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Today is Google Meeting day for NewMars.
GW Johnson has been hard at work on several different (but related) studies.
We have a new Daily Recap PHP file available for installation in NewMars forum. I am hoping SpaceNut will be able to join the meeting so we can discuss how to get the feature installed.
Austin Stanley reported finding a series on Mars that he had described previously. The series appears to be available in PDF form if anyone is interested.
Systems check went well at 17:29 New Hampshire time.
We expect to open the Waiting room at or just before midnight UTC, 8 PM New Hampshire, 7 PM Houston, 6 PM Los Angeles and mid-morning Australia.
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The waiting room is open at 23:55:44
GW Johnson joined the meeting and we spent the next hour reviewing his recent work comparing standard capsules for re-entry at Earth with the new inflatable design that flew successfully in a test dive from Low Earth orbit. That design generated lots of data, and NASA reported good results. The design appears to have met all goals and even exceeded expectations in some areas.
GW's analysis included different radii for the two shield types, and a variety of re-entry velocities, based upon LEO, the Moon or Mars.
He produced graphs and documentation, and each graph was backed up by an appendix with the raw data from his entry analysis spreadsheet.
One area where we spent some time was in review of the shape of the tip of the heat shield. A spherical shape with a radius of 1 meter was one example I recall from the many designs we considered. I found a diagram on the Internet that helped me to understand the concepts, and GW indicated he might consider adding that feature to help readers who have not seen the War Head entry studies from the Cold War that GW has in (declassified) hard copy.
Next week GW will be returning to work on the Mars lander. He spent some time attempting to reassure me that a feature I am worried about will not be a problem, so we'll see how that shakes out in coming days.
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The waiting room is open at 23:53 ....
Today is Google Meeting day for NewMars.
GW Johnson has been hard at work developing papers on re-entry in general and the Mars problem in particular.
System check at 23:32 went well.
We are on schedule to open the waiting room at just before midnight UTC.
7 PM Houston, 6 PM Los Angeles and Seattle, 8 PM New Hampshire and (my favorite) mid-morning Australia)
That was an interesting meeting. GW and I called up his recent pdf document about the SpaceS staging (you can find it in the GW Johnson topic).
He had made a number of changes to improve the understandability of the diagrams.
We then spent some time talking about the design of the Mars Lander that is intended to place 40 tons on the surface without discarding anything on the way down. This has never been done, so it is quite challenging.
Finally we wrapped up looking at some software that might be helpful as GW gets further along with the lander design. The management of force flows will be similar to those experienced by landers that discard their heat shields, but in this case GW is planning to hang onto the heat shield during all phases of the landing. The engineering calculations to do all that will definitely be interesting.
If all goes well, NewMars will offer another Google Meeting next week at the same time.
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Today is Google Meeting day for NewMars...
In recent times, GW Johnson has reported on his numerous studies and projects...
The Mars Lander that does not discard material during descent has been a primary focus recently.
In parallel, studies of heat shield designs in the atmosphere of Earth are well developed.
Pending are similar studies for Mars, which has a thinner atmosphere with lest consistency.
Recently GW has returned to a familiar topic: Project Orion
In a (very) recent post GW estimated an optimum ship mass at 20,000 tons. This is up significantly from the 5000 tons that was contemplated for Project Orion.
That would be a very good use for some of the atomic bomb grade material collected on Earth.
*** System check at 17:12 New Hampshire time went well. We are on schedule to open the Waiting Room at mdnight UTC.
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The waiting room is open at 23:56
kbd512 and GW Johnson joined the meeting.
We discussed aircraft design, Mars lander design, and the challenges of trying to slow Large Ship at Mars using the atmosphere to provide resistance.
We scanned through RobertDyck's Large Ship topic, looking at images created over the years.
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Today is Google meeting day.
GW Johnson has made considerable progress on his Mars lander.
kbd512 may have updates on aircraft design.
As a bonus item, if we have time, GW reminded me we do not know details about design of the Orion space craft.
All the documents from that time should be declassified by now, but how many are online is a question.
We would like to know how the charges were delivered to the site of ignition, and how they were oriented so the shaped charges went where they were supposed to.
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Systems check went well at 1900 New Hampshire time.
We'll open the waiting room a few minutes before midnight UTC, 8 PM New Hampshire, 7 PM Houston ... mid-Morning Australia
Update: we are online at 23:58 UTC
This was another solid meeting ... We split the time between aircraft (and specifically the Wankel engine developed by John Deere) and the Mars Lander, which is approaching closer and closer to ready for machine level drawings.
GW spent much of the past week diving into the intricate details of a honeycomb shelf for the 40 ton payload.
He created spreadsheet pages showing the tradeoff between wall thickness and material strength and load capacity.
He studied steel, aluminum and carbon composite materials.
All this work is accumulating in a paper that is now up to 24 pages, and there are more to come.
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Today is Google Meeting day at NewMars...
GW Johnson has been making progress on multiple fronts.
kbd512 has been working on aircraft design.
Others may join as well.
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System check at 22:54 went well. The waiting room will open in an hour.
7 PM Houston, 8 PM New Hampshire, 6 PM West Coast and (my favorite) Mid-Morning in Australia.
If present plans hold, GW Johnson will be here with reports on the wrap of the first phase of Mars Lander design.
kbd512 is a possible attendee, with updates on aircraft technology.
In recent weeks we have followed along as kbd512 has investigated a wide variety of technologies. Every design has strengths and weaknesses, and the history of some of them is interesting.
Waiting Room is open at 23:57:58
That was an interesting and productive session. My system crashed right in the middle but we picked up and kept going.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nbna7k4w … cz4vu&dl=0
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Today is Google Meeting day for NewMars.
We expect to open the Waiting Room at midnight UTC as usual.
7 PM Houston, 8 PM New Hampshire, 6 PM West Coast
Mid-Morning Australia.
GW Johnson has created a 7.5 meter version of his 9.5 meter Mars Lander.
The new lander can only carry 20 tons, but it fits inside the advertised space for a Starship if it were fitted with a Clamshell door on the back side.
No such versions of Starship are currently planned, but they were identified as possible in early SpaceX documentation.
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Systems check went well at 17:50 New Hampshire time ...
We are online at 23:58 and kbd512 is here.
The discussion took off on aircraft design and kept going at full strength for the entire hour.
My system froze up but the Google Meeting audio kept going, so I got to hear the spirited discussion.
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Today is Google Meeting day.
Our regular meeting time is midnight UTC.
I expect GW Johnson and (with luck) kbd512 to participate this evening.
Last week we had a bit of a surprise ... my GUI froze but the meeting proceeded just fine without me.
I discovered that I could move the Host to a nearby laptop. The move was successful, in that the participants were not inconvenienced by the switch.
The key learning opportunity for me was to see that the host responsibility could be shifted to a dedicated system.
I use the large Ubuntu system to provide sharing services, while keeping the meeting running, and it is apparent that the demands of Google Meeting plus multiple browser sessions plus multiple other applications can be more than my GUI can handle.
I'm planning to open the meeting as usual at the usual time. I'll have the back up system on standby in case the GUI locks up again.
We have offered to set up an earlier meeting time for our European members. That is absolute NOT a problem for folks in North and South America. However, in the years we've been running these meetings, not ONCE has anyone from Europe expressed interest. Perhaps with the arrival of HG Muller, that could change.
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Systems check went well at 22:47 UTC
We are on track to open the meeting room a few minutes before midnight UTC.
All your European members will (most likely) be resting up for the coming work day.
The Mars Society Convention is coming up October 22nd. PhotonBytes is scheduled to speak at 4:30 PM on one of the days. See the convention schedule for details, The event will take place in person and online.
https://www.marssociety.org/webcast/
When I went to that website, it said the convention is over. I presume that text is from last year?
Interesting: The link at the webcast site takes us to a presentation from 4 years ago
Hopefully that link will be working when the 2026 convention starts.
Update ... we are online at 23:55:17
kbd512 joined and we took a deep dive into aircraft propeller design and followed that with engine design.
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