Kickstarter to mars ?

[fredinno]

On May 26, 2013 at 1:43 AM, lyndonguitar said:

I would want this, We have the Technology to do it, the only real reason why no ones been to mars, or even to the moon since the 70s, is money.

If you have money, nothing is impossible. Maybe we don't have the safest way to go to mars yet, but at the least we could go there alive, even if it will only be a one-way journey. A lot of explorers in the past gambled, and have gone very long one-way journeys to other continents. A lot of people have the balls to do it, they only lack the resources

The Mars One program will actually be fund-raised by the people, Donations, Charities, Sponsors, Reality TV shows, etc. not really the actual crowd like Kickstarter, but its close.

but I don't think that Mars one mission will actually happen anyway

And Mars One has a long way to go, it takes $50 Million for mars Direct, a plan considered too optimistic by NASA, and Mars One doen't even have the $6 Billion it says it needs.

4 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Imma reviving this thread!

India did an orbiter for 76 million USD, so it's not entirely impossible if it's a flyby, and not a orbiter or lander/rover. So I guess the question should be, What's the lowest possible cost for a Mars probe flyby?

Also, where in the OP did he/she say it was a manned kickstarted mission?

Welp. NASA's cost cap for low-cost probes (Medium Explorer) are $70 Million USD, a program which wa used for a proposed cometary flyby mission. The next lowest, the $35 Million Small Explorers Program, has not been used for any planetary program, to my knowledge. You can, however, get smaller by piggybacking on another probe, Like Deep Space 2 did, and apparently get some decent science. Deep Space 2's twin probes were $30 Million. However, inflation raises that to $43 Million. Granted, you can probably reduce that to $40 Million due to tech advances, but the piggyback idea is where I'd start- even though Deep Space 2 would be somewhat ambitious.

http://explorers.gsfc.nasa.gov/ex.html#tess

3 hours ago, p1t1o said:

This may be disappointing/surprising to most, given this is the KSP forums, but I am actually *not* in favour of extravagant space exploration until we have sh** more sorted down here on Earth - until money isn't the problem any more.

Then we can *really* get going.

Sure it might take a century or so, but space isn't going anywhere, and there isn't much chance of an extinction level event in that that kinda timeframe.

That is probably a debate for another thread though!

Yeah, right. If that happens, we will never get off Earth. There were problems in Spain in the 1500s when Columbus set off to the Americas, you know. 

[KSK]

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

This may be disappointing/surprising to most, given this is the KSP forums, but I am actually *not* in favour of extravagant space exploration until we have sh** more sorted down here on Earth - until money isn't the problem any more.

Then we can *really* get going.

Sure it might take a century or so, but space isn't going anywhere, and there isn't much chance of an extinction level event in that that kinda timeframe.

That is probably a debate for another thread though!

I see this question come around every so often...

4 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Now, if you could have got Facebook to spend $22 billion cash on something of  real value instead of buying Whatsapp...

And this pretty much sums up my answer. It's not like we don't squander money on a vast number of pointless things here on Earth, that could be used to... do all sorts of good stuff that I'll refrain from listing in case this thread gets locked for mentioning the P word. Yet somehow spaceflight is the poster child for frivolous spending.

[PB666]

On 5/26/2013 at 9:44 AM, The Stinger said:

The fact that they don't show any solid plans, doesn't mean that they don't have them.

There is just no reason to show the public a WIP plan.

They've contracts running with companies involved in various space exploration sectors.

They also have a list advisors, people who actually worked for NASA, ESA, etc.

Their only hurdle is money. They just need enough to get the snowball rolling.

Please. Who has a valid plan?

[Bill Phil]

NASa can't take donations.

3 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Please. Who has a valid plan?

Every space agency... Plans are easy to make. Good ones, not so much, valid ones, a lot harder. But NASA, ESA, and Roscosmos all have plans, of varying validity.

Also, von Braun's 1969 plan is extremely valid. Heck, his 1952 plan is. 

[PB666]

By valid I mean technologically complete means of keep folks alive and getting them down and back, alive. Nope, nope nope, nothing. Roughly speaking anything can be published, practically speaking nothing that can be practiced.

[Kerbart]

And here's what your support options are

$1,000 will get you the Bronze package; you can watch the launch from our private webcast. [AVAILABLE]
$10,000 will get you the Copper package; you are invited to watch the launch live from Mogadishu Spaceport! [SOLD OUT]
$50,000 will get you the Silver package; you can view the launch straight from the launch tower. HOT! [AVAILABLE]
$100,000 will get you the Gold package; a seat on one of the first five rockets. GET UP WHILE YOU CAN!! YEEHAA! [AVAILABLE]
$250,000 will get you the Platinum package; a seat in one of the first five rockets. MARS HERE I COME!! [SOLD OUT]
$500,000 will get you the Diamond package; a guaranteed seat in the return vessel* [SOLD OUT]

 

* Additional fees may apply and will not be announced later than 5 minutes before launch of the Mars Return Vessel

 

[Bill Phil]

2 hours ago, PB666 said:

By valid I mean technologically complete means of keep folks alive and getting them down and back, alive. Nope, nope nope, nothing. Roughly speaking anything can be published, practically speaking nothing that can be practiced.

Keeping folks alive is easy, believe it or not. Moving that hardware around is the hard part.

For folks, you just need food, water, oxygen and good pressure. If you're going long term some artifical gravity is a good idea. And that's not hard either. A bola design could be built, and Project Orion could send thousands of tons to Mars in the 60s, so....

Have you seen any of von Braun's plans? Some are more complete than anything you can dream of. Definitely conplete enough for getting them there and back again.

[fredinno]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

Keeping folks alive is easy, believe it or not. Moving that hardware around is the hard part.

For folks, you just need food, water, oxygen and good pressure. If you're going long term some artifical gravity is a good idea. And that's not hard either. A bola design could be built, and Project Orion could send thousands of tons to Mars in the 60s, so....

Have you seen any of von Braun's plans? Some are more complete than anything you can dream of. Definitely conplete enough for getting them there and back again.

You also need a bit of living space too.

[Bill Phil]

45 minutes ago, fredinno said:

You also need a bit of living space too.

Yeah, that's true. What makes it hard is actually moving it all. Plus radiation shielding...

[PB666]

3 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Keeping folks alive is easy, believe it or not. Moving that hardware around is the hard part.

For folks, you just need food, water, oxygen and good pressure. If you're going long term some artifical gravity is a good idea. And that's not hard either. A bola design could be built, and Project Orion could send thousands of tons to Mars in the 60s, so....

Have you seen any of von Braun's plans? Some are more complete than anything you can dream of. Definitely conplete enough for getting them there and back again.

Seen the von Braun plans on TV briefly. Plausible but not valid.

Food no problem, 2400 calories per day packs nicely, Water no problem, recycle urine, oxygen well, its not that you need oxygen, you need to keep a vapor pressure above 0.2 ATM and keep CO2 well below 0.05ATM which means you need to carry a hydroxide or oxide of metal along to scrub. For every pound of food you need maybe 10 lbs of air (with tanks, scubbers, etc). Artificial gravity, not going to be useful in a soyuz style craft, radius is too small, you need bigger structure. Next you need a power supply, couple of space station sized panels would do. Project Orion was never anything more than a proposal, its hardly valid. So now we get to what we have . . . . . . . . \

For shipping supplies and fuel - solar panels and xenon (it would take a decade to set up the staging areas).

For landing on Mars and then reorbiting - hand wave alot, nothing exists.

For safely protecting travelers in space outside of earths magnetic field for 2.5 years - hardly credible.

For the tour d'France you need a multispeed  racing bike, and we are still flirting about on training wheels.

Well folks have voted and thinks its a fraud or something (maybe what trump was inferring with his small hands).

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

Seen the von Braun plans on TV briefly. Plausible but not valid.

Food no problem, 2400 calories per day packs nicely, Water no problem, recycle urine, oxygen well, its not that you need oxygen, you need to keep a vapor pressure above 0.2 ATM and keep CO2 well below 0.05ATM which means you need to carry a hydroxide or oxide of metal along to scrub. For every pound of food you need maybe 10 lbs of air (with tanks, scubbers, etc). Artificial gravity, not going to be useful in a soyuz style craft, radius is too small, you need bigger structure. Next you need a power supply, couple of space station sized panels would do. Project Orion was never anything more than a proposal, its hardly valid. So now we get to what we have . . . . . . . . \

For shipping supplies and fuel - solar panels and xenon (it would take a decade to set up the staging areas).

For landing on Mars and then reorbiting - hand wave alot, nothing exists.

For safely protecting travelers in space outside of earths magnetic field for 2.5 years - hardly credible.

For the tour d'France you need a multispeed  racing bike, and we are still flirting about on training wheels.

Well folks have voted and thinks its a fraud or something (maybe what trump was inferring with his small hands).

Von Braun's plans require more than brief exposure to understand.  I don't even fully understand them. Mainly because there's a whole bunch....

I don't think you know what "valid" means. It means that it's do-able. That it's workable. Not that it's complete. 

In systems engineering, there's something called the engineering "V", where you go from idea, to requirements, to implementation, plus all the in betweens.

Using your logic, we couldn't have ever gone to the moon, since none of the proposals were "valid."

Orion was a serious study, not just a proposal. There's data galore, all of which shows that it would've opened up the solar system to human exploration. Proposals are ideas, studies are options under consideration.

All of the problems you mention are handily solved by Orion. 4 weeks to Mars means low radiation dose, massive cargo allows for a varied mission architecture, and it's safer than the auto industry, even at high launch rates.

 

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

Von Braun's plans require more than brief exposure to understand.  I don't even fully understand them.

Von Braun's plans can be thoroughly understood with little more than casual exposure, which shouldn't come as much surprise because there's not really much there.  They weren't formal engineering plans or studies of the types we're used to seeing from NASA, they're essentially 'hard SF' intended to be used to gain publicity.   And PB666 is correct, they're not really valid because they used approaches we know won't work today or are far too expensive* and they're filled with engineering details** that we now know are incorrect or unworkable.   (Though to be fair, nobody else knew any better then either.)

* Such as assembling the spacecraft from girder and plate stock on orbit.

** Such as bubble canopies.

[sevenperforce]

Manned mission to Mars on a kickstarter? Nah.

Mars flyby on a kickstarter? Sure. 

Step 1. Identify some yet-unrealized science objective that can be accomplished at Mars via flyby. Maybe it's measuring magnetic field fluctuations, maybe it's sampling upper-atmosphere isotopic ratios. I don't know. 

Step 2. Partner with a university that has an active planetary research group and get one of the grad student groups to design a lightweight instrument to achieve that science objective. Get their advisor to write a grant proposal for money to build the instrument. 

Step 3. Design a spacecraft to carry the instrument, make some sexy mockups, and crowdfund the cost of building it, promising that anyone who donates over $100 will have their name engraved on it. 

Step 4. Respectfully ask Elon and NASA to use a reusable Falcon Heavy in place of a Falcon 9 for one of their ISS resupply missions, so that the upper stage has enough dV remaining to put our intrepid voyager on a Mars Transfer. 

[fredinno]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Manned mission to Mars on a kickstarter? Nah.

Mars flyby on a kickstarter? Sure. 

Step 1. Identify some yet-unrealized science objective that can be accomplished at Mars via flyby. Maybe it's measuring magnetic field fluctuations, maybe it's sampling upper-atmosphere isotopic ratios. I don't know. 

Step 2. Partner with a university that has an active planetary research group and get one of the grad student groups to design a lightweight instrument to achieve that science objective. Get their advisor to write a grant proposal for money to build the instrument. 

Step 3. Design a spacecraft to carry the instrument, make some sexy mockups, and crowdfund the cost of building it, promising that anyone who donates over $100 will have their name engraved on it. 

Step 4. Respectfully ask Elon and NASA to use a reusable Falcon Heavy in place of a Falcon 9 for one of their ISS resupply missions, so that the upper stage has enough dV remaining to put our intrepid voyager on a Mars Transfer. 

"Step 1. Identify some yet-unrealized science objective that can be accomplished at Mars via flyby. Maybe it's measuring magnetic field fluctuations, maybe it's sampling upper-atmosphere isotopic ratios. I don't know. "

Sadly, there probably is nothing. There are things like that for Uranus and Neptune, but heavily observed objects like Mars have a cr*p ton of science objectives done. NASA said that one of the reasons Mars Scout was cancelled was since the orbiters it was concentrating on were becoming less useful scientifically, apparently.

A better idea is to make a piggy-back machine, like a piggyback tiny Mars Helicopter, or Impactor. This allows the probe to save a lot of money and be a lot smaller.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4457

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_2

[Bill Phil]

14 hours ago, DerekL1963 said:

Von Braun's plans can be thoroughly understood with little more than casual exposure, which shouldn't come as much surprise because there's not really much there.  They weren't formal engineering plans or studies of the types we're used to seeing from NASA, they're essentially 'hard SF' intended to be used to gain publicity.   And PB666 is correct, they're not really valid because they used approaches we know won't work today or are far too expensive* and they're filled with engineering details** that we now know are incorrect or unworkable.   (Though to be fair, nobody else knew any better then either.)

* Such as assembling the spacecraft from girder and plate stock on orbit.

** Such as bubble canopies.

Those were the 50s plans. And they are valid. The only problem is that they're friggin massive, using inefficient fuels and engines. They weren't hard SF, he literally sat down for quite some time and worked out every detail in 1948, publicizing his designs in Collier's magazine, which ended up being a false representation, that was intended for publicity. Granted, landing with gliders wouldn't have worked, but it used data/assumptions from that time. Also, valid means "fits the requirements" which von Braun's plans certainly did.

But, in his 1969 plan, he used everything. Definitely more than hard SF, since it was a serious study that NASA undertook along with him, as well as funding the study.

[Elthy]

If you could get people to donate more than 100 billion $/€ for such a thing humanity would have allready solved all the problems keeping it from doing it without donations.

[Bill Phil]

3 hours ago, Elthy said:

If you could get people to donate more than 100 billion $/€ for such a thing humanity would have allready solved all the problems keeping it from doing it without donations.

Even with NASA's current budget it's doable. It's just that the government doesn't want them to.

Edited March 6, 2016 by Bill Phil

[DBowman]

I think you could actually (or very nearly actually) do a one man 500 day Venus and Mars flyby for about 400 million USD using current Russian hardware plus a custom 'InterPlanetary Module'. I've been investigating this for a while and have all the details for mass and cost estimates in this thread post.

The nice, and under appreciated, thing about a Venus flyby is that Venus is easy to see most every day but Mars is harder to find. It would make it easy for a parent to be able to point out the 'first star of evening' and say we threw someone right around that little star and caught them again, maybe ignite a fire in someone to do more.

[Nibb31]

 How do delete a post in this stupid forum software?

Edited March 6, 2016 by Nibb31

[fredinno]

28 minutes ago, DBowman said:

I think you could actually (or very nearly actually) do a one man 500 day Venus and Mars flyby for about 400 million USD using current Russian hardware plus a custom 'InterPlanetary Module'. I've been investigating this for a while and have all the details for mass and cost estimates in this thread post.

The nice, and under appreciated, thing about a Venus flyby is that Venus is easy to see most every day but Mars is harder to find. It would make it easy for a parent to be able to point out the 'first star of evening' and say we threw someone right around that little star and caught them again, maybe ignite a fire in someone to do more.

400 Million is likely too low if you add up R+D costs for the docking module, for example, and it's way too little space. The astronaut(s) will likely face severe psychological issues, and might go crazy with that little space. I would add maybe 2 BEAMs, at least.

However, it is a decent analysis.

 

[DBowman]

30 minutes ago, fredinno said:

400 Million is likely too low if you add up R+D costs for the docking module, for example, and it's way too little space. The astronaut(s) will likely face severe psychological issues, and might go crazy with that little space. I would add maybe 2 BEAMs, at least.

However, it is a decent analysis

I allocated 95 million for developing the 'docking module + some radiator + solar arrays + maybe some tanks' and 'running the program' - it seems like a lot of $$ but maybe it's not enough - that will take further study.

re the volume - I think it's in the 'functional' range from NASA's BAV doc - apparently they think 5 m³ would be 'tolerable' over that time scale - it looks like 'tolerable' or better is doable.

 

[fredinno]

44 minutes ago, DBowman said:

I allocated 95 million for developing the 'docking module + some radiator + solar arrays + maybe some tanks' and 'running the program' - it seems like a lot of $$ but maybe it's not enough - that will take further study.

re the volume - I think it's in the 'functional' range from NASA's BAV doc - apparently they think 5 m³ would be 'tolerable' over that time scale - it looks like 'tolerable' or better is doable.

 

I doubt the Soyuz is viable for the year+ long duration of a Mars flyby. Srsly, the 14 day gemini mission was hell. Sure, the Soyuz has more space, but in a flyby mission, the supplies will be taking up a huge amount of space, and thus basically confining you to your seat. I don't think someone would not go crazy from a year sitting.

[Temeter]

Sorry to break it to you, but this kind of stuff, including the theories, are usually just total repurposed bovine waste.

Space isn't that easy, there is a reason why e.g. SpaceX planned to do at least 30+ test flights of their near finished dragon 2 capsule before even thinking of sending people to low orbit.

As for sending big stuff to low orbit, e.g. every single SLS launch was projected to cost US$500 million in 2012. Program cost is projected to be ~7 Billion, and that's only until 2018. You won't even get people to close mars without billions of dollars, access to decades of know-how, and strong political backing.

[Spaceception]

4 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

 How do delete a post in this stupid forum software?

Report it? There's no 'delete' button anywhere here.

[fredinno]

7 hours ago, Temeter said:

Sorry to break it to you, but this kind of stuff, including the theories, are usually just total repurposed bovine waste.

Space isn't that easy, there is a reason why e.g. SpaceX planned to do at least 30+ test flights of their near finished dragon 2 capsule before even thinking of sending people to low orbit.

As for sending big stuff to low orbit, e.g. every single SLS launch was projected to cost US$500 million in 2012. Program cost is projected to be ~7 Billion, and that's only until 2018. You won't even get people to close mars without billions of dollars, access to decades of know-how, and strong political backing.

30+? srsly? Did SpaceX have a clue how much that would cost?