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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.
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.
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
Yeah, Musks robots will arrive the same year the $35,000 Model 3 arrives.
"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
"Musk's Martian Mart"
You must be new here. It's called 'Elon's Emporium'.
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.
Mars radiation problema can be solved by finding a cave or drilling underground.
The Gopher provides all the tech we need for that part.
Manned Moon round trips were almost 50 years ago. It made no economic sense at the time and the engineering challenges were such that only the most powerful state actors could realistically attempt it. Since then, technology has shrunk the engineering costs while the world economy has expanded exponentially. It still makes no economic sense. Permanent bases on the moon and Mars would clearly be vanity projects, but vanity projects that are now well within the economic reach of at least three of the world's economic units. So your extra century might well be right in terms of economic viability but it is certainly not right in terms of vanity. I will counter with a ten year time frame for at least a partially self sufficient moon base and twenty for Mars.
For your further entertainment, here is a way to make rocket fuel on the moon out of water and aluminum oxide, both abundant on the Moon. The Moon is a lot closer to Mars in terms of delta-v than Earth is, so connect the dots.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
... 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