Nibb31

His remarks on the poor choice of glass as a road surface are correct though. It has poor resistance to abrasion. After a couple of days, the glass would end up opaque. His remarks on the upfront cost are also true. The whole thing would cost billions to implement on a wide scale and would never pay for itself.

Because they have an actual track record, which is better than no track record. Their components are certified and their failure rates are known so they are easier to insure. They also tend to launch payloads that are more easily replaceable. As I said, it largely depends on the customer. Institutional payloads tend to be more valuable than comsats because they are either military or scientific one-offs. Comsats are produced in larger series with a common spacecraft bus.

SpaceX seems to be structured like a software company, where R&D is ongoing. In hi-tech industries, it's never a one-time cost. The fact that SpaceX's designs are evolving all the time is actually both a strength and a weakness. - It's a strength because the ongoing innovation allows them to improve the cost and performance of their vehicles. - It's also a weakness because this is an industry where you build confidence in a launcher over time. SpaceX is all about reducing cost, but for many customers in the space industry (especially institutional customers), cost and performance is a secondary factor. They will rather pay for the most reliable rocket (which will also save them money on insurance costs), because they simply can't afford to lose a payload on a new unproven launcher. Reliability is calculated from the number of successful launches of a specific design and by resettin their reliability counter each time they redesign their rocket, any certification or confidence built on the old vehicle is lost when the new one comes out. This is especially true for DoD contracts, where ULA's launchers are favored against SpaceX regardless of cost, but it's also true in the commercial sector. I'm not overly pessimistic about SpaceX. They are great with the innovation and the technology, and the PR too, but they have some very significant business challenges ahead of them that are not technology-related and it's something to be aware of. And I find fanboism annoying in general, whether it's in favor of SpaceX, Linux, Apple, football teams, or the latest dumb boys band. The constant worshipping tends to hide any sense of reality and lacks healthy criticism.

A large part of SpaceX's development has been paid for by NASA. And for his own personal investment, Musk expects a hefty return. Even if it's a money sink, SpaceX can only be viable if it is profitable. But he can only become rich if his ventures are profitable. SpaceX has yet to prove that it can be profitable. Reusability is not going to bring down launch costs significantly. It only reduces material costs of the parts that are reused, which is only a minor portion of the cost of launching a rocket. The bulk of launch costs are in personnel wages, R&D, and infrastructure. On the other hand, reusing hardware means that you build less engines and stages, which reduces the benefit of mass production for which Musk has scaled his factory. There are no savings if reusability causes his production lines to be sit around underutilized.

Oh come on. It takes millions of years for the plants that absorb CO2 to turn into coal. We will be long gone by then. Nobody seriously considers coal as a renewable energy source.

It's not just the prices that have raised in Germany. CO2 levels have too: http://www.rtcc.org/2014/03/10/germanys-carbon-targets-in-doubt-as-emissions-rise-in-2013/ http://dailycaller.com/2014/04/09/germanys-140-billion-green-energy-plan-increased-co2-emissions/ Our biggest issue today is climate change, not nuclear waste storage. Germany's policy of switching from nuclear to coal is both suicidal in terms of CO2 output and hypocritical on nuclear, because it has increased electricity imports from France who has had to increase their nuclear output capacity.

For some irrational reason, SpaceX has attracted a fan following that the older aerospace corporations simply have never had, although those companies have done more for space flight than SpaceX ever has. This is probably more due to Elon Musk's rockstar status than to their actual technological or commercial accomplishments. He has a Tony Stark vibe about him that the CEOs of other companies simply don't have. As good as it is to see people get enthusiastic about space travel whenever Elon tweets about going to Mars, we really need to step back a second a look at some of the challenges here. First of all, SpaceX is not a space program. It's a launch provider. They provide transport from the ground to LEO to people who pay. They are not competing with NASA or funding their own exploration program out their own pockets. If they do go to Mars one day, it will be because someone pays them to. As a launch provider, they are on an extremely competitive market which is already saturated. A dozen of launch providers are competing for a limited number of flights. On the other hand, they are scaling their company for a huge amount of launches. Their production facilities, launch sites and the potential for reusability are all assuming that lowering launch costs will allow the emergence of new markets. They are unrealistically oversized for current launch rates. Musk is taking a huge risk here, because if those new markets fail to materialize, he's going to be stuck with huge fixed costs and his reusable rockets simply won't be viable. We all know that reusability is only viable as a cost reduction measure if launch rates are high.

That was a bug in an old version of the pack but has been ironed out since. Are you sure you have the latest version?

I agree. I don't see the point of trying to build a self-sufficient base on Mars or the Moon if we can't even do it on Earth. A successful "Biosphere"-type of experiment in Antarctica or under the ocean will have to be tested before we think about any long-duration outpost.

What 70's technology are you talking about? Did we have life an ECLSS that could support a crew for 2 years? Did we have Mars heavy landers? 70's technology was Salyut space stations and Skylab, neither of which had the endurance or the capability to protect their crews against solar flares. Did we have the industrial capability of launching several Saturn Vs in a couple of months to assemble a large MTV? Did we have the industrial capability to do that continuously enough to maintain a semi permanent human presence on Mars or would it have been just flags and footprints again? The only thing we had in the 70's was Apollo's heritage, namely the Saturn V, but that was entirely geared towards the Moon landings. So what 70's technology are you talking about? Did we have life an ECLSS that could support a crew for 2 years? Did we have Mars heavy landers? 70's technology was Salyut space stations and Skylab, neither of which had the endurance or the capability to protect their crews.

No need for a ladder. There are ground crews for that.

Go ahead then.

It's pointless to predict the future beyond 10 or 20 years, because really, anything could happen. The two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Internet revolution, the transformation of the world after 9-11... none of those things could have been predicted 20 or 30 years before they happened. I'm not very optimistic (but you guys know that at this point!). I think that we are arriving at the end of a cycle. For the last 2 centuries (which is peanuts on the scale of human history), our societies have been based on economical growth. In a finite system, growth cannot be infinite. There are hard limits (running out of space or resources) and efficiency limits (dimishing returns as you approach the hard limits). We are currently reaching the limits of that growth in terms of resources, environmental transformation, and demographics. At some point, the current economical system is bound to breakdown. I believe that whether we like it or not, our World is going to transition to a different model. Humanity is going to have to adapt to this new environment and to do so will have to engage into to some profound changes. The transformation might be peaceful and progressive, or it might be violent, but I'm sure that there are going to be some tremendous changes in Humanity over the next century or two. I can't make specific predictions, but I'm pretty sure that those changes will include a drastic reduction in human population (voluntarily or not) and a major shift of values (things that we value today will become secondary as society focuses on other areas). This means that any extrapolation that we use to predict a future will be wrong.

I think many people are misguided when they think of Mars being more inhospitable than the Moon. I think they are misled by the fact that pictures of Mars look a lot more familiar, like some deserts on Earth. Those pictures don't convey the harshness of environment, the cold, the radiation, the lack of atmospheric pressure. In fact, on a scale that goes from habitable to uninhabitable, both the Moon and Mars are pretty close to each other at the very hostile end. Now, picking a destination First of all, let's rule out "colonies". To be sustainable, a colony would need to have hundreds of people. That's hundreds of mouths to feed, to house, and for which you need to provide closed loop life support. It simply is not possible with current technology to send that much infrastructure (or the infrastructure to build that infrastructure). It's a dream that is centuries away in the future. I'd also suspect that it's a sort of romantic science fiction dream as a way to relive US history (a sort of new Wild West founded by space homesteaders...). However, that is ethnocentric, and reflects different times and whole different reality. It also doesn't make sense, because if you can colonize and survive in a sterile wasteland like Mars, then we have no reason to go to Mars. We could build the same colonies anywhere on Earth or in LEO for much less risk and much less energy. So with colonies out of the way, what we are looking at is something ranging from a "flags and footprints" expedition to a semi-permanent science outpost. For me, a science outpost makes sense as a way to learn about: - closed loop life support - off world logistics - building and maintaining infrastructure - partial gravity and radiation studies - biological studies It would have to work as sort of ISS or like the Amundsen-Scott base in Antarctica: it would have to rely on frequent supply flights and crew rotations from Earth with a goal of decreasing the reliance on those logistics as science progresses and additional capabilities are added to the outpost. It would only support a small number of astronauts at first, from 4 to maybe 10. So whether we go the Moon or to Mars, if we want anything more than "flags and footprints" we will first need to build the logistics to support a long duration outpost. This is why I support building a lunar infrastructure. We simply don't have the technology or the resources to support a continuous supply line between Mars and Earth. The launch windows are too infrequent anyway. If we sent humans to Mars, it would be a one-off flags and footprints and then we would be back to square one. I'm all for setting ambitious goals, but those goals have to be achievable. A one-off expedition might be possible, at a stretch, but I don't think that a semi-permanent outpost on Mars is achievable with current technology and budgets. Concentrating on the Moon allows us to expand our knowledge, learn how to live on a different planet, and buys us time for developing new propulsion technology which might allow us to expand to other planets in the future.

You need more than just 3D-printed parts to make a robot or any sort of machinery. First you need the material. Different uses require different material depending on their mechanical and thermal constraints. Some can be made of plastic, others have to be made of metal. You need seals, springs, filters, all sorts of fluids, solvants and lubricants. Some of them can probably be made locally, but each different item will need its own complex manufacturing process with its own dependencies. Most of the stuff we have is made of a many number of different compounds and alloys and materials and not all of it can be 3D-printed. Look at the stuff around you and think of everything that went into their production, including the consumables needed to run and maintain the equipment that made those things. Something as simple as an electric motor is made of all sorts of different metal alloys. Making electronics from ISRU would be extremely complicated. You need to make every component with a variety of different processes and manufacturing techniques and rare materials. 3D printing as a way to produce some select spare parts is a great way to save weight on a mission, but it's still limited to small monolithic parts.

Could any of the mods merge this thread with the existing one. Just about everything has been said about Mars One. We shouldn't have to start all over again just because a newbie didn't find the old thread.

No it doesn't.

In your ideological world. Fortunately, in Europe and the rest of the World, public transportation is a system that pretty much works and avoids all major cities from being paralyzed.

Yes, but they are limited and only exist because they serve mutual interests. It could work on a specific large-scale focused project (such as an International Space Station or a Mars Expedition), but as an ongoing organisation it would end up pretty quickly as an even more paralyzed version of ESA. Why would a country give up their sovereignty for space exploration, when the main objective of government funded space exploration is to serve national interests?

It really depends on what you want to do. An underground metro line is good if you need to transport 100K to 500K people every day. A tram line is good for 50K to 100K. A bus line is good for 10 to 50K. There are also distance, cost, and real-estate factors to take into account. Each system is a different tool for a different purpose. You can't compare a hammer with a screwdriver.

No, never made, and yes they were for hypothetical lunar Gemini missions. Those missions were proposed by McDonnell as a backup plan in case Apollo didn't work out.

Why start a new thread when there is this one already? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/47036-space-Is-Mars-one-a-scam

Tram, metro/underground/subway , bus... it really depends on the topology of the city. My city (Toulouse, France) has been investing in a tram system for the last couple of years. We already have two lines of an automatic metro already. Metros are good for a small radius around the city center but the system is saturated, and each line cost 1 billion euros. A surface tram costs 20% of the price of the metro per kilometer. It has a lower capacity and is slower but because it's cheaper, it can cover a wider area. To maximise its efficiency, it needs to have its own lanes, otherwise it just gets stuck in the traffic like a bus. The infrastructure costs are still high, with a lot of surface area, rails, crossings, signs, stations, and power lines. What I hate about tramways is that it is implemented by city councils more as a way of bannishing cars from urban centers than as a genuine public transport solution. The more real estate a tram system uses, the better. It also has some disadvantages: it's still expensive, the rails are a hazard for cyclists, the power lines are ugly, and it isn't any faster than a bus. Also, if one tram breaks down, or if there are roadworks or an obstacle blocking the line, then the whole line is interrupted. You also need a minimum distance between two trams, which limits the cadence, because of power constraints. They require especially trained drivers and maintenance workers and specialized depot facilities. I think that new high capacity bus systems are a much better solution. They have the same capacity as a modern tram. They use dedicated lanes, like a tram line but without rails or power lines, which can also be used by emergency vehicles. They can drive around obstacles or take alternate routes. They are also cheaper to maintain because they share most of their parts with the city's standard bus fleet and can use the same depot facilities and tooling.

The V1 landed with parachutes + splashdown. The V2 lands in the same way in launch abort mode. The parachute lines rip open the skin of the capsule, so if they deploy the parachutes for launch abort or landing abort, then the capsule goes straight into refurbishment (depending on how well it survived the hard landing or splashdown).

Why this focus on orbital debris? There really isn't much of it. Just about everything launched into orbit for the last 20 years must be disposed of. At any rate, it has nothing to do with SSTO or MSTO, because rocket upper stages are either deorbited or sent to a graveyard orbit. Very little debris ends up in LEO, and when it does, it decays naturally.