New Mars Forums

On the contrary, reuseability is going to be vital reducing per mission costs. Why launch a TLI stage every time when you can launch a reusable one and a fuel tanker capable of fueling 3 missions? Why launch a Accent stage when the CEV can do the same? Depending on how effective the new landing methods are, the service module could likely be equipped with a heat shield and reused as well.

Don't mistake Shuttle "reuseability" for VSE reusabilty. All of these components combined will have a tiny fraction of the complexity of the shuttle. With modern materials and technologies its highly unlikely that they would require anywheres near the level of rebuilding after every mission.

Whoever is best qualified for the mission.

This isn't the best place for an Affirmitive Action thread.

Not so much reducing the number of supercarriers, but deploying more and larger amphipious assualt carriers. The current ones carry 2200 marines and a squadron of Harriers.

Lets not forget that every time they cut the number of F-22s we buy, the more each copy will cost. The reason the F-35's are about 60mil a copy is because were suppose to be buying 3000 of them.

How long and how many people did it take to explore the planet Earth?

I have a feeling it was more than 50.

If it were to be done, we'd have to do it by closely reproducing the shuttles cargo bay. In other words, throw together a shuttle-c/z. Not the heaviest lifter in terms of the VSE, but far from useless either.

Interesting indeed. Even if one wants to argue that the ISS is useless from the US prospective and was just a braindead project to keep the shuttle going, something I'd question anyway, even more so after the immune system tread the other day, the other partner state put hard money into it at our request, so you know they are trying to get the best out of it. A waste by any standard.

SpinCalc

Depending entirely on how many revolutions per minute our crew can handle, and what g is considered enough to maintain the immune system, I think we can wittle down the radius to be feasable for a nuclear electric powered mechanical solution.

You'll have a very hard time selling a tethered system to congress and the American people. We'll have enough issues with the things we can't see, we don't need to add to  it with ones we can.

I don't think we spend too much on robotics, we don't spend enough on manned space flight or robotics.

It’s going to be a good long time before humans get to some of the farther reaches of the solar system, and even when we do unmanned systems will still be very useful.

What we aught to do is every budget year set aside $2-3 billion for an unmanned probe that will cover the cost of design, construction, launch, and operation through the end of its primary mission. We pick our targets on a rotating basis, starting with the Sun, and then going to Mercury, Venus, the Asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the Kuiper Belt. Then we cycle round again. Granted when I say target for the outer solar system I include the moons as well. So when we get around to, say Jupiter, the first time we might send something to orbit and probe the planet itself, and as a secondary objective snap pictures of its moons. The second time around we can go directly to study one or more moons, and snap pictures of the planet as a secondary objective. This will get really interesting as we start to get multiple probes in the same system.

Note that I did not include the Earth, Moon or Mars in that list. Earth studies should be handled by NOAA and/or the USGS, but there’s more to the Earth System than just the Earth and the Moon. We can't afford to forget to probe our nearby asteroids and comets, lest they probe us. Near Earth Space, the Moon, and Mars are of such an importance to the future of man I would devote $1-2 billion each for a probe every year.

And yes, that’s a hell of lot of money, $5-9 billion a year (mind you if it were up to me NASA's administrative costs would not be included in the primary budget, (earth based) aeronautics would be handed off to the military, and Manned flight would be guaranteed half of a $20billion budget). And it would be 2-3 years after such a program started before anything was launched. But that funding allows for a multi-faceted mission, perhaps allowing for large Prometheus class mother ships launching daughter-orbiters, rovers and landers, and perhaps even a sample return for good measure, and of course the launchers to get them off the ground. In time these missions can even directly support manned exploration, setting up infrastructure by remote control decades before man ever steps foot. Technologies developed for manned and robotic exploration will support each other, and even compete with each other.

Imagine an unmanned Lunar mission consisting of several construction rovers and a ISRU plant sent to a resource rich corner of the Moon building itself a base and stockpiling vital minerals and fuels completely independent of the manned program. Or that same mission on Gamymede. Or series of Mars sample return missions that test prototypes of the eventual manned lander, deploying a series of small rovers to collect and return samples from several km away, and sucking in its own fuel for its return to earth, a full decade before man steps foot there.

Perhapes even more conserning, if the function of these cells is tied to gravity, is it tied Earth's gravity?

The expense, or precieved expense. It would involve lots of launches and on orbit construction that basically requires the ship be designed to be reusable, or be disassembled and landed to make a base, both of which make things complicated. Thanks to the ISS this makes people cringe. And if it were being done 20 tons at a time at a half billion dollars per launch, I'd cringe too.

But thankfully its far more apt to be done 120+ tons at a time at a cost of maybe $200million per launch.

Cause that will end up being a hell of a lot of methane, repeatedly. Verses a reactor in one shot.

Its interesting that for all the talk of microwave solar power plants, no one has thought to set up a power source on high ground and beam the power down to all the things need it in its line of sight. Might not be all that great for long range explorers early on but it will be great for powering all the rovers bringing regolith to a LOX plant.

Hydrogen is the one missing link. Carbon was found in Apollo samples though in low consetrations, be there are probably denser consentrations.

I doubt the rovers will be (any)gas powered. Most likely solar, with precharged batteries.

Its interesting that they are using the same accent engine for the service module.

I wonder what it would take to just add some legs and some rovers to the CEV/SM and just put that on the surface.