Jonfliesgoats

Money and science make for interesting bedfellows. I remember doing some research regarding this when my wife was pregnant and worried about food. There are risks from unplanned allergic reactions. The use of GMO monoculture in fields has some economic risks, too. That said, there will be 10 billion people to feed soon. Should we eschew GMOs and consume valuable freshwater, use more nitrate fertilizer, etc? Risks need to be taken in context. In Zimbabwe a group of American and Europeans successfully got the Mugabe govt. to ban GMO imports for a short time. The result was that a country with 2000% rate of inflation had food prices rise faster again due to scarcity. The Westerners that lobbied for the ban weren't the ones that went hungry. Perhaps, rather than a ban, better oversight and some labeling system of genetic properties would be appropriate? GMOs may be necessary for spaceflight, too. I don't think the choices around these things are binary and the information available is heavily politicized.

That's wonderful!

That's why I am proposing a porcine mission to lunar orbit. Realistically, it would probably be rats or mice.

No offense taken at all. It's a ridiculous proposal, to be sure. True, the pigs would need umbilicals and all sorts of other things. That said, working out pig or mouse survival would make the challenges facing human sustainment relatively easy. Honestly, I have trouble idea seriously. It's ridiculous. Is the idea any more ridiculous than not sending lab animals into prolonged deep spaceflight befor humans, though? We engineer a greenhouse and some habitation modules for a trillion dollar manned flight to mars with no biological testing of these systems in high radiation and low-g environments? Politically, pigs on umbilicals in space for months on end may be a hard sell too.

Good points, guys. Again, I am FOR preliminary research. I am against an idea that these flights are outside our capabilities. I dont actually think we have any disagreement here. I just want to keep human spaceflight as a goal in our minds. In some circles it seems there is a growing sense that man is and always will be incapable of flight beyond LEO. That is what bothers me.

Flying pigs for a few months in lunar orbit may give us a chance to work out life support technologies and evaluate the effects of long term spaceflight outside our protective magnetic field. I know flying farm animals doesn't play well anymore because they could die, but pigs, similar to humans as they are, may be worth flying around the moon. How does someone propose a mission like this and have it taken seriously? Also, the challenge of feeding farm animals in space would allow us to make human sustainment relatively easy.

Another point worth mentioning, optimism is not synonymous with stupidity. Nobody is arguing for an unprepared launch. That said, knowing how humans will handle long term deep space will eventually require humans in long term deep space flight. Between creative storeage of supplies, placing the axis of a vessel so that solar radiation has to traverse most of your vessel and other techniques we have required technology within our grasp. Right now NASA expects a round trip to Mars crew to receive about 2/3 of their career career radiation limit (.66 Sieverts). The risks are present but manageable. To be sure, spaceflight is risky. People will die at some point. At some point we, as a species accept that risk and sail beyond sight of shore, fly across oceans and lift ourselves into the cosmos. If we accept no risk whatsoever we become collectively paralyzed. Right on, Green Baron. Establishing preliminary unmanned flights makes good sense. I am railing against an artificial sense of impossibility that exists. Also, perhaps we need to orbit pigs and chickens around the moon for some time to evaluate prolonged exposure to deep space? This would be less expensive than sending pigs and chickens on a more ambitious flight and it would give us a chance to work out longer term life support technologies.

With regard to space, it seems we are in a catch-22. You need a reason to invest and the costs are too high. To get costs down, you need to build and learn from systems deployed to sites. To do that we need investment. Perhaps we need idealistic zealots?

I think most people are aware of the difference between solar radiation and various emissions from radio-isotope decay. What I was trying to point out was the idea that Van Allen radiation belts are impenetrable to human spaceflight despite it being done before. While there are many hazards for a prolonged flight through the solar system, solutions exist from water storeage to carrying "hardened" rooms. The reference to radioisotope decay was a reference to another form of artificial severity in popular consciousness. Will prolonged exposure to low g environments eventually kill us all, make our vision fail, etc? Possibly. Possibly not. There are solutions within our grasp to these problems too. It seems people, and I am not referring to anyone in these forums, see these relatively manageable challenges as impossible barriers.

Between SLS, SpaceX and Boeing, 2018 is shaping up to be pretty eventful. http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2016/1215/Why-SpaceX-is-delaying-its-first-human-crewed-flight

Someone mentioned Antarctica! This is a great analogy for why we may want to withdraw from the OST. Article 4 of the Antarctic Treaty bars any nation from laying sovereign claim to any part of the continent. Consequently, nobody is scouting coastal Antarctica for rare earth minerals, etc. This is a good thing for me, but also an example of how the OST may hinder future commercial exploitation of space. We need a reason to go to these places and any investment needs a return. You can't promise a return unless you can enforce some law around those investments. Sovereign claims seem to be required, unfortunately. Agreed about the value of research. ISRU devices in KSP are a shortcut to factor much more complex problems of resource utilization in the field. While ISRU isn't in the cards IRL, it seems any manned presence on mars will need to extract some local water. Same on the moon with the limited amounts of water there. Any sort of enduring presence there will need to make use of local resources in some way.

Why do people who know better latch onto unrealistically pessimistic ideas? Also, is this becoming a significant problem? In the cockpit and in the lab I notice(d) a lot of pessimism from educated and trained professionals that isn't supported by evidence. Many pilots in all segments of aviation seem to latch onto conspiracy theories, especially apacalyptic ones. Engineers from my previous lives seemed to do the same. I had a gentleman who used to be in a development program with me insist that we need relativistic speeds just to send mankind to the gas giants. Despite having access to open-source data and existing technologies, people seem to resist the idea that a manned presence elsewhere in the solar system is or will be feasible. (On a similar note, people are convinced we have to shelter for centuries rather than weeks should nuclear fallout become an issue.). One of two things is occuring: In the first case, perhaps I am noticing the pessimists and ignoring the optimists? This is possible. I notice the things that bother me while things that conform to my ideas don't immediately stand out. In the second case, perhaps there is something in aerospace that attracts or changes people so they are more receptive to these notions? There are certainly many examples of very eccentric aviation and space pioneers.

I think the appeal of sulfur-concrete on Mars is because what water there is may be required for other things. Mining water ice out of the ground, melting it and making it available for habitation or electrolysis into fuel may be more important. Concrete to seal the ends of lava-tubes and shore up the insides of excavated living spaces may require lots of water. Of course, if it turns out that water is more available than we thought, it's a moot point. Alternative concrete is nice tech to have, even if it's not required.

One of the things I like about KSP is that it gets a lot of like-minded people discussing these technical details. Great input and reference, guys!

Not my field either, but seems pretty interesting. Do we have any physicists who can comment?

Surveying is really cool! What are the big improvements with Galileo beyond public 1cm accuracy? Also, will the Galileo constellation need as much support information from ground stations?

Guidance for high yield weapons is still important. If you want to get rid of command and control bunkers or ICBM silos for example, decent guidance makes the difference between a kiloton or megaton scale groundburst. That has huge impact for the amount of local fallout created downwind. Moreover, cruise missiles need to fly accurately without revealing themselves with active radars.

I think the military slant comes from the military impetus for the development of these systems. Some tensions between the US and EU arose due to military concerns regarding Galileo capabilities, too. As for GLONASS, I have a hockey-puck sized GLONASS receiver, but Incant really speak to its reliability in comparison to GPS. It seems like it's a little better at high latitudes, but that could be my imagination. Kryten, so you are saying limited fissile material causes city targeting rather than limitations in guidance?

Good information, Aerogav. So, right now, one would need a seriously overpowered fuel cell, even with a fuel-cell-battery-motor combination? Ideally some numbers regarding continuous amperage available from a given weight hydrocarbon fuel cell will be available. Additionally, I don't know how bulky these things are. I imagine a device the size of a shoe box or microwave, but that is nothing more than a guess. Also, I agree about hydrogen infrastructure.

The prevalence of water is nothing surprising, but it is exciting! When I was in grade school, we were generally convinced we lived in a dry, dead solar system with only small amounts of water.

More accurate guidance means less yield required for a given nuclear payload, however. Currently, It is rumored that Chinese nuclear weapons are built around high yield warheads and stated policy of the Chinese favors targeting cities. This probably has more to do with their guidance systems than their political options, and is similar to 1970s Soviet philosophy. Better guidance for Chinese weapons is generally bad for Americans, but a silver lining is that we may see a re-prioritization of targets and reduction in warhead yields. This means less civilian casualties in an exchange and fewer ground-burts lifting tons of radioactive dirt into the atmosphere. Here's a link to "Nuclear War Survival Skills" by Cresson Kearney, fwd. by Ed Teller. It's a staple among conspiracy nuts, but the concepts, forward and first chapter are really interesting. They also relate to guidance, missile yield, etc. http://oism.org/nwss/nwss.pdf

GPS and Galileo are compatible. GLONASS and Bei Dou (sic) are similar systems, but not compatible. For the civil user, a lot of devices can swap between systems or integrate information from both. So the user can have a device that can take information from GPS and GLONASS to provide better position information while the GPS and GLONASS systems themselves don't shake hands. There are obvious security implications with SATNAV systems moving to more nations.

Mars dirt and sulphur when hot makes concrete. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/545216/materials-scientists-make-martian-concrete/ Lunar concrete too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunarcrete Is our future on Mars, Europa or Ceres dependent on burrowing and concrete? Is our future in the stars dependent on us turning into burrowing, spacefaring, techno-badgers?

This conversation reminds me of old men telling me about going blind from drinking wood alcohol. Interesting point regarding the treatment of methanol ingestion with ethanol too. I think, when people look at ethanol they are looking less at the energy density of the fuel than its sustainability. There are a number of reciprocating ethanol powered airplanes out there and all of them consume about 3/2 more fuel for a given power output. With fuel cell-battery-electric props, one could imagine a variety of fuels working, but, as you point out specific fuel economy would vary based on fuel used.