Elon asking for help

[Rakaydos]

14 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I'd assume that for long-haul spacecraft, the volume targets should  be based on submarines.

And to "help Musk", I'd suggest building habitat modules similar to ISS, firing them  up on a Super Heavy Booster (plus some expendable 2nd stage) and connecting them up in orbit (right now the only technical option is alongside the ISS.  That would be politically tricky.

Note that such a habitat can be reused, see the Aldrin cycler.  Of course this means you also have to pay all the delta-v to get to it, so presumably you can take your "100 passengers" and with enough refuelling pay the ~13,000 m/s delta-v needed to go from sea level to Mars intercept and dock with the cycler/habitat (hope it is big enough for 100 passengers).  How to return the Starship is up to you, and docking it and using it as a "Mars shuttle" makes the most sense (and don't be surprised if you need a lot of Starships to shuttle to the cycler to meet the window requirements).

Personally, I see cyclers as a late-colonization optimization. It actually takes more DV to reach the cycler orbit than to go to mars directly, and all it does is provide facilities that cannot be landed and used on mars. If you already HAVE space capacity on mars, that's fine, but in the early synods they can use all the pressurized volume they can land.

 

I flat disagree with the choice to use expendable upper stages to launch cycler components, though. At the very least, you want them to be refuellable "starkickers" to get the assembled cycler into it's solar orbit once completed.

[wumpus]

14 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

Personally, I see cyclers as a late-colonization optimization. It actually takes more DV to reach the cycler orbit than to go to mars directly, and all it does is provide facilities that cannot be landed and used on mars. If you already HAVE space capacity on mars, that's fine, but in the early synods they can use all the pressurized volume they can land.

I flat disagree with the choice to use expendable upper stages to launch cycler components, though. At the very least, you want them to be refuellable "starkickers" to get the assembled cycler into it's solar orbit once completed.

While it takes more delta-V, you only need to accelerate a tiny fraction of the mass to your cycler.  So it becomes wildly cheaper for every trip after the first (including the trip home from Mars).  The best argument for not doing it during an early trip to Mars is the maintenance requirements of the ISS are so extreme that there is little hope for the thing to be operable after another trip to Earth orbit and back (granted, it wouldn't have much protection orbiting Mars either).

As far as "expendable", the only important point is that it won't ever land (even on Mars).  So refuel it if you want (although assembly in LEO seems to be the only current option).  Once assembled, I'd recommend nuclear or Hall thrusters to get to L2/MTO and Starship (or similar) to take your passengers to the habitat.  The only big difference between a cycler and an expendable transfer unit (i.e. at best one round trip) would be that you'd rendezvous at L2 and burn the ~1000m/s to MTI while the passengers are on board.

[Rakaydos]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

While it takes more delta-V, you only need to accelerate a tiny fraction of the mass to your cycler.  So it becomes wildly cheaper for every trip after the first (including the trip home from Mars).  The best argument for not doing it during an early trip to Mars is the maintenance requirements of the ISS are so extreme that there is little hope for the thing to be operable after another trip to Earth orbit and back (granted, it wouldn't have much protection orbiting Mars either).

As far as "expendable", the only important point is that it won't ever land (even on Mars).  So refuel it if you want (although assembly in LEO seems to be the only current option).  Once assembled, I'd recommend nuclear or Hall thrusters to get to L2/MTO and Starship (or similar) to take your passengers to the habitat.  The only big difference between a cycler and an expendable transfer unit (i.e. at best one round trip) would be that you'd rendezvous at L2 and burn the ~1000m/s to MTI while the passengers are on board.

Indeed, cyclers are great... when they're servicing planets that can provide the same enviro plant and hab volume not landed by the cycler. I'd put that about 10 years into colonization, about 20 years from now. I would say that early missions would be more focused on building up surface infrastructure, (which gets no benifit from cyclers) than on optimizing crew size. (no 100-person colony ships until there's a cycler for them to stretch their legs during the trip, and apartments waiting for them on mars)

Edited July 14, 2021 by Rakaydos

[mikegarrison]

We already have robots driving around on Mars and doing things. I don't see why this would be some kind of impossible challenge.

It's the totally obvious move. Send a bunch of robots to prepare the base in advance. Make the return fuel. Preposition food/air/water supplies. Etc. Then you are relatively safe to send a crew.

[Deddly]

13 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

We already have robots driving around on Mars and doing things. I don't see why this would be some kind of impossible challenge.

It's the totally obvious move. Send a bunch of robots to prepare the base in advance. Make the return fuel. Preposition food/air/water supplies. Etc. Then you are relatively safe to send a crew.

I thought that was the plan

[Rakaydos]

15 minutes ago, Deddly said:

I thought that was the plan

Elon had a hard lesson with the Tesla factory about relying on overautomation. Some people in the loop make things much more reliable.

[mikegarrison]

11 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

Elon had a hard lesson with the Tesla factory about relying on overautomation. Some people in the loop make things much more reliable.

We *have* people in the loop for Mars robots. Our robots there do their tasks and then wait for instructions about what tasks to do next.

[kerbiloid]

And yes, a garage of Martian Teslas, to drive there.

***

The problem with robots is that they need instructions, while a human can make decisions immediately on their own.
"Take this stone, take those two ones, return to the rock I've seen yesterday and look around, what was blinking there. Put the hammer, take the shovel, dig here, dig there, take a hammer, scratch this stone., etc"

Also the humans are better in drilling. A drill is heavy and should consist of many parts to get deeper than a meter. 
So, the humans should drill tens of holes here and there, and this will be much more informative than a robot can see on top.

The heavy drill needs power, and accumulators are hardly appropriate, they need either a portable reactor , or (easier) a combustion engine powering the drill.
So, they need a plant to produce the drill fuel, and to fill the drill with it. Also a coolant, a lubricant, a solver (methanol or so).

A brigade of humans can do these things much easier than robots, because humans are natural, GMO-free biorobots ready to use.

The plant should be serviced by a chemist-technologist and an specialized engineer. 

All this staff will get ill, get traumas, etc. So a doctor is needed.

So, a field base crew may be 10+.

Say, a sixpack on every interplanetary ship with emergency capacity of twelve to evacuate all.

Two geologists (in shifts: one in field, gathering stones; one in lab, analyzing what to do next and having a rest)
Two shift engineers to operate the drill in shifts.
Pilot/commander/steward/whatever. The pilot is just a backup autopilot, so he is used as a boss, a helper, and a janitor, depending on needs.
A doctor.
A chemist-technologist.
A refinery engineer.
Another ship pilot.
Another ship engineer.
Another ship doctor, and at once a biologist.
Stewardess.

I.e. about 12 in total.

They can land right after the arrival, and get into the previously delivered base, to spend 1.5 years in gravity.

Also don't forget to send a pack of tungsten penetrators to dig several holes for free, and several tens of long-term meteoseismic probes before that.

After 1.5 years of drilling and climbing slopes (with layered geological epochs), such expedition will bring by orders of magnitude more Science than robots could.

Edited July 14, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Vanamonde]

A number of comments have been removed from this discussion. Disagreeing with each other is fine, but resorting to insults makes the forum a less pleasant place for everyone to visit. 

[SunlitZelkova]

19 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Also, you are just not going to get people to sign up for going to another planet and then not even being able to set foot on it.

I think this is very subjective. We just don't know whether a colony would be appealing or not until it is done.

One could just as easily argue no one is going to sign up to live in underground habitation modules for the rest of their life. EVAs are extremely orchestrated and it would be much the same for a Mars colony, so its not like colonists would be able to go for a morning jog outside of the colony every day.

Due to the nature of the colony-platform-balloon design, whereas a Mars colony would be habitation modules- effectively a spacecraft underground- it might be possible to design the interior of a floating Venus colony like a regular Earth town. This would be much more appealing than living in a metal tube.

But again, we just don't know. It is a very opinionated matter so I don't think it is reasonable to declare either a Venus or Mars colony as unmarketable and "doomed to be unpopular".

[funnelton]

On 7/13/2021 at 3:37 PM, mikegarrison said:

"Deep space" on Orion is a 3-day trip to the moon.

Bottom line is that Starship has been massively oversold as being able to carry 100 people to Mars. There is just no way. But every time anybody mentions this, fans here get all up in arms over it.

If it could take 3-4 people to Mars and back (having pre-positioned fuel and food and supplies etc.) it would be massively successful. Why people insist on defending things like 100 people to Mars  or 1000 people point-to-point is beyond my understanding.

I found a video showing how ridiculously cramped it would be in a starship with 100 people, by their calculations the max would be 17

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

23 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Also, you are just not going to get people to sign up for going to another planet and then not even being able to set foot on it.

I think this is very subjective. We just don't know whether a colony would be appealing or not until it is done.

It should be a criterion of candidate selection.

Who agrees to sign, is not ready for Mars and stays home.
Because Mars isn't Yukon, no need in adventurers there.

Edited July 15, 2021 by kerbiloid

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

It should be a criterion of candidate selection.

Who agrees to sign, is not ready for Mars and stays home.
Because Mars isn't Yukon, no need in adventurers there.

So what, draft people and force them onto the ship at gunpoint? Only send military people under official orders?

[kerbiloid]

24 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

So what, draft people and force them onto the ship at gunpoint? Only send military people under official orders?

Send specialists to do their work in prepared surroundings.

[mikegarrison]

4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Send specialists to do their work in prepared surroundings.

Specialists don't volunteer? Volunteers can't be specialists?

[tomf]

What spaceX should do is bring it a Mars colonization simulator called Oregon Mars trail. At each synodic period you get to send more colonists and material to Mars, sign colonist priorities and contend with various incidents.  In 100 years time you get points depending on how many colonists you have, how miserable they are and how much you spent on the colony.

[mikegarrison]

11 minutes ago, tomf said:

What spaceX should do is bring it a Mars colonization simulator called Oregon Mars trail. At each synodic period you get to send more colonists and material to Mars, sign colonist priorities and contend with various incidents.  In 100 years time you get points depending on how many colonists you have, how miserable they are and how much you spent on the colony.

More miserable = more points? Sounds more like a capitalism simulator.

In fact ... yeah. Call it "Mars Tycoon" and give people awards for making the most money off of the Mars colony.

Edited July 15, 2021 by mikegarrison

[kerbiloid]

33 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Specialists don't volunteer? Volunteers can't be specialists?

?
If a specialist is volunteersing for the unprepared base, he is adventurer and it's dangerous to send him to Mars.

27 minutes ago, tomf said:

What spaceX should do is bring it a Mars colonization simulator called Oregon Mars trail.

Mississippi Nirgal Trail.

Spoiler

It's like Mississippi but on Mars. The Marsissippi.

17 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Sounds more like a capitalism simulator.

The colonists will build families, compete, and rule each other. So, a feudal one.

17 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Call it "Mars Tycoon"

Jeddak. Mars Jeddak. It's like tycoon, but jeddak.

In the Russian edition - Mars Magatsitl (like jeddaks, but from Aelita). Or just Maga.

Edited July 15, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Vanamonde]

This thread has turned into a repeat of the Musk/SpaceX thread. Please take the discussion there.