Nibb31

I said launch vehicle reusability might not be economical compared to increasing production volume. We won't know until somebody tries. I disagree with claims that reusability is the only way to reduce costs or that the only way to reduce costs is through reusability. But the economics of an exploration infrastructure are not the same as for a launcher. SpaceX has based their cost reduction on mass producing Merlin engines and stages, but there will never be a mass production of lunar landers in the foreseeable future. They are always going to be expensive and they go through a much less wear and tear, so it makes sense to try to reuse them. We have restartable engines, we have space vehicles that have shut down, restarted, and have lasted several years. It's much easier than reusing a first stage or a capsule. Also, it's just what I'd like to see if we want a return to the Moon and Lagrange gateway to make sense, not what is necessarily feasible. It probably isn't at this stage. Orion doesn't currently support refueling. Neither does the EUS. And a lander has to be extremely rugged and reliable, which might not be compatible with reusability and the limitations or in-space checkout procedures.

If we ever get serious about going to the Moon, what we will need is a reusable single stage lander and to add refuel capability to the Orion/EUS. Leave the lander at EML-1 or 2 and refuel as needed.

What do you mean? Look up Apollo Waste Management System.

Did I say it didn't need to be cheap? I said it wasn't designed to be cheap because that wasn't part of Orion's requirements. Please don't insult my logic when it's your comprehension skills that are lacking. You asked why Orion was more expensive than the Commercial Crew program. I gave you the reasons, which are mostly political and systemic because of the way NASA does business with its contractors. That doesn't mean that I agree or condone those reasons. I'm just trying to answer your question by explaining to you how reality works and why it works that way. Government money is never wasted. For each highly-qualified job that is created by SLS and Orion, more jobs are created in the area to support them (services, shops, schools, health, cleaning, restaurants, etc...). Those people, in turn, pay taxes and boost the economy of the area. At the same time, the nation benefits from maintaining and advancing the technological capability of putting people into space. If NASA stops spending money on SLS/Orion, it is likely that several NASA centers will have to shut down, which not only would put 20000 NASA employees out of a job, but would also bring down all those support jobs in the area. The engineers would have to move on to other jobs. Some might be able to remain in the aerospace industry, but most would have to move away and reconvert to something totally unrelated. Some might even move abroad, taking their technical knowledge to benefit other countries, but in the end, the country loses the technology. That is why politicians want NASA to spend money. If it flies one day, then cool. If it doesn't, then it's no big deal. SLS and Orion are peanuts compared to US Government budget, but the effect on the economy are substantial. It is more capable. It has a much more robust ECLSS that allows 21-day mission duration with 4 astronauts whereas Apollo could only do 10 days with 3. It also has much improved navigation and communication systems. It has more room, automatic docking. And a toilet.

Why's that? Humanity is only a few thousand years old. There are species on Earth that have been around for millions of years without expanding out of their environment. A colony on Mars has more chance of dying than the entire Human population spread over the Earth.

Well they definitely paid a price on ASTP, with two crewmembers incapacitated and the other one unconscious. They were lucky to only spend a week in the hospital. My point was that after the whole slew of safety reviews that occurred after Challenger, based on the fact that the Shuttle crew had little chance of surviving even a minor depressurization or a chemical leak, nobody is going to be doing shirt-sleeve launch and reentry without a pressure suit.

It's not an experimental test bed for developing new technologies. That's what X-vehicles are for. It's designed to be operational and man-rated using proven state-of-the-art technology (TRL-8 or 9). It was not designed to be cheap and comfortable. It was designed to be rugged and versatile. You keep on comparing it to the Commercial Crew vehicles, but it simply isn't designed to operate in the same environment, for the same missions, or even in the same political and economical climate. Different requirements make different vehicles. Orion is more expensive because the requirements are different.

Challenger. The crew wouldn't have survived if they had LES/ACES suits in that accident, but NASA realized that the unpressurized suits were inadequate in most contingency situations.

Who said it was manned? Red dragon is a one-way unmanned lander that replaces a JPL-designed lander.

Mars will never be more inhabitable than the most pessimistically scorched Earth will ever be. And a backup plan that only saves 0.01% of your files is useless. There is no backup plan that will save 8 billion human lives.

It does. This is how JPL envisions a sample return lander. Why would you want to use a 10 ton orbital taxi instead of a smaller and more efficient lander? Using a dedicated lander allows a larger payload, and therefore a bigger MAV that can carry more samples.

Well, yes. Pressure suits are required for launch and reentry, just like they are required for high-altitude fighter jets. Both the Russians and the Americans have paid the price when they tried to cut corners on that, so that requirement is not going away soon. To answer the differences between a LEO taxi and an exploration vehicle, a Mini and a Land Rover are both cars, but they are not designed for the same purpose. You could modify a Mini to cross the Kalahari Desert, or you could use a Land Rover to drop the kids off at school and go shopping downtown, but neither would be the best vehicle for those purposes. The Commercial Crew vehicles are Minis. Orion is a Land Rover. So yes, you could modify CST-100 or Dragon for BEO missions (I would actually advocate using them as a dinghy for a MTV instead of Orion because they are lighter and smaller), but it would probably cost more. For example, Dragon carries a lot of extra weight with its landing system. It's a good idea for a reusable vehicle designed frequent commutes. But it's a useless (and unwanted) feature for an expedition that will only fly once every 2 years and that has a tight weight budget. On your trip to Mars and back, would you rather carry more science equipment or fuel for landing? Orion has communication and navigation systems that are designed for leaving Earth orbit. It can be depressurized for EVAs. Its shape makes it capable of skip reeentry and provides more lift than Dragon, making it more adequate for high energy reentries. It has an ECLSS that can keep the crew alive for 3 weeks. Dragon has none of those things. It would need extensive modification and system certification to do BEO work. Can it be done? Sure. (although the skip reentry thing is probably unsurmountable with the current mold line and CST-100 is probably a better candidate for the conversion). But in the end, it would be like turning a Mini into an off-roader when you have a Land Rover sitting in the garage.

It's not just some rocks and soil. The lunar samples from Apollo are some of the most precious artefacts on Earth for many reasons. The idea of Red Dragon is nothing new. The idea is that it might be cheaper to use a modified Dragon as a landing platform rather than to use a dedicated lander like previous Mars missions. The cost problem has yet to be demonstrated, but the fact is that it will necessarily be less efficient with a lot of wasted landing weight and a smaller payload than a dedicated lander of the same size. A conventional lander sheds its aeroshell and heatshield to minimize landing weight and only lands a minimalistic platform on the surface. This allows it to use smaller parachutes and smaller landing rockets. Power-landing the entire Dragon pressure vessel, aeroshell, and heatshield serves no purpose and just cuts into the payload fraction by requiring more fuel and bigger engines. The mission is to get a payload to Mars, not PR for SpaceX.

Exactly what is "old tech" about Orion? What's silly about a capsule if it's the best design for the job? Is an Airbus A350 "old tech" because it has a fuselage, a tail, and two wings like a DC-3? Is a Tesla "old tech" because it has 4 wheels and a front-engine like a Ford Model-T? As for the delay, it was pretty much expected. ARM could never have flown on EM-2 unless EM-2 was postponed to the mid 2020's. They haven't even started designing the unmanned asteroid capture spacecraft or selected a candidate asteroid. The manned ARM mission can only happen a year or two after the unmanned ARM part of the mission, which is pretty much impossible to launch before 2023 at this point.

And then figure out a way to reliably inject and extract fluid out of your spinning donut tank. Add the complexity of having a motor, joint, seal, cooling system, lubricant, etc... And a counter-rotating mechanism to cancel the torque. And don't forget that the whole contraption has to run continuously. Nothing is simple when it comes to space hardware. The equipment that VirtualCLD describes is already heavy and complex and expensive. Making it work in space would make it orders of magnitude more complex and expensive.

Yes, calculating n-body orbits is "easy". The problem is that it's iterative, which means that each object's position is calculated from it's position in the previous frame. This means that there's no way of predicting an object's position at a given time without calculating all the intermediate steps. This rules out trajectory prediction and warp. Unfortunately, not being able to predict where you're going without running a full simulation, and not being able to warp on a journey to Eeloo, would make the game not very fun at all.

Yes, but why would an orbital power plant require an O'Neill colony to support it? It would work just as well as an unmanned satellite.

The only way it would be economical to import iron ore from Mars is in a science fiction universe. You could argue that if we suddenly have a magical energy source that can economically transport iron ore from Mars to Earth, then the problem of iron ore shortages on Earth would probably be moot. And again, if the reason for mining Mars is economical, then the corporations in charge of the actual investment will likely set up a model that involves as much automation and as little human involvement as possible. They won't build massive colonies if a small maintenance crew is all that's needed to keep the mining equipment running.

Shame it all starts with a false premise that we would colonize Mars for its resources. The resources are useless to Earth because of the expense of shipping them back. Besides the fact that no sources are cited for any of his claims about concentrations of gem stones and iron, there's no shortage or iron ore on Earth and there's no reason to think that future computers would run on hypothetical "gems and crystals" (!) that would make economical sense to import from Mars. Therefore, the only use for Mars resources is local consumption to build a Mars colony, which means that the only reason to colonize Mars is to colonize Mars. Circular reasoning isn't good enough to justify the expense of jumpstarting a Mars colony. You need a much better business case.

The problem is that if you know that doomsday is coming in 3 years, there's no way you are going to be only one knowing. The news will go public pretty soon, so countries and organizations will be fighting to stockpile and defend as much resources as they can to protect themselves. When survival kicks in, selfishness prevails, and things would get ugly pretty quick. I don't think I'd like to live in a world like that.

It's only an improvement if it meets better requirements. If the improvement is to look ...., but it doesn't cope as well with extreme conditions or provide the same comfort and survivability, then it isn't an improvement. It's fluff. .... skin suit won't look as good when you're wearing diapers underneath. Don't forget, you need a thermal layer, you need a coolant loop, you need room for the air and fluid to circulate inside the suit, and you need protection from windblast. There might be room for improvement in terms of bulk and lightness and comfort. I don't know, I haven't worn a Sokol or an ACES, but you don't design a space suit based on looks. That's as ridiculous as putting wings on a space probe. There is zero reason for a skin suit, unless you're mission is to film space .... (or Star Trek), because there is zero reason to beleive that it will be better for the job. The Sokol or the ACES suits are perfectly adequate for their job. Why would you want to redesign something from scratch if the old one meets all requirements? Also, the Commercial Crew vehicles are designed for 7 crew members, but it's unlikely that they will actually carry more than 4. - - - Updated - - - They had pressure suits, but no way to bail out and probably no way to move (because of the G forces, not because their suits were bulky). We don't really know how much consciousness they had. Their visors weren't down and some didn't have their gloves on. The only way the crew would have been saved was if they were in a capsule and the capsule had parachutes. The biggest flaw of the Space Shuttle was that it was designed for looks, because a spaceship with wings seemed like an "improvement", when it was just a huge liability.

Sorry, your voluntary joke was too well camouflaged by the unvoluntary inaccuracies. What makes you think that you cannot move with an ACES suit? It was designed for astronauts to climb around and parachute out of the Shuttle, so movement was definitely part of the requirements. But it has to be a full pressure suit, including gloves and helmet, to be able to handle depressurization and windblast. It also has to be fire resistant, chemical resistant, and allow floatation. The undergarment is a "Maximum Absorbency Garment" for urine retention, and has tubings for cooling fluid. It's not easy to meet all those requirements and still be .....

The trunk is for unpressurized cargo only. You can't bring stuff that's outside inside (doing an EVA to get a toothbrush would be stupid), and you can't expose most personal belongings to vacuum. Also, female astronauts don't wear makeup in space. There is no bathroom on Dragon or CST-100. They intend to do same-day docking. They pull them out of the trunk with the Canadarm and attach them to the outside of the ISS. The trunk is only for stuff that goes outside. Whatever they use will look a lot like the ACES suit. It's not old tech, it's what is needed to meet the requirements. The suit is needed to survive depressurization, high-G abort modes, and bail-out after a splashdown.

Mercury astronauts didn't have many switches to operate anyway. The capsule was designed to fly chimps. The only controls were to control the attitude RCS thrusters and to fire the retro rockets.

Yes, they also made videos that showed recovery of the upper stage, or a Dragon V1 doing a powered landing. CGI renders and powerpoint rockets are easy and SpaceX has a history of changing directions pretty often. Don't take everything that comes out of SpaceX or Musk's tweets for granted. Launch service price != rocket hardware cost. There is a lot more to an orbital launch that the cost of the rocket.