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Ain't gonna happen so why waste time on it?
It's going to happen, even if Space-X isn't the one to do it. Someone else will build a system dedicated to the actual task and will get all the funding for shipping habitats and supplies for an actual base, and Space-X will not. Not with the ships they have designed. They simply aren't a good design for delivering what a Mars base needs.
Last I checked, Space X is creating 1 kg of methane per day with its test equipment. 3 orders of magnitude from where it needs to be.
There needs to be a 1-way BFR-DS [for drop ship]. Which means the forward section is a lander, the current engine section merely a second detachable stage. The second stage gets the lander to Mars, burns its remaining fuel to slow down, then detaches. The second stage would attempt an aerobrake orbit, but it disposable. The lander would drop directly to Mars surface and would be able to detach its engines or even have them lift off and crash land. The lower itself to the ground to off load cargo or be used as a habitat. If a BFS started to fall over, the "holy shit" moment for the crew would be horrifying. The thing is going to be not just narrow, but top-heavy. So, unless Musk can also demonstrate robots that can convert regolith into concrete platforms on the surface, or at the very least scout accidentally ideal landing spots that are rigid and roughly flat.........
The first time I see a successful outcome associated with the first item from that list, SpaceX can concern themselves with everything else required to actually live on Mars.
[thumbs up]
I'm also thinking that there's no reason they shouldn't put a nuclear reactor in the unmanned ships and have them do the fuel processing. In theory, a ship like that could take off, go to Europa, take off, go to another moon. Fly around the solar system almost endlessly.
Sorry, I meant Mars
They will definitely have to do most of this robotically. Otherwise, there's no point in sending the ships in advance.
Before Space X launches its first manned ship to Mars it should be able to:
1. Land a BFR in a rocky desert
2. Robotically offload and construct a solar panel field
3. Offload robotic diggers that can dig down into the desert
4. Extract via digging about 10 tons of water *per day*
5. Return it to the ship
6. Have the ship hydrolize and sabatier the liquid fuel
7. Store the fuel in liquid form
8. Launch and return to base and land.
The problem is that the left handled it miserably. So the right felt compelled to defeat the left.
The other issue with a gravity tractor is that unless your calculations are dead on a year or more out, you could actually be doing more harm than good by pulling the object towards Earth.
The main problem I see with a gravity tractor is that the impulse can't be applied fast enough in most cases. It is limited by the gravitational attraction, which is quite low. And you need to avoid creating a pressure gradient with the gasses colliding into the asteroid which would partially neutralize the effect. So...., in my mind, there's nothing like nuclear weapons to provide massive impulse in a split second, plus the potential advantage of splitting it if there's a weakness. Spin isn't much of an issue since the bomb would trigger only a few meters off the surface or instantly on impact. Not enough to affect the result much as long as the angle is right. No need to try to use a tug when a nuclear bomb has so much more power.
3D printing is not that good for speed or quantity.
Well. That's an interesting assertion.
It's like saying an e-mail will never have the speed or quantity of a Fax.
Bellter,
Despite the hysteria that's been spread by certain groups and individuals, the US election was not actually hacked. What seems to have happened is that foreign governments decided to do some campaigning of their own. Which isn't at all unusual - America does it all the time, and did so in 2016 during our referendum regarding the EU.
I never said it was. I couldn't care less about the election. National socialists, social nationalists, it hardly matters.
It's all Earth vs Mars to a Belter.
The Opportunity Rover disagrees. I'm just pointing out that, yes, there will have to be backup power or a ton of overbuilding because a large dust storm could kill propellant production for weeks or months. Just enough to cause a delay if the production couldn't be caught up. Also, I do believe I forgot to factor in night time, so that would bump us up to something like 10,000 panels, just to get one ship fueled with no room for error.
I probably *am* exaggerating the amount of water, though keep in mind, I'm talking about "per cubic meter", not total. In any case, a dust storm like Mars had could cause astronauts to be stranded for an additional 2 years. That might make a good sequel called "The Martians". If you put something under pressure, yes, you'll generate heat, but you still burn a ton of energy pressurizing it. The methane combustion is *enormously* powerful, so it will take multiples of that energy to produce it. I'm sure someone has run the calculations but it's going to take a pretty large solar field to do it and machines working every day, if not 25/7. If I did't screw up my calculations, it would take about 5000 solar panels working for 2 years straight just to fill one rocket.
If the figures I read are correct, water vapor is less than 1/10th of Earth's water vapor by percentage, which means about 1/2000th the amount available. Getting enough water from the air to produce several tons of fuel per day is going to be almost impossible. CO2, sure, but the water is going to have to come from the ground. The problem is around the equator, there land is so dry, there's little to pick up, making a passive condenser pretty useless. I'm thinking that the North Pole in summer is going to be the best time and place to refuel, but there are two large areas at 30 and 180 degrees right near the equator that could have some ground water in the permafrost. If those don't pan out, not sure how they can avoid going up to 60 degrees or higher.
You're talking burning more energy than you can extract. Remember that not only do you have to collect water with the least amount of energy possible, but you have to break it and CO2 down to their component parts, which uses more energy than is created. We need to collect enough energy with solar power to blast at least one ship every two years out of orbit. A compact nuclear reactor may be necessary.
I still can't believe that we put critical infrastructure or military servers on the "world wide web"
We are F-ing retarded. No sane person would do this.
The problem with not having a docking station for a sealed rover is just the lost of air every time, plus you'd still try to pump a lot of it out, so you'd have to sit in an airlock for awhile while as much air as possible is pumped out. I think most of the surface exploration and work is going to be done with wheeled robots in real time, unlike the automated systems required of current rovers. Telepresence is far safer and far faster.
The Space Shuttle was the equivalent of the Honda CBX, that let everyone thinking "WHY?" Admittedly, it was cool and sleek, but it didn't solve any problems or save any money.
The problem with water extraction from the air is that the air is intensely thin and simply can't hold that much. And the planet is literally a desert. And trying to chill air that is -100 to -200 degrees to squeeze some water from it is pretty tough. What you *could* do is set up passive condensers that collected moisture when the sun goes down. But there just isn't much to collect. If there were, there would likely be life living on the surface. It might be doable near the poles. If you look at a moisture map of mars, the water is clearly above/below 60 degrees latitude.
3D printing will make bricks totally obsolete.
Seems like Gusev Crater is the place to go if they're looking for water near the equator.
I don't see a particular issue with an air tight rover except it will suck up a boatload of weight and then every time you're in and out you'll have to replace that O2 by making more. And there's no way of docking it to anything. So it becomes almost pointless.
The fueling facility is going to have to be 100% robotic to make it work. It's going to have to find its own H2O with robots and spend its days just churning out methane without human supervision. And from what I saw, which may be incorrect, they have to scale up their output by several orders of magnitude on a foreign body. It would have to find and separate nearly 3 tons of water per day to fuel a single BFR. And there will be two to fuel, which makes me think one will remain. I also think that they're going to have to extract the excess fuel from all of the other units to refuel a single BFR. I would be shocked if this isn't the backup plan already (or the hidden primary plan).
Seems to me that the actual fuel factory (and storage) should be in the ships themselves, actually. That each ship would bring robotic diggers to retrieve slush, and that slush would be heated and processed outside the ship, and then purified water sent into the ship where it would go through hydrolysis which isn't that big of a deal, and then Sabatiering the methane. This would avoid transporting and accidents. It should be able to be done on board, the question is, how much size and weight is required to put out the kind of quantities required. And if it's going to take a large factory, too big to be integrated into the ship, then it's going to be quite the hassle to get setup and running, and then to safely get the fuel pumped on board.
Both crews could live on one ship for safety while the other ship is refueling itself. Then transfer to the other when they're ready to leave.
And having an integrated factory would be the surest way to have something that is proven to work in advance.
I think the Blasey's accusations were weak, though Kavanaugh's defense was also weak.
There is something of an issue though that needs to be addressed, which is long distance planetary travel. The place to setup up a base is going to be closer to the equator, but the accessible water is at the poles. So fuel is almost certainly going to have to be transported around. Perhaps even flown. Or maybe the base could be 100km or so from the poles or right at the edge at maximum size. Then vehicles will have to go back and forth with ice water. This is why I like the idea of an automated refueling facility that can refuel reusable booster engines similar to the Falcons.
Like I said, my issue isn't that Space X is committed to the BFR (and SFR), but how they are going to do the other things *with these particular machines*. I don't think any moon rover they launch could possibly be air tight and it would be somewhat foolish to make them that way. The air loss, size and shipping weight is impractical. More likely a few exposed vehicles that are very light weight and operate like pick up trucks, but with some mechanical work attachments. Something that can be craned out of a BFR easily. I haven't seen a BFR design that really gets into the logistics issues of moving things in and out, but maybe I've just missed it. They can't just slide out a 10m wide habitat from the units.
One thing Musk needs to do is start doing landing tests in a rocky desert and see if he can keep a Falcon from tipping over.
I also don't see what is nuts about recycling a large fuel tank into living quarters. Most of these early ships are going to be 1-way trips, so being able to turn the fuel tanks into habitats seems pretty logical. Unless they can figure out how to build the fuel manufacturing right into the ships themselves, and the only thing that needs to be supplied directly is water.
I also think the Cargo ships need to be pretty robotic. In theory, you should be able to send an unmanned rover from one ship to another and have it lower the supplies right on to the cargo bed of the rover. Especially if the distances are long.
Another issue is that they're not going to want to have a single Mars base. There's too much varied topography and formations to keep it in a single place, another reason why planetary transport is going to come up. An SFR could be used to shuttle around the planet to different areas, once the refueling stations are created.
The lack of specific though are going to raise a lot of questions until he mans up and answers them. By this time, he should have narrowed down the landing spots. And if they're not at the north pole, he needs to detail where he thinks he's going to get the water and how. They can't be digging up the whole planet for drops of water, they need a substantial source with minimum effort.
I think one thing that will work in the favor of making things workable is that there will probably only be 8-10 member crews at most, maybe as low as 6. Fewer people to lose, but also, a lot less oxygen, water and food to send. More ability to send raw materials and machinery. I mean, 3 years worth of supplies for a human crew of any size is a boatload of storage and mass.
Sorry, I'm a noob. I'm here because I want to start a space engineering academy at my girls' school.
Also, different Aries. 2001 lunar transit ship.
Well, we just have to keep going back to how Space X has no actual plan for any of this, at least, not that they're sharing.
I mean, the major flaws I see is the shape of the ship, how it lands, it's probable inability to offload very heavy cargo without simply falling over, lack of elevators, essentially useless storage tanks in the way of offloading anything, the lack of a robotic system of construction, the lack of a habitat design, the likely inability to land habitats and place them close to each other. There's just a ton of things that they either haven't resolved or aren't telling anyone about how they've done so.
Now, if they can show how they can convert the BFR-C storage tanks into habitats, that would be interesting. Offload the fuel to landers that are going to return. Another way to handle this might be to use an exterior fuel tanks, or put the tanks higher, in the nose cone, and the cargo down below. A little more unstable going up, but more stable going down. Or convert the BFR into a 3-stage affair. One to get above the atmosphere, one to accelerate to escape velocity and then the top half would separate and either crash into Mars or could land near the North pole, close enough to eventually be refilled and put back into orbit.
I just don't see the viability of the BFR as anything more than a good shuttle, but terrible for delivering materials and habitats.