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If the depth of the traveled area is kept at a fixed height, then a dome can cover the wagon trains road with the walls having solar panels to collect energy.
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A dome over the road is more infrastructure to emplace. It's bad enough just having to grade the road. But the "truck train" idea won't really work without a graded road. Road grading is cheaper than building railroad tracks, though.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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We're up to 7 subscribers!
ExRocketMan1
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A member of North Houston NSS chapter took the plunge yesterday!
We might be able to pick up a few more subscribers there.
Update as of 14:42 local time ... an announcement of a new video on Exrocketman1 just pinged on the browser window.
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I am delighted to be able to report that Dr. Johnson has uploaded a new video showing the use of a "laser pointer" to help viewers to follow the discussion.
Feedback from NewMars members would be welcome!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN7YsQ33t0Q
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I see news reports that SpaceX delayed the private launch of Dragon to ISS for Axiom Space. They were correcting issues with parachute rigging and with the connection of Dragon to Falcon-9.
Those are fundamentally quality control issues that they are addressing. I find that worrisome. In my experience, the bigger an outfit gets, the more likely to occur is that kind of trouble. Boeing is the current egregious example of that effect.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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For GW Johnson re water found on Mars ...
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 79#p218579
The ESA report at the link reported in the post above appears to show that ice would not be found a few meters down.
This implies to me that it might be time to revisit your drill concept.
A drill that can reach several hundred meters down would appear to be needed.
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I agree its time to dust it off and see what can be done to make it happen. maybe seek out a college that would take on the project to build such a unit to send to mars might be an avenue for sucess.
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Drilling deep for ice requires a lot more of a drill rig than can be put on a rover and operated remotely. It WILL REQUIRE a human crew and typical well-drilling equipment adapted for use in vacuum and cold. You are looking at a drill derrick, a drill pipe string, and multiple bits periodically replaced.
And the operators will need EVA suits way more supple than anything we have ever seen since the X-15. Maybe even the X-2 and X-1. The idiotic things I have usually seen proposed for Mars EVA will totally immobilize a drill roughneck crew. Plain and simple. The cold we know how to handle. Vacuum exposure is the problem. Vacuum-protective "underwear" underneath the long johns and outer coveralls and coats would be awfully nice, don't you think? Sounds like MCP to me.
You will need a cement that sets in cold and vacuum to bed-in the well pipe. You will need to run a 2-way nested pipe string down this cemented-in well, to pump in hot steam, and receive the pressurized meltwater coming back up. It may require some sort of down-hole separator to get the dust solids out of the meltwater. None of that equipment yet exists in a form adapted to Mars.
Talk to a real oil driller. He can tell you a lot more, in far greater detail, about the kind of drill equipment and operations that are needed. He may not know about vacuum exposure, but he understands cold, and the rest of it. Or there would be NO Alaskan oil.
So, who is working on these things? NASA? Musk? Anybody else? Nope, no one!
That being said, then just how in hell will propellant ever be made on Mars in 1000-ton lots from Martian air and meltwater? Benchtop demonstrators DO NOT serve as production devices for 1000-ton lots! Bit that kind of thing is all that anybody has yet seen.
So, I repeat: who the bloody hell is working on the stuff that we are really going to need?
Somebody answer me that!
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2024-01-20 16:27:01)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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For GW Johnson...
Your EducationDoneRight series is of (potential) interest to an audience outside the forum.
The search mechanism is a bit much for folks outside the forum to master easily.
Here is a collection of the links:
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 11#p157211
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 84#p157184
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 17#p157117
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 06#p157106
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 06#p157106
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 50#p157050
SearchTerm:EducationDoneRight short list
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For GW Johnson ...
I asked ChatGPT4 for advise about how to develop animation to help students to follow your Basic Orbital Mechanics class material ...
ChatGPT4 said that DALL-E is not designed to produce animation, but it suggested a number of tools that may be worth considering:
Educational Animation Tools for Mathematics Teaching
As educators explore dynamic ways to enhance math teaching, animation tools offer an exciting avenue. Here’s a list of tools that can be particularly useful in creating engaging mathematical content:
Make Math Moments: Integrates animations into math lessons to introduce concepts, illustrate procedures, and engage students. It emphasizes interactive learning experiences. More info. Source: Make Math Moments
Synfig Studio: A beginner-friendly, free animation software supporting multiple layers of content. Ideal for creating explainer videos. More info. Source: F. Learning Studio
Pencil 2D: Open-source animation software with a minimalistic user interface, supporting sketching and painting. Suitable for beginners. More info. Source: F. Learning Studio
OpenToonz: Free, open-source software used for both traditional drawing and 2D animation. It offers flexibility for those with a good sense of color and art. More info. Source: F. Learning Studio
TupiTube: A free animation software compatible with both PC and smart devices. It's beginner-friendly and easy to use. More info. Source: F. Learning Studio
Flip Anim: Simplifies the process of creating animated GIFs, ideal for short, simple animations. More info. Source: Practical Ed Tech
Loopy: A free tool for creating animated simulations or illustrations of concepts, showing relationships between different parts of a system. More info. Source: Practical Ed Tech
Animaker: An online software offering customizable templates for creating educational videos easily. More info. Source: Animaker
Each tool has unique features, making them suitable for various educational needs. Explore these options to find the best fit for your math teaching approach.
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For GW Johnson re Texas style drill...
Calliban posted a link to a report on large quantities of water found near the equator on Mars:
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 82#p218882
The explanation offered is that Mars has changed it's tilt over the eons.
In any case, water quantities appear to be substantial, but they are hundreds of meters below the surface.
A ** real ** drill is going to be needed to reach that water.
I would imagine that hundreds of tons of equipment and a robust nuclear power supply will be needed.
The design of that rig and everything it needs is probably a bit more than the science community can manage.
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Just to clarify - The water is in the form of ice and is expected to be mixed in with volcanic ash. The ice rich layer is approximately 2 miles thick and covered in dust to a depth of up to half a mile. In addition to drilling, a heat source is needed to melt it insitu before the liquid water can be extracted.
Alternatively, or in addition, Mars regolith is rich in perchlorates, which are known to reduce melting point. One option would be solution mining, pumping perchlorate rich brine into the deposit. One problem with this idea is that cold brine has high viscosity, rather like syrup. Not ideal for a fluid that needs to diffuse between fine dust grains. So the water may need to be warm for this to work. Fortunately, this deposit is close to the equator. Maybe solar heated water could be put to use here? It doesn't need to be boiling. Maybe a trough collector, which directly heats water that is then dumped down the well?
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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I stand by what I said in post 233 above. It takes a real drill rig, and you inject steam to melt the ice-dirt composite and send the water (probably muddy) back up the well. Then you have to clean up the water. Vacuum-flash distillation ought to be pretty easy in a 6 mbar atmosphere. Steam extraction is how they do tertiary recovery in oil fields. We already know it works quite well.
The salts and evaporites like the perchlorates are symptomatic of an old sea that dried up. We see the same things here. In fact, that is very likely how the dirty ice got down there: sea bottom mud covered up with wind-blown sediments. Yeah, there's a lot of water down there, but that's too deep to mine with shafts. So do it with wells and slant-well drilling. You cannot do that with some small robot rover. It takes big equipment and a well-trained crew. Just don't overdo it, or you risk cave-ins.
I'm surprised and disappointed that nobody is working on these support technology things. Until these things are ready to use, the notion of refilling "Starships" on Mars for the return home is utter BS. All the "Starship" journeys to Mars, if they ever really take place, will have to be one-way suicide missions. Until such equipment and crews are there. Am I the only one who sees this killer item?
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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For GW Johnson re Post #238
I am delighted to see you back engaging with the drill-for-Mars proposal.
By purest coincidence, I drew a binder with your proposal from September of 2021 from my shelf, while working on something else.
It was right at hand when your post showed up on my browser today.
I have a copy of the proposal, along with the cover letter to a distinguished individual who I will not name for this post, because the individual did not acknowledge receipt of your letter. I rather suspect the staff filed the proposal in a huge library of unsolicited proposals this gent must have received.
What I'd like ** you ** to do, if you still have the energy, and the time, because I know you are busy with projects, is to update the proposal for the reality at hand.
We now have strong indications there is a ** lot ** of water on Mars, and it will go to those with the ability to design a suitable drilling configuration.
That movie about Texas oil men enlisted to save the Earth may not be so far off.
You do not have to invent much of anything, but you ** do ** have to adapt the existing Earth-oriented equipment for the reality of Mars.
There doesn't seem to be much of a way around the reality of what is needed, and the US is far better positioned to deploy a ** real ** drill on Mars than anyone else. There is no reason why any other Nation that wants to take part in the venture should be denied the opportunity, assuming they are accepted for any other joint venture. There is no deep security to worry about.
I'll set up a topic for this project.
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Tom:
The kind of drill rig capable of recovering stuff a mile down is absolutely not something you could mount on a rover, not even the 1-ton nuclear types. It 's the kind of thing you see in a real oil or gas field: a big derrick, a rack with miles of drill stem pipe, a big storage shed for bits and other equipment, and a hydraulic power "generator" about the size of a small semi rig. Plus dragline cranes and a lot of other big equipment. It takes a substantial crew to do this work.
Everything we do here at an oil or gas drilling site has to go to Mars. But it has to be adapted for operation in vacuum, extreme cold, and for no internal-combustion engines, because there is too little air on Mars, and even that has essentially zero free oxygen. And the crews who do this work are going to have to do it in some sort of pressure suits. Suits that can be field-repaired if damaged, and that WILL happen! Suits that allow the same freedom of movement as street clothes.
My problem statement still stands: I see absolutely NO ONE working on doing these prerequisite things. Which means there will be NO large propellant-manufacturing efforts going on at all, with the first trips there, since the equipment will NOT be ready to send. Which in turn means the first trips there WILL be one-way suicide trips! Because NOBODY is interested in shipping return propellant to Mars, they think they can just live off the land and make propellant to return home, because some tiny lab bench-top experiment showed it was theoretically possible.
The difference between a scientific feasibility experiment and an actual ready-to-apply technology is about as vast as the distance between Earth and Mars, if not to the nearest star.
And just remember, remote sensing has a poor track record at being "right". It's now better than the abysmal record of prior decades, but it's still less than a 50-50 proposition. This is still all based on remote sensing, there is NO ground truth yet. And there won't be any ground truth until a crew with a big drill rig goes there and does its job. A meter-or-ten from a dinky little "drill" mounted on a robot rover simply CANNOT do this!
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2024-02-02 14:53:10)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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For GW Johnson re #240
Please take a look at the image of a cycloid trace at this post: http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 59#p218959
I am hoping that this mathematical path shows a way to deliver 40 ton lots of material to the surface of Mars.
The idea itself goes back at least 50 years, when it appeared in the pages of the L5 News.
The application of the concept to Mars is significantly less difficult, due to the smaller gravity and the lower sensible atmosphere.
That said, it will ** still ** be at the outer edge of what existing materials can handle.
It would take an aerospace engineer to work out the numbers for the application of this concept for use at Mars.
There aren't very many of those on Earth at any one time, but with any luck, we might have one in residence here in this forum.
I had planned to send an email about this, but due to end-of-month activities yesterday, I ran out of time.
This post is offered as a substitute.
The concept is to extend a line from the payload delivery vessel as it travels in a Hohmann orbit with Mars coming up from behind. The line would extend out towards Mars. As Mars approaches, a payload of 40 tons at the end of the line would be accelerated down toward Mars. By cleverly managing engine burns at the payload and at the delivery vessel, the payload would be driven down toward Mars, and at just the right moment, the delivery vessel would exert thrust along the line to set the payload gently on the surface.
At that point, the payload would be disconnected from the line.
The line would remain attached to the delivery vessel, which would continue on it's orbit to return to Earth.
Thus, the difficulty of dealing with atmosphere entry and thrust needed for landing would be replaced with just the difficulty of planning the burns and accelerating the payload so that it arrives at the surface of Mars with zero relative velocity.
A concern that will occur to anyone evaluating this concept is the need to protect the line from hot exhaust at the delivery vessel, but I'm hoping there are solutions to that problem.
I am hoping that a spreadsheet program can provide the numbers to show the force that would stretch that cable. The force would include the 40 tons to be delivered, plus the mass of the line, plus the force needed to accelerate the payload against the gravity of Mars.
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I did see the trace and it's a portrayal of the curve that mars launch vehicle takes to get to mars.
The issue is the window of opportunity to launch that is about a month to 2 wide. At the beginning of the cycle the fuel to get a mass to mars is different to the amount required at its end even for the same payload.
Now payload to surface is not the payload of that unit at launch from earth as it requires much more than that to fuel the vehicle to make it possible to land it on the surface. It will also need to have more if the unit is the habitat for man not only for going, the stay on the surface but for the return as well from many consumable items.
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I do not understand this concept for deliveries to Mars. But I do NOT see how it might eliminate the aeroheating difficulties, since the difference in velocities wrt sun of Mars and the transfer orbit apohelion is around 2+ km/s wrt Mars. And that's before the gravity of Mars disturbs the orbit as a 3-body problem, increasing the relative velocity (wrt Mars) to over Mars surface escape at around 5.4 km/s.
You would have to make burns (probably multiple) on the order of that 5.4 km/s to do this odd cable thing. If you have to do THAT, then why not just land the more conventional way? And what in hell are you going to make that cable out of? A steel braided cable that supports tons of tension is a big, heavy thing! I have yet to see ANYBODY make a braided carbon nanotube yarn, much less a cable. It may be half a century (or more, look at fusion and scramjets) before such a technology is ready to apply.
If you adjust your course at transfer apohelion to strike the atmosphere a grazing blow, as Mars runs over you from behind, your velocity wrt Mars at entry interface is only 5.4 km/s off of Hohmann min energy transfer. Much or even most of that can be aerobraked-away without any thrust at all, although you need a heat shield. Not much of one, but something.
You only need thrust to touch down. Big things come out of hypersonics at Mach 3 too low to deploy a chute, and remember that ringsail chutes are "iffy" for survival opening at Mach 2.5. (Ribbon chutes fail at Mach 2 opening. Everything else has to be subsonic.) You must do some sort of heavily-thrusted landing, right after the entry hypersonic heating and deceleration pulses. Or you WILL smack the surface, in only a matter of seconds!
Something on the order of 1 or 2 km/s dV capability should be able to land your 40 tons, maybe even more. SpaceX is proposing to do exactly that with their Starship, at around 200+ tons at entry. I just don't happen to believe their lifting pull-up is going to work without some thrust. They think that reduces the dV of their thrusted landing. I do NOT agree with them on that.
Don't forget the KISS principle.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2024-02-03 11:37:22)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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For GW Johnson...
I asked FluxBB to show me a list of the posts you have created that include "baton" in the text.
The program found 87 of them. The first was this one: http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 69#p111469
In all these posts (certainly the ones I checked) you are describing a spaceflight configuration that is practical with known technology. That makes perfect sense, since practical good sense is the foundation of ** all ** your work. Even the most extreme examples of your work, such as a Large Ship flight to Mars and back, are practical.
In the topic I've created about 40 ton payload delivery to Mars, I have provided room for traditional approaches, and SpaceNut contributed a post with links to several traditional approaches.
I'm offering the challenge to our members who like to stretch their thinking a bit, to think of alternative ways of delivery of payload to Mars that do not depend upon encounter with the atmosphere as a major component of the landing procedure.
SpaceNut appears to have those pretty well covered.
This brings me to your baton concept.
If you made a baton long enough, and the cheer leader tall enough, she could toss the baton so the center rides just above the top of the Mars atmosphere, while one of the tips ** just ** touches the surface before pulling away.
If you drop the tip at the instant it touches the surface, the baton will continue rotation without the tip, and the cheer leader will have to compensate for the missing tip, which I am sure will be annoying.
However, if the tip she drops off was a 40 ton payload, the investors who sent the cheer leader on this mission will be happy.
Animation programs would make short work of this scenario, but (to my knowledge) not ONE of the existing members of this forum have the ability to create the software routines to show the procedure. The best we can do is to show still images, and I'm hoping our members who are skilled making still images will contribute them to the new 40 ton topic.
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For GW Johnson ... Void has been talking about Ballistic Capture for years ... since 2015 to be exact. However, I did not follow up on it until today.
Having followed the link to the Wikipedia article Void linked, I now have a tiny bit more understanding of what it is. Apparently it has been used by both NASA and ESA, and perhaps by other national space agencies. The method takes longer than Hohmann, but it has two distinct advantages ... It does not require large delta v at Mars, and it can be launched any time.
Please try to work a study of this method into your schedule. I recognize you have a conference in March, so may not have time until after, but this entire fascination with Hohmann may turn out to be a distraction.
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If I understand correctly, he is talking about some weird transfer orbit that reduces the dV at Mars for orbital capture, into a highly elliptic and energetic orbit. Except that you don't need a weird transfer orbit for that, you can just capture into the highly elliptic orbit at low dV, even from Hohmann. What's going to cost you is getting from that highly elliptic orbit to low orbit, or to the surface. Its periapsis speed will be near Mars escape at that that altitude. Which in turn is NOT low! We're talking about almost the same orbital entry scenario as NASA's halo orbit at the moon. Which is not advantageous for reaching the surface, only for orbital capture with a performance-deficient vehicle, as it turned out!
What I have been talking about, off simple Hohmann transfer, is a direct surface landing on Mars! There are two course corrections on the way, but that applies to the ballistic capture orbit too, so that is no objection! You do the grazing entry "hit" to take out most of the 5.4 km/s relative speed at entry interface by aerobraking, NOT thrust! That is a BIG plus for what I propose! Then there is a landing burn from end-of-hypersonics to touchdown, but it is only in the 1-2 km/s class at most! And you are on the surface where you really want to be anyway! Which is another BIG plus for what I propose.
You cannot use chutes because there will NOT be time! Not with large objects. In Mars's thin air, you come out of entry hypersonics at low altitudes very near the surface: only about 20-25 km at ballistic coefficient 100 kg/m2. At about 500 kg/m2, this is closer to 5 km altitude. On Earth with its thicker air, these are nearer 40-50 km altitudes, where there is plenty of time to slow further and deploy chutes (in turn more effective in the thicker air). Mars is unlike Earth, in that respect. What happens on Earth 40+ km up happens on Mars nearer 5 km, with large objects.
For a blunt shape, ballistic coefficient is mass-at-entry divided by the product of blockage area and drag coefficient (based on that blockage area). In the hypersonic range of Mach numbers, these drag coefficients are all but constant. Slower in the supersonic range, they are no longer constant, they increase as you slow down, to a max at about Mach 1.1. Assuming the same proportions and a similar shape for the same hypersonic drag coefficient, volume/area scaling governs, and ballistic coefficient varies as size.
For 1 ton & 100 kg/m2, going to 40 tons is a mass 40 times larger. That's a size about factor 3.4 larger, for a ballistic coefficient in the 340 kg/m2 class. For an object nearer 150 tons, the size ratio is nearer 5.31, for a ballistic coefficient in the 530 kg/m2 class. These will come out of hypersonics around 5 km up, on a trajectory slanting downward at around 45 deg or so. That's a 7 km path length to impact, at a Mach 3 speed of 0.7 km/s on Mars at low altitudes. You are crudely 10 sec from impact.
To stop the object from 0.7 km/s in 7 km, an estimate of the effective average kinematic deceleration comes from a high school physics equation: V^2 = 2 a s, solved for a = V^2/2s = 35 m/s2, or about 3.5-3.6 standard gees, which is not bad at all! Now, add another 0.38 gee to counter Mars gravity, and you are looking at experiencing a 4-gee landing even in a craft massing over 100 tons! What is so hard to contemplate about that? 4 gees is nothing for a physically-fit person, even one unaccustomed. This is amusement park roller coaster stuff!
You need to stop into hovering about 50 m up, so you can divert laterally away from any rocks, holes, cliffs, or other obstructions, and then make a safe landing. THAT is why I factor up the landing dV by about 1.5-to-2 in my estimates. And that is Mach 3 speed 0.7 km/s on Mars, times 1.5-to-2: for a landing dV budget in the 1.05 to 1.40 km/s class. You try to land from that high ellipse, and it will cost you nearer 5 km/s dV! There is no way around that, excepting Rube Goldberg notions that have little chance of actually working.
As for the heat shield, Earth entry from low orbit is at 7.9 km/s while this is nearer 5.4 km/s off Hohmann (7.4-7.5 km/s off fast trajectories). Anything that would work for LEO entry will certainly work for this kind of landing on Mars.
There, THAT is how you land 50-150-ton objects on Mars, without thrusting into any orbit, and at a gee level humans can take easily if they are fit. Which is a really good and compelling argument for either (1) supplying artificial gravity during the 8-9 month trip on Hohmann, or (2) sending people on a faster trip nearer only 4-6 months, without the artificial gravity, but with lots of gymnasium equipment.
THAT is what it all boils down to: getting to the surface! Because THAT SURFACE is where the resources are, and THAT is where propellant and life support supplies will be manufactured! And that surface is where people have dreamed of going for some centuries now. Better to just belly up to the bar and simply do it right!
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2024-02-05 10:26:38)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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In other news, I've decided to offer my ramjet book as pdf files emailed from home to paying customers. Right now, that's check or money order. I hope to add soon the ability to take credit cards by voice over the phone. The base price is $100, the rural Texas sales tax $6.25, for a net invoice total of $106.25. I've already gotten two committed customers who've seen me on LinkedIn and "exrocketman", and contacted me out of the blue by email. I've not advertised yet.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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For Dr. Johnson!
Congratulations on sales of your ramjet book!
FYI ... Zelle is a payment method that works through your bank. I first found out about it from an organization that switched to it. It works bank to bank. I have two banks that I use, and they both support it.
It works by the payer logging into their bank online website to make a payment.
The payee has to be approved by the bank ahead of time, but your bank might be willing to help with that.
This system allows everything to be done online, and the money flows from checking account to checking account.
(th)
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For Dr. Johnson!
It is good to see your progress on the 40 ton lander concept.
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 21#p219121
You asked about the four poster lander ... That design is intended to put the payload flat on the surface.
If one of the rocket engines fails, and there are only four of them, then the mission fails.
The illustration was intended to show the concept.
How does your design get the payload safely to the surface?
It is perfectly reasonable for you to use retro-rockets to lift the payload off the lander, after touch down.
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For Dr. Johnson!
Thank you for your observation that the lander concept shown in another topic, with rockets at the four corners of the shipping container, lacked redundancy.
The problem I was trying to address was the problem of delivery of the payload to the surface directly, without the need for cranes or for a separate rocket stage to lift the payload off the lander.
The problem you correctly identified was the lack of redundancy. All four rockets would have to function perfectly throughout the landing sequence.
I attempted to persuade BARD (Now Gemini) to try again, but none of the attempts were successful. It appears that the image software is simply not able to juggle all the elements I asked for.
Thanks again for the feedback on the need for redundancy.
I may try again after some time passes, in hopes that the developers working on this software can help it do a better job with engineering requests.
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