Rakaydos

(Interesting... looks like the deflection point on your chart is the war on terror, or slightly earlier) I wonder if those "empty hexes" are deliberate, to test tile failure?

This isn't "orang man bad", this is a comment on reganesque tax policy since Regan, including "centrists" like Clinton. Check up on the tax policy we had during the Apollo era. That was how america beat the soviets to the moon. But since it became a platform of the republican party to cut taxes, and cut services to pay for it (but only services for other people) there hasn't been budget for adventurous space projects.

The shuttle was politically viable for the very reason it was economically dead- hordes of well paid goverment jobs in a number of different congressional districts. There still is no political will for derailing the gravy train, but rightwing tax cuts have given corporations power formerly reserved for nations, and a few are using that power to pursue space. in ways Congress will not allow NASA to.

...one that is easilly replaced even here on earth.

Traditionally, cats are pest management agents. Initially, in a purely synthetic enviroment, great lengths will be taken to assure that pests do not reach the colony... and infestations can be dealt with via temporary local depressurization. As more organic biosphere elements are added as the city grows, pests may slip in- escaped pet mice and parrots may be a problem a future mars colony has to deal with. I dont think Cats will be a superior solution than "just space them", but Im not a martian resident who prefers colorful birds in the park domes even if they leave birdexcrements everywhere.

Can you get more specific? What part of the biosphere would be most difficult to replace?

Wow... So, Biosphere 2 needed constant management to remain stable. Sure. They were able to keep the entire first mission going, with proper nursemaiding. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/sunday-review/biosphere-2-climate-change.html Then Steve Bannon... yes, that steve bannon, took over, and the second mission had to be aborted because mismanagement would be lethal. The trick with the mars colony, is to assume the recycling elements will fail at the worst possible time, and have enough supplies on hand for replacements. But also, rely on the recycling elements (and ISRU, which biosphere 2 wasnt officially allowed) as much as possible, because they dont rely on shipments from earth.

We Kerbal players may be particularly vulnerable to underestimating how much mass SpaceX can be landing on mars. Can you imagine a ten thousand- launch campaign (to fuel over a thousand mars landers) being orchestrated one mechjeb launch at a time? And repeating this at every orbital opportunity? The lag alone! But SpaceX isnt limited to a single control instance. They can and will launch massively parallel missions to bring hundreds of thousands of tons of equipment, supplies, and operators to mars every other year. Oh, we can build machines to replace it, it's just more expensive than letting the biosphere do it's thing. And it's not a one-and-done thing either- if you find you missed something, request a new, specialized machine to cover what you missed, to arrive in the next synod.

Please keep this thread in the context of a spaceX fleet of 8 thousand raptors at less than 50 raptors per stack, all of which are fully reusable. More than that, because the boosters where most of the raptors are can be used 1 or 2 to a launch site, servicing any number of starships.

"City itself probably takes roughly 20 years, so hopefully it is built by 2050" Note that the current plan doesnt have the base START until early 2027. 20 years from then is 2047, which leaves 2 synods for delays.

Do you disagree that for every need a mars colony has, there exists a large, heavy machine that can provide that function on earth? The a-priori assumption the the outpost CANNOT become self sustaining within the lifetime of SpaceX is the problem here. The spaceX plan is actually to push through the unsustainable outpost to sustainable colony as fast as possible, and they estimate it will take 20 years even with the new raptor assembily line their building in texas.

NCD update: Got a nice series of test and haul parachute, or test flea at the launch pad, contracts which I combined with science landings in Shores, Water, and Grassland, along with the launchpad science itself, getting up to 5 science. With the thermomiter in hand, built a science roller. And blew ip up with Jeb inside. But Bob survived, and I had enough money from those testing contracts to try again. Val and Bob got runway, SPH, Main hangar, Astronaut complex, flagpole, administration, R&D, R&D main, and Corner lab science, enough to get liquid engines. After all my previous failures, I'm saving it here.

So apparently SpaceX is going to be breaking ground on a new raptor factory, capital of shipping more engines per day then we can build space shuttle main engines per year. Fully functional, this factory will be able to build several hundred starships worth of engines every year. Each starship can carry a good 100 tons to Mars if refilled reusably, and if it's refilled on Mars, it can come back and carry another load. For those complaining about how large and undertaking a colony is... Elon knows. For the doubters, I wonder what you expect SpaceX to do with that many engines.

Had a NCD run end when I unlocked and bought the thermomiter before "first launch", and didnt have the funds for a capsule,chute and srb. That "buy your own parts" restriction is nasty. Edit: a few more false starts. Landing a hammer-boosted capsule, and exceeding the speed limit with the science roller.

First NCD run died going for the reaching space contract. Got up to 90 kilometers, and didnt survive coming back down, with a rocket worth 99% of my saved funds.

Ok, I'm going to give it a shot. Edit: wait, 1 tweak...

So, the current program is sending whole starships, landing probes and rovers (probably off the shelf Boston Dynamics robodogs like the ones seen at the texas launch site) in 2024 to confirm the presence of water at a landing site chosen for easy access to water. Probable next steps include scouting the site and packed-dirt pad creation over those first 2 years, followed in 2027 by enough starships are landed to run a fuel plant, plus 2 crew ships each capable of carrying the entire expedition back in case of problems with one, food for 5 years, in case something goes wrong with the fuel plant and the first resupply mission, a MOXIE CO2 cracker and CO2 scrubbers with equipment to bake them back after they are used as redundant air supplies with the electrolosys/fuel plant, and a shovel and electric heater as an ultimate backup plan for water supply. Enough solar panels to run the fuel plant is also enough to run life support through even the worst dust storms if you turn the fuel plant off. Also, knowing Elon, the first mission will have a greenhouse module with the traditional martian potatoes.

When I find hilarious about this naysaying, is that the orbital test flight is scheduled for next month. Now given that spacex's hardware rich test program means that they will have a bear minimum heat shield that might not be enough, in order to find out how much is enough, there's about a 50/50 chance that that flight will not make it down to the water. And y'all are going to lose your minds if that happens, calling it in another SpaceX failure, when it is in fact the intended result. This is why spacex's eventual success is assured. They're not afraid of the occasional explosion (as long as people aren't around for them) if it gets them to their goal faster, and the money stream isn't going to turn off halfway, because the chief engineer is the money man.

"doing things of that scale take political will and or economic possibilities" Thanks to tax cuts, that's not actually true anymore. Corporations can afford private space programs... and the goverment cant afford to send people to the moon anymore. "Starship isnt going to carry 100, it can barely manage 18" I'd like to see your math there- it's got the internal cargo volume of a jet that seats 500+, so 18 seems a ridiculusly low number. As I said, I'm not giving clicks to someone who makes a living finding or creating drama. If you think something is a telling argument, tell it yourself, and be prepared to back it with sources that arnt a youtube video.

Noone is attempting to justify the SpaceX company goal. But it IS their goal, unreasonable as it is... as unreasonable as "putting a man on the moon and bringing him back before the decade is out" in many ways. Like Kennedy's mission, the SpaceX goal affects everything they do. "Does this help us get large numbers of people to mars" is a litmus test that led to the cancelation of Red dragon and Lunar Dragon, and almost killed Falcon Heavy, in favor of Lunar Starship and Chomper. Dismissing the goal as something that could not happen in our lifetime is missing the point. SpaceX is honestly going for it, even if noone else believes. They arnt doing it for the money, they are getting money to accomplish the goal. If a design isnt good enough to accomplish the goal, it will be abandoned for one that can.

That said, if Starship is being launched in waves of thousands of ships per synod toward mars, sure, some people will die. Aircraft are the safest form of transportation in the world, and people still die on aircraft. Some of the Starship passangers might even have been savable by a LSS-style foward engine ring, if it didnt have to worry about the heat shield. But that's going to be a discussion between SpaceX and the FAA.

Like, sure, it will inevitably suffer engine faulures. but SpaceX pioneered anti-fratricide armor on Falcon 9 to keep engine failures from even stopping the mission as planned, let alont blow up the rocket. Now, that's not going to stop a malicius actor from sniping a tank after launch, but that's going to be a different problem.

so you are "confident" that Starship will lift less than Falcon Heavy? (FH expendable is technically a superheavy lifter) Forgive me if I am dubious of the claims of someone who's whole public idenitity is finding things to be skeptical of. It is in their best interest to publicise the worst possible interpretation of anything they hear. SpaceX isnt trying to drum up investors here. They are working on their company internal goal- "making life multiplanetary." If Starship isnt enough to do that goal, they will take the lessons they learn from it to make a rocket that can. But SpaceX seems confident that 9m Starship is enough to do the job. Even slightly too big, if you wanted perfect optimization for ground support costs... but they will make do. Over on NSF, insiders find it unlikely that raptor will hit the quarter million target, but that the half million mark is manageable. according to a quick google (https://blog.klm.com/8-things-you-probably-dont-know-about-jet-engines/) "Roughly speaking, an (jet) engine can cost anything from 12 to 35 million dollars." Jet engines are crazy engineering masterpieces that put the much simpler rocket engine to shame. While a 747 only needs 2 engines, and Starship 6, even at a million dollars per raptor, Starship is spending a quarter as much on propulsion as the comparably sized aircraft. It's also not dangling a nose and tail off a midsection supported by wings, so the stress on the vehical is lower and simpler to calculate. While Starship may not hit 5 million per new build, even 15 million is a gross overestimate.

This might suprise you if you dont come from the US, but tanks and jets arnt exactly made for affordability. Oh, every choice has a logical explanation they can point to the military accountants, but there's a gentleman's agreement between the politicians who provide the money and the contractors who provide the workers- dont bite the hand that feeds you. SpaceX has built more production pathfinders for Starship than the number of Saturn 5s that ever flew. Their goal is mars invasion, so they need a cheap heavy lifter, so they are focused not just on building Starship, but making the factory such that making starships is cheap.