Space X - getting ready for Mars.

elderflower · 2017-11-09 05:02:48

Like anything else, its only worth what you can sell it for! That's how markets work. If you could find a buyer at $20 billion that would be a true valuation.

Oldfart1939 · 2017-11-09 21:48:24

I'm sure there will be a lot of conceptual refinements made before SpaceX attempts anything in the physical sense. Computer models can do a lot, but they are strictly guides for experimentation.

Oldfart1939 · 2017-11-09 23:04:01

SpaceX suffered an anomaly in a recent test of a block 5 Merlin engine designed for the block 5 Falcon 9 vehicles. Here's the link to spacenews.com article: http://spacenews.com/spacex-suffers-mer … st-mishap/

I believe this fits the category of an RUD.

Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2017-11-09 23:09:19)

louis · 2017-11-10 05:15:16

An explosion then! But not directly relevant to the BFR which will use Raptor engines...that's the case isn't it?

Oldfart1939 wrote:

SpaceX suffered an anomaly in a recent test of a block 5 Merlin engine designed for the block 5 Falcon 9 vehicles. Here's the link to spacenews.com article: http://spacenews.com/spacex-suffers-mer … st-mishap/
I believe this fits the category of an RUD.

Oldfart1939 · 2017-11-10 12:15:18

Louis-
Yes, the explosion may put the test stand out of service for 4 to 6 weeks. Not too much concern as there is a second bay in the complex which was only minimally damaged. Expect to resume testing within a week.

GW Johnson · 2017-11-11 12:21:35

This sort of thing has happened before. It's just part of the business of developing rocket engines. I didn't hear the Sunday anomaly, but I have heard bad tests before. Their thrust stand is 6 miles from my front porch. Quite easy to hear what is going on, especially if they are using the older tower stand. The newer big one is down into a pit to reduce radiated noise.

GW

louis · 2017-11-11 18:25:14

A very silly article:

http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk … ?r=US&IR=T

Arguing Space X should be targetting Titan rather than Mars. The "planetary scientist" seems not to care about the lack of insolation, the weak gravity...and doesn't seem to realise there is plenty of water on Mars in any case.

SpaceNut · 2019-09-07 07:56:30

The ship is progressing on the drawing board and timeline for mission has slid a bit but still is looking more likely to be able to get there before Nasa will.

Oldfart1939 · 2019-09-07 09:38:12

NASA seems to be on a fast track to nowhere...
The agency is mired in 50 year old concepts being executed by feed-trough contractors; is in danger of becoming irrelevant.

GW Johnson · 2019-09-07 11:35:04

As I have repeatedly pointed out, Musk nearly always does what he says he will do. He just takes about factor 2+ times longer to get it done than he initially said, because real spaceflight is a lot harder than most folks realize, including him. That's the Spacex track record.

NASA's track record has been in decline since the end of Apollo. That's not to say shuttle and ISS were not incredible achievements, because they were. But they were not going to Mars, which was on the books for the 1980's when Apollo was cancelled "in mid-flight" in 1972.

SLS/Orion is supposed to be Apollo-on-steroids with Saturn-5 reprised from shuttle hardware. But they don't even have a viable lander for the moon. And the initial SLS with the service module on Orion cannot even reprise Apollo 8's going into and out of lunar orbit. Plus SLS has been going on longer and costing more than Saturn-5 without flying yet. For Saturn-5, the engines had to be developed "from scratch", while they already exist pretty much in the needed form for SLS. It should have flown years ago!

Lunar Gateway is a reprise of ISS (by the long-time favored contractors) in a location outside LEO. It's a way to claim they are going to the moon, while they are really still unable to actually land there, until they get a lander built and tested by "someone". And, they're going to get a crew killed by a solar flare strike on Lunar Gateway, because they are still NOT addressing 15-20 g/sq.cm shielding.

Why are they doing it this way? They didn't address this during Apollo, so it's just "traditional" not to address it now, despite the Apollo outcome of a fatal event between Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. Unlike the NASA of 1958-1962, they are extremely averse to doing ANYTHING they have never done before. This emotional response has come to swamp all management logic at NASA (if you'll forgive my choice of the term "management logic").

Oldfart1939 and I quite agree: NASA is not going to Mars any time soon. Spacex will still beat them there even if "Musk time" means they don't try until the late 2030's. If NASA kills a crew on Lunar Gateway from a solar flare strike, there may be no NASA manned spaceflight program at all by the late 2030's. Dead crews are not just economically expensive, there is a huge political expense, too.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2019-09-07 11:38:06)

louis · 2019-09-07 11:48:32

A lot of truth in what you say but I think Space X's record is distorted by the misguided detour down the F9H road which proved technically far more difficult than Musk expected.

Also, I think that Space X is far advanced now on things like rocket control and reusability and can simply scale up a lot of the technologies involved.

Plus the Raptor engine development seems pretty advanced and successful.

Put it all together, and I think Space X's development of the Starship is proceeding at a rapid pace comparable with the Apollo-Saturn 5 programme. I think Space X will get humans to Mars either in 2024 as planned or certainly by 2026. Put it another way round: what's to stop them? I don't see any major impediments, now we know NASA is working closely with Space X - meaning they can tap into a lot of mapping, rover, life support and coms know-how.

GW Johnson wrote:

As I have repeatedly pointed out, Musk nearly always does what he says he will do. He just takes about factor 2+ times longer to get it done than he initially said, because real spaceflight is a lot harder than most folks realize, including him. That's the Spacex track record.
NASA's track record has been in decline since the end of Apollo. That's not to say shuttle and ISS were not incredible achievements, because they were. But they were not going to Mars, which was on the books for the 1980's when Apollo was cancelled "in mid-flight" in 1972.
SLS/Orion is supposed to be Apollo-on-steroids with Saturn-5 reprised from shuttle hardware. But they don't even have a viable lander for the moon. And the initial SLS with the service module on Orion cannot even reprise Apollo 8's going into and out of lunar orbit. Plus SLS has been going on longer and costing more than Saturn-5 without flying yet. For Saturn-5, the engines had to be developed "from scratch", while they already exist pretty much in the needed form for SLS. It should have flown years ago!
Lunar Gateway is a reprise of ISS (by the long-time favored contractors) in a location outside LEO. It's a way to claim they are going to the moon, while they are really still unable to actually land there, until they get a lander built and tested by "someone". And, they're going to get a crew killed by a solar flare strike on Lunar Gateway, because they are still NOT addressing 15-20 g/sq.cm shielding.
Why are they doing it this way? They didn't address this during Apollo, so it's just "traditional" not to address it now, despite the Apollo outcome of a fatal event between Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. Unlike the NASA of 1958-1962, they are extremely averse to doing ANYTHING they have never done before. This emotional response has come to swamp all management logic at NASA (if you'll forgive my choice of the term "management logic").
Oldfart1939 and I quite agree: NASA is not going to Mars any time soon. Spacex will still beat them there even if "Musk time" means they don't try until the late 2030's. If NASA kills a crew on Lunar Gateway from a solar flare strike, there may be no NASA manned spaceflight program at all by the late 2030's. Dead crews are not just economically expensive, there is a huge political expense, too.
GW

Oldfart1939 · 2019-09-07 16:56:01

GW-
On another forum, I described the LOP-G, Gateway, as an experiment designed by Doctor Josef Mengele, the NAZI experimentalist whose "investigations" on human subjects were hideous to the point of Sadism. There have been commenters stating the goal of Gateway is gathering experimental data about exposure to radiation! Such an attitude will not only kill astronauts, but the agency itself!

Oldfart1939 · 2019-09-07 17:03:37

During my stint in the U.S. Army, there was a saying: Lead, Follow, of get the Hell out of the road. NASA needs to pack up the Ego, and begin doing something useful besides wasting taxpayer dollars on SLS, LOP-G, and other junk. The should shift to support of those who ARE leading the way by designing and building such things as large scale Sabatier reactors, and Moxie systems. NASA has shown they ARE capable of the deep space unmanned probes to Titan and Jupiter. Work on advanced MCP space suits for use on Mars would be an excellent example of how our dollars should be spent...

GW Johnson · 2019-09-08 10:56:38

I quite agree with you, Oldfart1939. I think we need to reinvent NASA essentially from scratch. The one we have is over-bureaucratized and over-politicized. To the point of being both useless and expensive, simultaneously.

My stint in the Navy was short, I got too sick to stay at the Academy. I went that route looking to enter naval aviation, get combat experience in Vietnam, go to test pilot school, and on to the astronaut corps.

My goal was the Mars mission, then on the books for the 1980's. All that died because (1) Nixon killed manned spaceflight outside LEO in 1972, and (2) I was unable to follow that career path.

I ended up as a defense industry engineer, developing some of the weapons our military still uses today. When that career died due to plant closure in a severely-contracting aerospace-defense labor market, I did some civilian engineering, and a lot of teaching in math, physics, aviation, and engineering.

That's how I got to be what I am today. An old retired guy with (mostly-) justifiable opinions, living on a farm, and building custom farm implements for sale.

GW

louis · 2019-09-08 15:43:13

Although not a US citizen, and so none of my business really, I used to argue that NASA ought to be split into two agencies: (a) Mars and Moon Exploration and Settlement Agency and (b) National Space Science Agency with roughly 50-50 revenue split. The former would focus on exploring and setting up bases on Mars and Moon and latter deal with everything else.

Now I think it doesn't much matter. Space X is the de facto "Mars and Moon Exploration and Settlement Agency". NASA does its thing - (or rather its 1001 rather diffuse and unfocussed things) with the emphasis on space science rather than exploration and settlement. Now that NASA appears to be co-operating closely with Space X, I think the arrangement I suggested is being realised in a way, albeit Musk's outfit is being funded privately rather than by tax dollars. Space X's Mars mission can definitely benefit from NASA expertise in rover design, ISS life support, space medicine and coms.

GW Johnson wrote:

I quite agree with you, Oldfart1939. I think we need to reinvent NASA essentially from scratch. The one we have is over-bureaucratized and over-politicized. To the point of being both useless and expensive, simultaneously.
My stint in the Navy was short, I got too sick to stay at the Academy. I went that route looking to enter naval aviation, get combat experience in Vietnam, go to test pilot school, and on to the astronaut corps.
My goal was the Mars mission, then on the books for the 1980's. All that died because (1) Nixon killed manned spaceflight outside LEO in 1972, and (2) I was unable to follow that career path.
I ended up as a defense industry engineer, developing some of the weapons our military still uses today. When that career died due to plant closure in a severely-contracting aerospace-defense labor market, I did some civilian engineering, and a lot of teaching in math, physics, aviation, and engineering.
That's how I got to be what I am today. An old retired guy with (mostly-) justifiable opinions, living on a farm, and building custom farm implements for sale.
GW

Oldfart1939 · 2019-09-08 17:57:22

As an aside here, we shouldn't forget that Musk has Tesla in his hip pocket for construction of a battery powered rover. Who else would even be considered, given the expertise of Tesla? If Elon says the word that he needs a rover by 2024, it is entirely feasible to have an operational model in under a year.

louis · 2019-09-08 18:13:40

Well yes, indeed, as I have pointed out before, in WW2 aeroplanes could go from drawing board to mass production in six months...But if I had to choose, I would choose NASA rather than Tesla to produce a rover I could rely on in the extremely harsh and un-Earth like environment on Mars - after all, NASA have had stupendous success with its rovers.

One oversight regarding the rovers could be fatal, since we need somehow to get all that stuff out of the Starships to the base location which will have to be probably a couple of kms away at least.

So for me, it would be a case of get NASA to design your robot and human passenger rovers. I think we can trust them to do a good job.

Oldfart1939 wrote:

As an aside here, we shouldn't forget that Musk has Tesla in his hip pocket for construction of a battery powered rover. Who else would even be considered, given the expertise of Tesla? If Elon says the word that he needs a rover by 2024, it is entirely feasible to have an operational model in under a year.

SpaceNut · 2019-09-08 19:18:06

The Nasa of today is engineering heavy for research and developement of cutting edge without consideration of steady state manufacturing of off the shelf use.
The nasa today is defused across the country and does not communicate all that well as there is quite a bit of design duplication going on as they do not trust the others to be correct any longer.
Just look at Red Dragon one said that heatshield with holes are an issue if engines are mounted in standard format, while the other showed that retro propulsion was the way to land the ship on mars with no parachute.
So deviding up Nasa for option as to mission driven will be a problem as the personnel required are spread out across the nation.

Oldfart1939 · 2019-09-08 19:32:09

Louis- If I were wanting to drive a vehicle on the surface of Mars, I would ask some automotive engineers to design something that would have wheels and some power system and a means of steering, NOT a bunch of eclectic aerospace engineers. Tesla has the necessary power train experience, and so do Ford, General Motors, International, John Deere, and a bunch of other companies. NASA would design something far too complicated for doing a simple mission. Jeep also comes to mind for rough terrain vehicles.

SpaceNut · 2019-09-08 20:43:20

continued in Planetary transportation topics

RobertDyck · 2019-10-10 12:02:38

Oldfart1939 wrote:

vehicle...surface of Mars... NASA would design something far too complicated for doing a simple mission.

General Motors developed the "Lunar Rover" aka "Moon Buggy" for Apollo in the 1960s.

NASA has been working on a rover for Mars. They've come up with 2 designs. The first is supposed to be the new Moon rover, but could be used on Mars. Image from 2009...

The second is a dedicated Mars rover...
rover.jpg?quality=98&strip=all&w=782
Is this the Batmobile from "Dark Knight"? Or the video game "Batman: Arkham Knight?" No, it's too big.

louis · 2019-10-10 14:52:25

I think the first one is the serious design! lol I've seen it on video and I really like the way it moves. I could imagine it on Mars.

Maybe Space X will put in an order. It could be used for exploration in the base vicinity, maybe up to 10 Kms away on Mission One.

RobertDyck wrote:

Oldfart1939 wrote:
vehicle...surface of Mars... NASA would design something far too complicated for doing a simple mission.
General Motors developed the "Lunar Rover" aka "Moon Buggy" for Apollo in the 1960s.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Apollo15LunarRover.jpg/280px-Apollo15LunarRover.jpg
NASA has been working on a rover for Mars. They've come up with 2 designs. The first is supposed to be the new Moon rover, but could be used on Mars. Image from 2009...
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/file … Q_full.jpg
The second is a dedicated Mars rover...
https://boygeniusreport.files.wordpress … =all&w=782
Is this the Batmobile from "Dark Knight"? Or the video game "Batman: Arkham Knight?" No, it's too big.

Oldfart1939 · 2019-10-10 19:42:55

I would vote for design #2, for the reason it has lower profile and better size wheels. Stability on uneven and sloped surfaces is paramount, as well as having the ability to incorporate some real radiation protection if built from linear polyethylene and incorporated boron nitride nanotubes. My biggest concern is protection from solar flare mass ejections and high proton flux.

Design # 1 resembles a somewhat streamlined shithouse on a roller skate. Too high a profile, and wheels too small with tires that will submerge in loose sand. Who designs this stuff? Talk to some guys who off-road in big old pickup trucks! My same engineering criticism as the drill rig that got stuck!

SpaceNut · 2019-10-10 20:16:01

The desert rat is on the chariot chasis which is intended to be a universal hauling bed for all items once lifted and attached for transport to sites as needed in the original Apollo on steriods plans to go back to stay on the moon.

https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/research/analogs/drats/
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/583953main_Des … tSheet.pdf

The other is a mars vehicle design not supported in any way by Nasa for mars. the unique tires and shell makes for lots of conversation. We have seen this before and its seems to fit the rugard terrain of mars...

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/innovation … st-n761771

Oldfart1939 · 2019-10-10 20:33:33

I wonder how many of these engineers have ever talked with a"Good ol' boy" who works a ranch in rugged country. I had a John Deere 6400 4WD tractor that was pretty darn mobile, but even with huge wheels, it was possible to get into situations where overturns and getting stuck was possible. It's much easier to get stuck in loose sand with smaller wheels. Another feature these should have is a differential lock, so one stuck wheel doesn't dig itself in by spinning.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#101 2017-11-09 05:02:48

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#102 2017-11-09 21:48:24

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#103 2017-11-09 23:04:01

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#104 2017-11-10 05:15:16

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#105 2017-11-10 12:15:18

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#106 2017-11-11 12:21:35

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#107 2017-11-11 18:25:14

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#108 2019-09-07 07:56:30

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#109 2019-09-07 09:38:12

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#110 2019-09-07 11:35:04

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#111 2019-09-07 11:48:32

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#112 2019-09-07 16:56:01

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#113 2019-09-07 17:03:37

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#114 2019-09-08 10:56:38

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#115 2019-09-08 15:43:13

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#116 2019-09-08 17:57:22

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#117 2019-09-08 18:13:40

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#118 2019-09-08 19:18:06

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#119 2019-09-08 19:32:09

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#120 2019-09-08 20:43:20

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#121 2019-10-10 12:02:38

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#122 2019-10-10 14:52:25

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#123 2019-10-10 19:42:55

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#124 2019-10-10 20:16:01

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

#125 2019-10-10 20:33:33

Re: Space X - getting ready for Mars.

Board footer