Ares and Ares

GCNRevenger · 2006-09-06 11:50:38

for the Mars vessel and then linking them in orbit using a shuttle derived robotic arm on the first stage, we can dock remotely from the space station or on earth.

No need, just dock them together with a regular docking clamp. No arm, no space station, no nothing else.

once near completion the first stage separates and with thrusters places itself into a orbit that could be used for establishment of a larger space station or platform

Why? There is no good reason to build a Martian space station for a long time, and when we do a purpose-built station would be better. This also avoids the problem of either lugging lots of fuel or a large aerobrake for the spent rocket stage.

EuroLauncher · 2006-09-06 12:16:06

In my recent book, 'The 13th Day of Christmas,' NASA and the Canadian Space Agency combine forces to go to Mars. One of the components is a Magnum.
I agree...it's time to quit with this Moon crap and aim a bit higher!

There was the idea to use the Moon as testbed for long term Mars missions

RedStreak · 2006-09-06 14:41:17

"Testbed" may be less the key issue but rather the fact that the Moon is only 3 days away versus Mars' 6-month minimal journey.

I think there won't be any denying that a Martian mission versus a Lunar mission will involve different requirements and different hardware. However, assuming they want an architecture that at least mirrors that of the VSE Moon missions I can think of some shared elements:

1) CEV - The CEV obviously was named for exploration. A craft designed to go beyond LEO can pretty much fly anywhere else in (at least) the Inner Solar System. I would hope for a future variant that flies on O2/CH4 but since the Mars Semi-Direct plan never required the Earth Return Craft to be Methane-fueled I'm confident the Lunar hypergolic CEV would fit the bill.

2) CLV - Obviously needed for a CEV launch, but we could just as easily launch the Mars Lander itself aboard one of these. Given that a larger EDS may be required for the longer Martian voyage we might have to treat the manned lander like the CEV in the Lunar architecture.

3) CaLV - This in particular will be needed since more and heavier equiptment would be sent to Mars.

Martin_Tristar · 2006-09-06 22:37:07

GCNR,

I didn't say a Martian Space Station , I said to return the first stages via an orbit, I meant earth - moon system. To build a larger space platform ( could be a space station or factory or science platform or many other variations ) by the reuse of the mars launch stages providing a 3x / 4x size increase on ISS platform.

Recycle, recycle, recycle ------- Name of the Game !!!!!!!!!!!!!

RedStreak · 2006-09-07 04:38:21

Tristar reuseability proved to be the shuttle's Achilles' Heal. This time around it will only be applied for Ares when it is applicable and affordable. And if you're going to nag that...well...just look at the shuttle. It's been delayed...AGAIN. Gee didn't see THAT coming...

In time a reuseable vehicle will become possible, but I think part of the trick is not asking for everything at once - that was the path the shuttle took and way too many compromises had to be made.

RedStreak · 2006-09-07 04:41:04

...also a launch platform is unnessisary. As I believe I and others have thouroughly explained as well the ISS isn't in the proper orbit and I doubt a new space station is on anyone's mind.

Read Zubrin's Mars Direct mission - the name says it all and any kind of space station is not direct.

...now a moonbase or a Martian base, where the materials to construct something are, might be a better choice.

Rxke · 2006-09-07 06:08:24

NASA did do a study (twice) re: reusability.

TSTO reusability only becomes cost-effective if you launch more than 50 times a year. We're nowhere near those numbers so reusability would cost more, not less.

GCNRevenger · 2006-09-07 07:46:12

GCNR,
I didn't say a Martian Space Station , I said to return the first stages via an orbit, I meant earth - moon system. To build a larger space platform ( could be a space station or factory or science platform or many other variations ) by the reuse of the mars launch stages providing a 3x / 4x size increase on ISS platform.
Recycle, recycle, recycle ------- Name of the Game !!!!!!!!!!!!!

No! No recycling! All you have is a worthless empty fuel tank and a used rocket engine.

Again, if you want to reuse something, reuse something worth while, the launch vehicle.

Salvaging the tankage from an EDS stage is totally useless, since you'd have to launch another tank of equal volume to bring fuel up to it, or build an RLV tanker and fly it several times. And lets not forget the nightmare of orbital construction of assembling these tanks.

And if you've got a reuseable launch vehicle, and you have a rocket engine able to fire repeatedly after long periods, you might as well just park a reuseable ship in orbit and send fuel up to it directly. No orbital gas station.

No no, if you want to talk reuseability, do something like the original Marshall Magnum rocket, a Delta-IV derived core with flyback kerosene rocket boosters instead of two expendable strap-on Delta cores like the tipple-barrel Heavy.

This, eventually combined with a reuseable Lunar lander, permit NASA to operate a Lunar base for around $1Bn a year. The rest of the money could then go to Mars. If you want reuseability, [b]that[b] is the place to start.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-10 22:00:24

There is something to this idea though. What if instead of refueling the ship in low Earth orbit, you refueled it at phobos. It might make sense to establish a station to extract fuel from Phobos and use that fuel to power the ship back to Earth orbit and the remainder to bring the ship back to Phobos. Does it really matter if the astronauts arrive at Mars on the second leg of the interplanetary vehicle's journey before refueling instead of the first. the most important thing to establish is whether their is any hydrogen and oxygen at all on Phobos to be had, it a nice conveniently parked asteroid in a low circular orbit around Mars.

GCNRevenger · 2006-09-10 22:47:41

Extracting anything from any asteroid any time this half of the century is a complete and total fairy tale.

noosfractal · 2006-09-10 23:06:22

Extracting anything from any asteroid any time this half of the century is a complete and total fairy tale.

What's the big roadblock? Technical? Political? Economic? All of the above?

GCNRevenger · 2006-09-11 04:56:27

Technical. There is no effective, practical means of applying the force required to dig. Many rocks also have a spin on multiple axies, which makes rocket-driven hovering over any one spot impossible for any length of time. Also basically precludes solar power, and doing anything in general in near-zero G I am sure is a nightmare. The worst of both worlds.

cIclops · 2006-09-11 05:52:58

Technical. There is no effective, practical means of applying the force required to dig.

Use a penetator rod to provde an initial anchor point. Once in place this can be used to hold equipment to fix more grappler points to the surface. These can be drilled or driven thereby creating a working platform for whatever surface activity is needed.

GCNRevenger · 2006-09-11 06:01:02

Nonsense, penitrator pietons? These rocks are either made of overgrown gravel, in which case pulling on a pieton would just dislodge a rock, or else mostly solid chunk of cast iron that a pieton would just bounce off. Even if you did get it to work, this notion that you could anchor a "work platform" to the surface is useless, you couldn't dig any distance from it without laying whole fields of those pietons. Vast numbers of unreliable rocket-propelled shrapnel-throwing spikes is not a solution.

cIclops · 2006-09-11 06:23:37

Nonsense, penitrator pietons? These rocks are either made of overgrown gravel, in which case pulling on a pieton would just dislodge a rock, or else mostly solid chunk of cast iron that a pieton would just bounce off. Even if you did get it to work, this notion that you could anchor a "work platform" to the surface is useless, you couldn't dig any distance from it without laying whole fields of those pietons. Vast numbers of unreliable rocket-propelled shrapnel-throwing spikes is not a solution.

Yes a penetrator would have to be designed for the type of surface material. Loose gravel or light "snowball" type material would be the most difficult. A deep penetrator that expanded umbrella like at the forward end should be possible. Stony material would be far easier to anchor. Iron would the easiest of all, just use a magnet!

GCNRevenger · 2006-09-11 06:53:50

I'm saying that building and delivering all these peitons, not to mention the cables strung between them, are going to wreck the efficiency of any mining operation. I don't think you can make penitrators that will work reliably and safely on rocky asteroids either, I'll believe it when I see it. And magnets? Magnets don't work so well without either alot of mass, alot of power, or both plus some sort of relatively flat surface to join to, which you won't have, thanks to the inverse square law of force fields.

cIclops · 2006-09-11 07:15:33

I'm saying that building and delivering all these peitons, not to mention the cables strung between them, are going to wreck the efficiency of any mining operation. I don't think you can make penitrators that will work reliably and safely on rocky asteroids either, I'll believe it when I see it. And magnets? Magnets don't work so well without either alot of mass, alot of power, or both plus some sort of relatively flat surface to join to, which you won't have, thanks to the inverse square law of force fields.

Ideally only one penetrator would be required then the work platform could be constructed. Woking from a space platform to establish an anchor point would be an alternate way. Cables would be one technique, another might be using a bonding material to form a "foundation". It will require innovative technology and probably human presence to setup the worksite so it can then be used by automatic equipment.

Nevertheless it will be very expensive, very very expensive. The first such operations will probably be for the most needed materials, such as LO2 and LH2. The physical properties of water ice and the process of electrolysis should make this easier to do than with other materials.

GCNRevenger · 2006-09-11 08:44:53

I'm not saying that it can't be done, what I am challenging is that there is any rational beliefe that it could be done efficiently for a long long time. I am especially dubious of robots and space cement.

Even in such a future though, it will be difficult to compete with the Moon and its buried asteroid wealth, unlimited supply of oxygen, ease of medium-to-large scale solar power (especially thermal), ease of radiation protection, gravity so us bipeds can work efficiently, and best of all its proximity to Earth.

Mars also has an ample supply of water at one of its poles in the form of ice. That plus Martian methane would be hard to beat for Mars-gravity-well fuel.

If you are looking for water for use as rocket fuel further out, and you don't mind going a bit out of your way, harvesting it from Jupiter's moons? They are literally coverd with ice, not trace snow or veins of it hidden deep within rocks, and they have much more appreciable gravity too.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-11 09:32:36

Technical. There is no effective, practical means of applying the force required to dig. Many rocks also have a spin on multiple axies, which makes rocket-driven hovering over any one spot impossible for any length of time. Also basically precludes solar power, and doing anything in general in near-zero G I am sure is a nightmare. The worst of both worlds.

But Phobos is tidally locked with Mars, effectively a day on Phobos is the same as a day on Mars. Also it seems a simple matter to string cables around Phobos, that way you can anchor your platform to the moonlet and do some drilling.

GCNRevenger, I think you tend to give up on these problems too quickly, and are too quick to shake your head and say it cannot be done. Phobos is not that big, you can talk about things like wrapping cables around it.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-11 09:36:30

I'm not saying that it can't be done, what I am challenging is that there is any rational beliefe that it could be done efficiently for a long long time. I am especially dubious of robots and space cement.
Even in such a future though, it will be difficult to compete with the Moon and its buried asteroid wealth, unlimited supply of oxygen, ease of medium-to-large scale solar power (especially thermal), ease of radiation protection, gravity so us bipeds can work efficiently, and best of all its proximity to Earth.
Mars also has an ample supply of water at one of its poles in the form of ice. That plus Martian methane would be hard to beat for Mars-gravity-well fuel.
If you are looking for water for use as rocket fuel further out, and you don't mind going a bit out of your way, harvesting it from Jupiter's moons? They are literally coverd with ice, not trace snow or veins of it hidden deep within rocks, and they have much more appreciable gravity too.

But Phobos is in a much shallower gravity well, it ms more sense to obtain fuel from Phobos than Earth's Moon as you have to fight that larger moons gravity well to get the fuel to your ship. Besides were talking about a circuit between Earth and Mars, at some point along that curcuit, the interplanetary ship is going to have to refuel. Why not refuel at Phobos instead of low Earth Orbit where there is nothing to refuel from except what is brought up from Earth?

GCNRevenger · 2006-09-11 11:06:34

Not that big?? You'd need twenty five kilometers of cable just to go around it one time! You would need several hundreds to thousands of kilometers to have meter-scale spacings. And thats assuming that the stretch such a cable would have would be minimal enough. And thats assuming you could string the able and secure it in the first place and not have it slipping all over. We're not talking Kevlar shoe strings either here, but real load-supporting metal cable.

It makes no sense to obtain anything from Phobos if you can't dig on its surface; going to a huge amount of trouble to dig up, purify without gravity, and and finally crack it to Hydrogen and Oxygen...... or just put a robot truck load of Lunar dirt into a solar furnace or cut a few ice blocks out of a Martian glacier with a marble saw operated by a guy in a skin suit. Doesn't matter if most of it will have to be burned to launch the product fuel into orbit, its still easier! Especially with reuseable or semi-reuseable lift from Earth (spaceplane?) and a Lunar space elevator (no Hydrogen required).

And once we get around to building Shuttle-II or something, whats wrong with launching much of the fuel from Earth?

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-11 21:25:45

And why can't you dig into its surface? the best way to find out if something can be done is to try it. We've landed probes on asteroids before, and it turns out not to be that hard. That we've never mined an asteroid before does not mean we can't mine asteroids. The people who shake their heads and say we can never do this will never try and consequently never suceed.

How long has it been for people shaking their heads about crossing the Atlantic? People were for centuries shaking their heads saying that we can never cross the Atlantic, that it is way too vast or that we'll fall off the edge of the Earth. So long as the learned minds kept shaking their heads, no one tried, the Romans could have, but they had experts telling them not to bother, that it was impossible and that their was more productive uses of their resources in building armies and conquering their immediate neighbors.

neviden · 2006-09-12 05:49:17

Technical. There is no effective, practical means of applying the force required to dig. Many rocks also have a spin on multiple axies, which makes rocket-driven hovering over any one spot impossible for any length of time. Also basically precludes solar power, and doing anything in general in near-zero G I am sure is a nightmare. The worst of both worlds.

there is nothing inherently wrong with a concept of asteoroid mining.. most of the energy needed is used to get close to asteoroid.. since even the smallest asteoroid will have more than enough material then the gravity and delta-v to get from/to asteoroid will not be significant. Therefore, processing plant can stay in orbit around asteoroid. That way it will be able to use sun for energy, will not get damaged if some volitiles inside of asteoroid vaporise, space around it will not be filled with floating dust and it will not have to deal with being in some tumbling spin.. it also means you can build centrifuge (or just simply spin it) to create gravity in witch to process the material..

to get material from asteoroid to this processing plant you would then need (preferably few) small autonomus ships with big grapple like that used in moving scrap metals around on earth.. "land" on the asteroid, grab onto rock and see what happends..

Nonsense, penitrator pietons? These rocks are either made of overgrown gravel, in which case pulling on a pieton would just dislodge a rock, or else mostly solid chunk of cast iron that a pieton would just bounce off.

If the rocks are made of gravel, then you only need to grab it with a grapple.. if you dislodge a rock and get ejected by the asteoroid's spin by you weight alone you already sucedded.. you deliver this rock (in the tonns range) to processing plant and return back to get another.. if you do not dislodge a rock, then you are on the asteorid and you can start to drill. if the force of your drilling causes you to "beak off" you also sucedded.. and if you dont.. well.. you can simply escavate what you need and then release grapple and go to processing plant.. either way you get material.. and there is no such thing as useless material..

Even if you did get it to work, this notion that you could anchor a "work platform" to the surface is useless, you couldn't dig any distance from it without laying whole fields of those pietons. Vast numbers of unreliable rocket-propelled shrapnel-throwing spikes is not a solution.

if the rock is solid.. once you can drill into rock, you can ancore yourself easily.. and if the rock is gravel, you don't need to drill only hold on to rock to get small rocks seperated from the rest of asteoroid.. and if the rock is made from ice.. then you need to keep temperature down (sunshade?) and you can treat it like solid (most of the volitiles had billions of years to escape to space)..

I'm not saying that it can't be done, what I am challenging is that there is any rational beliefe that it could be done efficiently for a long long time. I am especially dubious of robots and space cement.

in the case of phobos.. unlimited propelant for spaceships in mars orbit seems like a good rational.. it would mean that you can have bigger, safer, reusable spaceships for trips in space (to get to earth).. you could even load suficient propelant to get from mars orbit to earth orbit and back to mars orbit..

Even in such a future though, it will be difficult to compete with the Moon and its buried asteroid wealth, unlimited supply of oxygen, ease of medium-to-large scale solar power (especially thermal), ease of radiation protection, gravity so us bipeds can work efficiently, and best of all its proximity to Earth.

Moon has everything you need, but you need 4000 m/s delta-v to get from it.. but it's a good place to develop all the needed tehnologies..

Mars also has an ample supply of water at one of its poles in the form of ice. That plus Martian methane would be hard to beat for Mars-gravity-well fuel.

yes.. Mars has even more.. but it has even higher delta-v.. you can use methane to get back from mars to mars orbit, but if you don't want to live few months in small can on the way back to earth, the better way is to get people to orbit, dock to a big, safe, reusable (= cheaper longterm), refueled, radiationshielded spaceship and return to earth that way..

If you are looking for water for use as rocket fuel further out, and you don't mind going a bit out of your way, harvesting it from Jupiter's moons? They are literally coverd with ice, not trace snow or veins of it hidden deep within rocks, and they have much more appreciable gravity too.

why Jupiter if there is Oxygen in mars orbit or asteoroid belt.. lower delta-v.. less time..

or just put a robot truck load of Lunar dirt into a solar furnace or cut a few ice blocks out of a Martian glacier with a marble saw operated by a guy in a skin suit. Doesn't matter if most of it will have to be burned to launch the product fuel into orbit, its still easier!

you can build solar furnace in orbit, make gravity and.. best of all.. you are already in orbit.. and you don't need heatshields to land evertyhing first on mars..

And once we get around to building Shuttle-II or something, whats wrong with launching much of the fuel from Earth?

nothing is wrong, but.. we have seen what happend with the cost of shuttle I.. and I will belive in cheap reusable Shuttle II when i see it.. and it will be made when there is a demand for it.. and there will never be suficient demand if you go to space only to do "science" and "explore" and "my country is better than your country".. that will happend only when you can return to earth more than used t-shirts and garbage from astronauts.. because you need to sell things (platinum group?) on earth to be able to buy services/things on earth..

GCNRevenger · 2006-09-12 07:35:00

there is nothing inherently wrong with a concept of asteoroid mining

But there is! So many people are totally infatuated with the low delta requirements that they refuse to accept the simple truth that the devil really is in the details!

First this crazy notion of spinning anything the size of a mining refinery is pretty silly, the difficulty of docking with it in the first place rules that out pretty much. You can't have spinning and non-spinning sections really due to the unavoidable friction between the two parts. The size and mass you would need is quite extreme, especially with some 2001 ring station docking bay arrangement, which is pretty much the only option. Definatly not a project for this half of the century.

small autonomus ships with big grapple like that used in moving scrap metals around on earth.. "land" on the asteroid, grab onto rock and see what happends... If the rocks are made of gravel, then you only need to grab it with a grapple... if you do not dislodge a rock, then you are on the asteorid and you can start to drill

No! You are still thinking like you are on a body with gravity: a digging scoop or a grapple requires force to penitrate into the ground in order to get the digging implement around the dirt, which you don't have! The grapple will not even penitrate the ground!

The same thing with a drill, it doesn't matter what the asteroid is made of, a drill can't bite into the surface without downward force; thats the way drills operate, they use the downward force to scrape up the dirt or whatever with it sharpend ends. Press the drill against the rock, and the only thing that gets dislodged is the drill, which gets pushed back into the air. Go swimming, and try to push the bottom of the swimming pool, and the only thing that happens is you get pushed tward the surface.

You will not suceeed with either method, because both these tools and all purely mechanical tools rely on applied force, and thanks to Newton's law the only thing you would accomplish is to push yourself back into space. You will get no material at all beyond whatever pebbles are sitting on the surface. This is why you would need some kind of rocket-driven anchor system.

And there is worthless materal; what if the rock you are digging is 90% junk and 10% water? That means its only ~1% hydrogen, the fuel of choice for reuseable nuclear vehicles. It would require such a huge digging operation that it really may not be worthwhile to mine the asteroid, ever.

Which leads me to reiterate my last point, which you totally missed: that if you have to go through all this titanic trouble to dig up 1kg of fuel from an asteroid, who cares if you are saving 9kg by not having to launch it from Earth or Mars'es surface? Rocket fuel is rocket fuel, there is nothing magic or special about what you dig out of an asteroid. So, its just so much easier to crack Florida tap water or blocks of Martian polar ice or shovel the omnipresent Lunar dirt into a furnace in vast quantities, it doesn't matter that you'll burn 90% of it to deliver it, its still far cheaper!

Just add RLV and stir. It can't possibly be any harder to build than such a mining operation.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-09-12 08:15:08

GCNRevenger, just because you can't think of a solution to all the problems of asteroid mining doesn't mean no one can. I didn't say we wouldn't have to learn to do a whole lot of new things to mine the asteroids, but as you said in another thread, we can only learn by trying. Outlining the technical difficulties of asteroid mining is not a reason not to try, it is a challenge for our next generation of engineers. There are two ways to react to the technical difficulties of asteroid mining, one way is to be daunted, which is what you seem to advocate here, and the other way is to be driven to find solutions to these problems.

This may be the Mars Society, but I don't think it has to be either Mars or the Solar System. I tend to think that a manned Mars program is only the tip of the spear to get us out traveling the entire Solar System. Mars is the most visible part of this effort, it is a benchmark to test our capability to travel the entire Solar System. I think we should focus on Mars because it is something, it is a place we can go to, and there we can start small. I think it would be a better idea to start with a Mars Base, because if we send humans to Mars at all we will have to start a Mars base to house them for at least two years until the next orbital launch window back to Earth. I think it makes alot more sense to try for Mars than to try immediately building an O'Neill colony at L5. I think O'Neill colonies have their place, but one of the best ways to acquire some of the technology to build O'Neill colonies is to first try to land men on Mars. Mars has got everything, including two asteroids we can practise mining on. Maybe the purpose is to refule the interplanetary spaceship, but in the process we learn to mine an asteroid and later on we can use that same skill to mine other asteroids, some near Earth perhaps and use the material from those asteroids to build O'Neill space colonies. we all have to start some where, and Mars looks like a good place. And to top it off we have the more immediate goal of establishing a human colony on Mars and learning more about that planet. Building an O'Neill colony by itself has no more immediate goals, we will first have to mine the asteroids anyway just to build those colonies, so if we are going to mine the asteroids, why not accomplish something useful in the meantime while we learn such as obtain fuel for the interplanetary Martian Spaceship. the first missions to Mars won't require refueling, but we can try it out, and once we learn, we can build later missions that depend on that resource and make travel to Mars just that much cheaper, and ultimately learn how to mine asteroids and later build colonies in space, that is what its all about.

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