even assuming that I am a crazy alt.space-hugging quack who has a tenuous-at-best grasp on reality, it would seem that I come out ahead here. You claim that I resort to wishful thinking and falacies to back up my points. You on the other hand resort to insults and name calling. I have absolutely ZERO respect for you as an opponent in this debate now, GCN. If your side of the argument is so obviously correct to every single person who was not born yesterday and lives on this planet, you ought to be able to defend yourself without name-calling. This isn't the playground, we're adults here. If you want to insult people do that somewhere else.

Yes yes yes, we're all very aware that hydrogen is much less dense than kerosene. But much smaller quantities are needed to reach a given delta-V as well. Tank stretching is necessary, but not a vehicle-killing amount. The Atlas first stage was capable of reaching orbit in a single stage after dumping two of its engines, and that burned kerosene. With hydrogen and oxygen no advance over current technology is needed for SSTO flight.

Better insulation will be required as well, but this is not a killer either. Insulation technology is highly mature and remember that an RLV SSTO will only need to carry its load of hydrogen for a couple of minutes. If the hydrogen is pumped into the launch vehicle about ten minutes or so before launch that makes it very difficult for the hydrogen to boil off and minimizes ice formation.

An engine that burns hydrogen will require higher-strength materials to cope with the much hotter exhaust temperatures. How is that grounds for a tenfold increase in development cost? We like to think that these analyses can tell us exactly how much a given increase in reusability and reliability will increase the cost of development, but they can only go so far. No one has ever built an engine of sufficient resusability for an RLV SSTO and because of this there is no example to cite costs from. Any estimates of the cost of such rocket development are educated guesses at best.

Let's pause for a moment and think about the TPS subject. Imagine this. At the bottom of the vehicle a plate of beryllium-copper alloy is placed with holes cut into it just the right size for the engine bells. To cover the engines during re-entry retractable doors made of the alloy lock into place. In between the plate and the base of the fuel tank (or crew capsule) is an empty space filled with vacuum. Since the doors will be open during the whole ride to orbit, creating a vacuum in this space is as simple as letting all the air leak out during launch and sealing it up tight while in orbit. The beryllium-copper will be able to survive reentry temperatures (its the stuff that usually causes damage when sattelites de-orbit) and the vacuum space would insulate the rest of the vehicle. Has anyone considered this possbility for a TPS? Perhaps it could work. The point is that there is no fundamental law of nature that dictates that a heat shield must be expensive and incovenient.

If it were possible to launch from the same desert the SSTO lands in that would eliminate the transport problem. Edwards comes to mind as a place this might be possible, but I doubt the FAA would be very keen on launching away from the coast. What about using parafoils? Parafoils would allow the vehicle to land on a runway like an airplane, in Florida right next to the launch site as well. Of course, no one's ever demonstrated a parafoil big enough for the job yet, but it is another possibility to consider. The landing gear issue is a tricky one to solve, but that is no reason to assume that it will automatically cost a mystical $6 billion to develop the rest of the vehicle.

Being closed-minded never got anyone anywhere.

Mission Commander's Log, May 6, 2103:

I think I've come up with a plan that's fool proof. Hopefully. Maybe.

Treb, the Chyrsians, and Lord Vlork's flock has had access to all of our technology data for some time now and it would appear that any edge we have over them has evaporated. However, what they didn't bet on is that I have exclusive access to highest-level security tech dvelopment documents. Nobody, not Gryphon, not Meadows, nobody knows this but me, which is pretty cool.

One of the key points on our negotiations with the Chyrsians was that our new digital doppler radar units are foolproof and incapable of error, they can detect anything. While that's true, it's incomplete. Back at MIT they've just finished the plans for a new prototype jamming system that can conceal something even from these instillations they've set up. I'm not quite sure I fully understand the technology behind it, but it has something to do with destructive interferance with the initial radar waves, and doing this without alerting the sensor of the presence of active cancelling. I had Meadows in engineering stereo-lith a few of the units for me, they're really quite innocuous looking unless you know what goes on inside one.

Tonight I'm going to assemble a team of a few negotiators and troops for our assault on Lord Vlork. He has far too much manpower for us to defeat him purely through burte force of course, but that's not what I'm trying to do. We'll sneak into his palace, surprise him, and have a nice friendly chat about a ceasefire. Going at the rover's maximum efficiency speed if we head out by 22:00 tonight we can reach his base by 8:00 tomorrow morning. If he balks, we upload a virus into the palace that kills all computer controls on everything. The LSS, the air conditioning, water purifiers, everything will go wacko on Vlork if he doesn't feel like cooperating. If things really get hairy we can always bug out and dissappear. At least, that's the plan...
-Lt. Col. Tiffany Barkley

In the crystal black darkness of a Martian night, the rover set out for the northwest. As the hours wore on it passed checkpoint after checkpoint and scores of killbots, all of which were as blind to the rover as human senses are to radiation. Slowly the Sun illuminated a layer of Cirrus clouds and the deep blue and teal colors of a Martian sunrise. The rover continued on at its breakneck pace, attempting to outrun the ability of the myriad sensors' detection. Finally, it reached its destination.

Lord Vlork's palace was a rather unflattering building considering the expectations one might have from its name. In essence it was a hut dug into the rim of the caldera of Olympus Mons, that archaic leviathan against which all other volcanoes in this star system are measured. The view was great, overlooking the former and possibly future shore of the Boreal Ocean to the north and the vast chasm of Olympus's caldera to the south, but the palace itself was unimpressive. A small, visitor's center look-alike sat at the ground floor of the palace, filled with stairs and elevators and rabbot sheds.

Under the cover of their radar cloak, the rover parked mere feet from the door of Vlork's palace. With military precision six suited astronauts piled out of the vehicle and flung open the door. Upon equalizing pressure, they bolted down the stairs, following the kindly-painted directions to the palace throne. Surprisingly barely anyone filled this top layer, and those who did paid no attention to anything at all, merely muttering unintelligable incantations.

Upon reaching the throne room, the team became aware of the power of Vlork. The room, an immense chamber rivaling that of the largest caves on Earth (indeed it was a former lava tube, a relic from the volcano's more youthful days), was filled with nearly the density of a Nazi rally of hooded priests and nuns chanting praises to Vlork. In an instant the team could have been swallowed up and eliminated by the crowd, but for Vlork's command to halt them.

Vlork, like his palace from the outside, was rather unimpressive. He was hunched over, wrinkled with age and barely coherant enough to utter a sentence, much less command the largest force on the planet (no offense  :;): ). Upon viewing this sight the team marched forward to his throne, visors up to conceal their emotions and where they glanced. One of them, bearing a nametage "T.Barkley" bounced under the weak gravity directly to Lord Vlork's seat.

Abruptly the lead settler flipped up a golden visor, revealing the face of a woman in her mid thirties. She then went so far as to flip up the glass entirely, choosing to breathe the same air as that of Vlork and his flock. The astronaut pushed a lock of muddy-brown hair back, looked Vlork over with deep piercing emerald eyes and cleared her throat.

"Hi, the name's Tiffy Barkley."

She extended a gloved hand to the ancient dictator.

Well, maybe "romantic" isn't quite the right word. Let's see, "wicked awesome" has already been used, how about "captivating?" Personally I've never had any problems at all with security at the metal detectors or watching the planes, but again I don't fly very much. I love to just watch the whole proccess, to see the mechanics buzzing around the plane before boarding, the pilots running over checklists inside the cockpit, the feel of the slightly damp aluminum of the fuselauge (I always make sure to touch the outside of the plane as I enter, sort of a habbit of mine). There's a great adrenaline rush when the attendants slam and latch the door shut and the cabin subtlely (sp?) shifts to bleed air, then begins to taxi away. Last November when I went to New Mexico I had brought along a book and some homework thinking I would be bored out of my mind after a little while at the airport, but I was so excited I never even touched either. Then again, this is the kind of stuff that gets me pumped (and ranting), most people just don't see the attraction I suppose.

Since my family never really goes on vacation anywhere I've decided to do it myself this summer. I'm paying for the bulk of a 10-day trip to England and Scotland chaparoned by my history teacher. That's four flights within ten days of each other (we'll first be flying to either Chicago or New York before going to London and the same on the way back from Glasgow), w00t (more modern slang)! I really don't understand why some of the other expedition (I prefer that term over "trip") members are so worried about the trans-Atlantic flight, I can't wait! Just imagine, nothing but ocean and some clouds for thousands of square miles to the horizon. I imagine it helps one get a better grasp of the concept of infinity. Whenever I fly I am absolutely glued to the window, so I'll be very happy if the rest of the group fights over the isle seats. I always go for the windows. Anyways, that's my rather inexperienced, romantic (do'h! I'm not supposed to say that!) take on the matter.

Another part of that website that bothered me was the comparison between the Saturn V and the SASSTO. Right at the top of the page it bore a picture of an exploded view of the Saturn V staging with a note that "everyone (who exactly is that?) knows REAL rockets aren't SUPPOSED to look like this..." That's just plain insulting to everyone who was involved in the development of one of the greatest pieces of engineering in the history of the human race, IMHO. Rockets aren't supposed to look like that!? It's real! What else do you want? I just happen to get highly offended at art for art's sake, art that is created design priorities first, asthetics later (ie Saturn V) is far far far better. Reality rules. I just don't get why everyone tries their darndest to get away from it. Just look at some of the top images from the Hubble. No artist in the world has ever created something that comes near approaching the awe-inspiring beauty of those images, because reality is far better than any fantasy world we can create. I for one like this world.

Well, that's just my venting for today. I of course wouldn't try to impose any of my opinions on you. I'm just stating them excessively vocally.
-(Brushes self off. Straightens hair and collar. Gets back to work)-

I dunno, the creators of that site seem to have a tenuous grasp of reality. I was thumbing through the section "Future Flight," avoiding the urge to pound my head painfully against the keyboard. "Believe it or not, flying used to be romantic, adventurous..." blah blah, the same old rubbish. Am I the only one that still thinks flying is really wicked awesome!? Probably. The next time you're on an airliner (I'm lucky, I'll be on several this summer. I've only been on heavy metal flights a handful of times in my life) just pause for a moment and think about what's going on. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of thrust propelling hundreds of people riding half a million pounds of aluminum and composites miles upward into the sky. Riding in shirt-sleeve comfort at 39,000 feet with nothing more than some bleed air and a nice pressurization system. I don't care if I'm not pampered with extravagant luxuries, the flight in of itself is the attraction.

Moreover, why were any technical assides labeled "boring technical details?" The technology and the details  are what make it fun! You skip that and there's no point in discussing the matter in the first place. Sure a picture of the whirlpool galaxy from the Hubble is nice eye candy even to a layman, but if you truly understand what's going on in there it becomes an awe-inspiring miracle of nature, not just a pretty picture. Details are everything. Maybe I just like getting brain candy more than most people.

At any rate, that site annoys me. Sorry if I'm ruining your tomorrow (I wrote this at 11:53, so probably no one's going to read it today).

Mission Commander's Log, April 18, 2103:

Dr. Gryphon continues to insist that these crazy cyborgs are the best way to defend the base. I'm not so sure, but I figure they can't help, though to be perfectly honest they bug the crap out of me. Once again the engineering team has proven their worth, the base is fully online after only a little over a month. I've put security on 24-hour watch over the station, and I've been talking to Meadows on extending the complex underground. We have no idea what the bleep is going on here, so we ought to have a base at least as safe as those archaic missle silos from 140 years ago.

Did I say defending the base? Good greif, what a difference a month makes. 40 days ago no one could have possibly expected to see this invasion of rabbots and killer drones we've had. Our motives have shifted entirely from exploration to defense. Oh, well, I guess you have to be secure before you can explore.

I've decided to place the base on limited power use so that our batteries are 100% charged at all time. If we get a sudden spike in rabbot encounters, we'll be ready for it. I'm afraid it may hurt morale, but we'll all just have to make sacrifices. God, what I would give for a nice warm bubble bath. There's just no time anymore.
-Lt. Col. Tiffany Barkley

Mayflower-2 LAN e-mail:
From: TBarkley@olympus.net
To: DGryphon@olympus.net
CC: JMeadows@olympus.net, VPatel@antares.net
Subject: Rabbots, Robots, Formalities
Body:
Dr. Gryphon, I would like to know how much longer you intend to deploy the cyborgs. With the radio transmissions coming from Chyrse we know that there's someone out there with similar technology who could potentially mess with your code and turn them against us. Plus, they're probably a surefire way to tick off the locals, so please only deploy them as long as you feel necessary.

I would like to try to make contact with the Chrysians as soon as possible, so please prepare our ham radio transmitter asap. Also, I know that someone here must speak either French or Dutch; if you know anyone who can translate those poorly-sung show tunes I'd greatly appriciate it. We have to get into their minds, figure out what they want, before we can fend them off. And can someone please tell me what in the world is happening around Olympus Mons?

It is critical that we get a solid defense network up right now, so please don't let anything deter you from accomplishing that. I know I've been pushing everyone lately but you're all doing wonderfully and I promise that as soon as we get the caves hollowed out and pressurized and the refinery up to level two capacity you'll get a break. Just stay with me these next two or three weeks.

One more thing, enough with the formalities. I realize that this is a military/governmental program, but guess what, they're not here. We need any morale boost we can get, and formalities certainly don't help, so I'm ending the dress code (unless you go outside of course :;): ) and this stupid military ranking system. Tiffany or Tiffy will be fine in the future. Enough with "Col. Barkley," for now. We're on an alien planet, the last thing I want anyone dealing with is paperwork and a ranking system. Leave the paperwork to me when quarterly report time comes around in May.
-Tiffy

It's starting to look like the whole argument is pretty moot anyway. NASA is sloughing funds from across a wide range of missions, Hubble is just the most publicly-visible. It's likely that Voyager, Ulyssess, Hubble, and many other ongoing missions will go the way of JIMO in order to pool more funds for the VSE. Not the most desirable outcome, but it's what we have to live with.

I'm certainly not a fan of dumping Hubble, but it looks like that's what the issue is going to come to no matter what. Hopefully a mission like HOP will be launched to fill the gap.

Slowly four shimmering dots on the horizon ballooned both in size and brightness. One by one they flared to almost painful brightness, sending soft wishpering sonic booms to the microphones of several recon robots. Under gossamer sheets of kevlar and plastic they slowed down dramatically, to little more than the speed of an average early-21st century car on a highway. Spaced five hours apart, the Olympus, the flotilla's flagship, then the Antares, Lowell, and Opportunity came to a screeching halt on plumes of plasma-hot hydrogen peroxide.

Immediately following the flotilla's landing that fine early summer morning, the quartet of ships unpacked and began setting up base under the salmon-pink Martian sky. It was a risky business, colonization, and the 200 daring astronauts from NASA, the Air Force, and Boeing knew it. But, they believed, the potential benefits of conquering this planet, and finding out what happened to the ill-fated previous expedition, would be well worth the potential costs.

Mission Commander's Log: March 27, 2103:

Thank goodness EDL was a non-event. What followed was certainly not. After landing we started unpacking base, just as proceedures dictate, but ran into a bit of a snag. Five sentry robots of some sort attacked the crew, before we could get the lasers out. We were able to destroy them, but it sure gave medical a wake-up call. Patel examined of one of the bots and said that it didn't match anything in the original colony's payload manifest. Left unsaid was that the robot looked like nothing that either Boeing or the Air Force had ever been involved with, but I could tell that was what we were both thinking.

Obviously someone is still down here, but who? There are so many questions; are they still alive? Is this some remnant of a nasty fued between two factions of colonists? As soon as Meadows and the rest of the engineering team confirms that all LSS subsystem loops are closed with growth room for the minimum colony expansion requirements I'll send a team out to Hellas to see what exactly is going on over there. Meantime we'll be exploring the local Valles Marineris. So far we haven't been able to find any remnant of the prevoius Von Braun station except for a few scraps of metal and what look like crudely-made shotguns. Either the last crew totally killed itself or decided to leave... and leave no trace of their existance. Beyond that I don't even want to speculate before we look at Hellas.

The pressure here is high enough that you don't even need a spacesuit to walk around, but I don't want to be the first to try that. On our first foray into the Valley we found that the Shenandoah River is flowing again, that was a bit of a shock. According to MSL's observations, that river hasn't flowed for over 2 billion years, but I suppose that it shouldn't be too surprising that it's going again considering the vastly increased surface pressure. This place is absolutely incredible. On the surface it seems like a dump, red rocks, red sky, dry dusty and low-pressure, but... there's just something about it. I have no doubts in my mind that it is our destany and duty to settle this place. I know it sounds weird, but after we landed, this place immediately just felt like home. The view from Shenandoah certainly doesn't hurt. We absolutely cannot afford to let this mission fail, it is critical to our species that we succeed.

-Lt. Col. Tiffany Barkley

OOC: I'm guessing that the Yu Knights were the original colonists that didn't follow Lord Vlork? And Lord Vlork is Cobra Commander? To all colonists of Hellas Basin, bring it on! Oh, yeah, and if anyone new wants to jump in feel free to join my side, because right now it looks like I'm all by myself.

I don't have the slightest clue what's going on here. Considering that the topic has now slipped out of the first page of the "Free Chat" section and seems to be losing interest, I hope you guys don't mind if I go ahead and jump in.

Mission Commander's Log, March 11, 2103:

We finished re-packing the sails today, right on schedule. In two weeks the floatila will be landing, and maybe we'll finally find out what in any world has happened to Mars. I went over the procedures for atmospheric entry again with John Meadows, our cheif flight engineer, this afternoon; all the preparations are coming together nicely. Fortunately we haven't had to use the diamond-electric lasers the colony department of NASA insisted on including the payload manifest, at least for now. The results from the Antares's atmosphere observations are in, confirming telescopic view from Earth. Mars's atmosphere has swelled like a tick ever since we lost contact with the first colonists, whatever in God's name happened to them is wreaking havoc with the whole planet. Unless of course, they're behind it.

This time we'll be doing it right. We'll be landing at Von Braun Station in the Shenandoah Valley, right where the last colonists touched down first. That should give us a good indication of what happened to them; I can't wait to see the Valles Marineris for myself. There seems to be some activity in Hellas Basin, I'll make a note to send an expiditionary crew to go check it out. In the meantime we'll just have to hope for the best and try to piece together what went wrong, and do it right this time as well. It'll be difficult, for sure, but I've been stuck on this ship for the last three months. Let's get down there already!

-Lt. Col. Tiffany Barkley

Okay, I had absolutely no idea in the world on what date this was supposed to be set in, so I just guessed. Feel free to point out any plotholes I may have just opened up. So, who wants to go next?