New Mars Forums

Kavanaugh wasn't my first pick, but Democrats can hardly complain after they elected and elected and elected Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton to the highest offices in the land with far more evidence presented against them.   I wouldn't vote for him because I think he was being disingenuous about his drinking, but I knew a LOT of friends that grew up, went into the military or college and came out highly professional people.    Blasey also left a LOT of bizarre holes in her story and had basically no corroborating evidence.   Most of it makes no sense at all.

I think that Bigelow released an updated version, but it rides on a solid platform and then inflates after landing.   I can't seem to find it though.   Like the LEM, but with a blow up habitat instead of ascent module.

My thinking it that any sensible 'drop in' habitat needs to be resting on the ground with the ability connect expandable tunnels between modules.  And the ability to land these in *very* tight groupings.  Possibly using the Opportunity technique.    Or having them somewhat mobile that the can drive themselves into place before inflating or connecting to each other.   No one is going to want to be outside that much on Mars.   At least, not just to go between modules.

Yes, but a Bigelow system just inflates.   The ability to construct something air tight in -200 degree temperatures in a space suit is limited.  But even to get to that point, you need places for the workers to live.   Besides, the people going to Mars aren't going to be welders and carpenters, they will be scientists.    Blowing up a habitat by pressing a button is at the edge of their construction experience.

But surely you can see how many people think that trying to populate Mars without testing those things on a perfect and nearby test bed is incomprehensible, right?  Not even in any sci-fi I've seen or read does Mars come before a moon base.

The problem I see with expanding to a greater government is that we have no "greater" government at all.   The Feds refuse to follow the Constitution, just absolutely refuse.   Canada actually has a judicial *policy* of not following the Constitution except in spirit and Mexico's Constitution used to be a good one, but got substantially worse with each iteration.    Not one has government that is trustworthy and even if we dissolved all three in favor of a new Constitution, I shudder to think of how atrocious it would be.   The EU is already showing wear and tear, they're in our 1800s, heading for civil war or divorce.

I think habitats would be more likely delivered on lunar module type landing platforms.  Bigelow has some primitive designs for this.   Basically, you could send a small swarm of landers with inflatable habitats mounted to them.  Drop them on the planet close to each other and inflate.  Ideally, close enough that you could extend inflatable tunnels to each other in a grid.    Another option would be something more like the Viking lander or Space 1999 Eagle, where a vehicle would be designed to lower a habitat to the ground via tether, or land, release and then pull away.   But the goal should be to get these directly onto the ground, or even dig into the ground part way and then using rovers to scoop soil and drop on top of them for radiation protection.    I guess a Mars base that looks like mounds of dirt isn't that sexy for an illustration.

But I think the fly in the Space X ointment is that they haven't been able to put forth any kind of vision for habitats other than staying on a cramped ship and dropping to the surface and back with a crane, while allowing everyone else to fill in the blanks with their imaginations.   The ability to produce and store large quantities of fuel in space seems incredibly sketchy at this point. Obviously possible, but I think they're soft selling just what a monumental effort it will be to gather up that much H2O and break it up safely and drop it into tanks.  I'm thinking more that residual fuel from multiple BFRs would more more likely to be transferred to a single returning ship for the foreseeable future.   At the very least there is a shitton of equipment that would need to be delivered, mainly mining robots and transporters, solar panels or miniature nuclear reactors.   So these ships will be left there, unless they send swarms of Curiosity style missions that drop this machinery.   Maybe 5-10 mining drones with their own landing system in a single shot.    But it seems to me that being able to send 1-way ships that drop their payload and then are converted into habitats kills two birds with one stones.   Instead of a "graveyard of ships" as he calls it, a city of habitats and machinery dropped in a 1-way mission.

I think going to Mars without landing the craft on the moon and coming back is sort of a deal breaker.   That should be a minimum standard test.   Though I think the overall Mars plan is fairly sound and sensible over all.   And at least Musk is doing amazing work with landing a first stage on small targets with few accidents.   At least set down on the moon, hang out for a few weeks or more, come back.   Really, it should be more of a long term platform for debugging the systems.  Then bring them back, see if you can land them on Earth.

I wish we were putting our energy into advanced robotics and and manufacturing in space than manned missions outside of Earth orbit.   We should constructing habitats on the moon with robots, mining minerals and water.   Then sending astronauts. Sight seeing tours are kind of dumb if we can't do anything while we're there.

This is more or less what I'm imagining here.   10-12m wide, 10-12m high.  The bottom is more like a ring attached to a mushroom.  The outer engines would lift it off the pad, and then the main engine would engage for lift off.  The struts would then lower dropping the habitat ring to the ground.    The curve on the bottom would be a heat shield, with a center that would get blown out to expose the engine.   Just my imagination for the most part.   

The fun thing is i used lamps to make the struts.  But if the struts could retract and drop the structure to the ground, you could turn it into a permanent habitat.       Another option to the mushroom/donut design would be a more conventional two stage system with dual motors, dual tanks.

To be clear, I'm only really talking about orbital aero braking for a few unmanned ships to be dropped in orbit.    Ideally, these would be linked to landers that would would be better designed for an aerobraked landing.  Wider, shorter, more stable.    Better designed for being recycled into habitats or torn down for building materials.  More similar to the lunar lander, but larger.   The crew would leave the orbital vehicle to make the aerobraked landing, then be able to return, dock and then use the now orbiting ship to depart for Earth as needed.   Like the LM, the descent platform would become the launch pad for the ascent module, but would also be engineered to converted to living quarters and/or drop critical supplies.  It would be even better if the legs could be retracted to allow it to sit directly on the ground.   The Ascent module would be used to ferry back to the orbital ship for return trips until manufacturing and fueling became reality.    I'm imagining something that looks like a hamburger with legs.   The Ascent module could have its own engine/fuel tank, or could simply detach from a ring shaped descent module, more like a mushroom detaching from a donut.

I don't think that plants are going to be mortally wounded by a solar flare.  It is still in the magnetosphere which offers substantial protection and the hull is embedded with about 1-2" of water and 6 layers of alloy.   The low G modules would have a substantial amount of water (5m at least) through which the protons would have to pass first.

First, not sure why it can aerobrake to 0 mph, but not aerobrake to 10,000 mph.

Second, that's why you only do this with the cargo ships.  After all, there *is no base*.  And there won't be for a long, long time.   The first ships that arrive will be "the base" for years, if not decades.

Third, at some point, robots are going to be sent to clear landing areas, perhaps even construct a platform.  If we're worried about rockets tipping over, we shouldn't be sending huge manned landers like the BFR and should be doing something more along the lines of the SFR.

I think it's a serious issue if they can't land these things within about 100m or so of each other.   You can't call ships spread over km "a base".  There would be minimum contact between the crews since it would be a full suit affair just to go back and forth.    The other issue with these ships is that the manned part is 30m up with no elevator.  So.....they need to deal with lowering vehicles and such to the ground, but with no way to dock them.   So just to go visit another ship is going to be an all day affair.     At some point, either these things are designed to be cannibalized, or they need to be adaptable enough to convert the rocket chamber into living quarters and close enough that tunnels can be built between them.   Otherwise, the BFRs serve little purpose as cargo ships OR as habitats.   

By time they land, they should have less than 5-10% of their fuel capacity on board.   So while an explosion would be catastrophic for the ship, I don't think that would necessarily inflict any kind of deal breaking damage to the others.   The actual safe [enough] distances is are up for debate but minor damages could be repaired.  And I think the first ship could use laser targeting to guide the next ships in to an accurate position, since we don't have GPS on Mars.   

When the manned ships land, they won't have to worry that much.  They can land around the periphery and pray there isn't a failure because they'd be screwed.  But at a distance that would still allow them to take off, though I still think the BFR is the wrong ship for that.   It seems to me that a staged ship that left the booster in orbit would make more sense.   Like the Falcon first stages, let them separate, use aero braking or sling shot techniques to slow them into eventual low Mars orbit for future possible uses.  Let just the tip of the ship land, which would make it far more stable and less prone to falling over from a bad landing.   I guess the "beauty" of the design is in the fact that it only needs one group of engines.    I think Musk is saying "permanent Mars base", but he's running it more like Apollo.  Go, hang out, leave.   Because I don't see much going on that leads me to believe an actual base is going to happen out of these launches.