New Mars Forums

The extent that NASA will need aeronautics in the future is limited. At some point we will need a passenger space plane, but that is at least a quarter of a century off. Plus, if we hand off such research to the Air Force, they will develope a hypersonic transcontinental bomber on their own that much quicker, with a hell of a lot more money than NASA will ever see, which is pretty darn close to want were after. In the mean time the CEV can be enlarged to at least twice the seats with little trouble.

Plus the life span of said space plane will be limited once we have a space elevator.

Now Martian aeronautics is another story. 

Fantastic article right there. Especially if you consider those very same fuel modules can be modified with airlocks, launched empty and used as solid habs like Skylab. One or two and you'd have the volume of the ISS and then some.

On Orbit Fuel Storage modules would also solve all the problems of trying to exploit the tremendous volume of the ET by turning it into HAB, because they would also have it too. Although it still leaves the issue of unexploited volume, and the wasted 33tons of aluminum. Though the ETs would still be useful if launch un-insinuated like in the first couple shuttle missions (to prevent debris) and if they could be stored in orbit and shaded to prevent expansion and contraction. They would make lunar base building a whole lot faster if empty tanks could just be buried. You’re not just going to dump tons of regolith on a fancier module. As for getting them there, we are already going to have restart able SSME's from the Stick, so we can get them to orbit on residual fuels. Once there, they will need to be "shaded". Solar panels could be oriented to do it. In fact this might be a good spot to test the Solar Power Satellite concept, since your going to have lots of shaded space behind it. In any event, since it would be impractical to launch a tank with its own TLI stage on top of whatever cargo its hauling, they are going to have to be rounded up in LEO and sent together. We can attach the required landing gear here as well. Attach 6 or so together in hexagonal pattern on a pair of big gear shaped scaffolds. Finally, launch a final stack that mounts directly within the others. This would be the ideal position to mount landing legs and retro rockets from, because your cargo would all be fore of the tanks. Then it’s a relatively simple matter of deploying the payload faring, and unfolding legs down on predestinated tracks, once at the appropriate point, twist and wrap around the tank. Nose deorbiting thrusters can just pop out the sides of your cargo module. Fuel stored in the cargo module can send whole thing on its merry way. Of course its likely we could only this once we have the rovers on the ground to dig the trenches and bury them, unless we want to store them at L1, or at a polar site in the early years. I bet we could produce one bundle per year between everything we launch. And that more than enough volume for a big base. If we produce several bundles over the early scouting phases, we almost have more volume than we know what to do with. Later on we can launch all the furnishings well ahead, with the tanks coming a few months later, and basically build an entire base in 6-6 launches, not including manned launches.

Fuel depots are a whole issue by themselves. Its going to take a lot of rovers scooping up dirt 24/7 to create enough oxygen to make a fuel depot really work for us especially when combined with the shortage of hydrogen. I think your going to need an alternative source. Asteroids are the most obvious source, be are not easy to exploit. If you could a find a small (around 50m diameter) hydrogen and carbon rich one and get it in a highly elliptical lunar orbit, and then slow it down at the right time, you might be able to bring it down without making a mess. That would probably provide all for all your fuel needs for decades to come.

I really don't think they've planned that far ahead. Nowhere do they mention platnium, He3, metals, fuels of either the solid or liquid persassion.

Its obvious that they don't want to scare anyone with long term pricetags. But the media will do that regardless. The only way to counter that to do a phased approach that were we have something really spectacular at the end that requires a set number of affordable bite sized steps. They don't have that yet.

We have to make the first phase look easy. Cause it should be. Were amking it much hard than it needs to be.

That translator is terrible.

But I don't see the problem. French planes took part in Operation Infinate Justice, in Afganistan, as part of NATO.

Good job. I suppose we have to thank the French for that. 

Although its not clear that they expended any munitions.

The bloated cargo requirement is going to come back to bite us.

The same principle of seperate manned and cargo launches to LEO should apply to landing on the moon. There is no way we can make effective use of 12 tons of gear in  7 days. Limit the cargo to a pair of large 2 man rovers that contain all their experiments and can operate on their own indefinately on solar power, though slower, and cap them at about 2.5tons each.

If we can keep costs low for the first series of missions that are purely scientific in nature we get up there sooner, avoid any foot race with the Chinese, built a steadily increasing body of data, and still have money to continually develope more advanced systems.

The use of inflatables makes Mars Direct or Semi-Direct obsolete. You'd be crazy build anything with a higher launch weight and lower volume untill you can effectively build stronger and larger modules on the moon.

If you consider "massive" to be much larger than we have now, then absolutely. Several empty modules roughly the size of shuttle ETs could be built, launched from the moon, and assembled in Lunar in less time than its taking us to get back to the moon. If we take the time to build outposts with permenent residences, then we could probably have craft capable of going anywhere in the solar system within 50 years.

The Enterprise is much farthur out. 

Artificial gee spacecraft will solve the bulk of these problems. Doing surgeries in a plastic tent or in dedicated and specially designed sick bays will prevent body fluids from shooting out into electronics.

Good question Twinbeam. Anyone know the cost of a Soyuz w/launcher or a Progress w/ launcher?

The Soyuz tourist package is $20 million, I doubt the whole package is much more than $100 million.

Am I the only one who thinks this is a godsend? We can now have a Soyuz rescue craft at the ready in the event of failure of the shuttle tiles. Taking 3 astronauts off the ISS will greatly reduce strain on it, assuming the Soyuz can be remotely opperated. I bet it can modified to carry 4 as well.

Progress launches could be increased to pick up the slack caused by the grounding of the Shuttle for a tiny fraction of the cost.

THe only limit is the rate at which they can build and launch them. Hell, if we pay for some of the Russian ones they can get the Klipper done faster. Although given the way the Russians operate they will probably just milk it all they can.

The time to swallow our pride was back when we had to ground the shuttles with one still in orbit, if not before that. We got a lemon. If we can solve that problem and still get things done then we aught to. Besides, maybe it will embarass some more money out of Congress.

Well, they could eat the bees. 

Their going for the same reason they want to go to Mars.