Kibble

The establishment of permanent extraterrestrial human settlements is in no way inherently dissimilar from the human expansion that has been going on for a hundred thousand years. To make a voyage from Europe to the Americas required as advanced technology and intrepid human spirit as space exploration does today. Don't forget sailing ships had existed for six thousand years before Columbus made his voyage. Orbital rockets have only existed for seventy years. Over the thousands of years in the future space vehicles will get more ubiquitous, easier to construct, and more optimized for the tasks at hand. As will ISRU processes and closed-loop life support systems.

Shuttle did have one task it was suited for - the construction of large experimental modular spacecraft that require manual assembly. AKA construction of USOS, although it was flying a decade before construction began on Station. Simultaneously launching a 20t module, and the astronauts, Canadarm, and spacesuits to hook up the power connections and deploy panels and such is something only Shuttle could do. Not that manual assembly is always necessary, Russian modules have been autonomous docking with built in power and fluid connections since Salyut 6.

Today's fragile high-tech life support is tomorrow's bark canoes and animal skins. That technology was extremely advanced for the time. As for supply lines, that is a straw man issue - we will never go anywhere ISRU isn't possible. And I'm sure you are aware there are plenty of promising ISRU methods for many destinations.

Thats a very unromantic way to put it! Anyway there are lots of theories as to why, but the important thing is that it happened for some reason or another, probably lots of reasons. Reasons that won't go away as long as we are still Homo Sapiens.

Piloted missions are not (and rightly shouldn't be) about planetary science. The greatest benefit of people living in space, is learning how to live in space. It may sound circular, but despite all the "pragmatists" rhetorically asking human spaceflight's Forbidden Question, we will go into space and live there - for the same reason a small group of humans left lush familiar Africa to brave a treacherous journey to the rest of the world.

An asteroid is any of the millions of minor planets/small Solar System objects that occupy the Asteroid Belt - Ceres is an asteroid, and it is also within the IAU's definition of a dwarf planet.

Why not just revive actual LK hardware? That would be orders of magnitude cheaper and quicker than researching, developing, designing, testing, and qualifying all-new hardware. Since LK is accessed thru EVA you wouldn't even have to change up LK that much to add a compatible docking port and tunnel, you could just add on the (simple!) Kontakt probe to whatever mother spacecraft you use. Something to keep in mind is that it would take a similar amount of time to develope a very capable lander from scratch, as it would a less capable lander from scratch.

I absolutely love this mod you are making - in fact I have been actively looking for something like it. Reliability of hardware heritage is extremely important to human spaceflight (and human technology in general, I guess). I just hope there are failure modes for all kinds of different parts not just engines and stuff! <3

How does operating a Moon or Mars base relate to operating a Venus base? A Moon base has much more in common with Space Station - short flight times, low gravity, close proximity meaning minimal radio communication delays, and relatively friendly abort modes, except instead of Soyuz for crew transfer you need Saturn V. A Mars base shares some challenges of Venus (flight times, light lag, dismal abort modes), but those are challenges for any interplanetary mission. If anything, a piloted Venus orbiter could be a precursor to a Mars base (because Venus has somewhat shorter trip times and is generally closer to Earth), but the actual bases ave little in common, and neither is much easier than the other.

The lightest rocket that has launched a maneuverable piloted spacecraft is Soyuz at 300mt GLW. A LVO rocket may be lighter due to lower gravity, and ferocious mass-optimization, but it would be comparable. No reasonable rocket can launch 300mt, but if you can launch it dry and fuel in situ, that's much more favorable - Soyuz is only 20.8mt dry. If it had a big enough cargo bay, Shuttle could launch it! 50km is above the clouds - Venus' albedo is extremely high, so it might even strain your eyes to look down! But for the same reason, solar panels can be double-sided and the nadir side will get like 90% efficiency.

The primary reason for a piloted mission anywhere should not be to do planetary science, though they will be doing planetary science (because a piloted mission is hardly mass-sensitive to science equipment). In our situation, a neanderthal non-infrastructural space program, the primary reason should be to prove technologies and operational doctrines that will one day enable permanent habitation. We spent many years flying people up in tiny Vostok, Voskhod, Mercury, and Gemini capsules figuring out how best to keep people alive on low Earth orbit, and testing actual mechanisms that would one day enable us to permanently inhabit low Earth orbit with Mir, and Space Station. If we want to live anywhere else, we need the Venusian, Lunar, or Martian Vostok equivalent, and then the Salyut equivalent, and finally a permanently piloted Space Station equivalent. Powerpoints don't prove hardware will work - only flying that hardware will. Venus looks very favorable on paper, but we may figure out its harder than we thought to keep aerostats on stable wind currents, or maybe the atmospheric processor experiment didn't produce as much O2 as we thought it would, so next time we bring an improved version of the experiment, and then on Cloud City they use a really big atmospheric processor to make their O2, based on the same hardware. I'm pretty sure we could't have figured out all the technologies to keep Space Station going by just sending probes. Before 1961 we didn't even know if astronauts in micro-gee environments could even work effectively.

I think Dimovski meant like the more you launch craft containing certain parts, those parts get cheaper to launch in the future, representing building on hardware heritage. Which is a awesome idea that should totes be stock. (And speaking of DangIt!, the more you launch certain parts, the more the MTBF should increase! Reliability!)

You are underestimating the resources that can be extracted from the atmosphere of Venus.

I don't even see why Mars sample return is considered at all. The main point of sample return is so that you can process it with our massive Earth scientific equipment and laboratories, without having to rocket them all the way to the site. But it takes a massive, complicated payload (much more massive and complicated, if you put people on it too) to do sample return from Mars, and it begs the question as whether that is more efficient than just building a massive Mars Science Super-Laboratory with all the equipment you would of used to process the samples. Then it can rove around and use that equipment to do science with more Martian dust (an option not available without another sample-return mission)

The main point of a piloted mission should never be to do science (unless its for teleoperation). Science can always be done easier unmanned.

Well there's no real reason to build a Mars base either! Yet, anyway. I am assuming a far future (Hundreds of years?) with resource and transportation infrastructure in space (the only time where it is at all necessary to build a piloted base anywhere but Earth). The profitable extraction of resource will almost certainly come from asteroids, not planets. Some asteroids have volatiles in the form of hydrated clays, so you can extract water ice (to make O2, H2, and H2O2 for rocket fuel, H2O for drinking, O2 for breathing, and H2 for sabatiers, etc) and ammonia ice (to make N2O4 and NH3 for rocket fuel). There are a significant number of metallic asteroids as well, so you can extract all kinds of metals (especially valuable aluminum!), all without having to touch the surface of Mars or Venus, deep in their respective gravity wells. But there are also several reasons to park asteroids on orbit of planets, where you can use the Oberth effect for easy capture, and easy access (because small bodies on orbit of a massive body are extremely accessible), and so they wouldn't be on unstable, often inclined and eccentric, solar orbits. It also simplifies the logistics of supplying piloted bases if they are in the same neighborhood. There are only a few reasons not to park asteroids on orbit around Earth, but those reasons are very strong (and hopefully very apparent). I was just making a case for centering space infrastructure around Venus because of its many benefits over Mars for the aforementioned purposes. Plus balloon cities and rocket balloons (rockoons?) are so super cool! EDIT : There is acid in Venus' atmosphere, but there isn't that much acid. It would be simple (but not entirely trivial) to shield your stuff, probably amounting to a spray-on plastic coating. (manufacturable in-situ?)

Venus has even more advantages as compared to Mars than you mentioned! The launch windows occur much more frequently (every 1.6 years), because of the albedo of Venus' clouds you can have double sided solar panels, and the Venus-facing side would be 90% as efficient! The trip time between Earth and Venus is shorter (.4 years). And by carefully selecting where in the dynamic atmosphere your balloons are, you can probably circle the planet with a period of close to 24 hours. In situ resource utilization is also very possible by processing the gases at the 52km altitude, and while Venus may be drier than the driest desert, it is rich in many other compounds and elements that could be useful for sustainable presence.

Haha! Ten char~

Can ATV fit in MK3 cargo bays? It's a little wider than 2.5m, but it would be cool to use the cargo bit as MPLM! (It's based on the same hardware)

Kerosene is a fossil fuel which means its not a renewable resource right? It makes the most sense in the long term to switch to methane or something that can actually be produced.

Hey this is a cute thread, I'll participate! Antares: Orb-3 sad D: Falcon 9 v1.1: SES-8 Ariane V: ATV-5 Delta IV: EFT-1 had to stay up all night twice in a row for this one >: P GSLV Mk. III: CARE Huh I've only seen five that sucks...well I hope to at least see Spx-5 and Angara A5 launch this month! barge<3

Right. But Orion can't do EVA either can it? I mean, unless it carried space suits for all the astronauts. (Another benefit for having OM!) EDIT : Oh right, you don't need full EVA spacesuits for all the astronauts, they can just wear their partial pressure suits that they'd have anyway, depressurize, open the hatch for EVA, quickly close up the hatch and repressurize. Still harder than just using an OM for spacewalks though.

You mean like one Orion vehicle costs 500 million, but an entire flight of CST-100 or Dragon V2 only costs 200 million? That seems hard to believe. Oh I was under the impression that Atlas V was already man-rated and that's why CST-100 (and formerly Dream Chaser) were going to launch on it. Either way once it is man-rated, the 541 (5m payload faring, 4 SRMs, Single-engine Centaur) could do the job. I haven't been able to find any figure's for Dragon V2's mass. The point is to have a flexible set of in-production hardware that you could use for a variety of missions. Like a Cygnus OM could evolve into a LM ascent stage, which could evolve into a FlexCraft-like thing or something. Because you can have a great spacecraft on a Powerpoint, but the spacecraft that will fly, is the one already flying. With Orion flying, it should be a priority to find stuff to do with it, and incremental ways to improve it. That's super awesome! :3 If only that configuration could fly someday...

Orion can't be too much more expensive than any other spacecraft though, right? I guess we'll see once it starts flying. Also I mentioned the orbital module would be stowed on Centaur below Orion, and there would be a transposition/docking/extraction maneuver. That's a good idea! Stow a OM in the trunk, and T/D/E on orbit. I'm not that fond of Dragon though, sticking everything but the solar panels in the capsule means you gotta heat-shield it all which makes it a lot heavier than it has to be. I'm also not that fond of inflatables, I think they are overhyped. In almost all other cases you are better off with a standard tin can, because while an inflatable gives you a bunch of empty space, you can't launch it with any supplies or anything at all. And launching a tin can Skylab-style can probably get you at least 2/3 the habitable volume, without having all the supplies and racks on a separate launch. In fact I never thought of it before, but Dragon's trunk functions a lot like the Apollo adapter fairing on Saturn V and Saturn IB! Maybe a stretched trunk could stow a Lunar lander...<3 Really, 21 days? For how many astronauts?

The OM would be attached to the Centaur, below Orion, like Apollo LM attached to S-IVB below CSM - it would be completely out of the way in case of a launch abort.