New Mars Forums

Hubble tasked to find target for New Horizons probe

To bad it wasn't planned as an orbital mission.

In terms of a time table, I don't think manned interstellar travel is going to happen this century anyway. We have plenty to do right in our own system. Interstellar exploration first requires massive telescopes to get a good idea of where to aim, and then a substantial unmanned probe with a rather sophisticated AI to properly survey the system, so potential colonists know what they are getting themselves into, before sending people. An interesting twist could be building or adding the intermediate step of an AI control seeder colony, that gets a head start on the ISRU, either for further long term AI exploration, or as a precursor to settlement. Among all the things to do here through the end of the century, the telescopes are certainly feasible, and we could even be ready to launch such probes, and are more than worthy objectives, but we have to keep in mind that it could take the better part of a century just to get results back. Which is why speed is so important. We have a hard enough time rebuilding capability when one generation retires, how much worse would it be if all the people responsible for the design and launch, and their children, where dead of natural causes, before data started to flow back. It would make the current efforts with the ICEE-3 mission look trivial be comparison. If interstellar drives can't propel an unmanned probe to 1/3 light speed, and a cluster of such boosters can't propel a manned vessel to 1/4 light speed, our time is probably better spent improving our drives. We don't want to get a whole generation of people all jazzed up to be the first humans to step foot on an exoplanet, only to have a settlement waiting to greet them.

In terms of shielding, we need to be thinking in terms of sloped armor, the bulk of which would be on the bow of course, but the flanks can't be ignored either. A solar sail can either be propulsion or shielding, but not both. Our best bet for propulsion is some Project Orion or Daedalus derivative. If fusion can't do it, perhaps anti-matter can.

It's going to many centuries before we expend our ability to simply build more orbital habitats right in our own system. Barring tyrannical oppression, a system wide comic disaster, or natural curiosity and ambition, there would be little need to leave. Unless there is at least a marginally habitable world at the other end, or some other equally lucrative goody uncovered by AI's,  I'm not sure why people would go. Use the wastes for AI seeder colonies, and send the people to the habitable systems.

There's a lot to go through there.

My first concern would be the impact mitigation strategy, which seems to be to make as small a a target as possible and pray, instead of assuming an impact is going to happen and building accordingly. The latter will cost you in propulsion from the outset, but you could could make up for it in aerobraking at your destination.

I don't think they addressed propulsion at all, but hopefully we are starting out at least 25% light speed, otherwise we won't be going very far before no one who leaves reaches their destination, which only compounds an already delicate social experiment. Unmanned precursors to these systems are essential, so people have a clear idea of what is ahead of them, but even so, a generation or more into the trip and the cause for leaving would lose its meaning for the youth tasked with building a civilization from scratch.

What would we do with all three if there is no ISS to go to?

The CST-100 is at a particular disadvantage here, because contingencies require a permanent recovery ship off shore.

I don't see Russia coming around anytime soon. Putin has given Russians pride again, in much the same way Hitler restored German pride. Whether it leads to limited conventional conflict or not, it only ends one way, the Russian people swallow their pride and kick the Putin/Mendeleev tag team out of office in favor of someone who can act civilized. At best, that will only happen after a sustained period of painful economic isolation. In the mean time other trouble spots where we depended on the Russians to speak reason into little tyrants, like North Korea, Iran, Syria, ect, are off the table. We have to go eyeball to eyeball with them now, because the Russians have proven unreliable partners (as if they ever where). It might mean a Sino-Russian Alliance, the return to a bipolar world, and fierce competition for influence in the developing world. Either way, the so called peace dividend was a myth, and it's time to get serious again.

The whole purpose of a space station was to experiment with the life support systems to support journeys of months across interplanetary space, and years on a hostile surface. The ISS is utterly incapable of doing that, and will not gain that capability with the removal of Russian orbital segment. We need something on the scale of a Nautilus-X, designed to support a full Earth-like ecosystem, so we can achieve self-sufficiency in transit, and quickly move beyond dependence on resupply from Earth on the surface. Further investment in the ISS is just throwing good money after bad. Cancel the Orion/SLS debacle, and use the funding to get the ball rolling on a Bigelow Station, and in completing the Commercial Crew program. The existing COTS contract expires at the end of 2016. If we play our cards right, we can have a near seamless transition from the ISS to its successor, and progress from there.

It all boils down to motivation. We got to the moon on pure nationalism, but it didn't keep us there. We've tried to run on pure science ever since, and it hasn't gotten us very far. The only thing that will sustain real manned space exploration is the economical/colonial motivation, and as promising as Mars is on that front on the long term, it is a minimum of a quarter of a century from the initial landing from returning anything of intrinsic economic value to Earth, probably much more. The Moon offers a return on investment far sooner than that, and enables efforts elsewhere far sooner than launching from Earth alone. Luckily, science, which was really a non-factor last time, is essential to the economic motivation, and we might just get the nationalism factor back out of this crisis. It will take all three to really move the ball down the field.

When and why would the US State Department want Crimea? Our position has always been that it belongs to Kiev, and the Russians are welcome there as long as Kiev welcomes them.

How, pray tell, where we wrong in those in those instances?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but military spending has nothing to do with US fiscal woes.

If the US ever goes bankrupt, it will be caused by the same thing that is bankrupting Europe... entitlements.

At least half the country is asking the very same thing.

I'm not so sure. I think the real limiting factor is the volume, as determined by the 5.2m faring. Depending on what the biggest inflatable Bigelow could fit on there, we may be able to get away with the Falcon Heavy, even too Mars. Anything in the 1000-1200m^3 range would probably be enough for any single application, and most any mission would likely use more than one inflatable, of varying sizes. Then the challenge is getting enough propellant up there, and of course it would be far better at that point to spend the billions on a nuclear drive launched and fueled buy existing launchers, instead of a bigger launcher just to burn more propellant. With the reduced fuel requirements of a nuclear drive, the volume limit is far more manageable, and with a reusable 1st stage, the price is as well.

And even that is all moot, as Elon has made it clear that he has no intention of stopping at the Falcon Heavy, and what little we know about the Mars Colonial Transport indicates it will be more than sufficient.

The key is the political will to use what is most economical economically, instead of what buys the most votes. We are a year or two from regaining manned access to LEO, and if we where smart, we'd establish our own independent orbital outpost, post haste. We can do that with just the Falcon. With the Heavy, we can have a very robust lunar program, landing before the 50th anniversary, and attaining self-sufficiency within a couple of decades. Impressive unmanned missions and short trips to interplanetary space are also quite doable. The Inspiration Mars "Plan B" mission, for example, should be doable on the Falcon Heavy with a BA 1000+ class primary hab. And if done right (not necessarily as currently envisioned), that is a perfectly capable transit craft for a real Mars mission, and we just have to prepare surface elements. In fact, an Inspiration Mars architecture, spiraled up slightly in complexity at every launch window, would gain us access to Martian orbit and moons in short order, fulfilling the asteroid mission mandate far sooner than our current timetable is likely to, along with laying the ground work for manned surface missions by the end of the next decade, again, a far better timetable than NASA's current rate. And its not untill we are ready so loft those surface elements that the MCT would be really useful, which fits neatly into the projected timeline for it anyway.

Concentrate on LEO, and the Moon, let SpaceX earn the revenue they need to do what they want to do, and the bigger rockets to go elsewhere in an affordable manner will come in do time. Keeping in mind that if our objective is to open up deep space for the masses, our objective must be building and launching at least the bulky elements of our architecture from the Moon within a few decades, which will render even the MCT obsolete no more than a quarter century after it first flies.

Russia's annual vaporware announcement is right on schedule.

If they can revive Energia, it might provide some good international competition for the Mars Colonial Transport, but Russia has even less money for payload than we do, and are going to have even less the more they try to reconquer the Warsaw Pact.

I would not interpret a thread about Ganymede to imply that there is anything wrong with or any reason to exclude Callisto in the grand scheme of things. The more real estate the merrier. But Callisto would be a separate thread.

Or methane?

Given all the media attention, the Pentagon would be crazy to not give the SpaceX Raptor a chance.