Rakaydos

It has been mentioned in other threads that a self sustaining Venus base could be established in the upper venesian atmophere, mining the CO2 and acids from the atmosphere to chemcally assemble organic materials. This thread is for looking into exactly how that could be made to happen, preferably by an automated (or at least teleoperated from high orbit) probe. Lets keep all the mars discussion in the correct thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/129619-venus-vs-mars-colonization/ And not littering this one. No discussion of politics or scientific justification for such a base. Just focus on the basic requirements of our hypothetical probe, and how it can be filled. Our hypothetical probe needs, what? A thermal protection system for the initial entry, a buoyant lift bag capable of supporting the payload, enough gas to inflate said lift bag. Then some kind of chemical labratory, capable of breaking down atmospheric compounds and assembling new compounds to demand. A means of assembling these new material into useful objects like more lift baloons. And a way of maintaining itself over the long term. I'd prefer not to see "finished colonies" that assume human workers for maintanace- can we design an automated venus base that can grow faster than it breaks down? And can we get it to mass less than 100 Tons, based on the theoreticcal numbers for SpaceX's planned MCT superlift rocket?

900 cubesats in a single launch?

http://leadpeople.blogspot.com/2009/09/albedo-anthropomorphics-spacecraft.html An old comic that spawned a passable RPG, Albedo is as hard a scifi as the author could make it with the exception of an FTL jump drive. Weapons primarally consist of ACVs, basically expendable drones that can either mount weapons and submunitions or simply be kinetic kill vehicals. Thoughts?

What do you call a missile if you pull out the explosive and replace it with a laser turret?

That's mainly because production is so low, you dont get any economies of scale. By consolidating the tankage production line, (only building "Falcon 9" first stages, even if they're used in Falcon heavies) they can get more contracts on that one tank, and thus reduce the cost of ALL the tanks.

As Nibbs is SO fond of pointing out, the problem in launch costs is in market- there just isnt enough payload to make it practacle to mass produce launchers. Now, national launchers like Soyuz, Angara, Long March and SLS dont really care. But SpaceX has hit upon a brilliant solution. He has a single production line stamping out Merlins and Falcon 9 stages. And when he gets a contract for something too big for the falcon 9? He literally straps 3 falcon 9 stages together, scratches out the 9 and writes Heavy. Unlike the Falcon 5 concept, the falcon heavy involves absolutely no changes to tankage, plumbing or engine layout. While it's a bit more complicated than literally duck-taping the stages together, it keeps all production in a single line, allowing that line to be more efficent and mass-productive than two lines of lessened flexibility. So the falcon 9 wastes a little more fuel lifting really light payloads. Fuel is pretty much the cheapest cost of the launch- and it makes returning spent stages easier.

I stand corrected! I guess goverments CAN save money!

Goverments? Saving money? What is this madness?

Falcon 9 and falcon heavy achieve cost savings by being 90%+ shared components. Building something smaller than the falcon 9 would either be less efficent and thus less cost effective, or miss out on the shared components, and thus be less cost effective. As for the MCT, it may be a pipe dream, but it's a pipe dream that real R&D dollars are being put toward solving

Did they need a Soyuz level rocket? Considering the DV to orbit gets more efficent the larger the rocket mass (all else being proportional, due to square cube law vs air drag) I can see it being more cost effective to make the F9 their smallest option. So packages go from Falcon 9 cubesat bundle and multi-sat launch, Falcon 9 reusable, Falcon heavy multisat, Falcon heavy, Falcon heavy (expended core), and MCT (Cargo). There might be a bit of a gap between MCT Cargo and Falcon Heavy(expendable), if the MCT actually meets the "100 tons to mars surface" target numbers. Even if that assumes LEO refueling flights, that's looking at "Lift a Lunar/Lagrange space elevator in a single launch" lift capacity.

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Say rather, larger ships are more generally effective, smaller craft are more specialized. A missile might be optimised for TWR, whereas an ion sensor cubest might be optimised for low detectability over combat ranges.

I think it's more a matter that the DV gains for a "proper" asteroid sized rocket isnt worth the extra cost, compared to using a bigger, unrefined asteroid and throwing more fuel on it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2209764/

I agree, though I usually work the premice from the perspective of a full up Orion Drive mothership. Capital Ships are durable goods, missiles/laserdrone "fighters" are consumables.

2061? An 80% chance? No way. We cant even tell if a meteor is going to hit us a week out, let alone 45 years out. I call BS.

National Security launches will always be their own thing, but if one company can both underbid the competition for commercial launches via a lean corporate structure, and keep up with demand via reusability, then I believe water will flow down hill. Even if it's a glacier. And really, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are, for manufacturing purposes, the same RLV. Tha gives SpaceX a broad base of capability while specializing the manufacturing end.

Let's assume that, after every flight, the engine is rotated. It spends 9 flights doing launch burns, 3 of which it also does boostback and breaking burns, and 1 doing a landing burn. Then on the 10th flight the engine is fitted with a vacuum bell and moved to the upper stage, which isnt recovered. Throw on a factory test launchburn, boostback burn and landing burn. That's only 17 firing cycles before the engine is disposed of ANYWAY. Throw on test firings before EVERY flight, and you still arnt reaching the 40 burn design limit of the Merlin. The lifespan of the turbopumps simply isnt an issue for the merlin.

Not exactly... you need to have a restartable liquid engine that can throttle down significantly, and control systems to stabilize the stage on the way down. The merlin was designed for reusability- Existing launcher simply are not set up for it.

According to the Disney Canon peope, Starkiller Base was a wormhole weapon. As in, they tore a hyperspace rip in front of a deathstar cannon so they could shoot at interstellar ranges.

Presumably he's talking about modern AIRCRAFT. Because Aerospace includes Aero.

I'm pretty sure "Jerk" is the term for how suddenly you can accelerate. (1m/s^3)

Keep in mind that something than can handle 9 firings without maintanace may start to develope problems after, say, 45 burns, as stuff like carbon buildup start to affect the functioning of the engine. Running some Rocket-Safe Draino through the engine (or equivilant) to clean it out after each launch is a basic precaution.

Check my logic here: Lower-bound refurbishment costs Once landed, it's going to have to be taken back to the VAB, which should be part of pad overhead costs- nothing new. Then it has to be disassembled, and inspected. Lets assume disassembily is exactly as expensive as assembily, and that the reuse checks are exactly as rigorus as preflight checks. Assuming nothing is wrong, and there is a relatively fixed amount of prevenative maintanance. (clean off the RP1 soot, ect) it then has to be reassembled, mated to a new upperstage, taken back out to the pad and refueled. Assembily costs x2, Inspection costs x2, Pad overhead as normal, plus Reuse Regular Maintance, plus Damage Replacement (which should approach 0, once they know what tends to break) Does this sound like a reasonable interpretation of refurbishment costs?

The net gravity of any point inside a uniform hollow sphere is zero. IT all cancels out. Only the star itself has a gravity to worry about.