maccollo

Climbing to reach locations inaccessible to rovers would be something humans can do. But with the current political climate manned exploration beyond LEO is apparently not something politicians want to deal with. Like Obama's asteroid mission. It got derailed so fast it's not even funny. "And by 2025 we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. So we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history." Which turned into something like. "Oh you wanna go to an asteroid? Here's how you can do it without leaving geostationary space! Instead of going to a significant asteroid, we can take this tiny rock and bring it into lunar orbit" But I digress, if you want to find something out about mars in the near future probes and robots is what we got. Perhaps a smaller robot like this could be deployed by MSL next to the hill, and then it would walk up, take the sample and come back down again.

These take place in the warmer portions of the planet, and according to a NASA press conference I watched called "active mars" it's to warm to be dry ice, and the most likely candidate is water. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/41577590 That being said, it doesn't appear actually flow on top of the surface but rather between the sand grains. If it is the case that it is actually water, then these might be a prime destination for the next curiosity rover in 2020 The precise mission details haven't been outlined yet but is roughly "rover should look for signs of past life, collect samples for possible future return to Earth, and demonstrate technology for future human exploration of Mars." If this is indeed liquid water then I would say it is a prime candidate for both signs of past life and sample return. Even if life died long ago, it's arguably one of the last places where it would die out that are accessible to rover without drilling meters into the ground. Having a martian sample that has recently been in contact with liquid water seems like it would also be desirable. Actually if the water is really close to the surface it might be possible to scope it up before it evaporates, the sealing it in a container and maintaining it's temperature and pressure until we can get our hands on it. That would be quite something.

Maybe they just set the engine to minimal thrust to minimize the chance of failure? They probably did some testing to see just how much thrust they could apply at the surface without kicking up significant amounts of dust. 4 m/s is actually quite fast. It's just jogging into a wall. http://youtu.be/cPgsGkPtiVw In this drop test they lowered the rover quite slowly, I'd guess no more than 1 m/s, and even tho was capable of dealing with these forces it sounds like it's gonna fall apart. I saw a different video where you could also see the reactions of the team after the test, and it can basically be sumerised as "oh dear, that's a lot rougher than I thought".

But that is the point of sending humans. Robots are amazingly clumsy and slow. If it is impossible for humans to do this stuff then they would just have to tough it out during the first expeditions like champs. Sending heavier equipment to deal with this wouldn't be worth it until we've been there a few times, and 1 sievert over the course of the mission is something NASA is apparently willing to work with. I would assume the astronauts would be slightly better shielded in the habitation than what curiosity is. But if a rover could be devised that would be capable of performing this task that would be pretty cool, not to mention cute in a wall-e kind of way. It would have like a magazine of sandbags that would be loaded into a cavity, then it would shove sand and dirt in there and throw out the sandbags behind it. The main problem with such a contraption would be how to avoid the problem getting stuck in the sand it's trying to excavate. Mars rovers haven't been to lucky with sand dunes.

There's a very tiny dot that I think might be Ganymede. Might just be noise tho =P Actually I'm making all kinds of assumptions here about the orientation of the image, but I thought the brightness falloff and the hue being very different from the surrounding noise might mean it's not noise. It's roughly 9,5 jupiters away from jupiter, meaning it's about 600 000-700 000 km away, and that puts it within the orbit of Ganymede, and Ganymede is the largest moon. Edit: I was apparently wrong on all accounts =P

To put it in a different way. The cost to launch payload to the moon is usually said to be around 100 000 dollars per kg. Mars has similar delta V requirements, so let's assume the same cost for a kg to mars. Filled sandbags typically weight in at 20 kg. Each sandbag they fill and use as radiation shielding saves 2 million dollars. Each layer will save almost half a billion dollars minus the weight of the empty sandbags, which would be less than 10 kg for 230 sandbags.

Because the quality of the picture is not very important when you just want to make sure everything is going smoothly. The first pictures we got back from curiosity looked like this and it took several days before we got anything that looked good. http://www.astrobio.net/images/galleryimages_images/Gallery_Image_9463.jpg Now we have this http://www.360cities.net/image/mars-panorama-curiosity-solar-day-177#13.70,23.50,85.0

That would mean that the entire crew would be able to fill less than 10 sandbags per day. That would be truly astounding. The most highly trained explorers mankind has to offer take several hours to fill one sandbag.... DERP Now the actual rate at which a regular person can fill sandbags with very light and simplistic equipment is around 100 per hour. Now obviously, it's gonna be more difficult to do when you have a space suit, let's assume they can only to 10 per person per hour. Assuming a crew of 4 they could still fill 200 sandbags in 5 hours. The diameter of the mars direct habitation module is supposed to be 7.5 meters in diameter, which means the roof has an area of just over 44 square meters, so we're gonna need around 230 standard sized sandbags for each layer. I don't know what the halving thickness is for martian soil and sand, but if it's similar to dirt and sand here on earth (9 cm) then each layer would almost reduce the radiation by 75%, so they would only need 2 or 3 layers for substantial extra shielding... Which should only take 2-3 days. Or maybe it could take a week if half the team fills sandbags while the mechanics inspect everything to see that everything held together. ANYWAY, my point is it is not something that should take 200 days. It should take a week at most. The main principle of the of the mars direct/design reference mission is to make use of the resources that are available. Sand and dirt is probably the most plentiful resource I can think of on Mars. Alternatively there could just not be any extra protection, or to substantially increase the mass of the payload and thus the cost of the mission.

So on mars you would receive a radiation dose roughly a third that of in interplanetary space. This means that the martian atmosphere blocks out one third of 50% of the radiation. Given that most of the radiation will be coming from the top of the sky where the atmosphere is the thinnest this is where you would want most of the radiation shielding. If the astronauts spend about half the time inside the hab, and the had is well shielded the radiation dose for one year would be just a bit over 120 millisieverts, and then the total dose for the round trip would drop well below the 1 sievert limit. If they spend a third of the time outside the hab then it would be possible to get the radiation dose per year lower than the annual maximum dose allowed for a nuclear plant worker, which is 100millisieverts. So then we just need to figure out a way to shield the hab it has landed. We could use a super powerful magnetic field. We could also drag the hab into a cave. Or we could just make use of this tried and true techmology =D Just bring a few 1000 sandbags and a few shovels, fill them up at mars and line the upper walls and roof of the hab. As for whether the hab can support the weight, it better be able to do that given the fact that it's gonna have to live through quite a few earth Gs during EDL.

But the loop wouldn't need to be completely closed. If the losses are small enough they could be replaced by using oxygen and water extracted from the martian soil. Curiosity is only a few degrees of the equator line and it found the martian soil at it's location was 2% water by weight, and that the soil gave of a decent amount of oxygen when heated by SAM. There would need to be a way of effectively isolating the gasses, and if possible a less energy intensive way of releasing them than heating the soil to several 100 C would be preferable.

How does that thing not fall apart when you drive it?

If your rocket isn't designed specifically for the payload you're trying to lift you will either fail to make orbit if it's to heavy, or you will have to turn of the engines/reduce thrust during portions of the launch to make sure the orbit doesn't end up being to large. The initial boost stages need to have the right amount of thrust and delta V to give the orbital insertion stage enough time to increase the velocity to orbital speed. Your gravity turn needs to be just right for the same reason. If you want the rocket to be running at full thrust for for the entire launch while following the the prograde marker then miscalculating the gravity turn means you will overshoot the apoapsis before you make orbit. I should note that as far as orbital mechanics go it's less efficient to accelerate during this phase, but if done correctly it is still a net gain because you loose the heavy booster engines earlier and performing the last part of the orbital insertion phase with more efficient engines like the NERVAs. This is probably the best such launch that I've performed. As for weather it's worth it, it's like everything else in KSP. It depends on whether it is part of the challenge you set for yourself. It's sort of like space planes. They don't hold a candle to rockets in terms of lifting capacity but they are fun to build.

Doing the ultimately efficient launch is very hard even when you have a launcher that is very well optimized for the payload. The reason being that if you're burning at max thrust throughout the launch it becomes very hard to rescue the launch if your profile was just a little bit off.

Results from RAD on the surface of mars are in. Estimated doses for a long term mars mission is just over 1 sievert. http://www.space.com/23875-mars-radiation-life-manned-mission.html Given that mars blocks half of the radiation, this means that the martian atmosphere blocks roughly 30% of the rest. With reasonable radiation protection it should be possible to reduce this a bit more. The water in the martian soil could perhaps be extracted placed in the roof of the hab. Maybe they could bring a bunch of sandbags and a shovel, fill those up with martian soil and put them on top of the roof for even more protection =P

If you do things properly, the Moho injection burn should be a little more than 1500 m/s. Due to Moho's extreme orbit correct procedure a bit different than other planets. The most efficient way to get to Moho is as follows: 1: Forget about phase angles Moho's eccentricity, tight orbit, and inclination means the difference between just any encounter and a good encounter is massive. The best way to encounter Moho is to line up your periapsis with it's periapsis. Therefore if you want a good encounter you must always depart when Kirbin is lined up with the apoapsis of Moho. 2: Combine your escape burn with your inclination change Moho actually has one thing going for it. While it has a high inclination, the orbital plane nodes are actually aligned with the periapsis and apoapsis. This means you should do the inclination change at the same time as you do your escape burn from Kirbin. This will only cost 300 m/s or so. If you perform the inclination change after you have escaped Kirbin it will cost 800 m/s 3: Orbit the sun until you get a near encounter Now you just orbit around the sun until you have a somewhat decent near encounter. You can use one maneuver node right after you pass the periapsis to check 2 orbits ahead. You should only have to orbit a few times to get close enough. Once you get a near encounter you can do a small correction burn to get a very close encounter. This shouldn't take more than 50 m/s 4: And the result is A final injection burn of around 1550 m/s, and a combined delta V from LKO to Moho of just under 4000 m/s

Maybe jetpack RCS can only be refueled from RCS tanks? Refueling could work just like moving fuel between tanks,. Click on the RCS tank, click on the command pod, transfer RCS to kerbal inside command pod.

Fixed. Also noticed I wrote the equation wrong. There was a 2 in there that shouldn't have been there. http://tinyurl.com/odah4n9

Move aside as I will perform math, even tho I suck at it and I might well be wrong and don't know what the hell I'm doing. If I'm wrong here please correct me.... Anyway... During launch you will loose deltaV to drag and gravity. Gravity losses are a function of time, to the lower your TWR the higher your gravity losses will be. Drag losses are a function of your velocity squared times the amount of time you spend in the atmosphere plus some other variables. y=x/(x*x)+x This oversimplified equation shows roughly the relationship between gravity losses and drag losses as a function of your velocity where X represents terminal velocity and Y relative gravity+drag losses. As you can see, as the velocity approaches 0 gravity losses approach infinity. This is why you really really don't want to linger with a low TWR at launch. Drag losses increase linearly, because while the drag deceleration increases by the square of the velocity, your increased speed means you spend less time in the atmosphere. So, say you go 4 times faster, the drag deceleration per unit of time becomes 16 times higher, but then you divide that by 4 again since you only spend 0.25 times as long in the atmosphere. Now I thought this up this with the assumption that terminal velocity is the most efficient speed, and thus a TWR of 2.0 is the most efficient. However more TWR for any given mass means less deltaV, so I'd wager the ideal TWR is a bit lower.

Use gravity assist to put yourself in a close orbit to Vall before you have your final encounter with it. This will reduce the deltaV required for your capture burn significantly. Because of how easy it is to get encounters with the inner moons it doesn't really matter how you get captured around Jool, because as long as your apoapsis is within the SOI of Laythe you can use gravity assist to put your into any orbit. Personally tho, I prefer to use gravity assist using Tylo to get captured. It's far more precise than aerocapture, and you can quite easily fine tune your orbit way before you enter the SOI of Jool to make sure you encounter Tylo the right way.

Bonus points for not air hogging. That is actually sort of similar to something that I build, altho I used a single mainsail. It was capable of lifting about 20 tons into orbit. Here is something that can also lift 20 tons into orbit. 76 rockomax 48-7S and 4 orange fuel tanks.... derp.

This all depends on what your requirements for the final payload mass are. Going to Tylo and back with the mk1-2 command pod which weights 4 tons is gonna take a lot more parts than going with the smallest probe body which only weights 0.4 tons.

Turbo jets loose all thrust at 2400 m/s. If you go high enough you can probably do it with rockets for a short bit before you fly all the way out to the mun. More likely you will reach 3400 m/s at the edge of the atmosphere, and then you'll be escaping Kirbin unless you brake.

Your rover should be able to reach that mountain top. The slope is actually quite gentle if you go around it. Don't know how much you would need from 4000 meters, but from 7500 meters you need a little more than 8 km/s. So from 4000 meters... maybe 9.5 km/s is a good estimate?

It's very useful when you are going to Jool. Let's say you want to encounter Tylo and use it to get a gravity capture around Jool. This means you have to encounter it on the right side of Jool. If you do the Tylo intercept burn after you've encountered Jool this can cost several 100 m/s in deltaV. Focusing on Jool will allow you to check this. You can see if you will get an encounter with any of the moons, and you can see the encounter and escape nodes. This allows you to make minute course corrections way before you encounter Jool so that you will intercept the moon correctly.

Eve. I think the minimum delta V required to take of from the highest peak is like 8000 m/s or something insane like that. From sea level it's more than 12000. On Laythe orbiting only takes about 3000.