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Now back to our regulary scehedueled program of Mars Colonization Program, Mission 1: Your Comments,
Well most of the thread thus far has been about the means to get us there and until it is solved in an economic manner little or nothing will occur unfortunately.
But lets say that is solved and we decide that it requires a number of ships to get the first men there for the official flags and foot prints.
Would would be the scientific agenda that we should concentrate on after that great moment has happened?
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I think the ISS does have a role. As I said, there are researchers playing with analogue experiments in the lab. We have a space station, guys with Ph.D.s should stop playing with toys and actually do real research on ISS. Why waste money doing bed rest or other silly experiments that guess at human body response to zero-G (or micro-gravity) when we have a space station where they can do real scientific research on the real thing. ISS is also useful as a way-station, the space taxi only requires enough life support to launch and rendezvous with ISS, then get back down. Waiting for the lunar or Mars spacecraft can be done as the space station. Third and most important, we need to test the long duration life support system in LEO; that's best done on ISS.
That said, I think the launch schedule should be:
- Discovery, complete its ISS construction mission
- Atlantis, its ISS utilization mission
- Hubble service mission
- 3 combined missions (orbiter & Shuttle-C) to complete construction of ISS
- if the last construction mission has Node 3 on Shuttle-C instead of the US Habitation module, then one more Shuttle orbiter mission to launch the US Hab
*End of 2006: ISS construction complete. No more Shuttle flights. Decommission the orbiter.
- let politicians decide if there will be one more Shuttle mission to Hubble in 2007 as a "feel good" mission that would be Shuttle's swan song (final flight), or if the last ISS construction mission in 2006 is that final flight.
Some time in 2007, start flying the space taxi. Europe will start flying ATV sometime in 2005. Progress and ATV can supply ISS, Soyuz and space taxi can deliver crew. With EELV and Shuttle-C for cargo, and space taxi for crew we don't need anything more. Proceed on to the Moon & Mars.
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Here's the colonization plan as I see it. There are people who want to emigrate to Mars. From a business perspective it doesn't matter why, the only thing that matters is they do want to go and are willing to pay to get there. Establish a colonization ship that initially takes 100 colonists at a time to Mars. If the demand increases beyond 100 colonists every 26 months, then build a second ship that can carry 1000 colonists at a time. This ship will be commercial, paid by ticket price alone and profitable. There will have to be a Mars base to receive colonists and service the ship. The first ship requirement will be fuel to return to Earth. The base will be built by the company that operates the ship, and will hire employees to operate Mars surface-to-orbit shuttles to carry colonists down, as well as to make fuel and deliver it to the ship. The base will have to be self sustaining, making basic necessities like air, water, food. Some of that food will resupply the ship for its return to Earth. The colony will need a simple mining facility for construction material, and manufacturing for basic things like habitat walls, windows, spacesuits, life support equipment, etc.
This initial base will provide employment for those colonists who didn't bring to Mars anything other than themselves. The base will not only service the ship, it will also provide provisions for colonists who establish a homestead. There will be those who can afford to build an independent home away from the base in the "outback" of Mars. Those homesteads will require all the same equipment as the base. Well, they won't have to service the Mars orbital shuttle but they will have to be self-sustaining. I expect this will be the initial economy on Mars. The initial base will grow to become the first city on Mars.
Supplying asteroid miners will be the next growth market for the Mars economy after supplying homesteaders.
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I think the ISS does have a role. As I said, there are researchers playing with analogue experiments in the lab. We have a space station, guys with Ph.D.s should stop playing with toys and actually do real research on ISS. Why waste money doing bed rest or other silly experiments that guess at human body response to zero-G (or micro-gravity) when we have a space station where they can do real scientific research on the real thing. ISS is also useful as a way-station, the space taxi only requires enough life support to launch and rendezvous with ISS, then get back down. Waiting for the lunar or Mars spacecraft can be done as the space station. Third and most important, we need to test the long duration life support system in LEO; that's best done on ISS.
That said, I think the launch schedule should be:
- Discovery, complete its ISS construction mission
- Atlantis, its ISS utilization mission
- Hubble service mission
- 3 combined missions (orbiter & Shuttle-C) to complete construction of ISS
- if the last construction mission has Node 3 on Shuttle-C instead of the US Habitation module, then one more Shuttle orbiter mission to launch the US Hab
*End of 2006: ISS construction complete. No more Shuttle flights. Decommission the orbiter.
- let politicians decide if there will be one more Shuttle mission to Hubble in 2007 as a "feel good" mission that would be Shuttle's swan song (final flight), or if the last ISS construction mission in 2006 is that final flight.Some time in 2007, start flying the space taxi. Europe will start flying ATV sometime in 2005. Progress and ATV can supply ISS, Soyuz and space taxi can deliver crew. With EELV and Shuttle-C for cargo, and space taxi for crew we don't need anything more. Proceed on to the Moon & Mars.
No no no,
First of all, your desired dates for all this work to be done are wildly unrealistic, 2006 for the ISS to be finished even with Shuttle-C? What in or above the world are you talking about? Shuttle-C can't possibly be even ready by then, and even when it is done it can't carry more then two or three ISS payloads by volume most likly, requiring many flights still.
Furthermore, the work that can be done on the ISS just isn't worth the cost. Its not worth the cost, and thats all there is to it. There is no compelling microgravity research besides zero-G physiological effects worth the ~$40-50Bn you would need to build Shuttle-C, fly Shuttle for another few years, and operate/supply the ISS until its design life at several billions more per year. Not one more penny!
Last I checked, we wanted to go to the Moon and Mars, right? Then if we are in such a panic about the LSS box breaking or Astronauts getting deconditioned in space on a Lunar base or Mars ship, then thats where they should be tested best. As an added bonus, you get to test all the other systems too, and even better you get to test them in their final integrated configuration so you know they play well together.
You save tens of billions of dollars by not fooling with the ISS, which you want to save just to test the CLSS box and study zero-G effects, which you can instead spend on building Moon/Mars prototypes. Put the prototypes close enough that you can come home if there is a problem (Lunar surface, L1, LEO) and have crews live in them for the designed period. $50Bn would just about pay to execute the baseline NASA DRM Mars plan! It ain't rocket science!
Lastly, since EELV nor Shuttle-C have last-mile guidence, they can't possibly serve as ISS cargo vehicles without expensive (>$1Bn maybe) modification... Oh, and having the ISS as a storage facility for Earth/LEO taxis? Let me get this straight, you want to spend tens of billions of dollars AND force a 20% payload penalty on all payloads (altitude & inclination versus 200km equitorial aprox) ships... just so you can avoid giving the taxi extended unmanned loiter capability?
The ISS is worthless, its time to move on.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Here's the colonization plan as I see it. There are people who want to emigrate to Mars. From a business perspective it doesn't matter why, the only thing that matters is they do want to go and are willing to pay to get there. Establish a colonization ship that initially takes 100 colonists at a time to Mars. If the demand increases beyond 100 colonists every 26 months, then build a second ship that can carry 1000 colonists at a time. This ship will be commercial, paid by ticket price alone and profitable. There will have to be a Mars base to receive colonists and service the ship. The first ship requirement will be fuel to return to Earth. The base will be built by the company that operates the ship, and will hire employees to operate Mars surface-to-orbit shuttles to carry colonists down, as well as to make fuel and deliver it to the ship. The base will have to be self sustaining, making basic necessities like air, water, food. Some of that food will resupply the ship for its return to Earth. The colony will need a simple mining facility for construction material, and manufacturing for basic things like habitat walls, windows, spacesuits, life support equipment, etc.
This initial base will provide employment for those colonists who didn't bring to Mars anything other than themselves. The base will not only service the ship, it will also provide provisions for colonists who establish a homestead. There will be those who can afford to build an independent home away from the base in the "outback" of Mars. Those homesteads will require all the same equipment as the base. Well, they won't have to service the Mars orbital shuttle but they will have to be self-sustaining. I expect this will be the initial economy on Mars. The initial base will grow to become the first city on Mars.
Supplying asteroid miners will be the next growth market for the Mars economy after supplying homesteaders.
Too ambitious of a start, slower and more granular growth is a better idea... start with a ship of reasonable size, like with 25 people and make it small enough to be launched in pieces from Earth then build more of them as needed. Having colonists do the whole six-month low energy trip isn't that good of an idea either, a faster propulsion system should be used.
And run this spaceline at a profit? Unlikly, your passengers just won't have this kind of money even if they liquidated their entire fortunes for the trip and to help operate the colony. Alot of stuff is still going to have to come from Earth, and it will all have to be designed, built, and imported at terrible expense.
Satelite homesteads on Mars are also right out, it is so much easier to scale support systems rather then build multiples of them (like nuclear reactors), that one city will be preferred. Besides, it would get lonely living in the Martian outback, most people are social critters after all... Oh, and the collective wealth of all the colonists will be needed to help set the city up, and all but the richest people in the world could afford their own nearly self-sufficent "estate" anyway. It would make governance and policing much easier too.
Asteroid mining is impossible economically, it can never compete with larger Lunar mines with their gravity and proximity to Earth (and their target market), plus the simple fact that most of the exports will be light-weight stuff (Platinum, He3) for a long long long time. This is made way way worse by a Lunar space elevator, which can be made with today's Spectra.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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Regarding low-energy access to the Earth-moon L1 point: there is no low-energy access. In fact, it probably takes slightly more energy to go to L1 from low Earth orbit and stay there than it does to escape the Earth. L1 "orbits" the earth at about 2,000 mph/3,000 kmph. If one flies through it, one can't stay at it. It may be possible to fly to the moon, use lunar gravity to boost one into an orbit that oscillates between the moon and L1, then two weeks later when one is flying through L1 perform a small delta-v to stay there. L1 and the moon orbit the Earth at essentially the same speed. Going to L1 from Earth takes, I think, an extra 300 or 600 meters per second compared to escape velocity (but I don't remember where I saw the figure).
Weak stability boundaries connect EML1 to the other EM lagrange points and the Earth-Sun Lagrange points. For a low delta-v one can move among those points (though the travel time is usually months at minimum). But to go to the Mars-Sun lagrange points requires about the same amount of delta-v as traveling between the planets normally takes.
-- RobS
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I think many of the Mars colonists will be individualists who want to get away. After all, Mars is the ultimate get-away. That means there will be individuals and families that want their own homestead. The city I see as a company town, owned by the spaceline. Not everyone will want to live in a company controlled town even if it is beneficent.
You claim Mars transport must be made from Earth transported materials, but then admit such a ship can't be profitable. That's why it would be built of in-space materials, to make ship construction economical enough.
Actually I'm skipping a step. I would see the first human Mars mission being a science mission, but after about 3 science missions there would be a base construction crew of 12. That crew would build an initial base with apartments for themselves, greenhouse, and mining/refining/manufacturing to build that base and its needs. Once that initial base is built the construction crew would expand it to receive the first 100 colonists. The construction crew would be company employees. I expect space agencies would want more science; one export from the base would be science data. Space agencies, research institutes and universities could rent an apartment for a dedicated scientist or two of their own. It would be easier to mount science expeditions across the Martian surface from a Mars base than from Earth.
I'm one of the core members of the Mars Homestead Project. There will be an entire track at this year's Mars Society convention for the Mars Homestead Project. I don't want to get into more detail of that initial 12-person base because I would be giving away stuff from those presentations. I won't be presenting in that track myself, but I have participated in the development. I will make a few other presentations, not part of Mars Homestead. Why don't you come and criticize my ideas in the questions after each one.
*Blatant Advertising* Come to this year's convention. https://www.marssociety.org/secure/regi … p]Register now, click here.
As for lunar mines, well they'll need water and food and plastics and rocket fuel. As I explained before, water at lunar poles is not well concentrated. Lunar soil propellant is a mono-propellant; not safe for humans. Lunar greenhouses can grow some food, but they'll need water and nitrogen and carbon. You could harvest that from a C-type asteroid instead of Mars, but now we're talking about asteroid mining to support a lunar colony. That means asteroid mining is necessary to support lunar mining. If there is a lunar colony, then the Mars colony will trade with them. Besides, I really want to get in the business of making all the equipment for asteroid mining. If I establish an asteroid mine at all it will be just to prove it to customers and establish experience that can be sold for consulting fees. But I also intend to make lunar mining equipment, so it doesn't matter if lunar mines are more common than asteroid mines; they'll all get their equipment from me.
Lunar space elevator? Why, a lunar mass driver is more efficient. Besides, the Moon's rotation is synchronous with its orbit, which presents the same side to the Earth all the time. That means the Moon rotates once every 29 days 13 hours. The slow rotation rate puts lunar synchronous orbit higher. In fact it's the Earth-Moon L1 point. A space elevator must have equal force up from that point as down, so a lunar space elevator must extend past the L1 point a bit toward the Earth, a weight on the end would reduce the extra length. L1 is roughly 61,500km from the Moon. You want to build a 100,000km cable? Again I repeat, a magnetic catapult (mass driver) could throw payload from the Moon toward Earth.
Lastly I repeat, the difference between launching from KSC to 185km orbit at the lowest inclination KSC can reach (equal to its latitude) is just 10% more payload than launching to ISS. SeaLaunch can lift small satellites but nothing manned, the only American launch facility for manned flight or heavy lift is KSC. Your 20% figure is just fiction.
And He3? I already debunked that.
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I think many of the Mars colonists will be individualists who want to get away. After all, Mars is the ultimate get-away. That means there will be individuals and families that want their own homestead. The city I see as a company town, owned by the spaceline. Not everyone will want to live in a company controlled town even if it is beneficent.
You claim Mars transport must be made from Earth transported materials, but then admit such a ship can't be profitable. That's why it would be built of in-space materials, to make ship construction economical enough.
Actually I'm skipping a step. I would see the first human Mars mission being a science mission, but after about 3 science missions there would be a base construction crew of 12. That crew would build an initial base with apartments for themselves, greenhouse, and mining/refining/manufacturing to build that base and its needs. Once that initial base is built the construction crew would expand it to receive the first 100 colonists. The construction crew would be company employees. I expect space agencies would want more science; one export from the base would be science data. Space agencies, research institutes and universities could rent an apartment for a dedicated scientist or two of their own. It would be easier to mount science expeditions across the Martian surface from a Mars base than from Earth.
I'm one of the core members of the Mars Homestead Project. There will be an entire track at this year's Mars Society convention for the Mars Homestead Project. I don't want to get into more detail of that initial 12-person base because I would be giving away stuff from those presentations. I won't be presenting in that track myself, but I have participated in the development. I will make a few other presentations, not part of Mars Homestead. Why don't you come and criticize my ideas in the questions after each one.
*Blatant Advertising* Come to this year's convention. https://www.marssociety.org/secure/regi … p]Register now, click here.As for lunar mines, well they'll need water and food and plastics and rocket fuel. As I explained before, water at lunar poles is not well concentrated. Lunar soil propellant is a mono-propellant; not safe for humans. Lunar greenhouses can grow some food, but they'll need water and nitrogen and carbon. You could harvest that from a C-type asteroid instead of Mars, but now we're talking about asteroid mining to support a lunar colony. That means asteroid mining is necessary to support lunar mining. If there is a lunar colony, then the Mars colony will trade with them. Besides, I really want to get in the business of making all the equipment for asteroid mining. If I establish an asteroid mine at all it will be just to prove it to customers and establish experience that can be sold for consulting fees. But I also intend to make lunar mining equipment, so it doesn't matter if lunar mines are more common than asteroid mines; they'll all get their equipment from me.
Lunar space elevator? Why, a lunar mass driver is more efficient. Besides, the Moon's rotation is synchronous with its orbit, which presents the same side to the Earth all the time. That means the Moon rotates once every 29 days 13 hours. The slow rotation rate puts lunar synchronous orbit higher. In fact it's the Earth-Moon L1 point. A space elevator must have equal force up from that point as down, so a lunar space elevator must extend past the L1 point a bit toward the Earth, a weight on the end would reduce the extra length. L1 is roughly 61,500km from the Moon. You want to build a 100,000km cable? Again I repeat, a magnetic catapult (mass driver) could throw payload from the Moon toward Earth.
Lastly I repeat, the difference between launching from KSC to 185km orbit at the lowest inclination KSC can reach (equal to its latitude) is just 10% more payload than launching to ISS. SeaLaunch can lift small satellites but nothing manned, the only American launch facility for manned flight or heavy lift is KSC. Your 20% figure is just fiction.
And He3? I already debunked that.
I think you've got some mixed-up ideas about money and Mars, Robert.
Building a colony on Mars is going to be expensive. Very expensive. Extremely expensive... So expensive, that I think its very unrealistic to talk about profit of any kind made off of the venture. Every last cent of money made from colonists liquidating their fortunes, whoever running the colony making interest from these holdings, and whatever might be made from supplies/entertainment/selling science will be needed to keep the colony running and growing... and then some probobly. There isn't going to be any profit.
As such, I don't think looking to a for-profit corporation to operate the colony is realistic, and instead the colony will be operated by a not-for-profit organization that answers to the colonists of Mars. This organization will, for most intents and purposes, be the "government" of Mars. To large degree, capitalism probobly isn't going to work very well because reasources will be in such short supply (nothing to buy), imports from Earth will be so expensive & time consuming (too expensive for most), and for all you Socialists out there... the colony probobly needs that money to stay afloat.
And "loners who want to get away from it all?" Frankly, there aren't any people that rich on Earth probobly. I would say that it isn't asking too much that any colonists coming, at least early on, ought to forgo any nontrivial personal wealth (including that cottage in the Martian outback) for the good of the project.
You've also got all these silly images of asteroid mines... no way. If you can't even figure out how to hold your water drill to the surface, then I think its a lost cause. Again, doing anything in zero gravity is so hard, that any attempts at serious asteroid mining are doomed to failure.
The Moon won't need massive amounts of supplies or propellant either for a long time, since the export - Platinum and He3 - isn't going to weigh that much. When and if it does, then the solution is to simply find one of these C-type asteroids that are probobly strewn on the surface and mine it instead of bothing with asteroids.
A mass driver is never going to be practical because its no good for anything "soft" (like people or solar pannels or light-weight finished spaceship structures), you can't get stuff back down with it, and its going to be far heavier and more complex then a space elevator. At least 60,000km you say? Not a problem with only 1/6th G gravity, we can do that today without CNT composites. Why not?
Helium-3 has not been "debunked" by any means either. If we can extract it easily from the Lunar soil, and we are sending back ingots of raw PGMs, and we will have gas liquification plants... then why not send back tanks of He3 as well? Helium-3 will be an "easy" export, it will permit fusion reactors to operate more efficently, reduce or eliminate neutron radiation from same, and perhaps the Trintium gas produced too. A He3 fusion reactor is the only possible type that is honestly, truely, "radiation free."
The payload penalty for the Space Shuttle to reach the ISS is around 20% versus low equitorial... but even if it is "just 10%," I find how casually you shrug off this large inefficency and severe performance penalty to be silly.
Oh, and this bit:
You claim Mars transport must be made from Earth transported materials, but then admit such a ship can't be profitable. That's why it would be built of in-space materials, to make ship construction economical enough.
Thats right, the cost of operating such a ship will preclude a spaceline from making any profit, mainly due to launch costs (fuel, payload, supplies & crew). However, these will simply pale in comparison, pale as in the diameter of the sun versus that of the Earth, what it will cost you to BUILD ships in space from space materials. Never, not in a hundred years, will it be so easy to build in space versus efficent launching of ships from the Earth. That isn't the problem anyway, its the cost of reloading the ship between sorties.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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We must make Earth->LEO transportation cheaper first, before we go for colonization. It will cost much more to set up an infrastructure in space, advanced to a degree where one could think of producing spaceships mostly from space based raw materials, than even just launching them off Earth with current prizes.
As I've said often enough, a rotating space tether seems to be a promising way to achieve this to me. Though a full scale elevator will probably also become an option, depending on advances made with CNT. Only if we can reach launch costs of 100$/kg or less will Mars settlement truly become an option for enough people to make it happen. If we go too fast, we might end up with a failure because of too high costs to sustain the development. Even so, there will surely be enough bad surprises waiting for us once we really begin to get there to stay.
As for what the colony will look like, it will have many systems in common use, will be difficult enough to make those redudant enough at that scale, not to speak of everyone getting his/her own autark biosphere.
That said, it doesn't mean the colonists will have to share quarters, because there will have to be enough greenhouses with lots of "open" space so that everyone will find a lonely spot amongst the food grown. Would even suggest to make everyone responsible for keeping his/her parcel productive.
Hmm OK, that is starting to sound weird to me, too, now. Add some knights as owerseeres and you have recreated something like medieval feudal Europe. Maybe not that a good idea after all...
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The hydrogen deposits at the poles of the Moon are C-type asteroid impacts. The high speed neutron spectrometer of Lunar Prospector looked for chunks of ice; it didn't find any. The epithermal neutron spectrometer looked for hydrogen in any form, and did find some but again that's a mixture of clay, gypsum, Epsom salts, and tar along with ice crystals the size of a grain of sand thinly scattered over a large area. Easier and more yield from drilling an actual C-type asteroid. These C-type fragments are the only hydrogen, carbon, or nitrogen on the Moon. The Moon has a lot of oxygen, aluminum, titanium, silicon, but no hydrogen, carbon or nitrogen. So what do you use for fuel?
I told you how to hold a water drill on an asteroid: metal pegs a few feet long driven in via rapid-burn solid rockets.
The 10% penalty includes the higher altitude. Don't forget that every km of additional orbital altitude means that much less fuel required to depart for the Moon. The higher inclination is a small fraction of the 10% cargo penalty to get to ISS, and only the inclination penalty is the effective cost.
Once fusion power plants are developed, Earth will use double-deuterium reactors that use a little tritium just to start the reaction. Deuterium distilled from tap water. Tritium for ignition is a waste product from heavy water fission reactors.
Are you familiar with the term "bootstrapping"? That means start small and build. The term comes from the story of the boy who pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Computers also use this term: a small program in Read Only Memory (ROM) is called a Bootstrap Loader. It loads a program from disk that loads a larger program, which loads the core of the operating system, which loads the drivers and plug-ins, which... you get the idea. Industrial bootstrapping means you send a small device that that mines and refines to build a larger device, which mines and refines to build a larger more sophisticated device, etc. In this case we send an ERV (or MAV) to harvest Mars atmosphere for propellant, then send a science team. They leave behind a surface habitat, rover, and small greenhouse, as well as characterizing mineral resources. Then send a construction team to mine minerals, refine materials, and construct a small base with apartments for themselves and greenhouses sufficient for all their food. In the process they build a large workshop and make more tools. Use those materials and the workshop to build large storage tanks and a small factory. Use that facility to make housing and life support for the first 100 colonists, as well as fuel for the Mars shuttle. When they arrive (with the shuttle) they build specialized small factories to expand the facility, and a hanger for the shuttle. They expand the facility for the next set of colonists. Industrial production on Mars will be consumed by Mars, but that means they won't require support from Earth.
Colonist ship operation: fuel from C-type asteroid, not Earth. Crew and passengers via SCRAM jet SSTO RLV.
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The development of a self sustaining colony will most likely be a gradual process, so that less and less equipment per habitant will have to be sent with each subsequent transport cycle. I doubt you could make it completely self sustainable from the beginning with so many complex automated machinery needed just to produce air, water and food.
Don't know much about asteroid mining, having never done it, but there are certainly ways to make it possible to mine them, question is what it will take to establish the required infrastructure.
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We don't need asteriods and any asteriod resources would cost much more than the mission to the asteriod itself.
Why is this even considered?
In my opinion all of this talk about asteroid, moon, and space based infrastructure is setting back any reputable human mission to mars.
Bootstrapping? The colonization of mars will probably happen that way but what does that have to do with us? It's probably 100 years in the future at least.
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Ahh last time you were talking about 200 years, we're getting closer now, finally. Make that 50 and we're almost there.
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The colonization of mars will probably happen that way but what does that have to do with us? It's probably 100 years in the future at least.
All this discussion is about the future and much of it is more than 100 years away. It has to do with us because we're the first stage in it all. Colonizing space is a task for many generations and many centuries. When people first moved out of Africa they probably weren't thinking of colonizing five other continents, but ultimately that was the result of their exploration and it had everything to do with them. One day we will have a civilization spanning the solar system and ultimately an even larger one. Cities on Mars, asteroid mining, orbital hotels, gas mining of the giant planets, Moon tourism, space elevators, and many other things will probably be reality one day. And reality is quite reputable.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
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People didn't move out of Africa, they weren't even the same species as us. Also that was tens of thousands of years ago so I think your analogy works for me rather than against.
Whether we begin a colonization effort of mars in 100 or 200 years the technology used will be very different than what we have now.
-Maybe we won't need rockets anymore?
-Maybe they will have a small fusion reactor that puts out incredible amounts of power?
-Maybe some extremely small and efficient machine that quickly makes huge amounts of oxygen from carbon dioxide?
Or these ideas which are more out there but they go right along with mining asteroids:
-We figure out how to convert energy to matter and the matter is exactly what we need-nitrogen.
-We build a fusion powered gravity ship, warp drive capable.
You're right, we need to discuss these things now, to get ready and all.
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Earliest possible schedule:
late 2006: completed construction of ISS
late 2007: first flight of space taxi
2008-2010: manned missions to Moon, Mars hab deployed on Moon as permanent lunar base
late 2011: launch automated Mars sample return
early 2014: sample returns
also early 2014: launch ERV/MAV
spring 2016: launch first manned mission to Mars
fall 2016: first human foot prints on Mars
early summer 2018: first humans return to Earth from Mars
same month: launch first construction crew to Mars
mid summer 2020: launch first colonists to Mars
Christmans 2020: first colonsts land on Mars
This is the most optomistic schedule. None of these events can occur earlier than this, delays could make them happen later and the further in the future the more likely a delay. However, you'll notice this shows the first colonists leaving Earth for Mars in 15 years. Not 200 years, not 100 years, not even 50 years, but only 15 years. If there are 2 additional Mars science missions before the construction crew, add 26*2=52 months to launch late 2024, arrive summer 2025. That's 20 years from now.
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Quite optimistic scedule, but not entirely unrealistic. It's maybe better to just work on making it happen than setting dates, except as deadlines for specific missions. That talk always reminds me of that rotating space station for 10,000 people, that was completed during the '90s, according to an article from the '70s. It's better to have more people talking about it happening in 100 years and actually doing it in 10 than the other way round.
But I might add that the few of us here represent the very small optimistic minority, so we're in no danger of going with the more unfavorable scheme.
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Not entirely unrealistic? With this schedule you lose all credibility.
Oh, you forgot the most important date: Easter 2021, when the last colonist dies because we were stupid and in such a hurry that we couldn't mars test the greenhouses, domes, power units, life support systems, radiation shielding, habitats, supply ships, or earth return vehicles.
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Test life support systems on ISS, starting in 2006. Test habitat on Moon in 2008-2010. Mars Sample Return tests ERV technology, 2011-2014. Test greenhouse on Mars with science mission 2016-2018 (send dehydrated/dry food). Technology for Mars ITV will be tested by Moon missions.
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Not entirely unrealistic? With this schedule you lose all credibility.
Oh, you forgot the most important date: Easter 2021, when the last colonist dies because we were stupid and in such a hurry that we couldn't mars test the greenhouses, domes, power units, life support systems, radiation shielding, habitats, supply ships, or earth return vehicles.
Or how about the new administation in 2009 decides to reduce the deficit and cancels a lot of missions, No people to the Moon, Mars. Cancel shuttle, let the ISS float, Reduce all those science missions that dont make a return to the US economy. Burn the boats really.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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Earliest possible schedule:
late 2006: completed construction of ISS
late 2007: first flight of space taxi
2008-2010: manned missions to Moon, Mars hab deployed on Moon as permanent lunar base
late 2011: launch automated Mars sample return
early 2014: sample returns
also early 2014: launch ERV/MAV
spring 2016: launch first manned mission to Mars
fall 2016: first human foot prints on Mars
early summer 2018: first humans return to Earth from Mars
same month: launch first construction crew to Mars
mid summer 2020: launch first colonists to Mars
Christmans 2020: first colonsts land on Mars
You are kidding, right Robert? Now, there is being optimistic in your forecast of how long things will take, but this... this is way beyond that. This... this is just not within the realm of reasoning, informed individuals. I don't know what your fervent beliefe in AltSpace etc' is doing to your positions on the feasability of these various projects, but whatever it is it isn't good... If you have any real, serious desire to be a part of real spaceflight, then you just can't say things like this, or people will rightfully shrug you off as an incompetant dreamer.
2006, finish the ISS? I mean, this has just thrown me off kilter... even if Michael Griffin quit today and you became NASA cheif tomorrow, told KSC to "okay, lets start building that Shuttle-C engine pod starting 9:00am tomorrow" there is no possible way that it could be ready even by the end of 2006 most likly. And say you do get it done by next Christmas? And even if you whack a quarter of the 30 or so ISS flights? Thats still going to be 10-15 Shuttle-C flights by volume, and 5-10 Shuttle flights for assembly, easily three or four years of work solid even assuming an extremely rapid Shuttle-C development.
Same thing with the taxi date... if you pulled the plug on the CEV studies tomorrow morning and started a crash-program development, there is no way that it could be ready by then, its just too complicated to that quickly.
And frankly, you aren't going to be able to do the Moon and prepare for Mars simultainiously like this, while still propping up the decrepit ISS to boot. There just isn't enough money to do that and do it right.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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The hydrogen deposits at the poles of the Moon are C-type asteroid impacts. The high speed neutron spectrometer of Lunar Prospector looked for chunks of ice; it didn't find any. The epithermal neutron spectrometer looked for hydrogen in any form, and did find some but again that's a mixture of clay, gypsum, Epsom salts, and tar along with ice crystals the size of a grain of sand thinly scattered over a large area. Easier and more yield from drilling an actual C-type asteroid. These C-type fragments are the only hydrogen, carbon, or nitrogen on the Moon. The Moon has a lot of oxygen, aluminum, titanium, silicon, but no hydrogen, carbon or nitrogen. So what do you use for fuel?
I told you how to hold a water drill on an asteroid: metal pegs a few feet long driven in via rapid-burn solid rockets.
The 10% penalty includes the higher altitude. Don't forget that every km of additional orbital altitude means that much less fuel required to depart for the Moon. The higher inclination is a small fraction of the 10% cargo penalty to get to ISS, and only the inclination penalty is the effective cost.
Once fusion power plants are developed, Earth will use double-deuterium reactors that use a little tritium just to start the reaction. Deuterium distilled from tap water. Tritium for ignition is a waste product from heavy water fission reactors.
Are you familiar with the term "bootstrapping"? That means start small and build. The term comes from the story of the boy who pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Computers also use this term: a small program in Read Only Memory (ROM) is called a Bootstrap Loader. It loads a program from disk that loads a larger program, which loads the core of the operating system, which loads the drivers and plug-ins, which... you get the idea. Industrial bootstrapping means you send a small device that that mines and refines to build a larger device, which mines and refines to build a larger more sophisticated device, etc. In this case we send an ERV (or MAV) to harvest Mars atmosphere for propellant, then send a science team. They leave behind a surface habitat, rover, and small greenhouse, as well as characterizing mineral resources. Then send a construction team to mine minerals, refine materials, and construct a small base with apartments for themselves and greenhouses sufficient for all their food. In the process they build a large workshop and make more tools. Use those materials and the workshop to build large storage tanks and a small factory. Use that facility to make housing and life support for the first 100 colonists, as well as fuel for the Mars shuttle. When they arrive (with the shuttle) they build specialized small factories to expand the facility, and a hanger for the shuttle. They expand the facility for the next set of colonists. Industrial production on Mars will be consumed by Mars, but that means they won't require support from Earth.
Colonist ship operation: fuel from C-type asteroid, not Earth. Crew and passengers via SCRAM jet SSTO RLV.
The Lunar Prospector neutron sensor simply wasn't very sensitive, and could very well have missed some deposits, especially ones that would be buried under regolith that would block the radiation the probe used to detect the hydrogen. I am not convinced that an Aluminum/Oxygen engine can't be built to run safely either. But this is really irrelivent if a space elevator were built, which would be pretty easy compared to an Earthly one, and could be built from today's high-end polymers for a ten-digit sum.
"I told you how to hold a water drill on an asteroid: metal pegs a few feet long driven in via rapid-burn solid rockets."
And I already told you that this wouldn't work, you would lack control over the rockets and this method wouldn't be reliable.
And the 10% gap? Thats still ten pecent of every single payload... one kilo out of ten, at the cost of $1,000-3,000 each, that would be wasted even on the big HLLVs... Just so you can lower the bar on your space taxi a notch versus a real space ship... And you would have to count on the taxi being able to dock, increasing mission complexity and risk. Then of course, there is the multibillion dollar cost of propping the ISS you have to pay every single year just so you can feel good about not throwing the worthless thing away? I am not impressed
Again, if we are lugging Platinum from the Moon and we have gas liquification plants, then why not bottle He3? Fusion reactors would be able to operate with considerably increased efficency, which is a big, big deal since much of your energy will be going back into the reactor. That few percent increase in efficency yeilds a much bigger output then the simplistic thermodynamics state.
Oh, and then there is the issue that the regular deuterium fusion will still produce neutron radiation and Trintium gas, yes I said the fusion reactor would and not just the fission, this is unavoidable.
"Industrial bootstrapping means you send a small device that that mines and refines to build a larger device, which mines and refines to build a larger more sophisticated device..."
Which will fail very, very badly because of the radical difficulty in doing anything in zero-G or in space in general. A factory-to-build-a-factory concept just isn't going to be feasable for a long, long time.
Finally, the fuel issue... with a GCNR engine, its not unreasonable to think about a Mars trip with only about 50MT of propellant for a cycler. If a SSTO RLV can haul 25MT for only $10M a flight, then the fuel (two flights of LH2), supplies (one flight for food, water, luggage, Uranium Hexafluoride) and the crew (one flight)... Your asteroid mines are going to have to compete with $20M for fuel. You aren't going to beat that, you will fail.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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I told you the launch schedule. That is, launch Discovery and Atlantis with their current scheduled missions. Then launch the Hubble repair mission. The reason to put Hubble so early is to give time to complete Shuttle-C. Then 3 combination flights: Shuttle-C from one pad and a day later the Shuttle orbiter from the other pad. The first combination flight will bring ISS to US core complete. The next one will launch all Japanese components. The 3rd will launch European components and European-built components that are owned by the US. There's room for either US Hab or Node 3 in the last combination flight. If Node 3 (smaller) is sent on the last Shuttle-C flight, then another mission for just the orbiter to lift the US Hab. Count: that's a total of 7 missions including the dedicated one for the US Hab. Including Shuttle-C flights that's 10 External Tanks. NASA announced it has enough aluminum-lithium alloy for 28 flights. At a flight rate of one launch every 2 months you can certainly complete 7 missions in 18 months.
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Robert, Shuttle-C simply can't hold that much stuff. It just isn't big enough to hold all those things by volume reguardless of their mass. You can only pack two Shuttle payloads into that faring. You are still looking at needing ten Shuttle-C/Shuttle "twin" missions to completly finish the station. I don't think that KSC could sustain even the 6 flights/year pace with STS alone right now much less Shuttle-C in parallel, it would take at least two or three years not counting Shuttle-C development, which makes that at least three to four. Then there is the repackaging needed for the Shuttle payloads to make them compatible with Shuttle-C... Get this idea that Shuttle-C will magicially materialize and fix everything in the blink of an eye out of your head, it isn't happening. Shuttle-C won't even be ready until 2007 most likely.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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The trick with an aluminum powder/LOX engine is how to pump dry aluminum powder into the rocket engine as bipropellant. At one point I suggested industrial powder handling technology but I don't know if that can handle the volume of rocket propellant. Sand blasting or powder spray equipment use a gas to propell powder. John Wickman used nitrogen gas to feed aluminum powder into a test engine; it worked but the Moon doesn't have nitrogen. He also demonstrated an aluminum powder/LOX monopropellant, which did worked and didn't have any backfeed along the fuel line. Backfeed would cause hot gas to ignite the fuel tank, with monopropellant that means explosion. Magnesium powder in LOX is shock sensative, a good knock will cause the tank to explode, but aluminium powder in LOX isn't. Still, do you think that's safe for human flight? I asked Robert Zubrin at last year's Mars Society convention. He literally laughed in my face at the idea of monopropellant, he said it's a very expensive way to commit suicide.
Again I remind you, most of the 10% payload penalty is for additional altitude from 185km to 407km. That altitude reduces propellant needed for trans-lunar injection. It's a question of pay-me-now or pay-me-later.
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