The Gateway Foundation

[Xd the great]

NASA is building a moon station. Can it get funded?

[StarStreak2109]

6 hours ago, Xd the great said:

NASA is building a moon station. Can it get funded?

What's that got to do with the Gateway Foundation project?

On 7/13/2018 at 8:44 AM, Shpaget said:

Yes, governments. Private lotteries a bit rarer beast to find.

Then there is the whole problem of getting the money out of multiple countries you run lotteries in, and I'm pretty sure there are plenty of money laundering and similar laws that will be in your way if you attempt to do that.

Let's suppose they did check the feasibility of such an undertaking. Also, let's put this lottery idea aside and treat this as a means of "crowd funding". Sure, you have a chance of winning money, but why should I enter this lottery and not the established "national" lotteries? They would have to invest huge moneys on advertising campaigns. There I see the problem of the general public where IMHO many have opinions like "We have so many problems on Earth, why should we invest in space?" or the likes. So you have to build a pretty solid marketing case. Even more so, if at least a minor portion of your target audience are future (low budget) space tourists.

Again, I think, it is an idea worth pursuing, but I believe it would be foolish to rely on this solely. Why not put various pieces of iron into the smelter and pursue a multitude of financing strategies:

• "Crowd funding" via lottery;
• Secure national funding from the space faring nations by getting NASA, ESA, JAXA etc. on board for a part in the project;
• Secure private funding from business angels and investors (i.e. venture capital);
• Secure industrial funding from corporations like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Microsoft, Apple, GE, Samsung, Siemens, Airbus, ...

Especially with regards to the last point, you will need a bunch of industrial partners anyway. So, why not get them on board as partners.

On an unrelated note: I am curious as to how they finance their current "development". I am assuming right now some effort goes into developing general strategies and concepts, but the majority of the effort will be building relations and networking. At some point, if they are serious, you will have to dig into serious technical development of all the infrastructure required. That costs, as we know, a few dollars.

Edited July 14, 2018 by StarStreak2109

[Xd the great]

If we are building megastructures in space, we might as well get everyone involved in it. Moon station will be a good testing point.

[sh1pman]

 

[Rakaydos]

Dont forget part 2:

 

[kerbiloid]

1. Take Babylon-5-like models (that ship of the First Ones).
2. Scrap the fizzix.
3. Name the thing after Von Braun (a Confederation flag would be nice, too, but looks a little offtopic) to show that this is not just that, but a really tough, serious, and special men's thing.
4. Make a cheap 3d animation.
5. Show yourself every second second.
...
9. Profit!!!

[Shpaget]

They posted an update.

Unfortunately, the half an hour video contains only one new piece of information - they changed the name.

[Shpaget]

Update:

They plan to test a truss building machine, which will build a 40% scale version of something (I seem to not be capable of following all their terminology). Anyway, it should be a football field sized ring. February is their goal.

They haven't addressed the biggest problem I see - the lottery system of financing, but they did put a big emphasis on this being a USA thing, which is in contrast to their earlier dreams of worldwide lottery.

[tater]

As goofy as this outfit can seem, this is exactly the sort of business that I think is a better risk than new space ventures like "smallsat launch."

Falcon 9 has already intruded into the smallsat launch market, and if they can get SS working I think the incentive to make everything as few grams as possible ceases to be a thing.

[YNM]

56 minutes ago, tater said:

I think the incentive to make everything as few grams as possible ceases to be a thing.

Less materials still means less cost overall. The cost of concrete for building Burj Khalifa will always be more expensive than the cost of concrete to build your house. Less material generally* also means faster production, takes a good few years to make a skyscraper but building your house is a months long thing at most.

 

Although I'm not saying that we shouldn't make large stuff in space - if it's for humans to live up there then it'd be good to have enough space for everyone. Most interesting part that I just noticed is that the access space are basically "above" the abode pods... so you don't really walk in and out of it, you more like climb up and down to/from it.

Wondering what the ring EVA is for, though, but I suppose it'd be better to start off already rotating if you're going to service a rotating thing ? idk, wouldn't stepping off just hurls you away really fast ?

 

* With the advent of off-site pre-fabrication it's true that the on-site assembly can be very fast, but it'd still be reflected in the size of the plants and the cost incurred. Though for space stuff it'd still be easier to make things here then ship it out ready to be assembled, at least for the near future.

Edited January 12, 2021 by YNM

[StrandedonEarth]

7 minutes ago, YNM said:

Less materials still means less cost overall. The cost of concrete for building Burj Khalifa will always be more expensive than the cost of concrete to build your house. Less material generally* also means faster production, takes a good few years to make a skyscraper but building your house is a months long thing at most.

 

Although I'm not saying that we shouldn't make large stuff in space - if it's for humans to live up there then it'd be good to have enough space for everyone. Most interesting part that I just noticed is that the access space are basically "above" the abode pods... so you don't really walk in and out of it, you more like climb up and down to/from it.

Wondering what the ring EVA is for, though, but I suppose it'd be better to start off already rotating if you're going to service a rotating thing ? idk, wouldn't stepping off just hurls you away really fast ?

 

* With the advent of off-site pre-fabrication it's true that the on-site assembly can be very fast, but it'd still be reflected in the size of the plants and the cost incurred. Though for space stuff it'd still be easier to make things here then ship it out ready to be assembled, at least for the near future.

Are you sure? If IKEA gets into the flat-packed space hab business, all bets are off. Or not:

”Dangit, I dropped that goshdarned hex key and its floating just out of reach. Maybe if I unclip my safety tether....”

”JEB! Just what do you think you’re doing...?!”

[YNM]

19 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Are you sure? If IKEA gets into the flat-packed space hab business, all bets are off.

Last I checked they asked me to pay more if I want a 3-person couch vs. the same couch line but in 2-person configuration. Materials and the effort that goes into making them cost money.

21 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

”Dangit, I dropped that goshdarned hex key and its floating just out of reach. Maybe if I unclip my safety tether....”

”JEB! Just what do you think you’re doing...?!”

It'd be like dropping them down to the ground though, for the rotating EVA part. Hence I was wondering what exactly is it for... I presume the only way you'd service this thing is with some sort of gondolas, kind of the same you'd see off tall buildings, but rather than being on winches going up and down it'd be going on rails sideways along the whole ring.

[tater]

21 hours ago, YNM said:

Less materials still means less cost overall. The cost of concrete for building Burj Khalifa will always be more expensive than the cost of concrete to build your house. Less material generally* also means faster production, takes a good few years to make a skyscraper but building your house is a months long thing at most.

This is simply not true.

The cost to make something the least possible mass for a given function drastically increases cost.

Would it be more or less expensive to make a smart phone with 48 ours of battery life at 100% CPU use during that period if the only constraint was mass? I mean, I can just add battery packs and get there at marginal cost, but the mass is more than the default phone. How expensive would it be to dev entirely new batter tech, or new electronics to get the same use per unit mass? Pretty expensive, way more than X cheap batteries bought on amazon.

Cubesats are cheap partially because they decided they could use off the shelf electronics. The sats are disposable anyway, so using a cell phone as the basic compute for the thing reduces cost. If the spacecraft is not intended to rapidly decay and be replaced (higher orbits), then the limitations currently tend to be mass, and reliability/redundancy. More expensive systems because launch is expensive, timelines are long for replacement, etc. The easy redundancy solution—just send multiple copies of whatever (multiple whole spacecraft, multiple computers, sensors, etc within a spacecraft) are off the table due to mass constraints.

Take radhard electronics, or heck, people. You can also just shield off the shelf electronics (or standard issue humans). Shielding) is usually talked about in g/cm². It's always a trade off, we can drop radiation exposure to Earth levels—with enough mass. At a few thousand $ per kg, that starts being concerning. At $10/kg? Not so much.

Edited January 13, 2021 by tater

[YNM]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Would it be more or less expensive to make a smart phone with 48 ours of battery life at 100% CPU use during that period if the only constraint was mass? I mean, I can just add battery packs and get there at marginal cost, but the mass is more than the default phone. How expensive would it be to dev entirely new batter tech, or new electronics to get the same use per unit mass? Pretty expensive, way more than X cheap batteries bought on amazon.

On the side of the physical stuff themselves, we're doing away with smaller and smaller lithography, therefore reducing the size of circuitry, therefore enabling reduction of the electricity used. Same goes to the screens, they've been made to be as thin as it could be because a thicker panel means you get more internal reflectance, and this reduces the efficiency of the illumination and raising the electricity usage. As a result I can use a smaller battery that'd last longer.

There're more than one side when it comes to electronics, you can either use less power and therefore increase the time the device will remain on over the same battery capacity, or raise the capacity of the battery. To be able to use less power you'd most likely use something that's smaller as well. We've also used better and better batteries, and if anything phones these days are unbelievably cheaper than it used to be, given the increase in capabilities.

Here are some of the phones me and my family had been using (data based on gsmarena : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Based on the table alone, I'd say that the technology has leaped once between the first smartphones we used vs. the latest ones (and the latest one is 3 years old now). Newer phones are barely heavier than the latest one on this table. I also don't include the size of the device here, which obviously changes the amount of material that has to be used. (seriously, phones are much bigger now than they were, at least in width and length.)

So yeah, I'd still say that lighter (using less materials) is still cheaper, if anything the reason the price kind of hovering is because we're given more features than we used to.

Edited January 13, 2021 by YNM
Added ratios of price/weight and capacity/weight

[tater]

16 minutes ago, YNM said:

So yeah, I'd still say that lighter (using less materials) is still cheaper, if anything the reason the price kind of hovering is because we're given more features than we used to.

Those are mass-market devices, where small size, and power/weight is also a concern. Again, take the best phone there, and demand 10X more battery life. How will you do that, keep the phone exactly the same mass, and reduce power requirements? Increase battery power density? Or just add 9 more batteries at a mass penalty?

What are possible use cases in space?

For human spaceflight mass as the constraint increases cost.

For any spacecraft, propellant mass is controlled by the tyranny of the rocket equation. You might want as much as possible for long life/station keeping, but you simply can't, it's too expensive, and for large sats in GEO eventually becomes impossible as you exceed max throw to GEO by available launchers. You can't make propellant lighter.

 

21 minutes ago, YNM said:

So yeah, I'd still say that lighter (using less materials) is still cheaper, if anything the reason the price kind of hovering is because we're given more features than we used to.

Nope, not true. Again, look at shielding. We'd want many cm of shielding, ideally. What's Gateway gonna have? Any? Orion has "pile supplies up in the bottom of the capsule, then wear this vest" radiation protection.

Right now for Artemis, lighter buys them nothing, as they can't possibly make a lander light enough—at literally any cost, they are printing the money—to fly it with SLS as a comanifested cargo.

If we were given a spacecraft goal, and we each had 5 million available for launch cost, you had to use existing launch providers, and I could use Starship once fully operational, which spacecraft is cheaper? You have to spend $5000/kg, and I get to spend $50/kg for launch. You shave kg as long as shaving kg is doable under the 5k launch cost per kg. It's worth it to buy a $4999 part if it's a kg lighter than a $1 part. There's probably a place where the curves cross, but it's gonna be for very limited spacecraft in low orbits I bet.

 

 

[YNM]

7 minutes ago, tater said:

take the best phone there, and demand 10X more battery life. How will you do that, keep the phone exactly the same mass, and reduce power requirements? Increase battery power density? Or just add 9 more batteries at a mass penalty?

Are you suggesting to add the development cost in there ? And paying for a prototype ? I'm sure their cost would rise up way more.

My official answer to that particular question would be to "wait until we have better technology". It will be possible one day, perhaps.

10 minutes ago, tater said:

For human spaceflight mass as the constraint increases cost.

For any spacecraft, propellant mass is controlled by the tyranny of the rocket equation.

Yes sure that if you want to lift more people you're going to need more things, and as such more mass, and more propellant.

As for the cost per person, there's a tendency that because areas are squared while mass are cubed, you need slightly less material when building a larger thing. But this still equates to less mass used overall. Honestly here's the only point that you're getting, sadly not everyone is willing to pay more than what they are needing to, otherwise we'd have been launching Saturn Vs (or similarly sized and performing rockets) since the 70s.

12 minutes ago, tater said:

look at shielding.

Depends on the volume being shielded.

13 minutes ago, tater said:

If we were given a spacecraft goal, and we each had 5 million available for launch cost, you had to use existing launch providers, and I could use Starship once fully operational, which spacecraft is cheaper?

A prototype or mass production ? How many more years in the future are you expecting it ? You'd be basically doing the same thing I'm doing when answering your first question - "wait for better technology".

But given the exact same technology ? Less mass is less cost spent.

And there's still the question of you need to fill it up for it to turn a profit. Not everyone wants to fill up a Spaceship when all they want is just to get something simple somewhere specific. There's an argument to be made further that Starship would make the space industry more attractive and as such it'll take the demand up, but we'll see how long it takes. (I'm confident it'll take not too long but not too short, betting like a decade after being introduced.)

[tater]

43 minutes ago, YNM said:

Are you suggesting to add the development cost in there ? And paying for a prototype ? I'm sure their cost would rise up way more.

My official answer to that particular question would be to "wait until we have better technology". It will be possible one day, perhaps.

I mean right now.

Insight could have just landed with multiple drill probes, right? Why not? Why just 1? because more mass costs more, and costs more in propellant, which requires a larger LV, etc. Why not just a better drill, one capable of pushing the probe as deep as required into the regolith? Mass.

If you have a mission, and mass is the limitation, making it lighter costs more. You have to dev new materials or something. If we sent a probe to an outer planet with Statrship, and you got 3000kg, and I got 30,000kg. Launch costs are held equal, you spend $150,000 on launch, I spend 1.5 million on launch. You're sending 1 spacecraft probably. I could send 10 like yours, or I could send 10 that are cheaper to make (same mass budget per), or I could send 5 that are twice as massive, and lower price. Even a cheap Mars orbiter is 10s of millions these days (India's was 70M including launch). PSLV is apparently ~28M, so they spent that sort of money (10s of millions) on the spacecraft at 1300kg. Looks like 10s of thousands of $ per kg on the orbiter. So your spacecraft is 10s of millions, can I make any cheaper, since if I send 10, I don't care if 9 fail?

Juno cost >$300,000 per kg of spacecraft mass. That's just absurd. It's because they count literally every gram.

Quote

Yes sure that if you want to lift more people you're going to need more things, and as such more mass, and more propellant.

As for the cost per person, there's a tendency that because areas are squared while mass are cubed, you need slightly less material when building a larger thing. But this still equates to less mass used overall. Honestly here's the only point that you're getting, sadly not everyone is willing to pay more than what they are needing to, otherwise we'd have been launching Saturn Vs (or similarly sized and performing rockets) since the 70s.

Depends on the volume being shielded.

Yes, but at $5,000-$20,000/kg the cost is prohibitive.

Quote

A prototype or mass production ? How many more years in the future are you expecting it ? You'd be basically doing the same thing I'm doing when answering your first question - "wait for better technology".

The better tech in this case did 2 static fires today. 3 static fires today.

If a new space mission was funded tomorrow morning, we're talking about the tech that will be available by the time it's ready. SS has a good chance to be that technology.

Quote

But given the exact same technology ? Less mass is less cost spent.

Only for launch.

How expensive is a car capable of average sedan level performance and safety that weighs 50% of the average car we're comparing to?

The question is, "Could you make the same or better quality spacecraft for less money if mass was not a concern at all?" The answer is unambiguously "yes."

Literally any spacecraft can be made better with slightly more mass. Add a redundant computer, radio, antenna, etc. If you are shaving grams, that's not a thing, or it comes with the trade off of eliminating something else. NASA probes always have periods where they are deciding what instruments to put on the spacecraft—why not always put ALL the instruments on? Because mass matters.

Quote

And there's still the question of you need to fill it up for it to turn a profit. Not everyone wants to fill up a Spaceship when all they want is just to get something simple somewhere specific. There's an argument to be made further that Starship would make the space industry more attractive and as such it'll take the demand up, but we'll see how long it takes. (I'm confident it'll take not too long but not too short, betting like a decade after being introduced.)

You don't need to fill Starship if it works. If they can actually reuse it, their launch cost is less than Electron. That's SpaceX cost, not what they would charge, because with zero competition, they'll just charge "less" but still not too much less.

A partner like Gateway Foundation might be attractive for SpaceX to reduce costs for if the foundation can come up with case for launches, though, because it creates possible demand, and some of the tech is likely interesting to SpaceX for their own reasons.

 

Edited January 13, 2021 by tater

[YNM]

15 minutes ago, tater said:

How expensive is a car capable of average sedan level performance and safety that weighs 50% of the average car we're comparing to?

Have you not seen kei cars ? There's apparently a case that the sole reason why cars have gotten larger these days are due to emission limits being tied to footprint of vehicle. Sadly rather than developing more efficient engines they're just making the cars larger (though to be fair to them it's not like you can raise the efficiency easily, and admitting defeat would just put them out of competition entirely with non-combustion methods).

15 minutes ago, tater said:

Insight could have just landed with multiple drill probes, right? Why not? Why just 1? because more mass costs more, and costs more in propellant, which requires a larger LV, etc. Why not just a better drill, one capable of pushing the probe as deep as required into the regolith? Mass.

If you have a mission, and mass is the limitation, making it lighter costs more.

(emphasis mine)

It's 4:45 AM in the morning for me and I'm not sure if it's you that's not making much sense or I can't make any sense of things anymore. InSight doesn't have a drill for taking samples, just for putting in a subterranean temperature probe, and yes it only have one of it.

15 minutes ago, tater said:

If a new space mission was funded tomorrow morning, we're talking about the tech that will be available by the time it's ready. SS has a good chance to be that technology.

Yeah, to be fair it'd take a newly-designed mission a decade until it can actually be launched.

15 minutes ago, tater said:

If they can actually reuse it, their launch cost is less than Electron.

Honestly this is one of the questions I do have for Starship. Sadly SpaceX doesn't report operating profits and losses as it's not a publicly-owned company.

15 minutes ago, tater said:

A partner like Gateway Foundation might be attractive for SpaceX to reduce costs for if the foundation can come up with case for launches, though, because it creates possible demand, and some of the tech is likely interesting to SpaceX for their own reasons.

Yeah, the whole assembling truss autonomously is cool, the inflatable habs as well.

Edited January 13, 2021 by YNM

[tater]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Have you not seen kei cars ? There's apparently a case that the sole reason why cars have gotten larger these days are due to emission limits being tied to footprint of vehicle. Sadly rather than developing more efficient engines they're just making the cars larger (though to be fair to them it's not like you can raise the efficiency easily, and admitting defeat would just put them out of competition entirely with non-combustion methods).

I've seen loads of cars. Ave performance would mean same HP, acceleration, seating, crash survival, passenger/cargo capacity. Is there really that sort of variability in mass? I mean, you could make a BMW 4 series out of carbon fiber, and drop the body mass... not sure what impact that has on total vehicle mass—but it will NOT be cheaper.

1 hour ago, YNM said:

(emphasis mine)

It's 4:45 AM in the morning for me and I'm not sure if it's you that's not making much sense or I can't make any sense of things anymore. InSight doesn't have a drill for taking samples, just for putting in a subterranean temperature probe, and yes it only have one of it.

Yeah, I called it a drill, I know it is not properly a drill. Regardless, they could have made a better one, or flown multiples—but they didn't because mass.

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Yeah, to be fair it'd take a newly-designed mission a decade until it can actually be launched.

Honestly this is one of the questions I do have for Starship. Sadly SpaceX doesn't report operating profits and losses as it's not a publicly-owned company.

Yeah, the whole assembling truss autonomously is cool, the inflatable habs as well.

Without getting more off topic, by point is that in a world with massive lift capability to LEO at low cost, companies trying new business models would be useful.

[YNM]

39 minutes ago, tater said:

Ave performance would mean same HP, acceleration, seating, crash survival, passenger/cargo capacity. Is there really that sort of variability in mass?

Well, if you're OK with settling with less you can get them cheaper. Hence I pointed out kei cars. But if you hold them in a certain way then there's only one efficient way to do them.

39 minutes ago, tater said:

they could have made a better one, or flown multiples—but they didn't because mass.

Yep. That's about what I was simply wanting to say too, less stuff simply means less mass and less cost.

39 minutes ago, tater said:

In a world with massive lift capability to LEO at low cost, companies trying new business models would be useful.

And it will always be welcomed.

 

I think we're simply misunderstanding each other here. Sure we can squeeze out the last gram out of everything by changing the materials, using bleeding edge techniques etc. and those tend to be more expensive, yes. But there are other optimization methods one can use still, ie. there's a reason steel profiles are mostly a variation of I-beams and/or thin-walled members rather than a solid rectangle of steel. There're also stuff that can be made smaller like electronics and they have commercial applications and drive here that makes them so, included are heating problems which does correlate with power consumption. I even posted over on the SpX thread that a possible reason why they want to hang massive rockets around was because it'd keep them under tension, allowing thinner tank walls due to keeping them in tension even when it's not being pressurized. Less mass, less material, less cost, yet more performance.

Within the possibility of today, everyone will want to be able to accomplish what they want to do with the least stuff being used, it's kind of the point with everything ever. Using mass-produced stuff is a cost-saver, yes, but you want only the least to be able to carry out the task successfully for it to be as economical as possible.

Although I'd say that the pursue of having better things can never end for us humans. We'll continue to see people to squeeze anything out of everything because it simply means that in the future a better option would be here.

Edited January 13, 2021 by YNM

[tater]

17 minutes ago, YNM said:

Yep. That's about what I was simply wanting to say too, less stuff simply means less mass and less cost.

Spacecraft are expensive because they have to be made as light as possible, and extra reliable (which adds cost), instead of just using cheaper parts.

[YNM]

23 minutes ago, tater said:

Spacecraft are expensive because they have to be made as light as possible, and extra reliable (which adds cost), instead of just using cheaper parts.

Chandrayaan ? Mangalyaan ? We've got cubesat constellation out there too... also there's stuff like Starlink...

They used to be expensive because they were a one-off, essentially. If there're enough of them, you can use the advantages of mass production to make them cheaper.

[Nuke]

i think the cost of space stations are actually due to shipping fees.

it might cost a fortune but at least the tracking is really good. 

[tater]

5 hours ago, YNM said:

Chandrayaan ?

Project cost ~$54M

 

5 hours ago, YNM said:

Mangalyaan ?

"The total project cost may be up to ₹454 crore (US$64 million).^[12][31] The satellite costs ₹153 crore (US$21 million) and the rest of the budget has been attributed to ground stations and relay upgrades that will be used for other ISRO projects."

So 21 million for the spacecraft. That's >$43,500/kg (dry) for the spacecraft. It has 5 instruments, the heaviest of which is 3.5kg. That's really cheap for a Mars probe, impressive! Still, rediculously expensive per kg if space is to ever be something done by "not a national government."

 

5 hours ago, YNM said:

We've got cubesat constellation out there too... also there's stuff like Starlink...

Well, Starlink is also SpaceX.

 

5 hours ago, YNM said:

They used to be expensive because they were a one-off, essentially. If there're enough of them, you can use the advantages of mass production to make them cheaper.

Um, yes. Cubesats are not super expensive, but they're not cheap, either.

https://www.cubesatshop.com/products/

Looks like it's easy to get them up to a few hundred grand (or way higher) for a sat that masses a few kg, so the price per kg is high. "Cheap" is relative to old space. With ion propulsion, you can throw enough propellant on it (if the launch cost is functionally unimportant), and you don't need an expensive, bespoke launch.

[YNM]

5 hours ago, tater said:

Well, Starlink is also SpaceX.

How much do they cost per kg ? How much more would they cost if it's a one-off ?