Nibb31

The perchlorate makes Martian regolith and dust highly toxic. Other than that, it's just a sterile substrate with no nutrients for plants. You can't just plant seeds and add water. Any sort of Martian agriculture would have to be based on massive importation of fertilizer and some sort of method to purify the regolith and turn it into loam.

First of all, let me say that I find the idea of predicting the future utterly ludicrous (and somewhat arrogant, however powerful your brain is). I believe that we might be able to determine crude trends over a foreseeable future (basically 10 years or so), but anything beyond that is too unpredictable. In the decades that preceded, nobody predicted the transformations that would happen with the Internet, WWI, WWII, the Great Depression or the end of the Cold War, yet those events had huge impacts on culture, society and technology. We are totally incapable of comprehending the changes that might occur beyond 2020 or 2030. I see no reason to believe that a artificial self-consciousness is impossible with today's (or near future) technology. We know how neurons work at the biological level. We can observe how they are arranged and how they interact. We have the understanding to model and simulate neural networks. There are physical limits to the size of microelectronics, but nothing stops you from just adding parallel processing as needed. We can already do impressive stuff within those limits. Scientists have already created working simulations of the brain of a fly or a rat. It's just a matter of time and throwing more computing power at it that we can model more complex neural systems. Early models will probably not be "brain sized" and probably won't work in real-time, but there's no reason to believe that we can't have building-sized supercomputer that can simulate 10 minutes of human brain function over 10 days of calculation. That's a start.

He won't have any participation in it if it thinks it will fail. It would be stupid to have Falcon and Dragon associated with people dying on Mars (in the worse case) or a legal investigation for fraud (in the most optimistic case). Any negative experience would be highly counter-productive if he wants to convince people to risk their lives in his own Mars project. Also, do we really need a new thread on this when we've already said everything that is to be said here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/47036-space-Is-Mars-one-a-scam Could mods merge them ?

For that to be true, there would have to be a first Bermuda triangle.

Seasons are not related to the Earth's orbit but to its tilt, which explains why the southern and northern hemisphere seasons are inverted. Distance from the sun has a much smaller effect than the angle at which solar rays hit the atmosphere.

No, probably not. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Airbus et al. probably spend far more on R&D than SpaceX. The main difference in term of R&D is that SpaceX uses fast prototyping to throw stuff against the wall to see what sticks. Other aerospace companies spend money on trade studies and CAD modelling to figure out if something can work, then they try to find customers that are willing to pay, then they start building. SpaceX's approach seems to be more like trial and error, which isn't typically very efficient and is high risk.

There must be a few hundred Jebediah Kermans on that DVD. Hilarious.

No, more like: SpaceX : Let's try to make the launch business by making it cheaper. NASA : Neat! Here's a contract to deliver stuff. SpaceX : Let's use that money to experiment all sorts of things that might or might not work. Reusability isn't a goal. SpaceX's goal is to bring down the cost of orbital launches, which is what they have actually done. Reusability is one of many industrial experiments to see if it can further that goal. NASA isn't giving any money to SpaceX to develop reusability. They paid SpaceX to develop the Falcon 9, which it has, and they pay SpaceX to deliver cargo (and crew) to a destination for a given price. What SpaceX does with its first stage after doing its job is SpaceX's own business.

Even weirder: Clement Ader's "Eole", which actually "flew" in 1890, 13 years before the Wright Brothers:

The implementation choices, and stuff that isn't part of NASA requirements, are decisions made by SpaceX, but the R&D for reusability is peanuts compared to the cost of developing the rocket and engines. The Merlin engine was originally based on a NASA reference design from a few years back. The development of Falcon 1 was pretty much from Musk's pockets, but Falcon 9 and Dragon development were funded by NASA. This is what makes the constant harping about "this new era of commercial spaceflight" a bit annoying. SpaceX's main customers are NASA and USAF. The launch industry, including SpaceX, only exists because it is heavily subsidized by the taxpayer.

It's a composite shot made from multiple photos taken with the arm in different positions. When compositing the image, they only take the parts of the picture that don't have the arm in it. The blurry white thing on the bottom of the picture is the part of the arm that couldn't be covered up by another picture.

The article is pretty clear about Musk's intentions to sell tickets for Mars at $500,000. As I explained before, the Venn diagram showing the intersection of people who are willing to leave everything behind, who can afford a $500,000 ticket, and who have skills that can be useful for jump starting a colony isn't going to make a huge waiting list.

It's not odd. A large part of their R&D was paid for by NASA.

The wheels are in bad shape, but it its the horizontal tread parts that do all the traction. The flat areas that are damaged aren't structural, they just prevent the treads from sinking into the sand. As long as they stick to solid ground, the rover should be fine. Mars 2020 will be based on the same design as Curiosity using leftover parts, but with new instruments and different mission goals. They have planned to redesign the wheel assembly.

Laptops don't typically use standardized parts, so unless all your laptops are the same model, it's going to be hard. You can't swap motherboards, keyboards, screens, or video cards on them. The CPUs or RAM are swappable but there are many different socket types, so you'll be lucky if two of them share the same connectors. CDROMs and HDDs are the easiest parts to swap. You can also try to swap the wireless LAN/BT cards if you're lucky. The PC that refuses to boot Windows probably has a corrupted filesystem or a dead HDD. You can try a reformat or swap the drive.

Some of those aren't really planes. The "Caspian Sea Monster" doesn't really "fly", it skims the water using ground effect, making more of a high-speed surface vessel. The HL10 (and X24 variants) was a glider dropped from a B52 to test lifting body reentry and landing shapes, so it didn't really fly by itself.

Every spacecraft that returns to Earth uses aerobraking. Apollo, Soyuz, the Shuttle. Even nuclear warheads. It's used regularly by space probes to enter Mars orbit too. It's risky, but once you know enough about the atmosphere, it works. It's gradual, so there is no hard limit. Most organisations and legal jurisdictions consider that outer space empirically starts at 100km, but the effects of atmospheric drag can be felt at much higher altitudes. The ISS experiences drag and needs to be reboosted from time to time. Google is your friend. You are always moving relative to something. You are always under the influence of some gravitational body, even it that force is extremely weak. The orbital altitude varies, as does the attitude, depending on whatever the requirements. The ISS used to orbit lower so that the Shuttle could reach it, but nowadays it sticks around 300 to 400km. It also turns around when visiting vehicles are docking so that the approach and docking occurs at the nadir (facing downwards). Atmospheric drag pulls it down, so they reboost it, usually with the engines from a visiting vehicle. Sometimes they have to go up or down to avoid debris. These manoeuvers are planned jointly between the participating countries. Each module has a Mission Control Center in its own country, but the main ISS Mission Control is in Houston, Texas. Yep, they have. Too long to mention here. There hasn't been any sexual activites that we know of (there simply isn't much intimacy on board a spacecraft), but stuff has been smuggled onboard for personal usage or to be resold. There was a scandal on one the Apollo missions about stamps that an astronaut brought to the Moon to be resold. There have also been fights and arguments, and astronauts grounded for it. There are plenty of books on the subject if you're interested. It's probably like being in international waters. I'm pretty sure you'd get nailed by the government that sent you up. It depends on the mission, the payload, the destination orbit. SpaceX charges 60 million dollars to launch an 11-ton payload to LEO. That doesn't include the spacecraft or any payload. ISS supply runs are much more than that. Wikipedia says: "The Space Review estimated in 2010 the cost of Apollo from 1959 to 1973 as $20.4 billion, or $109 billion in 2010 dollars, averaged over the six landings as $18 billion each"

Sure, you would. I would too. However, I'm pretty sure football fans would rather see that money spent on stadiums. Farmers would prefer that we spend money of farming subsidies. Religious folks think subsidizing churches is way more important. The military wants to replace their aging Hummers. Teachers want more books. What justifies spending money on something that us space geeks appreciate, but isn't shared by most of our compatriots. Genuine question.

Your analysis is pretty good. SpaceX has already drastically reduced the cost of rockets through streamlined processes and vertical manufacturing. However, the law of diminishing returns applies here: the big efficiency improvements are easier, but the further you go, the harder it gets to shave off more efficiency. SpaceX is a pragmatic company. They experiment a lot. If it works, they'll do it. If it doesn't, they'll try something else. They have accumulated a lot more failures and abandoned projects in less than a decade of existence than other aerospace companies, which is arguably something that can be admired. I have no doubt that they will eventually return a rocket stage. I'm not 100% sure they will be able to reuse that rocket stage. I'm even less sure that it makes economical sense to do so, when their whole business model is based on vertical manufacturing and economies of scale. Reusing rockets decreases your production volume and actually makes each stage more expensive to produce. And in this business, a 50% reduction on the price of the offering doesn't automatically generate a 100% increase in market demand. We will simply not know if reusability works as a business model until somebody tries. That is why all the other rocket manufacturers are pretty much sitting back and watching. Since when has SSTO been less complex? You are aware that for a given payload, SSTO actually increases the size and weight of a rocket, aren't you? If the Falcon 9 was single stage, it would actually need more engines, not less.

I think that puts you in the "space exploration for entertainment" category, which is fine. As a person who is inspired by observing space exploration, I'm pretty much in that category too. The question then becomes who should foot the bill for that entertainment?

Given that Thoth Technologies Inc. seems to be constituted of 4 people, and there are actually folks from NASA, ESA, and various other space agencies who have acknowledged playing KSP, it's not much of a stretch. Gamers are people too. They have their experience, knowledge, skills, that don't all pertain to playing games. Surprisingly, many gamers actually have a families, jobs, hobbies, and various other interests and pastimes that might or might not be related to any single game. Gaming, for most people, is a side-distraction, a very small part of their lives. On the other hand, there is no such thing as a "rocket scientist". There are physicists and engineers. There are professionals at various levels who are experts in propulsion, cryogenics, chemistry, materials, structures, aerodynamics, economics, marketing, telecommunication, computers, and so on. And within each of those fields, most of them only specialize in a specific area. There aren't many people who can claim to be an "expert in rocket science" with both width and depth of knowledge that covers everything "rocket science". So even the smartest experts in a certain field sometimes step out of their league and make mistakes. Some people are also paid to work on something that they know perfectly well won't work because they have bills to pay. Some people have ideas that are good technically, but unworkable economically. Some people patent ideas that are unworkable, and some people put their ideas out in the public domain. Some people have great ideas but fail to execute them. And some people invest large amounts of money in obviously flawed ideas*. So just because someone is a "rocket scientist" doesn't mean they are always right. Coming up with a silly idea doesn't make them idiots. The problem with that reasoning is that drag isn't a big deal. Gravity is. Rockets are thin and tall and pointy to overcome drag. So when a rocket hits the 20km mark, it's already going damn fast with a velocity vector that is already countering the gravitational force. If you launch horizontally from a platform (or a balloon) you start with a speed of zero, meaning that you have to fight the full pull of gravity (ie. down). You have no other choice than to point your rocket in the opposite direction (ie. up). You would be better off launching horizontally from an airplane (see Stratolaunch), which already has non-zero velocity vector, but even then it doesn't make sense economically of technically. *Stratolaunch is another one of those bad ideas. Not every new idea is progress. If someone comes up with a bad idea, it's better to actually tell them it's bad and why it's bad instead of letting them fail.

Extinction events don't mean that the Earth is pulverized. It means that a large number of species die off over a period that ranges from a few years to several thousand years. It also means that a large number of species survive and thrive in the end. With our adaptability and our knowledge, I'm pretty sure our species could survive any those events. I'm not saying it would be a walk in the park, but even if we lose 99.9% of the world population, we would still be millions. Many scientists consider that we are in the middle of the sixth major extinction, and we are the cause of it. If you push the reasoning to its extreme and if you consider that life on Earth is worth preserving, then get rid of the humans. Don't save them. I'm not going there though... But if you have only one basket, you do your best. The Earth is the only habitable place that we've got. We can visit the Moon or Mars, just like we can visit the Ocean floors or Mont Everest, but we can't live there permanently because the conditions are too extreme. There simply is no point. Until science fiction comes true (hint: it never does), we are not going to be terraforming Mars and turning it into a second Earth. It will remain an extreme environment: extreme cold, unbreathable atmosphere, toxic, and hampered with cosmic radiation and low gravity.

There are more rocket scientists on this forum than at Thoth Technologies Inc.

Which is an inexistant threat. We have a pretty good grasp on asteroids that are large enough to do that sort of damage. Nothing has totally pulverized the Earth over the last 2 billion years. It's rather unlikely that something appears out of the blue in the next few thousand hundred years. You can put UV lamps underground. My point is that if you have the technology to But what vital resource will we have used up that is abundant on Mars and that we cannot extract or recycle from Earth? Glass don't shield cosmic rays very well and they are fragile. A single leak and everyone dies. My point is that whatever closed-loop life support habitat you can build on Mars would be much easier to just deploy on Earth. If you could land the infrastructure for manufacturing glass domes on Mars, then you could bury a similar infrastructure in a safe place on Earth. If you can build solar-powered hydroponic farms on Mars, then you can build them on Earth. But we're really going off topic here. The point isn't how to design an underground bunker. The point is that if your goal is to establish a life insurance for mankind, there are cheaper, safer, and more efficient ways of doing it than colonizing Mars if you have the technology to do that. Just about every technology that you can think of for building a self-sufficient shelter on Mars could also be applied to building a self-sufficient shelter on Earth without the additional cost and complexity of going to Mars. Ralathon hit the nail on the head with the second post in this thread. When you are purchasing insurance, you get coverage for the reasonable risks. Your not going to spend everything you've got for a super insurance that covers the most improbable events. Also, insurances aren't infallible, and the survivability of a Mars colony, however self-sufficient, is always going to be more fragile than simply having people spread out over the Earth. What if your Mars colony gets hit by an asteroid a week after the Earth is destroyed? What if the destruction of Earth happens before your colony becomes self sufficient? What if an overlooked technical failure kills everyone on Mars? What if your plants get a disease and die? The odds of that happening are much greater than the Earth being pulverized by a freak asteroid.

From what we know now about Mars and with 1970's technology, I really doubt that.