You are not logged in.
They have located us, transported themselves to our planet and are using advanced nanotechnology to mask themselves as the infiltrate our society?
Or maybe as a civilisation advances everyone learns to transcend matter and become beings of pure energy?
Well I submit that we should classify the grouping above the 'homesteaders' as the 'Virgle's'. This is still a step or two below the kitset empire people which is itself a step below Dyson people.
Combined with public/private and national classifications we can start to group things. Maybe it all needs to go in the Wiki...
For example KSR's Underhill approach is Virgle in scale, but publiclly funded and international.
That is pretty much JP Aerospace all over.
The difficulty is that the 5% of lift is being generated at pretty serious speed. Unless you come in slowly then you will still need shielding.
JP Aerospace's ideas are generally to enter or leave using large ballons.
If it was fired before jettisioning the second stage then it won't hit 10G's but its at the point where the second stage isn't going to explode.
Or even with just the Service Module. 10G's is what happens when it leaves the service module behind.
It might get a bit extra into orbit.
If you don't fire an underside LAS then you have to carry it to orbit anyways.
A group of people chilling in a group of old MD Habs while they make bricks to seal in a lava tube?
Alternatively still send an enormous ship that breaks into dozens of small cache habs that enter and land independently.
The original contingent of Virgle Pioneers will be selected by numerous criteria, including an online questionnaire, video submission, personal accomplishments, expertise in scientific, artistic, sociological and/or political fields of endeavor, and inadequate Google and Virgin personal performance reviews.
Don't let Publisur see this one:
2014: Low Earth Orbit
If a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, then our 550-million-mile journey to Mars will begin with 550,000 1/500th-of-a-mile steps, as the LSE3, a multi-stage heavy lifter now under construction using the World War II-era Liberty Ship philosophy ("Make them fast, ugly and in large numbers"), launches our staging components into low earth orbit.
We will need to core. Try sending a geologist anywheres without coring equipment...
Balloon
The balloon aerobot was a constant-pressure balloon 3.4 m in diameter with instruments, weighing 25 kg in total. It was deployed at 54 km from the surface in the most active layer of the Venusian cloud system. The 5 kg instrument pack had enough battery power for sixty hours of operation and measured temperature, pressure, wind speed and aerosol density. Both Vega-1 and Vega-2 balloons operated for more than 46 hrs from injection to the final transmission[1].The balloons were spherical superpressure types with a diameter of 3.54 meters (11.6 ft) and filled with helium. A gondola assembly weighing 6.9 kilograms (15.2 pounds) and 1.3 meters (4.26 ft) long was connected to the balloon envelope by a tether 13 meters (42.6 ft) long. Total mass of the entire assembly was 21 kilograms (46 pounds).
The top section of the gondola assembly was capped by a conical antenna 37 centimeters (14.6 inches) tall and 13 centimeters (5 1⁄8 inches) wide at the base. Beneath the antenna was a module containing the radio transmitter and system control electronics. The lower section of the gondola assembly carried the instrument payload and batteries.
The instruments consisted of:
An arm carrying thin-film resistance thermometers and a velocity anemometer. The anemometer consisted of a free-spinning plastic propeller whose spin was measured by LED-photodetector optointerrupters.
A module containing a PIN diode photodetector to measure light levels and a vibrating quartz beam pressure sensor.
A package at the bottom carrying the batteries and a nephelometer to measure cloud density through light reflection.
The small low-power transmitter only allowed a data transmission rate of 2,048 bits per second, though the system performed data compression to squeeze more information through the narrow bandwidth. Nonetheless, the sampling rate for most of the instruments was only once every 75 seconds. The balloons were tracked by two networks of 20 radio telescopes in total back on Earth: the Soviet network, coordinated by the USSR Academy of Sciences and the international network, coordinated by CNES.The balloons were dropped onto the planet's darkside and deployed at an altitude of about 50 kilometers (30 miles). They then floated upward a few kilometers to their equilibrium altitude. At this altitude, pressure and temperature conditions of Venus are similar to those of Earth, though the planet's winds moved at hurricane velocity and the carbon dioxide atmosphere is laced with sulfuric acid, along with smaller concentrations of hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid.
The balloons moved swiftly across the night side of the planet into the light side, where their batteries finally ran down and contact was lost. Tracking indicated that the motion of the balloons included a surprising vertical component, revealing vertical motions of air masses that had not been detected by earlier probe missions.
The Adventure of Many Lifetimes: The 100 Year Plan
For thousands of years,
the human race has spread out across the Earth, scaling mountains and plying the oceans, planting crops and building highways, raising skyscrapers and atmospheric CO2 levels, and observing, with tremendous and unflagging enthusiasm, the Biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply across our world's every last nook, cranny and subdivision.
An invitation.
Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.
That's pretty hard on the system for April 1st.
I meant 'an' advantage.
If it is fired beyond the abort zone then it may sitll be pulling more than the abort weight tempering its thrust somewhat.
I meant integrated as in if it is not needed to abort then its thrust can be be added to the system. An abort tower has to use its engines to get itself out of the way even when its not needed.
No particualr links to it although there is a bunch over at the Apce fellowship.
My point was, that it is fine to say 'I have been an advocate of Nasa doing X instead of Y for ages'. Its completely within limits to say 'I told you so'.
Its entirely different to claim to have invented X or to claim to have advocated X first. Generally with Nasa, by the time Y has been announced X has already been studied and rejected.
Just stick to quietly posting your ideas an views on your blog or in books and magazines. If your thoughts are of value (and probably even if they aren't) people will start to listen. And if someone flogs your ideas let other people notice. Then you will be considered a Genius or a prohpet... instead of a spammer.
The big advantage of an integrated abort system is that you still get to fire it during ascent, instead of tossing it overboard. So not only does it save weight indirectly, it increases payload directly.
NASA considered over 20,000 different designs for the Ares-1 which would have included Underside LAS as a matter of course.
It is a well established design going back decades.
Perhaps you got the idea from Canadian Arrow, the most recent (before your proposals) public discussion of such a design?
Circa 2001:
Crew Cabin Escape System
During every aspect of the flight, the crew cabin can be separated from the first stage, and initiate a recovery sequence based on the altitude and flight dynamics of the vehicle. As described previously, the four solid rockets can be ignited at any point during the flight, including a zero altitude launch pad abort. Flight stability has been achieved by ensuring the second stage is a stable vehicle on it's own. Design changes during the last year have enabled the removal of the lattice style stablization fins. During a zero altitude abort the crew cabin will reach a height of 5000 ft where it will deploy its main recovery parachutes. The access hatches on the crew cabin can be explosively blown off for quick exit of the vehicle.
The SpaceX engineers are now free of conflicting oversight.
Their main advantage is that they don't have to answer to a public that creates blogs explaining how the Falcon 9 upper stage is too heavy, or that the Russians used Kerosene first etc.
Zubrin really does get it right with his analogy about connecting post and rope sellers (how much rope does it take to connect two posts 10 feet apart? Are you connecting the posts or selling rope?)
People who like Aeroplanes think up systems that are airlaunched. People who want to go to Mars demand that the Moon/ISS use HLLVs. People who like alt space in general quietly suggest that COTS might just be a way forward so that NASA doesn't have to worry about 'all that launch donkey work'.
Not really sure what you are peddling Gaetanomarano, except that you seem to think that the 4 Segment SRBoosters exhaust is made of sunshine and rainbows.
If you can't see the LCD pixels then you basically need a more powerful magnifying glass.
Alternatively put the image on a bigger screen...
Plus you can export the Ethanol as value Added Martian Vodka for extremely reasonable prices...
I always thought being thrown into the sun to join the nuclear cycle and shine down upon everyone was somewhat more noble...
There are some things that will will require scale industries. Turning out Ingots and glass to feed all your fabbers will be pretty traditional, but smaller.
Beyond robots and basic systems, Mars will quickly need large numbers of domes and tunnels to increase living space and pressurised agricultural space to meet demand. A system that can turn out thousands of struts for tunnels won't sit on you bench top.
While the rotation is operating you are not relying on your pumps and whatnot. Everything is passively pressurised and so on. If you don't have that then you rely on active system the whole way there and back.
Well that is not unreasonable.
Look at it the other way, the amount require to kill all its speed and land softly will be pretty close to what is required to send it back to Earth.
How much speed would you have to bleed to justify the risk of having an insertion burn, vs the risk of having a heavy highspeed aerocapture.
You will probably have an engine anyway for course correction, and a large engine for landing, so you are really looking at increasing your fuel load quite a bit. MD already calls for tanking 6 tons of H2 anyways its more of a cpacity thing than adding equipment.
A minimal amount of 'gravity' simplifies a lot of systems, reducing overall complexity. The same way a tap on the thrusters can settle main engine tanks instead of using positive expulsion mechanisms.
Are you related to Bentherdonthat? Because he is brilliant.
Also look at the Red Colony or Mars Drive forums for a bunch of like minded people.
That complicates matters somewhat...