Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[CatastrophicFailure]

1 hour ago, Technical Ben said:

Sorry, no. In no way are they "colonists". Any more than the trips to the poles were. This is a trip to the poles/up mount Everest type stuff. The slight difference is it is in an Ice Breaker/Helicopter (depending on scale of craft and length of stay).

There is no air. It is extremely cold. These are not small things.

If we're going according to Musk's vision, they are. They're not going there to wander around for a while and come home, they're going there to stay. Or at least try to.

Better analogy here is Jamestown. On really really hard mode. Hard=\=impossible. 

Thats why he's using that arbitrary 100 people number. That's not an expedition, that's a founding party. 

Edited September 30, 2016 by CatastrophicFailure

[Motokid600]

2 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

 

Regards,

Northstar

This is what I've been saying the past few pages. A cylcer is the way to go here. And I'd love to know the reasoning for SpaceX dismissing it. 

[Technical Ben]

1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

If we're going according to Musk's vision, they are. They're not going there to wander around for a while and come home, they're going there to stay. Or at least try to.

Better analogy here is Jamestown. On really really hard mode. Hard=\=impossible. 

Thats why he's using that arbitrary 100 people number. That's not an expedition, that's a founding party. 

Again. You cannot stay. You die on Mars. While we all die. It will be a much (and I'm tempted to add another "much") quicker one there.

Send one person, then make a claim you will/want to send 100. I'm all for hopes and dreams, but on the scale of things, while Musk does really good work, his latest video is akin to putting up a picture of the Star Ship Enterprise. We all know why that would be a bad idea In Rreal Life.

Edited September 30, 2016 by Technical Ben

[DerekL1963]

16 minutes ago, Technical Ben said:

Again. You cannot stay. You die on Mars. While we all die. It will be a much (and I'm tempted to add another "much") quicker one there.

As they say - [[citation needed]].   What makes you think they "cannot stay" and will "die quickly" there?

[CatastrophicFailure]

20 minutes ago, Technical Ben said:

Again. You cannot stay. You die on Mars. While we all die. It will be a much (and I'm tempted to add another "much") quicker one there.

Send one person, then make a claim you will/want to send 100. I'm all for hopes and dreams, but on the scale of things, while Musk does really good work, his latest video is akin to putting up a picture of the Star Ship Enterprise. We all know why that would be a bad idea In Rreal Life.

You die in space. You die at the South Pole. You die at the bottom of the sea, and plenty of other places hostile to human life we've learned to live at with regular resupply. That's really the fundamental goal of Musk's vision here, making all this routine and pridictable. 

You can live in some awful places with predictable resources. I'd say mars is actually easier to survive on long term than the South Pole, at least it's theoretically possible to be self-sufficient on Mars. 

Will the first ship carry 100 people? No, of course not. And it will find hundreds of tonnes of cargo and supplies waiting when it does bring those first 10 or 20 or whatever people. That's not the point of this endeavor. 

The point is that others will follow. That's what really makes a colony. 

[Rune]

1 hour ago, Motokid600 said:

This is what I've been saying the past few pages. A cylcer is the way to go here. And I'd love to know the reasoning for SpaceX dismissing it. 

A cycler is a horrible idea, actually. And several people have been telling you so for a few pages.

First, it would increase the development cost by about 50%, on first approximation. Just because you now have to develop, build, and test, three things instead of two.

But even if the cost was equal, it still wouldn't make much sense, really. You would have an awful lot of redundant equipment that doesn't increase you reliability, because it's spread out. You would need two ECLSS, one for the cycler and one for the transit ship. Two power systems, two habitats... and by design they will have to be different, since if they were the same there would be no point in using the cycler. You would need more total dV, too, since the cycler needs it's own corrections (which however minute, are applied to a large mass by design, so not insignificant amounts of fuel), and the hyperbolic rendezvous is not as efficient as a straight shot from Earth. Yes, you can pack more radiation protection on a cycler... if you needed radiation protection, that is. You won't have enough to make a significant dent in cosmic rays, and solar storms can be shielded against with surprisingly little effort (I.E: supplies and fuel tanks between you and the sun). Counting the shorter trip time of the fast trajectories Musk is proposing (6km/s vs about 4.5), and how freaking huge the ITS is (so more mass to shield the sun), and the radiation count will probably be much smaller than what standard DRM missions assume.

In fact, adding a hyperbolic rendezvous probably increases mission risk more than enough to offset any benefit form the increased space and mass a cycler can provide.

 

Rune. Cycler architectures are high complexity for minimal gain.

[Nibb31]

59 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

As they say - [[citation needed]].   What makes you think they "cannot stay" and will "die quickly" there?

We don't know either way. You would think that it would be safe to at least know if we can live in partial gravity for long term periods, deal with the perchlorate problem, mine water out of the ground, and even reproduce, before investing in the capability to send millions of people to live on Mars.

Musks seems to handwave these problems away by concentrating only on the transportation problem, which is probably the easiest one to solve. He assumes that if he solves the transportation problem, other folks are going to develop solutions for everything else to be ready we he's ready.

I don't think anybody is going to suddenly invest millions to start developing, for example, Mars-capable bulldozers and heavy mining equipment without some sort of business model.

3 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Better analogy here is Jamestown. On really really hard mode. Hard=\=impossible. 

...or Koanoke.

Edited September 30, 2016 by Nibb31

[tater]

Yeah, it seems like the first thing to do is to spin up a couple habs in LEO on long tethers (so RPMs can be kept low) at 0.38g effective, then keep people there for ISS periods of time. Heck, if it's SpaceX, use either 2X ITS, or an ITS and a counterweight. Then you test your LS systems in space, where a failure means you come home---and you even get to bring the failed units home to take them apart and fix them.

If it turns out 0.38g won't cut it... You change the design to help build O'Neill colonies  .

[CatastrophicFailure]

5 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

We don't know either way. You would think that it would be safe to at least know if we can live in partial gravity for long term periods, deal with the perchlorate problem, mine water out of the ground, and even reproduce, before investing in the capability to send hundreds of people to live on Mars.

Musks seems to handwave these problems away by concentrating only on the transportation problem, which is probably the easiest one to solve. 

.

Fair enough, but we'll never know until we actually go there and try. Having a transportation system in place that can deposit years worth of supplies seems like a prerequisite. Y'all seem a bit too fixated on that "100 people" number.  The Dragon 2 can carry 7. Has anyone claimed it'll carry that many on its first flight?

[Northstar1989]

4 hours ago, Technical Ben said:

 food production (how?),

With growth-lamps.  Indoors.  A bit like hippies growing, ahem, "vegetables" in their basements, but with better climate-control of the room and some of the world's best botanists coming up with ideas for the early efforts.  Actually, maybe this is more like the recent project to grow vegetables in abandoned air raid shelters and subway under London (or for that matter, efforts to grow crops on the International Space Station- except Mars has gravity).  Look it up.

Edited September 30, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Nibb31]

19 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Fair enough, but we'll never know until we actually go there and try. Having a transportation system in place that can deposit years worth of supplies seems like a prerequisite. Y'all seem a bit too fixated on that "100 people" number.  The Dragon 2 can carry 7. Has anyone claimed it'll carry that many on its first flight?

Sure, and I'm pretty sure that we won't see the 100 pax capability before a couple of decades, if ever, because that's the time it will take to learn about Mars and to figure out if and how we can live there sustainably.

For the Jamestown colony to succeed, there had to be many failures where hundreds died tragically. When they finally succeeded, they knew that they could breath the air, drink the water, breed livestock, live off the land, and have children. We have no idea whether any of that is possible for Mars at this stage. We are at the Anse aux Meadows stage of exploration, not yet Jamestown.

14 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

With growth-lamps.  Indoors.  A bit like hippies growing, ahem, "vegetables" in their basements, but with better climate-control of the room and some of the world's best botanists coming up with ideas for the early efforts.  Actually, maybe this is more like the recent project to grow vegetables in abandoned air raid shelters and subway under London (or for that matter, efforts to grow crops on the International Space Station- except Mars has gravity).  Look it up.

It is nothing at all like that. Plant growth would actually have to be completely hydroponic, with artificial substrates, fertilizer and nutrients imported from Earth. Remember, there is no soil on Mars, just regolith, which is not only sterile, but rich in perchlorate salts, and highly toxic for any biological organism. Just like everything else, you will need to develop techniques for this work in a closed loop, which can potentially take decades to get right.

Yes, the Martian was wrong. You can't grow potatoes in Martian regolith.

Edited September 30, 2016 by Nibb31

[Northstar1989]

1 hour ago, Rune said:

First, it would increase the development cost by about 50%, on first approximation. Just because you now have to develop, build, and test, three things instead of two.

But even if the cost was equal, it still wouldn't make much sense, really. You would have an awful lot of redundant equipment that doesn't increase you reliability, because it's spread out. You would need two ECLSS, one for the cycler and one for the transit ship. Two power systems, two habitats... and by design they will have to be different, since if they were the same there would be no point in using the cycler. You would need more total dV, too, since the cycler needs it's own corrections (which however minute, are applied to a large mass by design, so not insignificant amounts of fuel), and the hyperbolic rendezvous is not as efficient as a straight shot from Earth. Yes, you can pack more radiation protection on a cycler... if you needed radiation protection, that is. You won't have enough to make a significant dent in cosmic rays, and solar storms can be shielded against with surprisingly little effort (I.E: supplies and fuel tanks between you and the sun). Counting the shorter trip time of the fast trajectories Musk is proposing (6km/s vs about 4.5), and how freaking huge the ITS is (so more mass to shield the sun), and the radiation count will probably be much smaller than what standard DRM missions assume.

In fact, adding a hyperbolic rendezvous probably increases mission risk more than enough to offset any benefit form the increased space and mass a cycler can provide.

 

Rune. Cycler architectures are high complexity for minimal gain.

The Cycler Ship and Interceptor Ship can be close derivatives of each other, like I've been pointing out!  Basically, the current ITS design is already capable of functioning as either- though to obtain mass-savings you either need to cut down on the size of the crew-quarters on the interceptor ship, or literally just cram twice as many people into the ITS to be used as an Interceptor as it is built to support long-term.  When it meets up with the ITS you left in a Cycler Orbit, you transfer half of them over to the new ship (the one added capability you need is the ability to transfer crew when docked- although Musk has already said the ITS might have that as well in order to send crew up on capsules after launch, if it turns out the orbital refueling process takes months instead of days).  When you reach Mars, you cram them all back into the interceptor ITS.

All the other changes to the Interceptor and Cycler versions are solely to make them even MORE more cost-effective  (such as removing the landing legs and heatshield from the Cycler version).  You could literally just forget all of them if the cost proved not worth the benefit, re-use the same exact same design twice with a double crew-complement crammed into one at launch like I said, and cut your cost-per-colonist roughly in half (the exact cost-savings depend on how many times you re-use the ITS left in a Cycler Orbit).

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited September 30, 2016 by Northstar1989

[CatastrophicFailure]

Exploration requires risk. If we're going anywhere beyond our atmosphere, sooner or later we need to address the elephant in the room that, sooner or later, someone is going to die in the endeavor (any endeavor, not just this). That doesn't make the endeavor not worth doing. Those Vikings probably knew and accepted when they left that not all of them were going to make it. They also didn't have basically the entire world backing them up, either. 

[Nibb31]

1 minute ago, Northstar1989 said:

The Cycler Ship and Interceptor Ship can be close derivatives of each other, like I've been pointing out!  Basically, the current ITS design is already capable of functioning as either- though to obtain mass-savings you either need to cut down on the size of the crew-quarters on the interceptor ship, or literally just cram twice as many people into the ITS to be used as an Interceptor as it is built to support long-term.  When it meets up with the ITS you left in a Cycler Orbit, you transfer half of them over to the new ship (the one added vapability you need is the ability to transfer crew when docked- although Musk has already said the ITS might have that as well, if it turns out the orbital refueling process takes months instead of days).  When you reach Mars, you cram them all back into the interceptor ITS.

You gain practically nothing. Double the habitable space, that's all. I have a better solution for that: only send 50 pax. It's not as if the 100 pax capability is going to be needed anyway. 

Or you can increase the habitable space by extending the crew section as Musk suggested during the presentation.

Another problem with the cycler is that if you miss the RV window, you have to wait for the next synod. The window is much shorter than a normal Mars transfer window, that lasts months.

[CatastrophicFailure]

14 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Yes, the Martian was wrong. You can't grow potatoes in Martian regolith

You really can't say this definitively, giving that no one has yet tried. 

[Nibb31]

9 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Exploration requires risk. If we're going anywhere beyond our atmosphere, sooner or later we need to address the elephant in the room that, sooner or later, someone is going to die in the endeavor (any endeavor, not just this). That doesn't make the endeavor not worth doing. Those Vikings probably knew and accepted when they left that not all of them were going to make it. They also didn't have basically the entire world backing them up, either. 

Well, the world is very different now, isn't it. The vikings didn't exactly live in democracy, with ethic committees, FAA certification, lawyers, class actions, unions, political opposition, and insurance companies. Also, they didn't fear death, so there's that too...

Edited September 30, 2016 by Nibb31

[Northstar1989]

22 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

It is nothing at all like that. Plant growth would actually have to be completely hydroponic, with artificial substrates, fertilizer and nutrients imported from Earth. Remember, there is no soil on Mars, just regolith, which is not only sterile, but rich in perchlorate salts, and highly toxic for any biological organism. Just like everything else, you will need to develop techniques for this work in a closed loop, which can potentially take decades to get right.

Yes, the Martian was wrong. You can't grow potatoes in Martian regolith.

Many hippies ALREADY grow their "crops" completely hydroponic.  The project to grow food in the  abandoned London air raid shelters also has no substrate already in-location to work with (they use a version of hydroponics adapted to use solid plastic mats, basically).  The same goes for the ISS.  We've already done this closed-loop growth thing (or close enough to it- note that on Mars you can bring in compressed outside atmosphere, mined mineral nutrients like Potassium and Magnesium, manufactured ones like Nitrates, AND regolith that has been processed to remove perchlorates, eventually) many times.  It's a non-issue.

Edited September 30, 2016 by Northstar1989

[tater]

LS is not an issue from the standpoint of inputs, I think the real issue is keeping it running (spares, etc). A robust additive manufacturing capability, and either plenty of stock to do it, or ideally a way to make stock from local materials, will go a long way towards making LS a more trivial issue.

[CatastrophicFailure]

Just now, Nibb31 said:

 Also, they didn't fear death, so there's that too...

Perhaps that's a pretty basic requirement for those who would go where no one has gone before. No matter what we do, no matter how much effort we expend, it will never be "safe." It will never be guaranteed. It will never be risk-free. Sooner or later we have to leave the cave, or we're never going anywhere. 

Its VERY well documented at this point that half a dozen people can survive in a closed system for 2+ years with a couple hundred tons of supplies. That's 2+ years to figure out if you can, actually, grow potatoes in Martian regolith. IF Musk can make this architecture work, then I say that's when the time has come to accept the remaining risk. 

Plenty of people will be willing to leave the cave, even if they know they're never coming back. For some, that might be the whole point. 

[Nibb31]

10 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

Many hippies ALREADY grow their "crops" completely hydroponic.  The project to grow food in the  abandonef London air raid shelters also has no substrate already in-location to work with (they use a version of hydroponics adapted to use solid plastic mats, basically).  The same goes fir the ISS.  We've already done this closed-loop growth thing (or close enough to it- note that on Mars you can bring in compressed outside atmosphere, mined mineral nutrients like Potassium, manufactured ones like Nitrates, AND regolith that has been processed to remove perchlorates, eventually) many times.  It's a non-issue.

Sure, hydroponics are a thing. But none of those experiments are closed loop. You need to import everything, at which point it might make sense to simply import freeze-dried food. You would need a proper trade study to determine that. I don't think there have been actual experiments on removing perchlorates from regolith, since we have never had any Martian regolith to experiment with. And any such technique needs to then be developed into specific equipment that works under extreme Martian conditions, in low gravity, with little or no maintenance.

I'm not saying that it's not possible. It might be. It might not be. But these are all things that need to be hypothesized, experimented, and developed into working solutions. None of that can simply be done in a couple of iterations or handwaved away. These are vital technologies that need to be properly investigated.

Edited September 30, 2016 by Nibb31

[Northstar1989]

1 hour ago, Rune said:

But even if the cost was equal, it still wouldn't make much sense, really. You would have an awful lot of redundant equipment that doesn't increase you reliability, because it's spread out. You would need two ECLSS, one for the cycler and one for the transit ship. Two power systems, two habitats... and by design they will have to be different, since if they were the same there would be no point in using the cycler. You would need more total dV, too, since the cycler needs it's own corrections (which however minute, are applied to a large mass by design, so not insignificant amounts of fuel), and the hyperbolic rendezvous is not as efficient as a straight shot from Earth.

All those things would not increase costs at all, since you could literally just build the exact same ITS twice, and use one as a Cycler and one as an interceptor.  The Delta-V needed to establish a Cycler Orbit is almost exactly the same as the Delta-V needed to make a 5-month transfer to Mars, so it's actually a bit LESS than the ITS already uses for its TMI at some of the better transfer-windows.  And the Delta-V needed for course-corrections is quite a lot less than the Delta-V an ITS already packs for a Mars capture and propulsive landing.

So basically, there's no issue with just using an ITS as the Cycler and an ITA as an interceptor.  Anything beyond that is just about improving the efficiency even further.

The difference in Delta-V needed to actually rendezvous with the Ctcler Ship vs establishing basically the exact same orbit without rendezvous is not very significant- and definitely covered by the cost-savings of the Cycler mission architecture and the surplus Delta-V the ITS already has built into its budget- *especially* at those transfer windows where the ITS could already reach Mars in 3 months instead of 5.

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited September 30, 2016 by Northstar1989

[DerekL1963]

Jeez space fandom is fickle...  For nearly half a century I've been watching people complain that we needed to get off our butts and get to Mars, and now that someone is doing just that - everyone is complaining that he's doing it wrong!

/me shakeshead

 

[Nibb31]

4 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

All those things would not increase costs ar all, since you could literally just build the exact same ITS twice, and use one as a Cycler and one as an interceptor. 

As I said already, this just doubles the habitable space, which is pointless and not worth the extra complexity.

Quote

So basically, there's no issue with just using an ITS as the Cycler and an ITA as an interceptor.  

There is. You get a much shorter launch window (I think you missed my previous reply)

Edited September 30, 2016 by Nibb31

[Northstar1989]

9 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

As I said already, this just doubles the habitable space, which is pointless and not worth the extra complexity.

There is. You get a much shorter launch window (I think you missed my previous reply)

The shorter launch-window is worth the hassle, and doesn't increase costs at all if you do it right.  And did you not catch the point about cramming twice as many colonists into the Interceptor ITS since you will have twice the habitable space for most of the journey?

For one transfer-window  you get the crew complement of two ITS launches to Mars for the cost of launching two ITS's, so the costs are flat.  The second transfer-window when you don't need to launch another Cycler ITS as one is already in orbit, you get the same number if colonists as FOUR launches, for the cost of just three.  On the third window, it's 6 times the crew for 4 times the cost.  And so on and so forth, approaching a limit of half the cost until you need to eventually replace the Cycler ITS due to its age.

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited September 30, 2016 by Northstar1989

[CatastrophicFailure]

17 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Jeez space fandom is fickle...  For nearly half a century I've been watching people complain that we needed to get off our butts and get to Mars, and now that someone is doing just that - everyone is complaining that he's doing it wrong!

/me shakeshead

 

Welcome to huuuuuuuuuuuuumanity!

The only thing we're better at than complaining without action is telling some other guy he's doing it wrong!