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tater

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Everything posted by tater

  1. tater
    Very little of it is economically justifiable, IMO. If the announcement had been about a suborbital passenger vessel, then that would be true... then he could later say, "oh yeah, it's actually a Mars vessel, but we wanted to test it." I'm trying to retrofit utility to it, since there is no utility for a Mars settlement transport, because settling Mars makes no sense.
  2. tater
    No human effort in space is scientifically efficient outside the science of how humans live in space, IMO. I guesstimated that a cost/launch (vehicle included) for a suborbital version that still only flies 100 times would be ~2M$, but the thing has a passenger volume over 2X a 747, so 800 would not be impossible at $2500/seat cost (business class is way more than that for a gajillion hour flight now, 45 minutes is pretty appealing---plus you get to then claim astronaut status .
  3. tater
    I said this in the other thread, but I think that the ITS component is interesting as a VTVL transport concept---Earth transport. Let;s spitball a minute... The ITS has a usable passenger volume (including the cargo space) that is roughly twice the passenger volume of a 747. So it could theoretically hold several hundred people, possibly approaching 1000 in an airline seating configuration. They say that the cost to build on is about 200M$, and 130M$ for the tanker. That's slightly more than a 747. Their total reuse as a Mars vehicle is said to be 12 times, but for this application, but the tanker says 100 for a similar profile. My guess is a lot of the cost must be LS stuff, and other long-duration mission redundancies. So call it closer to a 747 at ~150M$. Even with just 100 uses, that's a vehicle cost of 1.5M$/launch. They said 0.5M maintenance per use for the tanker, let's go with that. 2M$ a flight. That's $2500/seat if it seats 800. First class to the other side of Earth is nearly 10X that. Business class is more than 2X that. There might be no coach class, but it's not an impossible business model. Perhaps start with air cargo until you have many flights with no issues, then mess with air travel.
  4. tater
    @Workable Goblin, I don't think Antartica is a very good model. If there were not treaties forbidding people from taking ownership, then nations and businesses would do that if for nothing other than oil. There is an economic driver for actual settlement, and Antartica is many orders of magnitude easier and more hospitable than Mars. Yeah, that's a legit concern. Realistically, the market would likely be limited to near a few high value cities, likely with a possible facility on or near the sea. NYC, London, LA, Tokyo, Shanghai...
  5. tater
    That's why the suborbital application is actually the most interesting bit to me. To convince people to take a ride into space period would require it to be safe. The way to know if it is safe, is many, many flights. As @DerekL1963 said, it's another chicken and egg issue. Suborbital flights, not as a joy ride, but as transportation that is also a joy ride might well fill this role. It could also have government customers... rapid deployment to a forward air base, for example. I posted "Pegasus" above, but it's counterpart was "Ithacus," which was meant to deploy 1200 troops anywhere on Earth in about an hour. If you could make the "spaceship" function as an airliner analog, with hundreds of seats, things might get interesting. The biggest issue would be the g-loading, though I'm unsure what that would look like in the suborbital application.
  6. tater
    Yeah, ETT is pretty good.
  7. tater
    Yeah, I agree, within the current system, at least delivery to Kerbin (or an existing station/base that a contract has required) would make vastly more sense.
  8. tater
    Colonization as a private activity requires an economic driver. There is not one forthcoming for Mars.
  9. tater
    If it is economical to bring ore anyplace other than where it is mined, the ISRU is grossly overpowered. ISRU is only valuable because the propellant/etc is at the place you want to be. Studies of lunar regolith mining for propellant have shown that it merely offsets landing costs. That's it. Hauling ore should cost more propellant than you get, 100% of the time, or something is broken.
  10. tater
    An SSTO with no payload that cannot be reused is useless, though.
  11. tater
    Give me several billion please! Your return might be "intangible." You game?
  12. tater
    The best money maker would likely be using the spacecraft as a vtvl suborbital passenger liner, like the Pegasus concept from Phil Bono in the 60s. With no need for recreation areas, and little need for more than max capacity seating for under 1 hour flights, you could probably put north of 200 aboard, easily. Wonder what the operating cost would be used that way? First class is full at 15 grand or more for trans pacific flights, 40 minutes to Asia would be worth a premium...
  13. tater
    I don't think it's remotely analogous to colonizing the Americas. Anyone dropped off with some simple tools could easily live. The New World was so easy that the earlier immigrants (edit: "Native Americans") never had to leave the Stone Age. Any destination for humans on Mars must be entirely constructed. They can no more bootstrap themselves than they could an O'Neill colony. That's on top of the fact there is no possible RoI at all---it's not a matter of an insufficiently high RoI, but that there is no plausible return at all.
  14. tater
    I thought that they were suggesting that early flights would be a more normal size crew (like 6), and that they might even send one empty to land and stay as a test (to be used as a hab, etc).
  15. tater
    No, that's not impossible for Rare Earths. But the only place to haul them would be Kerbin. Ore turns into fuel, though, so unless they break it up more, it's H, O, and maybe C that anyone cares about. Regarding 3He, that is sort of predicated on a fusion economy. So you'd first need to add that in. Regardless, you're not going to "haul ore from Gilly to Eve" when you have no facilities either place.
  16. tater
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  18. tater
    He's doing history of spacex right now.
  19. tater
    ROMBUS, lol. (ROMBUS was designed for 450 mt to LEO, then land booster).
  20. tater
    Yeah, that He for pressurization has been a problem .
  21. tater
    3-5 refuel missions.
  22. tater
    Now we know who inherited Jobs' reality distortion field.
  23. tater
    I think the moon was just to add something to the frame visually. MCT is on the wrong side, anyway. Elon Musk ‏@elonmusk 17m17 minutes ago 12m rocket booster diameter, 17m spaceship diameter, 122 m stack height
  24. tater
    I assumed that the relaunch was time lapsed. For rendezvous, they'd have to wait for the next overflight pass, anyway. Ditto the 1 tanker. It's surely multiple.
  25. tater
    I can't see there ever being a reason to bring "ore" anyplace. ISRU makes some sense, but hauling ore anywhere is nuts.
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