Mars Colonization Discussion Thread

[DAL59]

29 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

whose long-term ecological impact remains to be seen

Part of the point of solar city.  

[Diche Bach]

1 minute ago, DAL59 said:

Yes.  If you are trying to critize Musk, start your own thread.  Just talk about SpaceX please.

It was a problem that had never happened in any other rocket ever.  And it wasn't an actual launch.  SpaceX controls the majority of the launch market.

He should.  It allows him to do audacious things instead of backing away.

Yes, like the multi-billion dollar bullet train scheme for California which came and went . . . ? Or has this project progressed and I'm merely being an ignorant, illiterate luddite?

 

[DAL59]

No...but it is true.

Just now, Diche Bach said:

Or has this project progressed

Yes.  He's having teams compete for funding, and Maryland just gave him the go ahead for construction.  

[Green Baron]

I like the 2018 statistics They really had more than 50% in 2018, wow !

Edited November 3, 2017 by Green Baron

[Diche Bach]

1 minute ago, Green Baron said:

I like the 2018 statistics They really had more than 50% in 2018, wow !

If you are a female, I love you. If you're a dude, you are way cool bro!

[DAL59]

3 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

I like the 2018 statistics They really had more than 50% in 2018, wow !

I should have read those numbers...

[Green Baron]

Good night, guys, see you all tomorrow !

[DAL59]

Yeah...we've been doing this for 2 hours.  

3 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

see you all tomorrow !

Me too

[insert_name]

10 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

I like the 2018 statistics They really had more than 50% in 2018, wow !

judging by the title, this is referring to the dates of launch contracts awarded rather than actual launches, if it were reflecting actual launches the other U.S. would reflect the Minotaur C that launched this week

[PB666]

On 11/1/2017 at 11:18 PM, tater said:

https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/traj_browser.php?NEAs=on&NECs=on&chk_maxMag=on&maxMag=25&chk_maxOCC=on&maxOCC=4&chk_target_list=on&target_list=Mars&mission_class=oneway&mission_type=rendezvous&LD1=2018&LD2=2040&maxDT=2.5&DTunit=yrs&maxDV=7.0&min=DV&wdw_width=-1&submit=Search#a_load_results

Firefox will not load, says threat to computer embedded in the web site (maybe sniffer application).

1 hour ago, tater said:

I don't hear him as a messiah in the least. He talks about it the same way I would---"where the %$#@%$# is my Moon base I was promised as a kid?"

Multiplanetary species is entirely descriptive of his aspirational goal of a human colony on Mars. Unlike some here, he doesn't pretend that there is an economic reason, he literally says it's the sort of world he wants to live it---a science fiction future many of us of his age sort of thought we'd already have.

I disagree with the whole Mars thing, myself, but if people were living permanently on Mars, his description would be correct.

 

They can give NASA a public funding arm (like PBS) in which people contribute to the future space projects they want.

[insert_name]

6 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Firefox will not load, says threat to computer embedded in the web site (maybe sniffer application).

They can give NASA a public funding arm (like PBS) in which people contribute to the future space projects they want.

its a nasa site, I doubt its anything malicious, probably a network issue

Edited November 3, 2017 by insert_name

[PB666]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Are you a native English speaker? I've had a few cues that you are not. This phrase has a connotation that you seem to be missing. SpaceX is real. It's cheaper than competitors, and doing everything it promised to do. Timing not being spot-on is meaningless with new technologies, and the tight business model they started with (Musk is not in fact that rich, unlike Bezos).

Solar city is nonsense, clearly. Tesla has some issues, but the car market is hard in the US (look at trying to open dealerships, it's rigged against new competitors).

The snake oil thing WRT SpaceX just doesn't work.

With regard to F9 and F9 heavy, no. But with regard to ITS, it is a bit snake-oily. They had an imagine of it passing by Saturn . . . .seriously . . . . . 3 year journey to Saturn for a flyby.

[Canopus]

16 minutes ago, PB666 said:

With regard to F9 and F9 heavy, no. But with regard to ITS, it is a bit snake-oily. They had an imagine of it passing by Saturn . . . .seriously . . . . . 3 year journey to Saturn for a flyby.

They also show it landed on Europa, which is equally ridiculous, and the Video that suggest these will be used as an Alternative to Airplanes is pretty bad too.

[DAL59]

4 minutes ago, Canopus said:

nd the Video that suggest these will be used as an Alternative to Airplanes is pretty bad too.

for the military though...

23 minutes ago, PB666 said:

3 year journey to Saturn for a flyby.

So?  With a smaller crew, the life support could last that long.  

24 minutes ago, PB666 said:

it is a bit snake-oily

The why are they devoting their employees to it?  Even if it costs 10 times more than estimated, it will still be more efficient then any other rocket.

[Canopus]

10 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

for the military though...

This idea is pretty old but i don't see any real world application for it.

Edited November 3, 2017 by Canopus

[DAL59]

1 hour transport of 150 tons anywhere for less than 20 million?  

[Canopus]

3 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

1 hour transport of 150 tons anywhere for less than 20 million?  

Unless you have the Rocket on standby all the time there will be no time advantage. And why would you need such a fast transport anyway?

[DAL59]

Just now, Canopus said:

And why would you need such a fast transport anyway?

Invasions(a drop ship)?

Sure, it wouldn't be useful in day to day things, but they could get a huge defense contract.  

[Canopus]

13 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Invasions(a drop ship)?

Sure, it wouldn't be useful in day to day things, but they could get a huge defense contract.  

Invasions don't work like Normandy Landings anymore. 150 tons is just enough for two modern Battle Tanks. Not really a meaningful force even if you send ten Rockets. The only thing i could imagine such a fast deployment to be helpful in is special forces operations. But then a BFR landing in some field isn't exactly stealthy. 

Edited November 3, 2017 by Canopus

[DAL59]

2 hours ago, Canopus said:

But then a BFR landing in some field isn't exactly stealthy. 

Very sudden.  And very hard to shoot down.  And you can keep BFRs in a geosynchronous orbit, ready to drop down on a spot.   SYOT(Start your own thread)

[PB666]

4 hours ago, Canopus said:

They also show it landed on Europa, which is equally ridiculous, and the Video that suggest these will be used as an Alternative to Airplanes is pretty bad too.

Lots of trees have died to make paper plans for space ships that never went anywhere.

If someone is telling me they are devoting much of their dev staff to work on the plans, I would say what they are showing me at present is only a concept, one in which they do no know will work or not.

You couldn't get me stuck on a ship like that for 5 to 7 months.

Ahh and I have been practicing my Mars Aerobraking stuff. I have tried several methods. Again I am using  the super efficient RL-10B engines, the problem is to get back in orbit you need 4300 dV of fuel, and that is not easy to land, you'de need like 5500 to land and 4300 to return. Since wings get trashed before landing that bit of weight can be ingored except as a transfer cost. I have managed to get landings down to 400 dV, using RCS thrusters during decent to control position and augment lift. But again RL10b-2 is fantasy engine. How do you get the hydrogen to Mars, and of course the return launch window is a long way from the landing timeframes which means efficient cryogenic storage is expensive. This may be why Musk is focused on Methane. But he still has to liquify it and keep it and oxygen liquified. The other problem with RL10b uses an ablative nozzle that has a finite duty cycle, this speaks major problems since for any mars landing and return mission you need a very efficient engine, low TWR and has an infinite duty cycle.

You gotto have alot (alot more than they show) of wing to get adequate lift to stay aloft long enough to slow down. The vehicle I had the best results with look like a cross between the red-baron tri-wing and the Wright flyer. It took me down to 500 m/s in which I drop the wings and landed just like on the Mun. Coming out of Mars those wings do not offer any advantage.

I managed to put 500T at a = 1900 km LEO with the 68As (a bucket load of them, I'm working to get a single palyoad of 1 KT - I figure that is what it would take to make a manned - not kerbaled, but human size crew compartment landing on Mercury). Its not hard but you need a scale of rocket a magnitude larger and more powerful than the current falcon or falcon-heavy.  This discussion about putting a 150T load in LEO for the current cost of an F9 . . . . nope.

If I were space X I would be dreaming about putting a factory in MEO first,  a place where you can finish off a Martian landing vessel. The mass of the aerobrakes great (increaesed total mass by 40%) but they are way to bulky to accelerate through earths atmosphere to 7850 m/s.

 

[PB666]

4 hours ago, Canopus said:

Invasions don't work like Normandy Landings anymore. 150 tons is just enough for two modern Battle Tanks. Not really a meaningful force even if you send ten Rockets. The only thing i could imagine such a fast deployment to be helpful in is special forces operations. But then a BFR landing in some field isn't exactly stealthy. 

If you are using space to bring in an army, seriously don't wast the time on arming men, remote warfare is the future of warfare.  We have soldiers in Iraq and Syria to run computers and feed info to the locals, but the eyes in the sky is where the business is being done. If you take a look at these, civilians evacuate . . . . . . .any number of modern wave-form weapons and automated robots can be used to basically 'bomb' the holdouts.

[tater]

7 hours ago, Diche Bach said:

You have yet to answer my question of whom and how SpaceX benefits.

And now you have brought my native language experience into the discussion. Ha! Well that is a bit of a curve ball! 

How did you do on the language portion of your GRE? I scored in the 99% myself, so I suggest that whether I am a "native speaker" or not is not a distraction with which you should concern yourself. Little edification to be gathered there, rest assured . . .

Apparently you are fixated on the specific nature of "snake oil" within the metaphor of "snake oil salesman." This is understandable for someone who is not well-read in English literature broadly, or the full gamut of modern Internet-based parlance across the range of existing tropes. A metaphor can be difficult to comprehend, but they are also a rich part of the English language.

In any event . . . perhaps I am too hard on Mr. Musk. The President (both of the most recent two in fact!) seem to regard him with some respect and admiration, so he cannot be all bad I suppose.

I would adore Mr. Musk if he would propose something practical like a permanent, habitable space station in Earth orbit that can serve as the launching point for the yet to be initiated "space age."

My point was very much the requirement for knowing fraud for "snake oil" to be the term used. SpaceX flies rockets for customers, and reuses them (for it's own set of internal goals). If you think Musk is selling a fraudulent product in the Falcon 9, then the term fits. Perhaps you should tell his customers that their spacecraft are not in fact in orbit---a requirement for the fraud claim to be true in this case.

So yes, the misuse of snake oil salesman with respect to Musk and SpaceX is the sole source of my question about native language---because I cut people slack for a second language, particularly idiom, so the defensive bits above are a little inappropriate. My own ability in the two non-English languages I learned in school is abysmal, since I have virtually no need to ever use them, and any attempt at idiom by me would be dangerous (assuming I could even manage it, which is a rather large assumption). BTW, I'd not be surprised if my great, great grandfather actually sold "snake oil" among many other oddball business ventures after moving here from Sweden, so I have some understanding there, as well (and a great, great uncle was an early chiropractor, so he certainly sold metaphoric snake oil (because that is pure quackery)).

Anyway, we are largely on the same page regarding colonization. That said, I actually think that the next SpaceX launch vehicle (BFR/BFS) is a huge game changer due to full reusability. I think it opens possibilities that would not otherwise be exist, even though I think that Mars is not ever likely as a colony, and I'm clearly dubious about colonies in general.

Musk has made a point to not say that he'd make a Mars colony, but that he'd be the transport for such a thing... that immunizes him from selling the actual snake oil of a working colony that can function economically, even if he'd like to see it happen. If he's selling colony real estate, I might be on your side  .

 

 

The transport utility on Earth is far fetched, but the goal of his powerpoint presentation was about showing what such a generalized vehicle could do, not what it would do. The C-47 (DC-3) was imagined to be a passenger aircraft, and small cargoes, I'm sure no one at Douglas considered that in the SWPA in WW2 they'd cut apart bulldozers, and use C-47s to transport them into the jungle.

I don't take those images (or Europa, etc) as selling much of anything, since there are not really customers for that in the foreseeable future. If he was selling tickets for flights to Europa, then I'd be jumping down his throat, too.

Virgin has how many sales for rides, for example? BFR doesn't have any preorders of satellites, for example, that would not happen until people started seeing the "grasshopper" test flights at the very soonest.

Edited November 4, 2017 by tater

[tater]

6 hours ago, Green Baron said:

I like the 2018 statistics They really had more than 50% in 2018, wow !

To be fair, the chart says "Awarded Global Commercial Launch..." This means contracts to launch. It's not impossible that SpaceX has an over 50% share of contracts, particularly given the post-accident delays that extended their backlog.

I don't have an educated opinion on it past just reading the header use of "awarded," however. 

[tater]

6 hours ago, Diche Bach said:

Yes, like the multi-billion dollar bullet train scheme for California which came and went . . . ? Or has this project progressed and I'm merely being an ignorant, illiterate luddite?

I think we likely agree on a lot of this stuff, but in the context of this conversation, I'm limiting myself to SpaceX, not his other ventures.

I don't know what to make of the boring and hyper loop stuff, honestly. Tesla seems like a decent idea, but they need to deliver more cars. The people I know who have them, love them, however. I know a Tesla programmer as well who has a couple of them, and uses self-driving most of the time he's in the car. I agree that the range is less than ideal, particularly in the Western US, where a common trip would turn into a bit of an adventure in a Tesla due to range issues, particularly in summer (AC draining batteries).

I've suggested that if he wants people to move to Mars, perhaps he should try and make places like LA more, not less dystopian, so Mars looks more attractive by comparison.