SpaceX Shows Off Its Interplanetary Transport System in New Video (techcrunch.com)

Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to send humans to Mars with a ship called the Interplanetary Transport System, the company announced today in a video, revealing how the ITS will actually work. The ITS will be capable of carrying up to 100 tons of cargo -- people and supplies -- and it will utilize a slew of different power sources en route to Mars. From a report on TechCrunch: SpaceX has released a new video showing a CG concept of its Interplanetary Transport System, the rocket and spacecraft combo it plans to use to colonize Mars. The video depicts a reusable rocket that can get the interplanetary spacecraft beyond Earth's orbit, and a craft that uses solar sails to coast on its way to a Mars entry. The booster returns to Earth after separating from the shuttlecraft to pick up a booster tank full of fuel, which it then returns to orbit to fuel up the waiting spaceship. The booster craft then also returns to Earth under its own power, presumably also for re-use. The solar arrays that the spacecraft employs provide 200 kW of power, according to captions in the video.The Verge is live blogging SpaceX's conference, and has details on specs.

Comments

nice video, but the launch seems backwards

[jim.shilliday2271]

They show the spaceship being launched first, to be refueled by a drone tanker. Shouldn't the tanker be launched first? Unlike the spaceship, it can wait indefinitely in orbit if the second launch is delayed.

Re:nice video, but the launch seems backwards

[Kjella]

They show the spaceship being launched first, to be refueled by a drone tanker. Shouldn't the tanker be launched first? Unlike the spaceship, it can wait indefinitely in orbit if the second launch is delayed.

I think that whole segment is full of artistic liberty. I'm sure they'll have reuse and fuel boosters and "quick" turnaround, but the Formula One pit stop where the rocket lands right next to a fuel pod, it is hoisted in place and is ready for liftoff again is fantasy. I'd guessing that logistically they'd always do it backwards with a previously landed and refurbished rocket launching first with the fuel, then if successful a new rocket with people that afterwards lands and it refurbished. But I think it's fair to leave practical details like that out to convey the essence to non-nerds.

Re:nice video, but the launch seems backwards

[werepants]

Consider the fact that this is a promo video, just meant to demonstrate the architecture in layman's terms. In reality, sounds like during the 2-year wait between launch windows, these things will by flying continually, bringing up cargo and fuel to prep the transports. Crews will be sent up last, right before departure. Many ships are meant to make the trip simultaneously.

Re:nice video, but the launch seems backwards

[legRoom]

No point in keeping people waiting in orbit.

Actually, it's quite possible that the mass of the fuel that would be lost to boil-off is greater than the mass of extra life support required to keep the crew alive a couple of extra weeks.

As for making people wait - normally people's time is considered extremely valuable, but in this case we're talking about people who voluntarily signed up to move permanently to an isolated, barren, frozen, airless wasteland covered in abrasive, (mildly?) poisonous dust. Anyone who does so would probably rather spend the time waiting in "SPAAACCCCCEEEEE!" than on Earth, anyway.

(Or at least they think they would... perhaps sending the people up first is an opportunity to find out who's going to get cold feet before it becomes economically infeasible to bring them home? Sending up a reusable Dragon capsule to collect a few such people from LEO at the last minute is surely cheaper than dealing with the all of the horrible problems that unwilling, depressed, panicky, or constantly space-sick colonists would tend to cause.)

Re:Wow

[R3d M3rcury]

I dunno. They've managed to land boosters on barges in the ocean. They've managed to land boosters on dry land. They're getting pretty good at landing these things.

couldn't coexist with their English neighbors

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but the Pilgrims had to haul a lot of Bibles since the unknown wilderness they were shipped off too had Satan hiding behind every tree.

There's no trees on Mars.

Failure isn't failure... if you learn from it.

[Geoffrey.landis]

And that's different from NASA/Energia how?

Space ex has a failure rate 10 times worse. The FAA needs to step in and force them to take safety seriously.

Failing, as it turns out, is an effective way of trying new things and finding out what works. Painful, but very very effective.

The best thing about SpaceX is that they aren't afraid of failure.

The worst thing that could happen would be if the FAA steps in and no longer allows companies to fail. If you aren't allowed to fail, you're not allowed to innovate. The only way to take the chance of doing new things is by taking the risk of failure.

Or, to use a quote: “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

Re:Wow

[Rei]

Yeah, landing the booster right next to the refueling tanker seems little,eh... optimistic

The video is clearly stylized and not meant to be taken that literally. Unless you think the arrival of the spacecraft is supposed to make Mars spin until it develops oceans ;)

That said, while there's much to like, there's one aspect of it that's really clawing at me... the fact that they plan to make it out of composites. Including the LOX tank. We've never succeeded (and failed multiple times) at making flight-intent LOX tanks for orbital rockets. And they want to make the first time be on what's by far the largest rocket ever built? Without a lining?

Is it worth mentioning that they just had an explosion somehow related to the only major carbon fiber component in the Falcon 9 in a LOX tank?

CF becomes brittle in LOX. It leaks. And most concerningly, it's impact / shock sensitive in LOX. At atmospheric pressure it usually won't do a self-sustained burn on impact, but it chars on impact, and even that alone would be bad. But they plan to have significant pressure as well. He mentions briefly that they expect this to be one of the biggest challenges, getting stable coatings and the like. I think that's an understatement.

I just don't want to see the largest rocket ever built turn into the largest flying fireball on Earth. I don't trust composites with LOX. Composite cryogenics tanks are an active research topic, and they're making progress, but it's not a solved problem.

Re:The Refueling Tanker makes no sense

[Required Snark]

Space-X is about optimization for launch systems, not optimization of a rocket. That's why they are so focused on reuse. It's the best way to bring down system costs in the long run.

For example, the Saturn V used two different kinds of fuel: LOX with RP-1 and liquid hydrogen. This optimized performance for the 1st stage booster vs the upper stages. This increased the cost and complexity of the ground support. SpaceX uses only one kind of fuel for all stages. This reduces complexity and cost.

If you build a booster stage that is robust enough to return with only aerobreaking, it is going to weigh more and be more complex. You pay for that extra weight for every launch. Note that some of the structure is only used for re-entry and is dead weight on the way up. Breaking with the engines means they are used both on the way up and the way down.

As Musk points out in his presentation, fuel is the cheapest component of the launch system. Therefor it makes economic sense to use more fuel to land the launch stages, which are the expensive components.

The people at SpaceX are not dumb. They came up with a different solution because they framed the problem differently. Rockets are hard, and there is not a single best way to build them. There are a lot of projects that use vertical powered landing: McDonald-Douglas DC-X and Blue Origin New Shepard are examples and NASA funded various prototypes. Aerobreaking is not the only reasonable option.