DerekL1963

The why did you even reply in the first place? If you don't want to talk about something, don't quote it, don't add a non-sequitur. Just scroll on by. Um, no, you weren't. "If life is better" relates to people's desire to move - not to the logistics thereof.

It's not an argument it's a non sequitur that fails to address either part of my statement. It has nothing to do with the costs of sustaining the colony. It has nothing to do with logistical challenges of moving millions people.

Even though space travel is cheap, that doesn't mean sustaining the colony is cheap. And while millions of people moving are (theoretically) possible... It's so wildly improbable as to be laughable.

Which is about the 227th time in my lifetime that Congress, or the Administration, or a Blue Ribbon panel constituted by one of those two has demanded that NASA present a Brave New Plan for human exploration. Precisely none of them have amounted to much. So, I wouldn't get too excited.

Certainly it's a fun thought experiment - but only if, like any experiment, it sticks to reality. Otherwise, it's just an exercise in writing collective fiction.

Quoted for truth. A colony is place of lifelong residency with a certain degree of economic self-sufficiency (and often a certain degree of legal and political self sufficiency as well) and generally an economic role as part of a larger polity. What people are describing in this thread are mostly outposts or stations. Places of temporary residency where people are generally hired by the operators or assigned to a tour of duty by outside authorities. That is, like a military base, or one of the facilities many nations maintain in Antarctica, or one of the resource extraction facilities in Canada's far northern regions. One key indicator of the difference (for example) is that the citizens of a colony cannot be forced to remove themselves from the colony without the force of Law and a formal legal process. The transient contractors of an outpost or station can be given their pink slip and be on the next ship out of Chryse with little to no legal recourse. (Sure, sure, there are going to be dictatorial colonies. But a dictator is the force of Law by definition.) Which is not to say that an outpost or station can't become a colony as people settle nearby and live independently of (even if economically dependent on) the outpost or station and it's transient residents. This happened in many places in the New World over the centuries. Heck, it's even happened as late as the late 19th century - the town I live in would be a miniscule fraction of it's current size if the Congress hadn't selected the area for a Navy Yard. (If it even existed at all.) But it almost certainly won't happen on Mars - because you can't just clear a few acres, plow a field, and then sell carrots or cattle or whatever to the outpost. You can't plop down a simple shack, import a little yarn or catch local furbeasts, and start selling blankets and hats to the transient residents of the outpost. And all this presumes that Mars doesn't end up like Antarctica, where private residence is forbidden and you'll simply be placed on the next ship outbound (in cuffs if need be) if you try. But, to be honest, people are to be forgiven not understanding this. When it comes to space and space travel, science fiction and the popular media have been misusing the term colony for over half a century.

He specified that said calculation was a naive assumption, which to me means that it's not meant to be taken (as you seem to be doing) as a model of reality. He's said so many times - you even quoted and replied to a message where points out the difficulties of creating said model. You're arguing with something nobody claimed as fact. He keeps telling you that you're correct (it's a complex situation), and you keep telling him he's wrong.

Nobody said 500 seconds to remove the atmosphere - the figure calculated was 500 million seconds (16 years) as a theoretical minimum. You're picking a fight based on words you're putting into someone else's mouth.

That's because HTP is dangerous. Short term storage is fine, long term storage can be dicey as even when mixed with stabilizers it still spontaneously decomposes over time so the containers have to be properly vented. (And the area it's stored in properly ventilated.) Just because one guy was playing Russian Roulette and lived - that doesn't mean that playing Russian Roulette is a good idea. If you're going to play with rocketry, you're quite literally playing with fire. But you've now got a leg up, you know to research and think.

Everyone has to start somewhere...

0.o If the HP touches anything organic, it's going to react and break down almost immediately.

In theory. In practice, unless there's a mission at a point in it's flow that allows it to be repurposed quickly or the casualty is a slow motion one... not so much. How many of the current crop of crew vehicles can fly entirely autonomously and conduct a rescue at full capacity? A purpose launched Soyuz, for example, can only rescue/recover a single station crewmember. (And the next one won't be along for weeks to months.) In the submarine force, our options were the equivalent of an LES and redundant parachutes on a capsule... Only useful during a small portion of the beginning and ending of a flight or deployment. So we called the escape, rescue, and survival systems "mommy systems". That is, their existence kept wives, mothers, and congresscritters happy. The crews were under no illusion as to their (almost complete lack of) actual usefulness. If we couldn't reach the surface on our own, it was pretty much game over. So yeah, it's fine to talk about rescue capability... But the discussion must be informed by reality. If they can't evacuate then almost certainly the odds of rescue are slim indeed.

Which still doesn't correct the basic problem - you've now spent the entire cost of a Shuttle launch to orbit what is a largely useless lump of metal. To convert it into something only somewhat useful will require not only tens to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development and assembly work preflight, but also a number (at least 2-3+) of additional (dedicated) Shuttle flights. In the end, you don't gain much (if anything) over simply building modules that will fit in the cargo bay in the first place.

No, you have to pay the entire cost of a Shuttle launch to place the ET into orbit - and that's the only cargo that can be carried on that launch. That's not free.

TANSTAAFL. The ET isn't "free" mass - it's cargo to orbit, carried externally in place of internal cargo in the bay.

It appears to be intended to do that and also act as a kind of a clearinghouse/central point of contact for space related business. It's not really going to a launch agency or any kind of operator at all.

You still have to change the outside, and that's not really going to be much easier than changing the inside. You don't have to worry about taking a cryogenic bath, but you do have to worry about supersonic and hypersonic airflow. (Not just over the added/changed parts, but the interactions with the rest of the stack too.)

There's not going to be a space race with China.

It was only possible if the tank was essentially the only cargo carried to orbit. (And really only if the orbit was fairly low inclination, not to ISS at all.) The Shuttle had no capability of significantly maneuvering with it still attached due it's weight. The CanadARM couldn't do anything with it either, as the tank VASTLY exceeded the weight it was designed to handle. I ranted against the claim you made that they were "essentially free" (they aren't), and against the uses you claimed they could be put to.

Um, no. You spend a great deal of money for those things. You have the infrastructure cost of the recovery system, which is going to be expensive and which must be amortized. For a transfer stage or a fuel depot, the fuel has to come from somewhere - and the only place that makes sense is ISRU, which brings us back to expensive infrastructure. For a habitat, you have the man-hours to convert the stage - and the infrastructure to support your conversion crew (again, expensive infrastructure). Etc... Etc... Not to mention you have to convince the rocket builders to make the (expensive) modifications to their stages to enable all of these things. Modifications such as making the batteries accessible for replacement. Ordinance and toxic systems will also have to be redesigned to allow for safing on orbit. Etc... etc... Who pays for that? Folks purchasing launches for their own use sure as heck aren't going to. (Rant: Once again, space cadets understand neither accounting nor economics.)

So, you've got an empty dead stage... what are you going to do with an empty dead stage that justifies spending any money on a recovery system for empty dead stages?

She's wrong about the noise though... The hull only creaks when changing depth. Though at deep depth it can be a bit much sometimes. And what junior officer has time to sleep?

That's the basic problem with many schemes for making things in space 'cheaper' - they fudge the accounting to hide the enormous up front costs and feature the much smaller marginal costs instead.

Sweet!

Hydrogen, oxygen, caustic electrolyte, and high voltage electric current - what could go wrong? (The O2 generators were known in the fleet as "bombs", a reputation well earned.) I've been telling people for years that submariners are a better for space than pilots.