Mars Colonial Transporter: What will it look like?

[NSEP]

So, Mr. Musk told the world some time ago that SpaceX is working on a revolutionary but kind of ridicoilous spaceship called the Mars Colonial Transporter. I did not know much about that thing, so i just searched it on wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Colonial_Transporter

It blew my mind, it claims it is could carry 100 tons to Mars. If you want to do that, you need a BFS and a BFR, A Big Freaking Spaceship and a Big Freaking Rocket! So what will it look like? Here are some concepts by some awesome people out there: (post us your ideas if you want)

By Michel Residence https://michelresidence.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/mars-colonial-transporter/

By someone unkown (but its awesome, thanks for making this cool drawing, person!)

And of course, we have a month before the real thing comes out. But dreaming is good too.

Here is mine, very bad handwriting but what do you think?

Edited August 25, 2016 by NSEP

[wumpus]

Long, thin, pointy, big.  Basically rocket shaped when on the pad, and probably Saturn V sized.  There aren't a whole lot of options left for this type of thing.

In flight (out of the atmosphere)?  Pretty much whatever they want.  Expect it to look a lot like the ISS and Mir, as various sections held together by a long thin "backbone" seems to be the only tested means of building structures in orbit.

[Kerbal01]

All speculation will be pointless come Friday Sept 27th @ 13:30 local guadalaja time. Lets wait until then.

Edited August 24, 2016 by DarthVader

[kerbiloid]

It will look like something what you would definitely want to order, buy and put on your table.

[Scotius]

I hope there will be voting process for the name of the first ship I bet top three proposals will be: Enterprise, Hermes and Ares

[Findthepin1]

3 hours ago, Scotius said:

I hope there will be voting process for the name of the first ship I bet top three proposals will be: Enterprise, Hermes and Ares

What about Spaceshipy McSpaceshipface?

Edited August 24, 2016 by Findthepin1

[NSEP]

5 hours ago, DarthVader said:

All speculation will be pointless come Friday Sept 27th @ 13:30 local guadalaja time. Lets wait until then.

Yeah, but lets geuss from all the data we got. Because geussing is fun!

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

I would think that you could build a great modular spacecraft using falcon heavy. I also heard that they  might use ntr and hall thrusters. I don't think so though.

[RedKraken]

I've been playing with BFR/MCT models in realism overhaul.

So far i have a 4200t beast :

    3-core format with crossfeed. 

    27 raptors for launch.

    twr 1.30 at liftoff.

The upper stage (MCT) is only partly fueled on launch and must be refueled in LEO before the TMI burn.

After the 4000 m/s TMI burn there is about 1800 m/s fuel left for landing on mars.

Mars insertion velocity is about 6000 m/s, most of this is wiped off with aerobraking.

After all this, i can still only wrangle 75t to the surface. Landing sites are limited to low elevations.

 

Edited August 25, 2016 by RedKraken

[insert_name]

I'm extremely doubtful that MCT would be modular because of the extra mass of the docking ports and avionics for each module. I mean if you are making a big freaking rocket you might as well make a big freaking spacecraft. 

[Mitchz95]

If this thing does get built, I wonder what kind of spin-offs we'll see. A (relatively) cheap colony ship capable of delivering 100 tonnes of crew and cargo to the surface of Mars could conceivable be modified to carry a small crew and a lot of scientific equipment to Jupiter, for instance...

It would be cool if every MCT was named after a famous science-fiction ship. Enterprise, Discovery, Galactica... lots to choose from.

Anyway, found this concept image from a while back. Looks cool. Not sure how practical it is, though.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Mitchz95

[hms_warrior]

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?board=72.0

imho the best source for anything spaceX - Mars related. There is an extensive MCT speculation thread (actualy allready the 4th of it).

[RedKraken]

The nasa forums are awesome. 

[Streetwind]

7 hours ago, RedKraken said:

I've been playing with BFR/MCT models in realism overhaul.

So far i have a 4200t beast :

    3-core format with crossfeed. 

    27 raptors for launch.

    twr 1.30 at liftoff.

The upper stage is only partly fueled on launch and must be refueled in LEO before the TMI burn.

After the 4000 m/s TMI burn there is about 1800 m/s fuel left for landing on mars.

Mars insertion velocity is about 6000 m/s, most of this is wiped off with aerobraking.

After all this, i can still only wrangle 75t to the surface. Landing sites are limited to low elevations.

 

And now picture the fact that by all accounts and statements so far, BFR is going to be a single-core rocket It's probably going to be halfway between a Saturn V and a Sea Dragon. NASA is not going to be claiming "largest rocket ever" for their SLS Block II for long...!

[RedKraken]

Yep....single core will be truly massive. Interesting times!

[kerbiloid]

56 minutes ago, Streetwind said:

Sea Dragon

Sea Dragon. They knew...

[Nibb31]

I think it will probably be two vehicles:

- BFR: A huge reusable first stage.

- BFS: An oversized Dragon. It will work as an upper-stage for getting to LEO, then it can be refueled by a couple of other BFS.

So basically, you need at least 2 BFS. One carries cargo to Mars. The other is used for refueling the first in LEO. You might need to wait for 2 or 3 refueling flights before you perform the Mars transfer burn.

You will need some sort of ISRU to get back, so the first cargo flight is going to need to carry an ISRU propellant plant.

Of course, this is a lot of technology to develop: HLV, ISRU, refueling, life support, interplanetary heavy propulsive landing, etc...  SpaceX can't realistically develop all of that in-house in less than a decade or two. 

[RedKraken]

35 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Of course, this is a lot of technology to develop: HLV, ISRU, refueling, life support, interplanetary heavy propulsive landing, etc...  SpaceX can't realistically develop all of that in-house in less than a decade or two. 

I agree...A lot of (really hard) things have to go right.

It took five attempts just to land a first stage back on earth under well-known conditions.

Heavy EDL is the show-stopper. You can only attempt every two years. Takes 6 months to get the results. You cant pull apart the wreck on a fail.

You probably have seen this...Larry Lemke's propulsive landing talk from 2014 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoSKHzziLKw

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I'm betting that the rocket will just be a first stage, which returns to landing pad. The spacecraft acts as the second stage and arrives in orbit (with its full payload but with no fuel).

Also think it will be more of a large capsule shape than something like the Hermes. If it is designed to land on Mars and Earth a thin ISS like structure won't work.

 

(I'm also betting that the whole thing will never happen as the money just can't appear from nowhere)

[ScriptKitt3h]

3 hours ago, Frozen_Heart said:

(I'm also betting that the whole thing will never happen as the money just can't appear from nowhere)

I think it may happen- at least once. Why? Musk's proven that he's willing to sacrifice a lot (financially) to achieve his goals, and once at least one flight or successful series of demonstrations occur, there's more than likely going to be some major political and economic interest in the project. Plus, if the BFR and MCT utilize as much of the tech that SpaceX has already as they can, costs might not be as high as necessarily projected. However, we won't know for sure, since we've still got weeks until the unveiling in September.

[Nibb31]

57 minutes ago, ScriptKitt3h said:

I think it may happen- at least once. Why? Musk's proven that he's willing to sacrifice a lot (financially) to achieve his goals,

How so? Most of his achievements were strongly subsidized by the US government and had a clearly defined customer base and business plan. Mars is nothing like that.

Quote

and once at least one flight or successful series of demonstrations occur, there's more than likely going to be some major political and economic interest in the project. Plus, if the BFR and MCT utilize as much of the tech that SpaceX has already as they can, costs might not be as high as necessarily projected. However, we won't know for sure, since we've still got weeks until the unveiling in September.

As I mentioned above, there is a lot of tech that needs to be developed and much of the tech that they do have doesn't apply. For example, most of their precision landing experience doesn't apply to Mars because those systems are based on GPS. They can't build their own GPS network on Mars (GPS sats are freaking expensive) so they will need to develop a whole new system based on optical recognition, prelanded nav beacons, or some other tech that doesn't exist yet.

As RedKraken said, their iterative development method won't work too well with launch windows every 24 months. They won't be able to afford rapid prototyping and crashing stuff to see if it works the way they usually do. Certifying a man-rated life support system and life-dependent reliable ISRU and refueling techniques is going to need many development flights before they can risk human lives on those technologies, and debugging is hard in these conditions.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Nibb31

[PB666]

18 hours ago, Findthepin1 said:

What about Spaceshipy McSpaceshipface?

Dude, when haven't we had a naming discussion in which this has not come up.

Be creative, how about Elon Erotica or X-pensive

[NSEP]

9 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Dude, when haven't we had a naming discussion in which this has not come up.

Be creative, how about Elon Erotica or X-pensive

X-pensive is the best one lol.

[Gaarst]

It will look like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[NSEP]

Just now, Gaarst said:

It will look like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can sadly not see the image, is it me or...