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How NASA Will Use Robots To Create Rocket Fuel From Martian Soil (ieee.org)
Engineers are building a prototype of a robotic factory that will create water, oxygen, and fuel on the surface of Mars. From a report: The year is 2038. After 18 months living and working on the surface of Mars, a crew of six explorers boards a deep-space transport rocket and leaves for Earth. No humans are staying behind, but work goes on without them: Autonomous robots will keep running a mining and chemical-synthesis plant they'd started years before this first crewed mission ever set foot on the planet. The plant produces water, oxygen, and rocket fuel using local resources, and it will methodically build up all the necessary supplies for the next Mars mission, set to arrive in another two years. This robot factory isn't science fiction: It's being developed jointly by multiple teams across NASA. One of them is the Swamp Works Lab at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, where I am a team lead. Officially, it's known as an in situ resource utilization (ISRU) system, but we like to call it a dust-to-thrust factory, because it turns simple dust into rocket fuel. This technology will one day allow humans to live and work on Mars -- and return to Earth to tell the story.
But why synthesize stuff on Mars instead of just shipping it there from Earth? NASA invokes the "gear-ratio problem." By some estimates, to ship a single kilogram of fuel from Earth to Mars, today's rockets need to burn 225 kilograms of fuel in transit -- launching into low Earth orbit, shooting off toward Mars, slowing down to get into Mars orbit, and finally slowing to a safe landing on the surface of Mars. We'd start with 226 kg and end with 1 kg, which makes for a 226:1 gear ratio. And the ratio stays the same no matter what we ship. We would need 225 tons of fuel to send a ton of water, a ton of oxygen, or a ton of machinery. The only way to get around that harsh arithmetic is by making our water, oxygen, and fuel on-site. Different research and engineering groups at NASA have been working on different parts of this problem. More recently, our Swamp Works team began integrating many separate working modules in order to demonstrate the entire closed-loop system. It's still just a prototype, but it shows all the pieces that are necessary to make our dust-to-thrust factory a reality. And although the long-term plan is going to Mars, as an intermediate step NASA is focusing its attention on the moon. Most of the equipment will be tried out and fine-tuned on the lunar surface first, helping to reduce the risk over sending it all straight to Mars.
But why synthesize stuff on Mars instead of just shipping it there from Earth? NASA invokes the "gear-ratio problem." By some estimates, to ship a single kilogram of fuel from Earth to Mars, today's rockets need to burn 225 kilograms of fuel in transit -- launching into low Earth orbit, shooting off toward Mars, slowing down to get into Mars orbit, and finally slowing to a safe landing on the surface of Mars. We'd start with 226 kg and end with 1 kg, which makes for a 226:1 gear ratio. And the ratio stays the same no matter what we ship. We would need 225 tons of fuel to send a ton of water, a ton of oxygen, or a ton of machinery. The only way to get around that harsh arithmetic is by making our water, oxygen, and fuel on-site. Different research and engineering groups at NASA have been working on different parts of this problem. More recently, our Swamp Works team began integrating many separate working modules in order to demonstrate the entire closed-loop system. It's still just a prototype, but it shows all the pieces that are necessary to make our dust-to-thrust factory a reality. And although the long-term plan is going to Mars, as an intermediate step NASA is focusing its attention on the moon. Most of the equipment will be tried out and fine-tuned on the lunar surface first, helping to reduce the risk over sending it all straight to Mars.
As humanity wound down victims of their own exploitation the robots prepping the next realm for exploit quietly and dutifully kept making fuel until hundreds of years later the remenents of our civilization shutdown for good exhausting all the raw materials. We are gone
By the time NASA gets to Mars, it will probably be cheaper to buy the excess fuel and supplies Musk's robots have already created from mining started in the next few years...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
NASA getting to Mars. That's funny dude.
And maybe that is realistic. May still be too soon though.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Gear ratio - because millenials find "efficiency" too confusing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
At least until the clock gets confused at January 19, 2038 03:14:07 GMT
"Uh, yeah, this is Houston. We are confirming that we did use 32 bit processors for all the computing infrastructure up there with you... older designs means we know the bugs, why are you asking? And what is a... "thirty two bit time underscore t type"?
After 30 minutes of waiting, the engineer listened, resigned to the answer, already knowing what he was being told. "I'll get right back to you, out" he grumbled, and left his chair, thumping the wall, and walking back to the rocket.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
James P. Hogan wrote Code of the Lifemaker about a alien spacecraft that crash landed on Saturn's moon, Titan, and, due to damage from the crash, built self-replicating robots that evolved into a sentient lifeform. A million years later, humans show up and the robotic society goes to hell. The original purpose of the spacecraft was to drop off self-replicating robots to mine for resources and ship back home.
News at 11.
Good God, don't scare me like that! I'm not 64-bit-time compliant yet! Didn't we just have one of those?!?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
"After 18 months living and working on the surface of Mars, a crew of six explorers boards a deep-space transport rocket and leaves for Earth"
No, they won't, because they would be dead from the radiation. Why does Mars fantasy completely ignore reality and basic science? It is like a blind spot in space nutters when they hear the word "Mars colony".
They'll be harvesting methane fuel from Uranus!
Oh look, NASA engineers are playing in the dirt. They might as well practice mining for gold in finely shredded cash.
So far the Orion capsule, just the capsule and it's service module mind you - not a rocket, not a long-term habitat, not a lander/ascent vehicle, just a capsule, will cost the US $18,000,000,000 (so far). That's eighteen BILLION. For a capsule. That will sustain life for a month or so. With diaper wearing astronauts inside.
From the link above, here's what that 18 BILLION isn't paying for:
These prior Orion costs:
1. Exclude costs "for production, operations, or sustainment of additional crew capsules, despite plans to use and possibly enhance this capsule after 2021"[105]
2. Exclude costs of the first Service Module and spare parts[106] to be provided by the European Space Agency for the test flight of Orion in 2020 (about $1 billion)[107]
3. Exclude costs to assemble, integrate, prepare and launch the Orion and its launcher (funded under the NASA Ground Operations Project,[108] currently about $400M[109] per year)
4. Exclude costs of the launcher, the SLS, for the Orion spacecraft
There are no NASA estimates for the Orion program recurring yearly costs once operational, for a certain flight rate per year, or for the resulting average cost per flight.
So this is basically a long-term Lockheed Martin/Boeing subsidy. The US taxpayer is buying something that nobody knows how much it will cost to operate or sustain. Boys and girls, this is what happens when politicians spend someone else's money with reckless abandon. If allowed to continue, congress will be raping your ability to retire in order to pay for THEIR retirement.
In comparison, the Falcon Heavy cost between 500 MILLION and 1 BILLION to develop. For something can can be launched far more cheaply (and re-used) the Saturn program ever dreamed of. SLS will do no better than Saturn. By the time the SLS Launcher, Orion spacecraft, habitats, and ascent/decent vehicles are designed and built, Lockheed and Boeing's cost will be in the TRILLIONS for a Mars mission, and decades will have passed.
It's time to stop throwing good money after bad and let the private sector do what it's good at, and let Lockheed & Boeing compete freely and fairly: they spend their own money to develop something, they present it, if it's good, someone buys their product or service. Enough free money, open-ended contracts and bonuses paid out for demonstrating nothing more that cost overruns and slipping schedules. Cancel Orion and SLS. If Uncle Sam wants space toys for the military, let it come entirely out of a Pentagon budget and not pollute NASA further. The shuttle was a disaster of merging civil space and military requirements that we don't need to repeat.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
"After 18 months living and working on the surface of Mars, a crew of six explorers boards a deep-space transport rocket and leaves for Earth"
No, they won't, because they would be dead from the radiation. Why does Mars fantasy completely ignore reality and basic science? It is like a blind spot in space nutters when they hear the word "Mars colony".
Citation please.
Here's NASA's own basic science:
The Mars Radiation Environment Experiment has shown that radiation on the surface of Mars is likely no worse than on the International Space Station. The exception is during directional solar emissions called Solar Particle (or Proton) Events, during which time Martians can take cover underground or beneath better shielding. Such events are relatively short duration and could be viewed as taking shelter during a storm. Would you consider Florida uninhabitable because some fragile wood frame houses get blown away by a hurricane ever half century or so?
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
Oh look! 20 years later, they're recreating Zubrin's Mars Direct, and thinking they've had a revolutionary new idea!
When anybody gets to Mars with a possibility to get back
That doesn't matter at all to what I wrote. It really doesn't matter at all to anyone, even if the lifespan there were say one year you would have tens of thousands clamoring to go.
But the reality is inside 10-15 years Musk will be making round trips to Mars and back. You may be super old but I'll sure live to see it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
what alternate universe are you posting from?
maybe you could provide some citations for your claims?
*crickets*
We'd start with 226 kg and end with 1 kg, which makes for a 226:1 gear ratio. And the ratio stays the same no matter what we ship. We would need 225 tons of fuel to send a ton of water, a ton of oxygen, or a ton of machinery. The only way to get around that harsh arithmetic is by making our water, oxygen, and fuel on-site
Or refuel on-orbit, which is SpaceX's thoughts on the matter, because 90% of that fuel is needed to get you 150km up out of Earth's gravity well. Or..... just could develop more efficient engines. Or make bigger ion thrusters, a reactor that can deliver 1MW continuously, send all the supplies on the slow trip to Mars with the ion engines, send the people on the quick one with the chemical rockets, etc, etc.
No, but the only way around the problem is to develop tricky automated mining equipment and make all that stuff once you get there. I work with mining equipment. Maintenance intervals (oils/filters/etc) are every 50 hours of operation, machine-stopping breakdowns occur every few hundred hours, large component changeout (pumps, hydraulic cylinders, etc) is 4000 hours. 4000 hours is a year of operation at a 50% duty cycle. So you're going to ship all this stuff to Mars, and then expect it to run, continuously digging stuff up and crushing it and heating it and so on and so forth, for a couple of years? In a cold, dusty, zero-maintenance environment?
I know, I know, we're going to need mining equipment on Mars for stuff. Just send someone willing to stay a few extra years. And a whole lot of spare parts.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
After all 'The Case for Mars' is probably a dusty tome to them by now. Maybe some new whippersnapper wants to claim credit for old ideas.
Mars radiation problema can be solved by finding a cave or drilling underground.
The Gopher provides all the tech we need for that part.
with your not so system D eunuch timestamps
Zubrin demonstrated this in the late 80s or early 90s, pretty basic chemistry according to him. Will be good to see it tested on Mars though.
... or more like "Mars Direct". Thank goodness. I may not be a huge fan of the idea of permanent settlement on Mars, or this "terraforming" nonsense, but basic exploration has to solve these problems and Bob was writing about the solutions a long time ago. He gets dismissed as a crank from time to time, but it's nice to see something he laid out getting a little push.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
The robots will be able to do it all by themselves. Perhaps with a little help from the friends back on earth.
Heck, robots are already doing a pretty fine job of exploring Mars today.
The real question is whether by 2038 humans will still be necessary on Earth. How about by 2138?
'Most of the equipment will be tried out and fine-tuned on the lunar surface first, helping to reduce the risk over sending it all straight to Mars.'
Because conditions on the surface of the Moon are just like those on the surface of Mars. How did this idiotic statement get in this report?
>The year is 2038.
Not for long.
A different "gear ratio" explains why Mars will never be a backup planet for people, though it may for humanity.
I'm guessing there's a much larger ratio, say 10,000 engineers, technicians, controllers, and other workers to get 1 person to live permanently on Mars. In 2100 there will be a similar article about why the Mars colony should not accept any new immigrants, but instead make all its new Martians on-site.
Bob Stein, http://bobste.in
The outer space debate is swamped by the clueless on both sides.
How is it that advocates nor detractors not understand that in space, you only expend energy to leave a gravity well and to enter a gravity well? And that its only "expensive" to leave Earth's gravity well. It should be screamingly obvious that materials needed to get from Earth orbit to Mars (H2O, O2, & propellant) don't have to be launched from Earth. A future self-sustaining Mars expedition will have to produce its own O2, H2O, and foodstuffs from the Mars environment. Most important, it could be much, much more affordable to send out a robotics mission to Mars to produce H2O & propellant, and then send it to Earth's orbit, rather than lifting it all from Earth. (I am also interested in the possibility in using Martian produced H2O to act as a radiation buffer around the spacecraft.)
The other thing that bugs me is how no one understands the basic economics of the history of manned space exploration. Its so ridiculously expensive, the Apollo (and Shuttle) program chose to have its astronauts die, rather than have a backup rocket available to "rescue" them. There's no reason to expend hundreds of billions of dollars on a program to sustain humans on the Moon as a test case. Being only three days away doesn't make rescue "cheap" enough to be worth using it as a "stepping stone". The Moon has less exploitable H2O, and it near-definitely doesn't have anything worth "mining" that could offset the cost of an extended Moon expedition. The riskiest result of a successful Moon mission would be that neither a nation state or corporation would have the available investment capital to then try going to Mars.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon