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SpaceX's First Falcon Heavy Launch Will Now Take Place In 2018 (engadget.com)
The launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket has been delayed to 2018. In an email to Aviation Week, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said, "We wanted to fly Heavy this year. We should be able to static fire this year and fly a couple of weeks right after that." Engadget reports: The static fire test will be the first time that all of Heavy's 27 Merlin engines will be fired at once. And if all goes well there, Falcon Heavy should be ready for launch within the first few weeks of 2018. There have been multiple launch delays with Heavy, which Elon Musk has attributed to the development of such a large and powerful rocket being "way, way more difficult" than SpaceX expected. "Falcon Heavy requires the simultaneous ignition of 27 orbit-class engines," Musk said at the ISS R&D conference in July. "There's a lot that can go wrong there." And because of that, Musk has been very clear about where everyone's expectations should be going into Falcon Heavy's first launch. "There's a real good chance that it does not make it to orbit. I hope it gets far enough away from the launch pad that it does not cause pad damage -- I would consider that a win," he said.
What's the big woop? We were doing this in 1942. And it worked, ask the British.
The statement is clearly preemptive damage control. That said, given the track record of "first launches of new rocket systems" around the world, probably well warranted.
I'm sure if SpaceX could turn back time they would have skipped the development of FH altogether and focused entirely on BFR; the development process turned out to be much harder than they anticipated. But, they've come this far, so it's time to get this bird in the air.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
There's a Morton's Fork for project managers: give repeated updates to a changing schedule, slips and all, or to give a vague window that conceals these schedule slips. The benefit of the former is that onlookers can get an increasingly precise estimate of final delivery, whereas the benefit of the latter is that it appears more professional. The downside of the former is a constant request for updates (which one feels obligated to answer) and doom and gloom from onlookers every time the schedule slips; for the latter, it's that few people know when the project will be completed until it's almost done and a release date is easy to nail down, and it's difficult to plan around such a nebulous release window. Those who choose transparency often are stressed out by the scrutiny, sometimes wishing they maybe hadn't been so transparent.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Anyone lining up to criticise SpaceX for the delays to Falcon Heavy needs to be reminded that the current iteration of the standard Falcon9 rocket is now more powerful on its own than the original specs for Falcon Heavy.
Several of the payloads that were originally booked with FH have already been launched on single F9s.
So the Falcon Heavy that is being rolled out now is a substantially more significant piece of hardware than it would have been if we'd been watching this event two or three years ago.
The lessons learned from developing Falcon Heavy will also pay forward into the development process for BFR. Even if FH never flies again, the process was still worth it.
As Elon stated in the quoted comment, the complexity of this launch is pretty significant. Although it must be possible to measure the respective thrust output from 27 different rockets simultaneously [i.e. torsion gauges across your rocket superstructure], translating that in to real-time simulation that balances thrusts for both trajectory and vehicle integrity are going to be hard.
Whilst this launch is certainly experimental, SpaceX will want to get the maximum possible return on that investment - it's their USP after all - and that means having a good degree of confidence that it will work. Something that blows up on the pad after giving half a second of telemetry isn't much use to anyone except the afternoon news shows and YouTube. Well, and ULA.
This is all about balancing the need to test [in order to get data] with the need to test successfully [in order to get data]. And although the cost of an F9 Heavy launch [to SpaceX] certainly won't be three times the cost of a regular F9 launch, it won't be cheap, either. If regular F9 launches are $60MM, then the cost of F9H must be at least in the order of $120MM or so.
Worth taking the time to give it a reasonable chance of success.
The things they learn from launching FH will probably help them a lot putting BFR together. The fact that it turns out to be this hard for them to develop FH means that they probably could use the experience before scaling up.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Most launches aren't to the space station at all but just satellite launches.
As the head of the German rocket program in WW2, Walter Dornberger, said:
"We might well have been daunted by the multiplicity of the task before us. Luckily the difficulties were for the most part still entirely unknown to us. We attacked our problems with the courage of inexperience and had no thought to the time it might take us to solve them."
If you think rocket launches use a lot of fuel, you're probably underestimating the amount of fuel burned in road vehicles. Just the USA alone burns 1.5 million gallons of gasoline per hour (extrapolated from https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php)
Tesla's push to electrifying road cars will save many orders of magnitude more fuel per year than SpaceX will burn in total.
Satellite launches that improve quality of life here on Earth. Mainly communications and monitoring.
Also, expect a significant decrease in emissions per unit mass launched to orbit over time. BFR, for example, will burn methane rather than RP1, and will have a much higher payload fraction. And as for the ground operations, I strongly expect SpaceX to be a major early customer of the Tesla Semi once they're available. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the first megacharger routes to go live connects SpaceX facilities with their Florida launch pads.
So long as natural gas is cheap, they'll probably continue using it for methane supply for BFR. But if its price ever rises enough and/or the cost of producing it from electricity and CO2 ever drops enough, I'd strongly expect them to switch to synthesized methane. We're far from that at present, however - you'll need to see natural gas disappearing from baseload grid power generation first, as an early indicator.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
** Ed: also connecting Vandenberg AFB. Vandenburg through LA (access to Hawthorne), out on I-10, through Texas (passing 150mi from McGregor), along the Gulf Coast to Jacksonville, then down I-95.
Obviously they'll also be running Semi between Gigafactory and Fremont, but you don't really need a megacharger network in there. Perhaps one station.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
Yes, because GPS, weather forecasts, telecommunications, global warming science, astronomy and so on are anything but useful for mankind?
Think again. And also think scale: a small town and it's cars burns more fuel daily than a big rocket bringing sattelites into orbit.
If you want to fight pollution, aim your arrows against military uses. Coal fuel plants. The slow adoption rate of renewals. The power of oil companies. Inefficient use of heating & cooling. Air freight. Datacenters. Hell, aim your arrows against bitcoin or so for wasting energy if you wish so.
Almost anything you can think of makes more sense than complaining about space launches.
>because he wants to cut pollution and save the planet
He wants to go to Mars.
Space-X gets him there, Tesla powers the planet, Boring Company builds living space and connective tunnels, Hyperloops gives him transport (and easier, since Mars' low pressure means you probably don't even bother evacuating the tubes).
If Musk next starts in on magnetically confined plasma shielding technology and closed-loop environmental systems... you'll know for sure. He will want to get to Mars without the elevated cancer risk and survive there without constant resupply from Earth.
Well, as was shown on the TV show "Young Sheldon" on Thursday night, NOW we know how Musk got the technology to do what he's doing. LOL
Agree with your analysis, but would add that "the cost of getting methane from natural gas" has to include the environmental impact...
And as for the cost of synthesizing methane using carbon dioxide and electricity, well, Musk does just happen to have another couple of companies, one of which produces solar panels and another which produces huge storage batteries...
When you think about that, you realise that he's thinking seriously long-term, because he's actually hedging against the inevitable increase in the cost of natural gas with time - i.e. as it becomes more and more scarce.
if SpaceX could turn back time they would have skipped the development of FH altogether and focused entirely on BFR
The deciding factor seems to have been second-stage recovery. About a year ago, I recall Elon saying something about trying to recover a 2nd stage "next year" (2018). Then, a few months later, he announced his intention to reveal a new, scaled-down version of the BFR at this year's IAC.
Like Falcon Heavy, recovering that second stage turned out to be a lot harder than expected. Meanwhile, they'd just completed a ton of work on figuring out the BFR's lifting-body spaceship, which is a combination of 2nd stage and payload all in one vehicle. Why waste time and resources on 2nd stage recovery when you've already got the whole reusability enchilada figured out?
I think the real "light-bulb moment" for Elon was realizing that his grand vision for Mars didn't have to be so grand as to be impractical for the existing space market. Instead of building "old fashioned" stick-and-capsule rockets to pay for the development of the BFR, a slightly smaller BFR could eventually pay for itself.
That said, however, they really need the FH to be successful. They've sunk a lot of time into it, and they already have several customers lined up for it. Assuming it works, it will still be a huge step forward, both in payload capacity and launch costs. With F9 and FH, they can lead the market quite comfortably for the next few years as they work on the new BFR.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Use lots of struts
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
Elon Musk: 'I'm planning to retire to Mars'
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
No need to connect Vanderberg : it will be reconfigured as a "landing pad" for Hwasong-15.
if it works , he has to make money off it in the semi real commercial world and not keep feeding at the goverment money tit.
If each engine is x% reliable against kabooming the whole mess, then the chances of success are:
% Chance of success
99 76%
98 57%
97 43%
96 33%
95 25%
There is a rather dismal history on many-engine rockets. The USSR's attempt at that failed rather miserably.
>Why waste time and resources on 2nd stage recovery when you've already got the whole reusability enchilada figured out?
I don't know that they've got it figured out, but yeah, at least they have a plan. I'd be interested to see if they try a scaled-down prototype designed to ride the Falcon 9 or Heavy
As for the value of the Heavy - you left out the technology would also likely scale to the BFR, which would let you lift *really* large payloads. I recall pretty much all the early interplanetary launch plans involving not just 2, but 8 auxilliary boosters, and I doubt he's abandoned that vision entirely. IF they can get it to work reliably, then it's a wonderful way to dramatically increase your payload using existing hardware. Until we've established the full mining, refining, and manufacturing chain in space (which I don't see happening any time soon, especially for advanced composites), the ability to launch, say, an entire mining platform in one go is going to be quite useful.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I'd rather they spend a few months extra to get the launch right rather than launch before they're ready and risk a failure. Launching despite warnings from engineers/known dangers has resulted in more than a few NASA rocket failures. And unlike SLS taxpayers aren't on the hook for the overtime.
The Merlin engine has proven to be very reliable. The fact that they get to recover most of the engines and inspect them should help to keep reliability high, or even improve it. Also keep in mind the multiple engine configuration also allows the rocket to complete the mission successfully if one of the engines fails.
if it works , he has to make money off it in the semi real commercial world and not keep feeding at the goverment money tit.
Government satellite launches legitimately serve the public interest.
I do not want my government to depend on Russian-made rocket engines, or Russian-made anything, for launches that serve national security interests.
I want my government to spend my tax dollars on the most cost-effective provider of launch services.
Right now, that is SpaceX.
You assume that an engine failure dooms the mission. The whole point is engine-out capability that doesn't. In such a case, the reliability increases the more engines you have.
The problem with the N1 was a combination of A) its engine-out failures tended to be cascading (aka, the engines were not properly protected from each other), B) its rate of engine-out failures was huge, C) lots of miswiring, and D) overcautious software that killed missions it shouldn't have, and outright destroyed a launch pad when it didn't need to.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
You're basing your numbers on 1960s level tech for an expendable launcher? We've made a few advancements since then. In fact SpaceX's failure tolerance designs have already at least partly proven themselves with an engine exploding on a Falcon 9 flight but the rocket continuing on to orbit for a mostly successful launch (a secondary payload was lost but the primary made it to orbit). And if I'm recalling correctly that has been the only engine failure that is known to have occurred out of over 400 (44 launches x 9 main stage engines plus one second stage engine).
Strange, I remember when his rockets landing was called space nuttery.
I remember when the roadster first came out the main car companies were calling it Elecric Car nuttery.
I remember when he start pushing solar tile that was also called Solar nuttery.
I remember the 100 MWH battery for Australia in 100 days also being called nuttery.
I remember and still hear people calling The Boring Company nuttery even while the test tunnels are being dug.
And the HyperLoop is called nuttery even as governments are making bids on get it.
Musk can not be right in all things, but the best way to bet is to always assume he will succeed because that is the way it has been going so far.
The things they learn from launching FH will probably help them a lot putting BFR together. The fact that it turns out to be this hard for them to develop FH means that they probably could use the experience before scaling up.
From what I have read, what they learned was adding outboard boosters is a bad idea. They thought they could just strap three Falcon 9's together and get a massive increase in capacity. Turns out that's really inefficient. Most of the complexity is in the need to consume all of the fuel in the outboard boosters without using the fuel in the central booster in order to get the efficiency they wanted.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
> He will want to get to Mars without the elevated cancer risk
Not so much need for fancy shielding for one man, just fly solo in the middle of a densely packed cargo ship, you only need the equivalent of a few meters of rock to get the approximate shielding benefit of Earth's atmosphere, and I think it's only like a meter or so necessary to absorb most of the cosmic ray particle cascade.
As for closed loop environmental systems - there's already been tons of research done on the subject, and even the very first large scale attempt, Biosphere 2, was impressively successful. Besides, one of the things that makes Mars so much more appealing than the Moon is that you don't *need* to be closed system - you've got nigh-unlimited supplies of water and CO2 available on-site to work with, the bulk components of life. And you'd better believe finding easily harvestable sources of nitrogen and important trace elements is going to be a priority.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I hope Elon has done his homework. The Soviets failed miserably with 30 engines in the first stage of their N1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket). All four launch attempts failed spectacularly. Wikipedia also says after the first launch failure: "All subsequent flights had freon fire extinguishers installed next to every engine." Doesn't sound like a good design to me.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
The statement is clearly preemptive damage control. That said, given the track record of "first launches of new rocket systems" around the world, probably well warranted.
Yep. Turns out that a very good way to make a new vehicle is to just try it, see what goes wrong, and fix it.
This means that failures should be expected: they're part of the process. That's how you learn.
But the publicity and public outcry around a launch failure doesn't allow for the fact that failure is an important part of the process. So it's good to "preemptively" remind people of that beforehand.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Nothing much stopping us at this point but the will to throw enough money at the problem, and Musk seems to have the will, if not the money. And SpaceX is beginning to rapidly lower the pricetag.
The only missing piece to start the attempt is rockets big enough to transport people and cargo effectively - you don't need much high technology to make airtight underground terrariums with solar-powered LED lighting. Not if you're bringing the electronics from Earth.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
But it worked in Kerbal Space Program...
I love it!
"I hope it gets far enough away from the launch pad that it does not cause pad damage -- I would consider that a win,"
Don't forget about faulty fuel line plumbing, I believe several of the failures were caused (or at least exacerbated) by fuel lines shattering after unexpected reverberations or attempts to shutdown failed engines resulting in fires in the engine section. The Russians did some amazing things in space travel, but then the head of their program died during routine surgery and everything seemed to fall apart.
I didn't read it as damage control, I read it as "Realist".
Has there been *any* successful on first go for a new rocket design?
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
>Not so much need for fancy shielding for one man, just fly solo in the middle of a densely packed cargo ship, you only need the equivalent of a few meters of rock to get the approximate shielding benefit of Earth's atmosphere, and I think it's only like a meter or so necessary to absorb most of the cosmic ray particle cascade.
True enough, but without a much faster rocket (as opposed to the 'merely' much less expensive one Musk is pushing), a smart traveller is probably going to want some artificial gravity... and I believe the best we can manage now would be a capsule on a counterweighted tether during the unpowered portion of the trip. I'm certainly no spaceship designer, but I think they'd keep as much payload away from that as possible to minimize the counterweight and tether requirements.
Then again, we don't actually HAVE magnetically confined plasma shielding yet, we just know it's possible. And I've no idea how big and heavy that setup would be, either.
>As for closed loop environmental systems - there's already been tons of research done on the subject, and even the very first large scale attempt, Biosphere 2, was impressively successful.
Well... I suppose for certain degrees of 'impressively successful'. A lot of confidence and public interest in the results was certainly lost as they mishandled the atmospheric issues they ran into with the first two major runs.
>one of the things that makes Mars so much more appealing than the Moon is that you don't *need* to be closed system
Water gets you H2 and CO2 gets you... CO2. We need a noble gas for the bulk of our atmosphere, and I'm reasonably confident it'd be easier to recycle what you have rather than constantly mine for more to extract from local minerals. After all, we do know that a greenhouse in an artificial ecosystem is going to cause problems - with an excess of O2, I think (don't quote me!). Anyway, you're probably not going to want to constantly bleed air to fix that.
Maybe a few controlled fires and a good air scrubber? Anyway, if the 'boffins' say it's a problem, I'm going to assume they've given it more thought and investigated far further than I have, and the tech ain't there yet.
> And you'd better believe finding easily harvestable sources of nitrogen and important trace elements is going to be a priority.
Personally, I think we need automated mining, processing, and construction successfully demonstrated on Mars before sending people. And even then, I think it'd be wise to have an automated greenhouse and raise a few generations of lab mice ahead of time too... maybe even something larger. We have no idea what 0.38g does to the long term health of a mammal.
It's not really engine outs that doom launches. It's engine booms.
Nobody intentionally launches an unreliable rocket, and it's true the Merlin engine has a good track record. It also hasn't been used in a configuration where so many of them are running in close proximity. That's what the Soviets had a lot of problems with, even though they have always built reliable engines, even back then.
But in kerbal space program we have asparagus staging.
In reality pumping that much fuel that quickly from the side boosters into the central booster will cause all kinds of nasty effects, as a figure skater pulling her arms in when pirouetting. This is not simulated in kerbal space program.
A proper engine design can't "boom". It can burn violently until propellant can be cut off (you can't really stop that, when you're dumping fuel and oxidizer together), but if you design properly, you prevent backflowing "hammer" effects in feedlines, have proper debris catching around turbopumps, etc.
SpaceX has lost Merlins in flight before. No boom, at least so far :) A new Block 5 development engine was initially reported to have exploded on the test stand, but it turned out to be a failure of the test equipment.
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
The space shuttle worked the first time. There was no unmanned test flight.
Brings out the Tesla because he wants to cut pollution and save the planet, sets up space company which has a rocket that'll burn a million pounds of fuel in a matter of seconds just to send stuff to a space station that just sits there spinning round the globe.
Rated "Troll" I see, which is appropriate, but let me show just how stupid this post really is.
Last year the U.S. conducted a total of 22 space launches. The current Falcon 9's full up launch weight is 549 tonnes. If we assume that that weight is all fuel (it is mostly) then a Falcon 9 launch burns 549/3.56 = 154 tonnes of RP-1 kerosene (since the LOX to RP-1 mass ratio is 2.56/1), so this is an upper bound on the fuel used.
A fuel fuel load of a 747-400 is 165 tonnes, more than the Falcon 9. If every one of those 22 launches had been a Falcon 9 (7 of them were in fact) then the entire U.S. space launch program would have used as much fuel as just 22 regularly scheduled long distant wide body commercial flights.
This is 0.0065% of the 54 million tonnes of aviation fuel used by the U.S. airline industry in 2016.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Let me guess, you own Boeing stock and are angry they're being underbid for NASA and military contracts.
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Actually, the far enough to not damage the launch pad part is quite important. They're just now back up to 2 launch pads after a previous explosion put one out of use for a year. That's why they've spent so many years trying to get Falcon Heavy right before launching -- they can't afford to keep blowing up launch pads.
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This is silly fallacy.
What you are saying is that since some people somewhere called each one Musk's ventures "nuttery" (although actually nothing you list is really implausible - only founding a new car company was a stretch), then no one anywhere can point to any of his claims as being factually suspect.
Not quite the "they laughed at Galileo" fallacy, but close.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Living in zero gravity for as long as a year is a solved problem. You're not comfortable when you arrive back on a planet, you can't exert heavily for a while and you may have vision issues, but you're functional if you've been doing your exercises. No doubt more functional on Mars than on Earth. Nobody's going to Mars to have an easy comfortable time anyway.
As for what 0.38 gravity does to a person, is there really any reason at all to suspect serious negative side effects? Zero gravity's problems arise mainly from things not flowing downwards as expected. It seems far more likely that reduced gravity is good for you -- being heavy creates a lot of stress on the body.
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even the very first large scale attempt, Biosphere 2, was impressively successful.
So you don't actually know anything about Biosphere 2. Oops?
>Living in zero gravity for as long as a year is a solved problem.
Not by a long shot; it causes a temporary severe reduction in health with a smaller permanent reduction, and the deterioration only stops when you return to Earth.
>As for what 0.38 gravity does to a person, is there really any reason at all to suspect serious negative side effects?
ABSOLUTELY! The human body is a collection of 'hacks' blindly put together by evolution. Our fundamental environment has been constant throughout our evolution, which means there's potential for any number of problems to arise when those constants are changed.
We already know about body fluids migrating towards the head, vision issues, immune system impairment, and bone density loss. I would expect those items all apply in anything less than 1g... but I have no idea to what degree.
Maybe Mars will have enough gravity to keep our bodies working well, but maybe it won't. We absolutely have no idea, because we have no way to test fractional g other than lying in bed with our feet raised above our head, and that method is only used because we have nothing better.
Biosphere 2 was not the first one, as the number 2 clearly indicates.
Both, Biosphere 1 and Biosphere 2 were failures.
But I guess the technical problems could be solved.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
> He will want to get to Mars without the elevated cancer risk
Not so much need for fancy shielding for one man, just fly solo in the middle of a densely packed cargo ship, you only need the equivalent of a few meters of rock to get the approximate shielding benefit of Earth's atmosphere, and I think it's only like a meter or so necessary to absorb most of the cosmic ray particle cascade.
The radiation exposure for 6 months in interplanetary space is about 60 cSv (60 rems). This is 12 years of the maximum allowable dose for a radiation worker. NASA currently allows a 55 year old astronaut to accumulate 400 cSV (Musk is 46, and won't be going for many, many years). So the radiation exposure is within currently accepted occupational limits. So this is not really a problem.
As for closed loop environmental systems - there's already been tons of research done on the subject, and even the very first large scale attempt, Biosphere 2, was impressively successful. Besides, one of the things that makes Mars so much more appealing than the Moon is that you don't *need* to be closed system - you've got nigh-unlimited supplies of water and CO2 available on-site to work with, the bulk components of life. And you'd better believe finding easily harvestable sources of nitrogen and important trace elements is going to be a priority.
Getting nitrogen is easy. Just compress and liquefy the Martian air. At lower Martian elevations the pressure is about the same as an altitude of 30 km on Earth, where high altitude aircraft have flown. 1.9% of the atmosphere is nitrogen so in the process of collecting CO2 from the air, you can get whatever nitrogen you need.
But the problem is not really that it has to be "closed loop" (although it does, even on Mars). It is that the atmosphere has to be entirely manufactured and maintained at normal Earth conditions by mechanical systems, which if they fail kills everyone. To maintain a breathable atmosphere you must continuously remove CO2, and exhaled moisture, and any gases released by systems on board. Being on Mars "fixes" none of that. All of the oxygen is being manufactured somehow. Water recycling will be mandatory as there are not large accessible supplies of water that we know of.
The workload on the ISS simply to maintain the environmental systems is a full-time job for two people.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
The fact that Biosphere 2's first mission lasted the full two years, despite several difficulties, was incredibly impressive. And on Mars you've got a steady flow of new atmospheric gasses available, and artificial control of lighting, so the biggest problems don't translate.
Water and CO2 together, supplemented with nitrogren compounds and other trace elements, get you plant life - which means food, air, and extremely versatile and useful cellulose-based construction materials.
And point in fact we do NOT need a noble gas in our atmosphere - we do just fine in a pure oxygen environment, just as plants do just fine in a high CO2 environment - neither of us breathe nitrogen (mostly, a very few plants do). Plants need nitrogen, but need it fixed into larger, more reactive molecules in the soil/hydroponic solution. Fill a habitat with a normal O2/CO2 mix at 1/5th atmosphere and we mostly won't notice the difference, nitrogen just reduces the risk of fire (so yeah, we'll probably want *something* to cut the air with. Doesn't much matter what so long as it's non-reactive.)
And yes a closed *greenhouse* is going to cause problems with oxygen buildup - which is why what you want is a closed *terrarium*, with animals such as humans, insects, chickens, etc converting oxygen and plant-matter back into CO2 and water. And in an environment where you have complete control over lighting, it's relatively easy to regulate photosynthesis to maintain the desired O2/CO2 balance.
Gravity is the one potentially serious complication - though most of the problems we've encountered with microgravity shouldn't translate (much) to moderate gravity, where skeletal impacts and fluid pressure gradients will be only somewhat reduced. A mouse terrarium would indeed be a good test to at least give us some ideas of what problems we might encounter. It wouldn't even have to be on Mars, a pair of well-shielded orbital terrariums spinning around a tether at the right speed would be quite informative. But so long as the first wave of colonists are willing to take the risks, I don't see a problem. Colonial life expectancy has always been low, and gravity related issues are unlikely to be what kills them.
As for construction - well, if the Boring machines pan out as planned, you've got it. It won't be an industrial base, but the plan is to continue shipping durable goods from Earth for some time. So long as you have the equipment to make reinforced tunnels, all you need is the right "paint" inside to make them airtight. Personally I think a small nanocellulose production plant would be a valuable addition - it's transparent, non-toxic, gas-impermeable, comparable in strength to aluminum, and you can produce it from plant waste using purely thermo-mechanical processes (no eco-cycle contamination). It's also water soluble, which presents some challenges, but also makes it really easy to work with and repair.
As far as mining and industry are concerned - what exactly do you think the early colonists are there to do? You don't risk your life colonizing an alien world so you can sit around the spa all day monitoring productivity readouts.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Then again, we don't actually HAVE magnetically confined plasma shielding yet, we just know it's possible.
Hu? You never hold a magnet in your hands?
Never heard about electro magnets and electric engines?
Having an magnetic shield is suoer simple, no idea why you think 'we don't have it'.
The peercentage of CO2 is super low, so the O2 produced from it is super low, too. No idea again for what you are aiming here.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
>As far as mining and industry are concerned - what exactly do you think the early colonists are there to do?
Survive; there has to be enough infrastructure to give a reasonable chance of survival. I would assume the colonists will do a better job than the robots, but having the initial site built before anyone gets there is important unless you think they should depend entirely on the rocket they arrive in (which may not be the worst plan in the world, but I don't think it's the best, either).
How DARE anyone ever question a President. Political dissent is VERBOTEN!
>Having an magnetic shield is suoer simple, no idea why you think 'we don't have it'.
Well... first because I didn't say 'magnetic shield' (though we don't have those for spacecraft yet, either). I said, 'magnetically confined plasma shield'. There's an extra couple of words in there, and they are important. The plasma is used to absorb what the magnetic field can't deflect.
The concept was seriously proposed in the 1990s, and last I heard some kind of lab proof of concept was planned about a decade ago, but that it was anticipated a real-world deployment would require a room temperature superconducting wire (which we don't have and may not be possible).
They actually lost an engine and completed the mission on one of their earlier launches ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?...) .
From what I've read, there's a chance they might even be able to make it to orbit while losing two of them, depending on how heavy the payload is.
And since they're planning all three cores of the FH, there's going to be more margin to bring the payload up in expendable mode if an engine fails.
So the question is, do you prefer the chance of losing one big engine and the whole mission, or betting that you won't lose 2-3 engines on the same launch (For F9, I'm not sure how many it would be for FH).
Of course, SpaceX has other considerations with the number of engines they use, like the ability to use fewer of them for landing, and general economies of scale for production and testing.
You know what else causes a small but permanent reduction in health? Living on Earth for a year. There's certainly room for improvement, but a solution does exist.
You seem to be assuming that being able to live on Mars means living just as long and healthily as if you had staid on Earth. Why should that be the case? Colonists have *always* seen reduced lifespans compared to those who stayed home, and especially for the early waves of colonists into such an isolated and unforgiving environment, it probably won't be gravity-related health complications that kill them.
Even if Mars gravity cuts life expectancy by maybe 20%, why is that a problem? So long as the people making the choice to move there think it's worth the risk - so be it. You could increase your lifespan considerably on Earth living in a hermetically sealed bubble and consuming only maximally nutritious/minimally unhealthy foods - but nobody considers it a problem when you decide to do enjoy life instead. And don't bother mentioning the children who didn't make the choice - you enter the world, you takes your chances. Few people are up in arms over the hundreds of millions of children born into environments right here on Earth that subject them to much worse life expectancy reductions.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I didn't read it as damage control, I read it as "Realist".
Has there been *any* successful on first go for a new rocket design?
There's this obscure (but well known in enthusiast circles) rocket called "Saturn V".
Erm ... ...
You release some gas, usually hydrogene, into the magnetic bottle.
The sun wind strips electrons away and you have a plasma.
It is as simple as that
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Certainly you'd prefer to have at least basic habitats in place before you land, maybe even greenhouses up and running, but after that all you really need is agriculture to survive in the short term. And it's expected that it will take years, maybe several decades, before a colony could have a good chance of survival if the shipments from Earth stopped. That's risk is inherent in the endeavor - if you're not willing to accept it, don't go. Those who don't want to put their life on the line to colonize a new world will, by necessity, have to wait until other people have built it for them, and then accept whatever vision they can buy into for it. That's how it's always been.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Mission 1 lasted for the full 2-year plan. They had a LOT of problems, but they persevered and completed their mission. And those problems were the whole *point* of the experiment - to find out what problems they didn't already know about. If it had gone off without a hitch then the whole experiment would have been completely useless except as "proof" that we already knew everything.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yes it was - Biosphere 1 is also known as "Earth". They were attempting to recreate the critical parts on a much smaller scale.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I'm going to LMAO when Elon Musk gets to Mars and realizes he has given up a life of luxury for a tin can on a frozen airless rock.
Biosphere 1 has been a total failure. Time to shut down Earth and everyone go home.
So, why do the guys who conducted the experiment call it a failure then? ... so: a failure.
For starters: they had atmosphere problems, it was not self contained as in food as they planned originally
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That's the radiation exposure at the surface of the ship. Hence the "middle of a densely packed cargo ship" - the cargo doubles as radiation shielding. It only takes a few meters worth of rock-equivalent mass (14 pounds of shielding per square inch of surface) to duplicate the shielding effects of Earth's atmosphere. You don't get the benefit of the magnetosphere - but I believe that doesn't so much stop a lot of things that would otherwise reach all the way to the surface, as stop those particles from stripping away the atmosphere they would otherwise collide with.
As for nitrogen, the atmosphere is certainly a potential, if energy-intensive, source. The problem being that you really only need a comparative trickle of CO2 to offset atmosphere leakage and support ecosystem growth. Meanwhile for every kg of atmospheric CO2 you collect, you only get 20g of Nitrogen (along with 21g of Argon, 1.5g or O2, and 0.5g of CO). But perhaps you could work out some more efficient way to separate the N2 out of ambient atmosphere.
As for mechanically producing and filtering your atmosphere - there's no need and it introduces massive potential for failure, as you point out. That's a solution for when you're mass-constrained. In a colony you'd do it the same way we do it here - with plants. You're basically building one of those sealed terrarium-in-a-jar toys, just on a massive scale - rather like they did with Biosphere 2, only with no artificial requirements to be closed loop, so you can import all the water, CO2, and other useful materials you can find outside, and with complete control over the light exposure your greenhouses are getting, so that you can fine-tune photosynthesis rates as needed.
Pollution will certainly be an issue - but lots of plants are very good at filtering the air. the most important aspect will be minimizing the amount of artificial pollutants introduced - which shouldn't be too difficult, as they all have to be imported. (Industry would, I assume, operate in Martian atmosphere, possibly compressed if helpful.)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Sure there will be - a much larger population to interact with, and a mcuh larger environment to work in. Small-group dynamics can get particularly ugly over long periods, especially with a bunch of self-important egos involved (they are scientists after all, possibly even worse than actors for large egos).
You also have the fact that your colonists will be people self-selected (and hopefully further screened) to be willing to travel to another planet on what may very well turn out to be a one-way trip, to spend the rest of their life building an offworld colony - rather than scientists willing to sacrifice face-to-face interactions with their loved ones for a couple years for the sake of their research.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Can you offer any reference for that claim? The *media* reported it as a failure, I don't recall ever hearing anything from the scientists in that regard, except with a bunch of qualifiers that make it clear that it only failed to reach the ideal goal - which is why they were doing the experiment in the first place.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Three choices:
1 - English isn't your first language.
2 - You're deliberately misunderstanding me.
3 - You're an idiot.
I really don't care which, I only care that the end result is there will be no meaningful discussion with you.
REG: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!
XERXES: The aqueduct?
REG: What?
XERXES: The aqueduct.
REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.
COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation.
LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
REG: Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
MATTHIAS: And the roads.
REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads--
COMMANDO: Irrigation.
XERXES: Medicine.
COMMANDO #2: Education.
REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
COMMANDO #1: And the wine.
FRANCIS: Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.
COMMANDO: Public baths.
LORETTA: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
FRANCIS: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.
REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?!
XERXES: Brought peace?
REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!
True to 1, 2 not so likely, you claim there is no working magnetic plasma shield, right? So you are wrong.
3, unlikely.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If you want to fight emission look only to electricity generation and fossil fuel vehicles, that is more than 50% of the total.
It was declared a failure 20 years ago, so it should be easy to google.
Here is the wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Do you see the contradiction? To be survive, colonists will have to be humble, cooperative, mentally stable, socially well-adjusted people. Anyone who voluntarily signs up for a one-way trip should be immediately disqualified. And if colonists are screened for being too egotistical, then Elon will have to stay home.
My fault. ... as the building ... was running 2 experiments.
Biosphere 2
I thought the first one was called Biosphere 1.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yep. Turns out that a very good way to make a new vehicle is to just try it, see what goes wrong, and fix it. This means that failures should be expected: they're part of the process. That's how you learn.
IIRC the Shuttle had something like 2.5 million parts and each part probably has more than one failure mode. Even if SpaceX got it down to 1/10th the complexity fixing faults by trial and error ain't really happening, that'd take centuries. And that's only if you have the kind of problems where it consistently fails every time, if it's more like a dice roll it'll take forever to get anything reliable. This meme that failures are "expected" and a great "learning experience" is mostly hogwash. Those engineers had better get it 99.99% right the first time while the last 0.01% are mostly unknown unknowns nobody even imagined up front.
But the publicity and public outcry around a launch failure doesn't allow for the fact that failure is an important part of the process. So it's good to "preemptively" remind people of that beforehand.
Yes. But not because failures are the vehicle of progress but because there is only so much you can simulate, estimate and test before actually doing it. Every rocket needs a maiden flight. And that's when you find out that despite all your brilliant models, theories, proof-of-concepts, prototypes etc. don't 100% conform to reality. But you could have spent forever staring at the blueprints without finding it, more effort just wouldn't have gotten you any further. See: All the people who've tried to do the waterfall method "right" by creating the perfect spec.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Actually, it is not truly a new design.
Most of it has been fully tested.
Still, I agree with you. There is a LOT that can wrong here.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
*most* :P
That means there's something new... *boom*
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
all you really need is agriculture to survive in the short term
Also oxygen, heating, water, waste disposal, replacement parts, medical supplies... list goes on.
That's risk is inherent in the endeavor - if you're not willing to accept it, don't go.
SpaceX depends on government funds, so that puts the risk into realm of public scrutiny. Why should we pay for a bunch of people to commit mass suicide in the most convoluted way in human history?
HF was already delayed to late Decembers. Workers would be stressed or distracted by holiday activities then.
Then Russell's Teapot would be a a real thing!