IAC Today!

[regex]

Just now, tater said:

A large issue is the height of the thing, IMO. It's gonna look like old-school notions of space travel.

Unload that puppy with a crane, lol.

Yeah, you gotta wonder if the MCT includes a crane...

[tater]

If you look at either Mars Direct, or some of the DRM/DRAs from NASA, they hab unit tends to be a squat cylinder (though some designs have biconic vehicles). For any long-term habitation, you'd want some soil on top for shielding. I suppose that's the "flat pack" cargo. The 0.38g will certainly help. I'd presume they'd have a crane with a gondola for crew transfer to the ground. I'd still expect some sort of ladder just in case, though.

[tater]

Wonder what you could charge 1-200 people for a jaunt to the moon.

[Illyrian]

One thing was planned to go to Moon, other thing went to Moon. ITS and BFR should be changed in same amount of details.

 

 

This was crew vehicle by von Braun? ITS is almost same, but with shell?

[DerekL1963]

2 hours ago, _Augustus_ said:

The next president may very well take up that offer anyways and mothball SLS....

The President has about as much control over the Senate Launch System as you or I do.   And about one ten thousandth of the desire to do anything about.

[Montieth]

11 hours ago, Nefrums said:

Digging a hole and building in that makes no sense.  It will be simpler to build on the surface with some form of locally made mars concrete and just cover that with more mars dirt if needed.

Depends on the stability of the soil, what you have to dig and a number of other conditions. If a large trenching machine can be assembled on site...then you have an easy way to get sub surface habitation. 

[ProtoJeb21]

7 hours ago, Aerospacer said:

Bravo, Elon. It was really Impressively.

Especially this:

 

Remind me again, is Elon Musk a Kerbal Space Program fan? Because that rocket looks very Kerbal.

MOAR BOOSTERS!!!

Edited September 29, 2016 by ProtoJeb21

[Eklykti]

On 28.09.2016 at 9:25 PM, monstah said:

That bothered me when Elon said it. Sure, the ships are Earthbound anyway, but adding mass to them costs fuel, and exponentially so. "Nothing is for free" is the only law of economics/society that is actually enforced by nature.

Actually, it will be almost free for up to about 200+ tons of payload (including cargo and returning passengers)

Given liftoff delta-v of 3800 m/s, transfer 2500 m/s, and Earth landing (pessimistically) 500 m/s, it will be able to carry about 228649 kilograms back with no additional refueling on Mars orbit:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=9.8+*+382+*+ln((2100000+%2B+x)+%2F+(150000+%2B+x))+%3D+(6300+%2B+500)

Edited September 30, 2016 by Eklykti