New Mars Forums

Official discussion forum of The Mars Society and MarsNews.com

You are not logged in.

Announcement

Announcement: As a reader of NewMars forum, we have opportunities for you to assist with technical discussions in several initiatives underway. NewMars needs volunteers with appropriate education, skills, talent, motivation and generosity of spirit as a highly valued member. Write to newmarsmember * gmail.com to tell us about your ability's to help contribute to NewMars and become a registered member.

#1 2017-07-26 16:16:01

louis
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2008-03-24
Posts: 7,208

Musk - giant of the age!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … vator.html

Musk making great progress on two projects that could be highly relevant to Mars settlement: the hyperloop transport system which will serve in place of airplane travel on Mars and the Godot boring tech which will enable tunnels to be created more easily than with current technology.


Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com

Offline

#2 2020-11-28 17:16:19

tahanson43206
Moderator
Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 16,759

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

SpaceNut, there are an amazing number of topics containing the keyword "musk" in the title!

I chose to give Louis a boost for his topic from 2017 .... it captures the spirit of a link to be pasted below .... Elon Musk was interviewed by a military officer for an audience of service personnel, before the Virus restrictions took effect.

I've not listened to the video, except to confirm that it does indeed feature Mr. Musk ... if anyone has the time to "attend" the event, and to comment upon it, I'd be interested ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp8smJFaKYE

(th)

Offline

#3 2020-11-28 17:49:22

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,750

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

Quick round up of terms Mush + Tunnel + hyperloop + boring company ect...using the word "and" in between search terms instead of the +

Hyperloop, Earth/Mars

Playing games with The Boring Company

Musk's plans for Mars

Musk on Mars - interesting.

Musk Specs

Inter-settlement transportation on Mars

Musk is Boring...


So we have a working shaft elevator capable of a single car being lowered as big news to a trial tunnel concept that was dug by his boring company with a far of distant future under ground road to take you from LA to Washing DC....at a purported 130mph....

Offline

#4 2020-11-28 21:34:56

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,362

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

tahanson43206,

I watched the entire interview.  Some of the General's questions were answered, whereas others seemed to go off on tangents about fully reusable rockets.  However, I get the sense that Mr. Musk is very excited and passionate about the work being done at SpaceX.  He said he wants to make Star Fleet Academy a reality.  I believe him.

One interesting side note as someone who lives and breathes innovation, is that he said we may not be able to achieve teleportation or warp drive within our lifetimes.  I think that's fundamentally the wrong attitude about those technologies.  If we're to have a Star Trek future, then those two technologies are pivotal.  Apart from curing cancer or something like that, if there's any other task to use AI to accomplish, it should be figuring out how to produce a working warp drive and teleportation device.  Once we have warp drive, impulse drive, and some kind of gravitational field reduction device, then we can explore the universe at our leisure.  At that point, we won't need fully reusable rockets.

Offline

#5 2020-11-28 22:32:11

tahanson43206
Moderator
Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 16,759

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

For kbd512 re #4

Thank you for your review of the video!  I hope to be able to include it in my schedule, but am grateful for your observations and comments.

Your point about using AI to find the solution to the challenge of warp drive and other very advanced technologies is one that I should NOT have found surprising, but ... never-the-less, I had not seen those two ideas put together before in quite that way.

At this point, AI is quite primitive (compared to human intelligence) but in certain domains (augmented by the sheer power of modern computer hardware) it is far superior to human capabilities.

I'm not sure you've picked up on Elon's attitude toward AI ...

This snippet may give you a hint ...

Based on his knowledge of machine intelligence and its developments, Musk believes there is reason to be worried. “I am really quite close, I am very close, to the cutting edge in AI and it scares the hell out of me,” said Musk.Mar 13, 2018

Elon Musk at SXSW: A.I. is more dangerous than nuclear ...

In order to push the envelope in manufacturing Tesla vehicles (and probably other products like batteries) it is my understanding Mr. Musk is harnessing computer power and (I'm guessing of course) fairly advanced software.

The systems that drop Falcon first stages onto floating barges at sea may use learning systems, instead of traditional algorithms.

The place I'd like to see focus is working out how to devise the Startrek Replicator ... That would help a lot more citizens of Earth than other technologies that are on the horizon.  Nature has shown the way .... all living systems are "assembled" one atom at a time.  There is no reason why humans cannot improve on Nature's trial-and-error procedures to pick and place atoms at a faster pace.

It's possible that as Elon Musk pushes the perimeter of what is possible, he may inadvertently bring about progress in many areas we've discussed and many others that have not been thought of.

Thanks again for your report on the interview!

(th)

Offline

#6 2020-11-29 01:15:12

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,362

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

tahanson43206,

Speaking of human fear of nuclear whatever, AI should be used to devise passive nuclear decay heat mitigation systems and strategies that preclude scrammed reactors from melting down.

Here's how AI dramatically out-strips human innovation, as it relates to the design of the Czinger 21C hyper car:

A.I. Designed this Car | Donut Media

Recall what Elon Musk said about designing the machines to produce the machine you want to use being 2 to 3 orders of magnitude harder than fabricating the machine itself?

Well that's where AI really shines.  Tesla is using the same type of tech, just not to the insane degree the Czinger Vehicles did.  Kevin Czinger didn't have enough money to do it any other way, upholding Elon Musk's mantra of innovate or die.  Czinger Vehicles used AI to reduce the assembly plant cost from $500M to $3M, so yes, AI is "just that powerful".

Czinger 21C: the world’s first 3D printed hypercar | Top Gear

I would find it highly interesting if AI could not only tell us how to design individual components of a car that take weeks to months of design using an entire engineering team, days to weeks to design using iterations of sophisticated CAD simulation software, or mere minutes to hours using AI.  Fast forward to 6:10 in the second video to see the difference.

Equally importantly, AI should also to tell humans exactly how to move in ergonomic ways to assemble a car by hand, as rapidly as possible, or when to use machines.  Such as, install this component first because it makes installation of all the rest of the assembly components so much easier.  The same processes could be used in reverse to aid mechanics working on the car, or perhaps AI could look at assembly and disassembly from a "parts-to-assembled-car" and "broken-car-to-disassembled-parts-and-then-back-to-working-car" standpoint.

BTW, Mercedes Benz F1 team designed a gasoline engine that's 55%+ efficient at converting gasoline into horsepower, vs the usual 25% to 35% at best, by combining their engine with friction reduction, power recovery, and electrification subsystems.  IIIC, some aspects of their work involved the use of AI as well, but don't quote me on that.  BTW, Czinger is getting 930hp from a 2.88 liter V8 engine, so definitely approaching F1 engines, which are around 500hp per liter of displacement (11,000rpm 21C vs 20,000rpm F1).  The Czinger 21C is $1.7M, though, with $150M worth of technology invested into the car, so we need somewhat more realistic performance or mass production of the new technology.  At 20,000rpm, I hope you appreciate how vanishingly short the valve open/shut time is.

Enough about cars, though.  Imagine you're on Mars and a Raptor engine has a part that failed.  Whatsa country boy to do?  The AI says there's this piece of cargo that you'll probably never use, made from the exact alloy required, so you purloin the superfluous part, grind it into powder, put it in the 3D printer's hopper, press "the button", and watch the AI-enabled fab-magic begin to take shape.

As impressive as making machinery with advanced software and machinery is, rah rah for western technology and all that, but who really cares if you can't eat?  I want AI-enabled Star Trek replicators that can turn a few cups of chemical constituents / precursors into corn / rice / beans / beef, so I can eat my favorite fajita tacos for dinner.  I'm from Texas, and besides BBQ that's what we eat here, but maybe someone in Africa wants to eat something different.  The point is, we should have a machine that can make that stuff from scratch in time for dinner, maybe even season and cook it for us.  That's real "technology magic".

The same needs to be applied to medical technology.  You have cancer?  No sweat.  We have a machine that will deconstruct the tumor cells piece by piece and feed them to your gut for your next meal.  After we figure out what it is and where it is, we simply program the nano bots to find all of it and recycle it into energy that your body needs.

After we tackle those two major stumbling blocks that humanity has yet to overcome, then we can worry about warping space and time so we can run amok around our galaxy.  We can grab that asteroid made from precious metals to wipe out all debts and pay for everything we want to build.  There are dozens more where that came from.  In closing, there's no shortage of money, no shortage of brain power, and no shortage of technology, but we have to decide, as a species, to maximize the potential of what we build and use.

Edit:

This drivable car was 3D printed in 44 hours

If we can reduce that printing time even more with multiple print heads, then perhaps we can produce an entire car chassis in a day.  Take note of what that guy from Local Motors said about total parts count.  His vehicle chassis has dozens of parts in it, versus thousands, and because there are fewer parts that can fail, all design effort can be expended making sure that the few parts that were used don't fail.  Apart from that, he said a major automotive corporation has to scrap 20 pounds of raw material for every pound worth of final part that goes into a vehicle, whereas his material utilization rate is very nearly 1 to 1.  A mere $7K for a perfectly usable 2-seat electric car, maybe less if we can repurpose the batteries or combustion engines from older cars.  Reduce scrap, recycle as much scrap as we can, and reuse components, wherever possible- because it takes lots of energy to make new parts.  I say we make the chassis / suspension / motors or engines as durable as possible, like the Tesla Cyber Truck or a Trophy Truck.

Last edited by kbd512 (2020-11-29 01:31:57)

Offline

#7 2020-11-29 08:35:04

tahanson43206
Moderator
Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 16,759

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

For kbd512 re #6 

You were on a roll when you composed that essay!

SearchTerm:3DPrintedCar Kevin Czinger http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 82#p174382
SearchTerm:AIDesign
SearchTerm:Car3DPrinted

Here's something that might stimulate more of your creative thinking ... in an earlier post I showed a link to a metal matrix honeycomb product.

After thinking about that overnight, I realized that 3D printers ** excel ** at making small bore honeycomb ... they fill objects with this material in order to reduce material cost while retaining most of the strength of which the material is capable.

It occurred to me that Starship class vehicles could be built the same way.

In a recent post in a nearby topic, you observed that it might make sense to design a vehicle for entirely 3D fabrication.

At present, 3D printed components are incorporated into existing designs, so the result is a hybrid of manually fabricated and 3D fabricated components.

I imagined a honeycomb across the entire cross-section of a rocket, with oxidizer flowing through the center and fuel flowing through the outer ring of honeycomb.

I have no idea how thick the walls of that stainless steel honey comb are, but it may be possible to find a sweet spot for thickness that allows the same mass of stainless steel to be distributed over the entire cross section of a Starship class vehicle instead of concentrated at the outermost extremity.

(th)

Offline

#8 2020-11-29 11:46:28

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,362

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

tahanson43206,

I was specifically thinking about structures such as the engine mounts and landing gear for the Starship.  Those components probably can and should be designed using AI and 3D printed.  The propellant tanks require uniform structural strength, so there's probably not much advantage to designing them using AI, unless a honeycomb-type structure can be lighter than paper thin sheet steel, which doesn't seem possible to me for a structure that's already 95%+ propellant by volume.  However, doing that could eliminate the need for dozens of humans with portable welding machines out there in the elements, welding away on sheet steel.  As cheap as sheet steel is, I don't think you'd save any money at all on materials unless you had a very high scrap rate with the sheet steel due to weld imperfections, in which case you'd normally re-weld the seams that had poor quality welds, but there'd be a dramatic savings in terms of labor costs.

If you recall, certain parts of the Czinger 21C chassis were simple tubular metal because that was the simplest and cheapest way to provide the necessary strength for the part.  ULA's Tory Bruno said they used a special welding tool for the friction stir welder that produces their stainless steel Centaur upper stage propellant tanks that prevents the act of welding the components from distorting the metal.  As such, I still think simple welded sheet steel is the correct material to use for the propellant tanks, not 3D printing, but they need a welding machine that can performing multiple welds in a single pass.  AI should design the internal structural reinforcement for the tanks.

My comments about using CMCs for Starship's propellant tanks, such as those used in gas turbine blades, is related to the relatively lighter weight, higher compressive and tensile strength without yielding, higher temperature resistance range, and ability to withstand millions of thermal cycles prior to significant degradation from cracking.  The Starship itself is subjected to much more extreme thermal fluxes than the Starship Booster, so this more expensive material will be required for ultimate durability and absolute minimization of the heat shield mass.  It has about the same weight as Aluminum, the same strength as stainless steel, the same temperature resistance range as a ceramic metal such as a carbide.  The downside is that it's also pretty expensive stuff due to the vacuum furnace processing required.  Maybe some cost savings will be realized due to the simplicity of the propellant tank geometry in comparison to a gas turbine blade, but maybe not.

The CMCs in question are carbon fibers mixed with a ceramic slurry, subsequently baked / sintered at high temperatures under a vacuum, essentially a fiber-reinforced ceramic metal that can flex a little without immediately cracking, commonly used for hot section gas turbine blades and components exposed to the exhaust, such as the petals in convergent-divergent nozzles on military gas turbines with afterburners.

I want to see what AI-enabled optimization can do for the channel wall nozzle design of the Raptor engine, seeing as how we have 30+ engines on this beast.  If there's anything AI can do with the plumbing, then I'd like to see that as well.

Offline

#9 2020-11-29 12:23:18

tahanson43206
Moderator
Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 16,759

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

For kbd512 re #8

Comprehensive post ... will select two items ...

1) Picked up on vacuum chamber need for manufacture of CMC's .... logic says make it in space, so an industry should develop there

2) We've been using the term AI, without distinguishing between "programmed" AI and learning systems.

Programmed AI examples include the Chess and Go programs, and many others

Learning systems I'm a little less sure of, except that I am frequently hearing from Microsoft about their Azure based machine learning offerings.

My guess is that Google is a hybrid that started with programmed AI and is now largely powered by learning software, but again, that is just a guess.

I'd be inclined to expect that the kind of AI you've been thinking about is the machine learning variety. 

The natural world we see around us is evolved with the machine learning capabilities of free floating molecules.

Humans (and many creatures such as beavers, ants, termites) are an interesting wrinkle in the flow of directed activity over time, because they can and do take charge of the flow of energy and matter to achieve objectives they define for themselves.

(th)

Offline

#10 2020-11-29 13:56:42

GW Johnson
Member
From: McGregor, Texas USA
Registered: 2011-12-04
Posts: 5,423
Website

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

I first saw friction-spin welding in 1969,  at a machine shop producing detonator casings for 500 lb bombs.  It was a fascinating thing to watch.  But it does NOT apply to all shapes,  only those that can be chucked-up and spun. 

I like the idea of a robot welder making multiple welds at once on a stainless steel propellant tank.  Typically,  machine-made welds will be higher quality than human-made welds.  But there will always be heat-induced residual stresses and distortions-in-finished-shape to deal with. 

Friction-spin welding has fewer of these defects due to the clamping action of the machine and the source of the heat,  but (as I already said) geometries are restricted to those you can chuck-up and spin.  And you cannot really control the final clocking-angle of the two welded parts.  Which is an additional geometric constraint.

If you have a vacuum tank big enough to contain the part,  you can do automated electron beam welding.  I've seen that since the late 1970's.  There are fewer distortions induced by this,  and the weld quality is very high indeed (near-100% strength of the parent metal).  But for Starship, that would be one whopping huge (impractical) vacuum tank.  Unlikely to ever be considered.

Just cogitating some ideas.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2020-11-29 14:00:06)


GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

Offline

#11 2020-11-29 14:26:40

kbd512
Administrator
Registered: 2015-01-02
Posts: 7,362

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

tahanson43206,

If we were going to manufacture anything in space, it should probably start with materials that have to be processed under vacuum.  That said, the molds used to make these parts must be actively cooled or must withstand extreme temperatures.

All types of actual AI are "machine learning AI", which means they start with programming incorporating pertinent immutable physical laws and then the AI "learns through iterative design attempts", as it works towards a solution that satisfies a set of design goals.  AI is merely a collection of various software algorithms capable of doing that much faster than a FEA or CFD program run on a super computer, never mind human brains trying to comprehend what FEA or CFD software is telling them.  You may not get the exact same result by running the program twice, but both results can be and typically are perfectly workable solutions to the problem statement.

3D printing makes prototype fabrication so fast that you can afford to scrap a few parts that didn't quite live up to performance expectations without significant loss of time and therefore money.  The combination of the two is very powerful, because a very small engineering team can produce a very complex machine without expending a lot of time and therefore money.

For example, imagine that a single aerospace engineer or aerodynamicist could design the entire airframe of an airliner using standardized parts or configurations with the aid of AI-enabled computer programs, and could afford to allow the computer program to try thousands or even millions of little tweaks to the design to reduce fuel consumption or cost of manufacture or some combination of both, and that that process would take place over the course of a week instead of several years.

The Boeing 737 MAX cost $1.8B to develop and the engines cost another $3B to develop, largely a function of all that time required by the iterative engineering design work necessary to produce a product with the desired performance specifications, not to mention the fabrication processes.  If that could be done over a couple of months, a corporation like Boeing would simply hire an aerospace engineering AI firm to design their product using input from their customers, along with the fabrication and maintenance processes using that firm's aerospace engineering AI team, and then Boeing would exclusively focus on production and maintenance support.

As we transition away from larger airliners for regional flights and towards much smaller aircraft like the Otto Aviation Celera 500L, which flies at 737 speeds using sophisticated aerodynamics, combined with a very fuel efficient 12-cylinder diesel engine, AI will become an increasingly important factor for reducing the costs associated with the design / test / certification cycle.  An aerodynamicist may come up with the general shape of the machine, whereupon the AI will tweak it to extract every last bit of aerodynamic performance out of the basic design.

The EViation Alice is pretty far from the best we can do, with respect to aerodynamic design, but the AmpAire TailWind, combined with the bullet-like body shape of the Celera 500L, is much closer to a thoroughly optimized 6 seat high-speed electric aircraft design that could feasibly fly for 2 hours at regional jet-like speeds using current battery technology.  BTW, the Celera 500L can fly 5,200 miles on 208 gallons of diesel and has a 460mph cruise speeds, which is the low end of the 737's cruise speed.  The high end of the 737's cruise speed is just 60mph faster, but it burns 8 times as much fuel as the Celera 500L.  The Celera 500L is a 6 seater, a recurring theme in small regional passenger aircraft.

AimpAire TailWind

In the immediate future, hybrids or fuel cell powered aircraft will reign supreme.  The batteries could provide the extra power needed to takeoff or abort a landing, and then the engine or fuel cell can be optimized in size / weight purely for cruise flight.  The fuel and maintenance costs will be a fraction of that required to operate a jet engine.

Offline

#12 2020-12-31 13:13:22

tahanson43206
Moderator
Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 16,759

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

For kbd512 re #11 ... thanks for your analysis in this post ... your vision of how AI may improve manufacturing makes for encouraging reading ...

I logged in just now to report another article about Elon Musk, who is the subject of this topic by Louis ...

https://qz.com/1949790/is-spacex-versus … t-matters/

The author compares SpaceX to all other (viable) commercial vendors (and to China as the benchmark) and finds China the only significant competitor.

(th)

Offline

#13 2020-12-31 13:54:06

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,750

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

I would also include Japan and Taiwan in that AI and Robotics arena.

America resisted the automation factor back in the 80s as that would mean people losing there jobs as companies were not going to retrain there valued employees. So semi automated designs came to being where a human must interact with the machine doing the dangerous aspects of the work....

Of course the american colleges are alive and well with the research aspects to development...

Offline

#14 2021-01-06 03:08:37

Tmcom
Member
Registered: 2017-03-02
Posts: 837

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

kbd512 wrote:

tahanson43206,

I watched the entire interview.  Some of the General's questions were answered, whereas others seemed to go off on tangents about fully reusable rockets.  However, I get the sense that Mr. Musk is very excited and passionate about the work being done at SpaceX.  He said he wants to make Star Fleet Academy a reality.  I believe him.

One interesting side note as someone who lives and breathes innovation, is that he said we may not be able to achieve teleportation or warp drive within our lifetimes.  I think that's fundamentally the wrong attitude about those technologies.  If we're to have a Star Trek future, then those two technologies are pivotal.  Apart from curing cancer or something like that, if there's any other task to use AI to accomplish, it should be figuring out how to produce a working warp drive and teleportation device.  Once we have warp drive, impulse drive, and some kind of gravitational field reduction device, then we can explore the universe at our leisure.  At that point, we won't need fully reusable rockets.

Agreed, warp drive wouldn't even be potentially viable unless a mathematician messed about with the numbers for a laugh, and realized there where ways around it needing the energy output of Jupiter to pull it off.

If Musk wants Star Fleet then he needs to pump serious cash into antigravity systems.

And he shouldn't watch Star Trek Discovery Season 3!

Offline

#15 2021-01-06 17:23:13

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,750

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

The dreams of Star Trek are getting closer everyday to being real as

Quantum entanglement and data teleportation is a complex science, and not even the experts fully understand how it might ultimately be used in a quantum network. Each proof of concept like this that we get puts us a little closer to making such a network happen though.

Is teleportation possible? Yes, in the quantum world and We’re one step closer to a communication network based on quantum teleportation

Offline

#16 2021-01-06 19:33:01

Tmcom
Member
Registered: 2017-03-02
Posts: 837

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

SpaceNut wrote:

The dreams of Star Trek are getting closer everyday to being real as

Quantum entanglement and data teleportation is a complex science, and not even the experts fully understand how it might ultimately be used in a quantum network. Each proof of concept like this that we get puts us a little closer to making such a network happen though.

Is teleportation possible? Yes, in the quantum world and We’re one step closer to a communication network based on quantum teleportation

Still a long way to go, to get up to a dog going from one location to another, without looking like Sundays Curry.

Offline

#17 2021-08-10 12:33:04

tahanson43206
Moderator
Registered: 2018-04-27
Posts: 16,759

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/finance … 12325.html

Elon Musk has offered to help out Nasa after it revealed its problems in making new spacesuits.

A new report from Nasa’s Inspector General made clear that the space agency is notably behind its plan to produce new space suits, which it says were the result of funding problems, the impact of coronavirus and technical challenges.

They are not expected to be ready by April 2025 at the very earliest, which would be another reason that Nasa will not be able to make its plans for a 2024 landing on the Moon.

By the time they are finished, Nasa will have spent more than a billion dollars on the next-generation spacesuits, the report says.

Elon to the rescue again .... interesting quote about cooks in the kitchen

(th)

Offline

#18 2021-08-10 16:55:30

Calliban
Member
From: Northern England, UK
Registered: 2019-08-18
Posts: 3,352

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

If we succeed in developing high thrust, high exhaust velocity, fusion micro-explosion powered rockets, then we could realistically colonise every planet and moon in the solar system within a couple of centuries.  Assuming that can be made to happen, then I think that our future would probably look a lot more like the vision presented by The Expanse, rather than Star Trek.

In The Expanse, set in the 23rd century, mankind has colonised the solar system, but not yet the stars.  Mars has been heavily colonised and has a population of billions.  The asteroid belt provides the material resources needed by heavily populated Earth and Mars.  Belters resent 'Inners' for their imperialist behaviour.  Earth and Mars are both superpowers, vying for control of the solar system.

Generally, The Expanse features a lot of technological advancement compared to today, but lacks the fantastic technologies of Star Trek.  Ships are bound by the laws of physics.  Fusion drives can accelerate at many times Earth gravity, with high-ISP.  There are no inertial dampers, meaning that ship acceleration is ultimately limited by what human crews can tolerate.  On more than one occasion in the series, crew members died from strokes under high-g burns.  But it still takes weeks or months to travel between the planets.  Space battles take place slowly, with ship firing fusion driven nuclear weapons at each other over distances of thousands of km.  Short range point defence canons are projectile based, as are all small arms.  Rail guns, firing iron projectiles at tens of km/s are important secondary armaments for capital ships.  There are no warp drives, no phasers, no shields, no transporters.  And no faster than light communication.  Leaders on Earth and Mars, face delays in learning the outcome of battles.  Artificial gravity is produced either by rotation or thrust.  In the absence of either, crews wear magnetic shoes allowing them to walk on steel decks.

The only really fantastic technologies occur later in the series, with the opening of the (wormhole) ring gates, which allow humanity to colonise other star systems.  Protomolecule tech is fanciful, but not infeasible.  The faster than light communications allowed by proto-molecule tech is on the edge of possibility based on what we know now, with most of what we do know suggesting that it is impossible.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-08-10 17:11:01)


"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."

Offline

#19 2021-08-10 17:36:12

louis
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2008-03-24
Posts: 7,208

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

We could easily colonise the solar system in a similar way to how the UK colonised Canada and Australia in the 19th century but there was very little contact between Canada and Australia. Starships would be the connectors between the staging posts of colonisation. I can't imagine there would be a huge community of humans on Pluto but there could be the equivalent of an Antarctic science research station.  Mars obviously could be a blooming civilisation.  Maybe some of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn but aren't the G forces on the moons pretty spectacular?

Calliban wrote:

If we succeed in developing high thrust, high exhaust velocity, fusion micro-explosion powered rockets, then we could realistically colonise every planet and moon in the solar system within a couple of centuries.  Assuming that can be made to happen, then I think that our future would probably look a lot more like the vision presented by The Expanse, rather than Star Trek.

In The Expanse, set in the 23rd century, mankind has colonised the solar system, but not yet the stars.  Mars has been heavily colonised and has a population of billions.  The asteroid belt provides the material resources needed by heavily populated Earth and Mars.  Belters resent 'Inners' for their imperialist behaviour.  Earth and Mars are both superpowers, vying for control of the solar system.

Generally, The Expanse features a lot of technological advancement compared to today, but lacks the fantastic technologies of Star Trek.  Ships are bound by the laws of physics.  Fusion drives can accelerate at many times Earth gravity, with high-ISP.  There are no inertial dampers, meaning that ship acceleration is ultimately limited by what human crews can tolerate.  On more than one occasion in the series, crew members died from strokes under high-g burns.  But it still takes weeks or months to travel between the planets.  Space battles take place slowly, with ship firing fusion driven nuclear weapons at each other over distances of thousands of km.  Short range point defence canons are projectile based, as are all small arms.  Rail guns, firing iron projectiles at tens of km/s are important secondary armaments for capital ships.  There are no warp drives, no phasers, no shields, no transporters.  And no faster than light communication.  Leaders on Earth and Mars, face delays in learning the outcome of battles.  Artificial gravity is produced either by rotation or thrust.  In the absence of either, crews wear magnetic shoes allowing them to walk on steel decks.

The only really fantastic technologies occur later in the series, with the opening of the (wormhole) ring gates, which allow humanity to colonise other star systems.  Protomolecule tech is fanciful, but not infeasible.  The faster than light communications allowed by proto-molecule tech is on the edge of possibility based on what we know now, with most of what we do know suggesting that it is impossible.


Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com

Offline

#20 2021-08-15 10:03:13

Mars_B4_Moon
Member
Registered: 2006-03-23
Posts: 8,899

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

Super heavy booster 4
https://twitter.com/considercosmos/stat … 2058256394

Starship Fully Stacked
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1423659261452709893

Elon Musk calls out Jeff Bezos over his use of lobbying and lawyers in lunar lander spat
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech … -spat.html

Musk - Each Starship Could Travel to Mars a Dozen Times
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2021/08/s … -mars.html

Online

#21 2021-09-09 17:02:41

Oldfart1939
Member
Registered: 2016-11-26
Posts: 2,366

Re: Musk - giant of the age!

Just finishing up reading a biography of Musk that was purchased for me to read whilst recovering from my bout with COVID-19.

ELON MUSK
Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
by: Ashlee Vance

Written with some input from Elon himself, but not entirely a pretty picture; expose the man's flaws and isn't nonstop cheerleading.

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB