How is trying to get cheaper flights into LEO "putting the cart before the horse"?
I'll admit one of the attractions of going to Mars is that you can get away from the problems on the Earth. Think about it... if you want to say "take this country and shove it", where do you go? Mars is a genuine frontier where if you want to avoid paying taxes to the IRS, you've made a whole bunch of enemies and simply want a clean start, or just get tired of the Micky Mouse games and idiotic politics that sometimes happens on the Earth... Mars seems a whole lot more attractive as a way to genuinely "get away from it all".
Yes, there are challenges, but that sounds like something pretty attractive to me. There used to be places like that here on the Earth in the past, but those no longer exist.
BTW, I do agree though that economic activity is going to be the main motivator for going into space. I'm sort of partial more to mining asteroids, where economic potential is much more provable and you don't have to deal with getting tons of material out of a gravity well, like you would on Mars. There are several asteroids that cross between Mars and the Earth, where the technology needed to get to Mars could just as easily be used for those destinations as well and the economic potential is for me much larger on those bodies.
All of that though is predicated on the ability to bootstrap that activity with cheap launches from the Earth. If Elon Musk follows through with his $20-$50 per kilogram cost of getting to LEO, a whole lot of different kinds of activity become much more affordable where a clear business case can be found to start doing stuff like even mining. You can't even start doing any of that when the launch costs are $100k/kg or higher as the current proposed NASA launch systems are going to cost (low-balling the estimates too!)
My bad. You are correct, and that is something I should have fact checked.
The point is that somebody complaining about the "rigors of a vacuum" are only thinking of what it takes to maintain a vacuum here on the Earth as you have all of that pressure of the atmosphere pressing down upon you. A balloon which uses tensile strength to contain the air isn't nearly so hard. There were parts of the Apollo Lunar Lander which were about the thickness of a couple pieces of Aluminum foil that contained the atmosphere and kept it from leaking out into space for nearly a week. While I won't deny there are technical challenges, they aren't insurmountable.
You would be surprised at how much protection a foot or so of water offers from hazardous radiation. You can even drink the stuff that is in the shield too! I didn't know that water tanks were necessarily high tech devices, but then again I'm still sort of young about these things.
In the U.S. Navy, the only thing that forces a submarine to surface is strictly food, as the spaces aboard ship are too small for them to grow it. Six to nine month deployments where they stay underwater the whole time are even pretty common. In other words, your analogy is sort of flawed here. Yes, they can surface... but doing so compromises their mission and that is something they won't do.
In terms of gravity, spinning a spacecraft can do wonders. You want to keep the spin rate below about 1 RPM, but that merely implies the size of the vehicle or the length of the tether to the counter weight. That isn't being done on the ISS because.... it has been proposed as a possible module and was even one of the original module designs. It was cut for pure political reasons, not technical ones.
As for radiation, a tank of water does wonders to stop just about all hazardous radiation you would encounter in space. You might need to hunker down in some reserved spaces for a few days when a solar flare goes by, but it isn't impossible to cope with or to even predict when it happens. The Space Weather Prediction Center already exists to do forecasts for solar storms, where I'm pretty sure more resources would be put into trying to make more accurate predictions for manned spaceflight.
In terms of the vacuum of space, 30 m of water is the same pressure difference as going from sea level to space. On top of that, it is a whole lot easier to build something to keep pressure in (like a balloon) than to keep the pressure on the outside from crushing you. Spacesuits are more complicated because you want to bend that balloon to make it useful, but that is also a solved engineering problem based upon suits of armor fabricated at the time of Henry VIII of England.
As for extremes in temperature, it isn't that big of a deal either. Space is a very good insulator and the largest problem you have is simply getting rid of excess heat as you need to radiate it away as convection isn't an option. To keep a spacecraft from getting too hot one one side, rotating the vehicle is again key, something almost all satellites use even now much less manned vehicles.
I'm not saying that the issues you are complaining about are invalid, but it is something that there is experience and knowledge on how to accomplish them, where the largest factor in their use is simply getting them into space in the first place as launches to LEO have been so expensive in the past. When a liter of water costs $100k or sometimes more to put it into space, weird sorts of attitudes about what is important start to happen with spacecraft designs. Elon Musk is suggesting he might get that below $500 or perhaps even less with these reusable spacecraft, which is partly where the $500k per person round trip to Mars comes from.
Who says it is just Phobos? What other space infrastructure would be put in and around Mars before somebody finally gets around to building the space elevator?
Sure, steering around Phobos and Deimos might be "easy" (god help you if you need to squeeze between both Moons) but it is all of the other stuff that is a problem too. And it presumes you have the steering mechanism set up and going too. Still, that doesn't get over the all-or-nothing issue that space elevators present in terms of the low altitude orbits needed while the elevator is under construction... or do you simply propose that while the elevator is under construction that all spaceflight activity stop on that planet?
When I hear somebody say that you should colonize Antarctica before Mars, I have to say.... let me! The reason and the only reason you don't see cities in Antarctica (beyond something like McMurdo that doesn't have a permanent population) is politics. If you tried to set up a permanent settlement there and did something like drilled for oil, mined coal, or did other things on that continent to support a real city you would get your hand slapped so fast and put into prison that it would make your head spin.
Simply put, it isn't because we can't build a city in Antarctica, but because the politicians won't let us. There may even be valid reasons for stopping that from happening, but it has nothing to do with the technical capability of doing so or even the willingness of people to go there. That argument is not only tired and old, but misleading and presuming something that isn't even true. The arguments for stopping colonization of Antarctica really don't apply to Mars, the Moon, or other places in the universe though... unless you think development on Mars is going to cause global warming on the Earth due to industrial activity on Mars (or the Moon for that matter). Indeed I would argue exactly the opposite, and Mars could use some global warming.
Once you get into space you can also use other technologies for propulsion, like ion thrusters (low thrust.... but they can operate for a very long time with continuous thrust and insane specific impulse numbers) or even nuclear rocket engines like NERVA.
In theory, you can travel from the Earth to Mars in about six weeks and possible even less if you had the right engines. Yes, that takes a whole lot of energy.... but space is also full of a whole lot of energy too!
There are also things like Aldrin Cyclers and mission profiles that don't need to worry about how much mass is traveling between the Earth and Mars, so it becomes more like a cruise vacation on the journey complete with 5-star accommodations and staff along with entertainment. Those spaceships can literally be as big as you care... as large as any major cruse ship or larger. They can also be expanded to accommodate more passengers on each cycle or even have the construction crew "on staff" while in flight. It would be a bit of a trick to get the thing built initially, but the per passenger cost would be minimal and doesn't even need to worry about delta-v or even fuel at all and the staff can even be rotated out on each cycle. Food can be grown in such a vehicle, with air and water recycled as necessary... such a system is even being done on the ISS at the moment even though I'll admit it does need to improve to become practical on a larger scale. Solar arrays can be used for what energy needs such a vehicle might have. If you are going insane when running around a spaceship the size of a cruise ship, I can't help you out much. It may not look like a cruise ship, but then again stuff in space doesn't have to look like anything on Earth or even anything like what you've seen Hollywood come up with for spaceflight either.
In other words, it takes changing the notion of how things are done. The first few flights and getting the infrastructure set up are going to be expensive, but once that is built it doesn't have to be expensive for ongoing costs. The tough part is getting to and from the Earth to LEO or at worst to a "Earth Transfer Orbit" position. The sitting "as a sardine in a can" would only be for a couple days, and even then something like an Aldrin Cycler could be built to transfer between LEO and those other positions relatively near the Earth to get to the Earth-Mars cycler.
The idea that you are going to build a disintegrating pyramid starting from sea level at KSC bringing everything with you needed for the trip as you throw parts of your spaceship away is where the perception is flawed. Such a design methodology was useful in a wartime situation like how the Apollo program was built, but that doesn't need to be the only way to travel to other worlds. If anything, getting to the Moon with the Lunar Lander was about the limit of what you can do with chemical rockets flying on the disintegrating pyramid and Mars is simply unreachable. It is that mentality which creates the trillion dollar manned Mars missions too.
The Space Shuttle suffered not from extreme abuse upon reentry, but rather from going through the bureaucratic grinding mill known as the United States Congress and the fact that it was envisioned to be "The One True Launcher" that would be used for everything and thus had to do everything possible in space and was built like a swiss army knife. It had to fly polar orbits, have cross-range ability to avoid "enemy" interception, carry a huge payload, and do all sort of other things that ate into its budget to meet the needs of every federal agency (not just NASA)...and that wasn't all. The cost of the orbiter started to go up because there were many early costs that were deferred until later because the bean counters felt they could go for a cheaper solution during the design stage and the early development that would end up costing more when it finally got to flight status. So many compromises were made on the Space Shuttle that frankly it ought to be a textbook example for how not to design a spacecraft and what happens when you let non-engineers become involved in key engineering decisions.
Seriously, don't use the Space Shuttle as an excuse for why reusable spacecraft fail. A much better design was with the "Crew return vehicle" that was designed and even had some metal bent, but never made it into space due to shifting priorities on the part of the U.S. Congress. That should say something too, where there hasn't been a single spacecraft designed by the NASA manned spaceflight program which has made it from the drawing boards to making an actual flight into space for over 40 years (the last one was the Space Shuttle). It hasn't been for a lack of ideas or even billions of dollars spent toward building something else, it is just that every time something is tried *something* goes wrong and the design is scrapped for the next better thing. That happened so many times that America doesn't even have a spacecraft any more for astronauts to use.
NASA hasn't gone too much beyond where they were in the mid 1960's and in some ways are going backward. The SLS isn't anything more than a scaled down version of the Saturn V made with used parts from earlier spacecraft, so if SpaceX is at the same level that NASA was in the mid 1960's... in 10-15 years they will be far ahead of anything NASA is doing at the moment. It is sad to say, but Skylab pretty much was the pinnacle of the manned spaceflight program and it has been going downhill since. They've improved some procedures, but NASA hasn't really done anything genuinely inspiring with the manned spaceflight program other than repair the Hubble telescope. The Shuttle flights looked cool.... but really?
It terms of daring to go where nobody has gone before, NASA just isn't where it is at any more. Heck, they can't even duplicate Alan Shepard's first flight, even though Richard Branson is trying to make that happen.
At the moment, flight crew costs on most spacecraft are statistical noise, and the fuel costs are less than the catering budget for the public relations team and the people they are hosting at the launch. For the Space Shuttle it was the maintenance costs and the flight monitoring costs (analogous to the ATC crews for aircraft) that ate up most of the budget and had staff in the tens of thousands. Airlines wouldn't ever make a profit if they had to work under that kind of structure.
While I agree that fuel costs won't be the only factor in a fully reusable spacecraft design like Elon Musk proposes, if it was made much more significant due to the fact that the current way that spacecraft were flown was modified to be more like airline operations the general cost for getting to space could drop significantly.
An interplanetary spacecraft would operate more like long haul oceanic ships, depending on the method of operation. The actual spaceship itself would likely never fly in the Earth's atmosphere, so maintenance issue would not be an issue in terms of being designed for the stresses of atmospheric flight and might even be more like maintenance issues for buildings instead. Yes, they would need to be kept in good shape, but there would be relatively few urgent issues that would need immediate attention and could be done on an as needed basis and even prioritized were some issues could be put off for days, weeks, or even months.
The hard part has always been simply getting from the Earth to LEO and back. Flying through the air and being able to reach orbital velocity is tough, and using chemical rocket engines requires the vehicles to be solidly built. Those vehicles are going to be the work horse to drop costs, but I think it is indeed possible for them to be put onto a schedule similar to trans-oceanic aircraft on a per-flight basis. In terms of what happens once you get into LEO... that is a completely different story.
Ah.... Earth-orbit rendezvous missions. The concept was originally dreamed up by none other than Werner Von Braun (and it wasn't even original then but he was in a position to make major decisions of that nature). That was the original plan for going to the Moon until the Lunar-orbit rendezvous plan was created.
In terms of a place to rendezvous around Mars, I think a landing on Phobos would be in order and would be a proven stable location that could be used for transfer between a low-Mars orbit and the Martian surface. Besides, the delta v necessary to get away from Phobos is a joke, and Phobos has some interesting things that would be worth doing for its own reason.
On the whole though, I agree with your mission plan outline. The trick is the details... as you've pointed out too.
Why does it cost billions in order to travel to Mars? Explain that one then I might agree with you. If you are only suggesting it costs billions because the only way government bureaucrats have been able to figure out how to expand their empires to include a manned Mars mission is to ask for a trillion dollars from congress, then that is one approach.
The issue really is one of simply getting into low-Earth orbit cheaply. Drop that cost and getting to Mars can be done quite a bit cheaper. I don't know about a half million per seat, but it certainly could be done for less than a billion dollars a seat much less mutliples of a billion dollars. If mankind is ever going to get to Mars and doing anything realistic there, it simply must be cheaper.
The proof of this concept is simply letting Elon Musk have the legal ability to be able to try to do this, and to do so with his own money. Either he can get it done or not, but if idiots like you go around rewriting laws in Congress so people like him simply can't even try, we will never know if it is even possible. Space exploration is stagnating and the costs are escalating faster than inflation precisely because some groundhogs don't think there is any cheaper or easier way to get into space.
Elon Musk did say that he wanted to retire by living on Mars, and wants to make sure that he isn't alone there either. Given his age and what he has accomplished so far, he might just make it too.
It sure is a whole lot more sane than spending $30 billion dollars for a rocket that is half as powerful as the Saturn V and costs twice as much per pound as the Space Shuttle designed by the incredibly talented engineering firm known as the United States Senate. Which future do you really want to live in?
If you think that a $50 used moped is just as sexy as a Tesla Roadster and has the same performance characteristics, I suppose you are correct.
As for "taking tax dollars", the only tax money that was dumped into Tesla Motors was a loan program put together under the W. Bush administration originally intended to be for General Motors, but somehow Elon Musk was able to work it out that Tesla qualified for the same program and got some of the money. It was also a loan that had to be paid back.
As for the cost of the vehicle, if you don't like it, don't buy it. The only reason why Tesla is currently "losing money" is because they are ramping up the factory in Fremont, California (the former NUMMI plant) and getting ready for production of the Model S. Tesla Motors did make money off of the Roadster... not just a technical profit but a rather substantial amount. It was enough that Toyota decided to become one of those "venture capitalists" investing in Tesla... where I hope the Toyota corporation knows a thing or two about how to manufacture automobiles. Yes, they are just a minority owner in the company, but it also wasn't a tiny investment either.
Space elevators are stuff of dreams and the distant future... if they will ever be built. It is an interesting idea, but I'm still not convinced that the technology ever could be built to make them work... Carbon nanotubes and other claims about materials that might be able to withstand the tensile strength needed to get the job done withstanding. It certainly is something that needs the kind of technological progress we've seen over the past 200 years to continue on for another 200+ years.
Also, a Martian space elevator is going to need to perform an even more massive task: Moving Phobos. If the technology to move asteroid sized pieces of rock is commonly available, who needs stuff like space elevators? I guess several well placed nukes might get the job done, but that would be several bombs like the Tsar Bomba and perhaps even more powerful that would be needed to get the job done.
The reason why Phobos is a problem is that its orbit is inside the radius needed to build a space elevator, and that it would run into any elevator built eventually. The same issue applies to a space elevator on the Earth as it would shut down all spaceflight activity in LEO and for that matter just about everything closer than GEO. It is the kind of thing that is all or nothing: When it gets built, everything else must shut down. You can't have a partially completed and semi-functional space elevator built as a prototype.
I guess a whole lot is going to be riding on this next Falcon 9 launch. If it blows up on the launch pad I would think you might be right. Somehow I doubt that will happen, but who knows?
The problem with your reasoning is that Elon Musk is launching stuff into space and building real spacecraft, hiring real astronauts and getting stuff done. He also has that "crew-rated space capsule" and has even done the math to get it to Mars. In terms of the "long manifest", they are paying deposits to get onto that list, so there must be some actual people with money who are willing to spend several million dollars risking that something is going to happen.
I agree that SpaceX needs to go through the manifest, but Elon Musk does seem like he is able to deliver on his promises.
If the teacher brought in some real porn, why didn't the reporters and even the school district mention that instead of trying to drag Orson Scott Card's name through mud? If anything, that might just set up a libel suit that should be followed for that reason alone where something is being factually asserted which is patently false.
Yup.... Song of Solomon in particular. It amazes me to see some of these hardcore religious nuts try to defend that book at the same time wanting to get rid of "lewd books" like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.
If anything, getting this book banned, particularly for that reason, should put Orson Scott Card in good company of other censored authors due to zealots who are clueless about the book or overly sensitive.
I can't even imagine what this school district would have done with my high school literature teacher after we read "To Kill a Mockingbird" as a class. At least that book talked about a sex act, where I can't even imagine what reference is in "Ender's Game" other than the fact that Ender was born to a woman who conceived him naturally.
There was a brief mention that Ender's mother was Mormon, but that because of the official government view towards religion she kept her religious views to herself and didn't even share them with her children. That was apparently one of the motivations for why Ender was born, as she did make the petition to have a third child (where most families in the novel only had one or two at the most due to extreme population control).
Mostly though, you are correct that religious views were kept out of the book and even the whole book series. Orson Scott Card isn't shy about putting religion into his books, but in this instance it wasn't a major factor. "Speaker for the Dead" drew upon Mr. Card's experience as an LDS missionary who served in central Brazil, but that was mostly portraying a more realistic jungle environment and his use of the Portuguese language rather than religious imagery.
SpaceX is being very cautious with this particular flight. The largest problems might come from scheduling conflicts with other launchers though, including D.O.D. payloads from the adjacent Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Considering the schedule slip so far, it wouldn't surprise me that this flight gets pushed into May or even June, and I don't think Elon Musk is going to have "go fever" in order to simply get this to launch. He is taking enough of a risk by combining the first two of the original test flights for commercial cargo delivery.
Sure, the actual console might look different, but it isn't going to be "Spam in a can" either. I merely referenced the link to show there is going to be a real pilot of the spacecraft and that they will be following American manned spaceflight traditions as opposed to a capsule that is controlled from the ground entirely... like what goes on with Chinese space capsules and the real piloting is on the ground.
BTW, I think that escape system that SpaceX has come up with is pure genius, particularly where the escape system is also going to be the retro-rockets for re-entry as well (saves some payload weight through their dual use). That the performance envelope is enough that they may not even need a parachute upon reentry may be over the top, but that is stinking cool that it is even being considered.
No doubt there will be many changes even between now and when the actual flight happens, so even if you saw what might be a mock-up today at the El Segundo factory there will be still further changes before it finally gets implemented. The cargo version of the Dragon is really what they are working on right now.
Sure, the next time you go flying on Delta Airlines, tell me how their safety record is and how they keep killing passengers on every flight they make (or even every once in awhile). While no doubt there are some slackers in the airline industry, there aren't that many.... they simply wouldn't be flying.
Also note that the FAA has jurisdiction over the flying of spacecraft too... from the Office of Commercial Space Transportation. While they are admittedly taking reference information from NASA in terms of human spaceflight experience and safety guidelines, ultimately that vehicle can't fly without FAA approval and even a flight worthiness certificate. Since the Dragon spacecraft is also docking on the ISS, SpaceX also needs to meet NASA standards, as well as JAXA, and Roscosmos standards too! If any one of them says "No", it can't dock up there (or rather be "bearthed" to the ISS as the remote manipulator arm attaches it to the ISS).
Your assertion that the first flight is going to end up with everybody dying is not only trolling, but it should be noted that SpaceX has already flown the spacecraft too... although that flight was unmanned as will be the next several flights as well. It will be on about flight six before any crew is even suggested to go up, where any really risky issues should have been resolved. SpaceX also has some full-time astronauts who are involved with the flight safety protocols who also wouldn't mind being among the first of those going up.... do you think those astronauts are going to risk their own necks on something that doesn't work?
Where SpaceX is saving money is both on the procurement costs and construction of the vehicle, because they don't need to send everything out for a GSA competitive bid nor do they have some congressmen poking them in the side to move some of their production to multiple congressional districts to ensure "their district" gets some more pork. On top of that, SpaceX has done an amazing job of streamlining the production process of building spacecraft by moving almost all of the part production in house and even in the same factory. As was said in the 60 Minutes piece, raw metal comes in one door and spacecraft come out the other. That doesn't happen for other spacecraft by the major builders for many of the reason I mention above and others as well.
The Dragon isn't being build with a cost-plus contract in part because SpaceX doesn't need to. There may be valid reasons to offer such a contract, but putting people into space has long been a solved engineering problem where it is possible to even understand the financial risks of putting people into space. That may not have been possible 50 years ago, but it is today.
Besides, it is in the interest of SpaceX to keep its passengers alive as killing off customers is bad for the bottom line. Elon Musk isn't that stupid.
Yes, there is a pilot console for the astronauts in this cabin, and even a separate "mission commander's" console that has been planned. If you want to see at least a simulation of what is envisioned, checkout this video:
It certainly has real pilots running the vehicle and doing some actual piloting. As a matter of fact, the "ground crew" for the Falcon 9 is considerably less than anything NASA has done for manned spaceflight even though there will be a "mission control" center monitoring the functions of the vehicle like you may have seen with other spacecraft.
While I will be the first to say that the congressional testimony of Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernen about commercial spaceflight was more shilling for the traditional launcher builders (Lock-Mart, Boeing, ATK) than about any real concerns, there is a legitimate issue at hand in terms of moving to commercial services. There are examples of commercial outsourcing for government services that fall flat on their face (Blackwater Security... to give an example) where it does work better if they are government employees doing the job.
On the other hand, these same guys shilling for the SLS vehicle are also dissing well established vehicles like the Delta IV and Atlas V, suggesting those vehicles are so unreliable that shipping multi-billion dollar satellites into orbit isn't proof that they can also ship people into orbit too.
I don't think the issue at hand is that spaceflight should be special, but that these two former astronauts simply don't accept the possibility that some of these new companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin have the right motivations to be able to provide a safe and effective way to get into space. There is also the distinct possibility that these younger companies simply don't know enough about spacecraft engineering to be able to compete against the traditional companies either. There are examples of some of these companies having to "relearn" lessons from the past by blowing up rockets or other mistakes which caused a mission failure that the more traditional companies wouldn't have done, so the concern that perhaps what these young upstarts are doing could in the long run cost more is legitimate.
The problem with this line of thought is that it is presuming that the federal government is going to be footing the tab for failures by private companies. Instead, what you actually do see is that private commercial spaceflight developers are risking their own money (or the money of their investors) and when they make too many mistakes, the companies simply go bankrupt. Organizations like Benson Aerospace, Kistler, or "Space Services, Inc. of America" have tried in the past to build rockets and have failed to do so. Indeed there is a big list of failed companies. On the bright side, there seem to be several companies who have learned the lessons from the past and are being successful today in spite of those past failures of others.
If you really think a CEO acts without consequences, you simply don't understand corporations.
It may be possible for somebody who somehow was able to raise capital and owns 100% of a corporation to be a total ass and be lazy. Then again, such CEO simply don't exist in the real world so your point is irrelevant.
Yes, there are consequences for CEOs who don't perform. What you may see when a CEO or major corporate leader is goofing off is just a public view of that person. Some CEOs are lousy in terms of public relations and what their employees perceive of them, but if you really don't think there are consequences to their actions, you are completely mistaken. If anything, the level of responsibility and the things demanded of a CEO are by far and away much greater than what is expected of ordinary employees. That is one of the reasons they get the big bucks, because their liability is also huge if they are goofing off.
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How is trying to get cheaper flights into LEO "putting the cart before the horse"?
I'll admit one of the attractions of going to Mars is that you can get away from the problems on the Earth. Think about it... if you want to say "take this country and shove it", where do you go? Mars is a genuine frontier where if you want to avoid paying taxes to the IRS, you've made a whole bunch of enemies and simply want a clean start, or just get tired of the Micky Mouse games and idiotic politics that sometimes happens on the Earth... Mars seems a whole lot more attractive as a way to genuinely "get away from it all".
Yes, there are challenges, but that sounds like something pretty attractive to me. There used to be places like that here on the Earth in the past, but those no longer exist.
BTW, I do agree though that economic activity is going to be the main motivator for going into space. I'm sort of partial more to mining asteroids, where economic potential is much more provable and you don't have to deal with getting tons of material out of a gravity well, like you would on Mars. There are several asteroids that cross between Mars and the Earth, where the technology needed to get to Mars could just as easily be used for those destinations as well and the economic potential is for me much larger on those bodies.
All of that though is predicated on the ability to bootstrap that activity with cheap launches from the Earth. If Elon Musk follows through with his $20-$50 per kilogram cost of getting to LEO, a whole lot of different kinds of activity become much more affordable where a clear business case can be found to start doing stuff like even mining. You can't even start doing any of that when the launch costs are $100k/kg or higher as the current proposed NASA launch systems are going to cost (low-balling the estimates too!)
My bad. You are correct, and that is something I should have fact checked.
The point is that somebody complaining about the "rigors of a vacuum" are only thinking of what it takes to maintain a vacuum here on the Earth as you have all of that pressure of the atmosphere pressing down upon you. A balloon which uses tensile strength to contain the air isn't nearly so hard. There were parts of the Apollo Lunar Lander which were about the thickness of a couple pieces of Aluminum foil that contained the atmosphere and kept it from leaking out into space for nearly a week. While I won't deny there are technical challenges, they aren't insurmountable.
You would be surprised at how much protection a foot or so of water offers from hazardous radiation. You can even drink the stuff that is in the shield too! I didn't know that water tanks were necessarily high tech devices, but then again I'm still sort of young about these things.
In the U.S. Navy, the only thing that forces a submarine to surface is strictly food, as the spaces aboard ship are too small for them to grow it. Six to nine month deployments where they stay underwater the whole time are even pretty common. In other words, your analogy is sort of flawed here. Yes, they can surface... but doing so compromises their mission and that is something they won't do.
In terms of gravity, spinning a spacecraft can do wonders. You want to keep the spin rate below about 1 RPM, but that merely implies the size of the vehicle or the length of the tether to the counter weight. That isn't being done on the ISS because.... it has been proposed as a possible module and was even one of the original module designs. It was cut for pure political reasons, not technical ones.
As for radiation, a tank of water does wonders to stop just about all hazardous radiation you would encounter in space. You might need to hunker down in some reserved spaces for a few days when a solar flare goes by, but it isn't impossible to cope with or to even predict when it happens. The Space Weather Prediction Center already exists to do forecasts for solar storms, where I'm pretty sure more resources would be put into trying to make more accurate predictions for manned spaceflight.
In terms of the vacuum of space, 30 m of water is the same pressure difference as going from sea level to space. On top of that, it is a whole lot easier to build something to keep pressure in (like a balloon) than to keep the pressure on the outside from crushing you. Spacesuits are more complicated because you want to bend that balloon to make it useful, but that is also a solved engineering problem based upon suits of armor fabricated at the time of Henry VIII of England.
As for extremes in temperature, it isn't that big of a deal either. Space is a very good insulator and the largest problem you have is simply getting rid of excess heat as you need to radiate it away as convection isn't an option. To keep a spacecraft from getting too hot one one side, rotating the vehicle is again key, something almost all satellites use even now much less manned vehicles.
I'm not saying that the issues you are complaining about are invalid, but it is something that there is experience and knowledge on how to accomplish them, where the largest factor in their use is simply getting them into space in the first place as launches to LEO have been so expensive in the past. When a liter of water costs $100k or sometimes more to put it into space, weird sorts of attitudes about what is important start to happen with spacecraft designs. Elon Musk is suggesting he might get that below $500 or perhaps even less with these reusable spacecraft, which is partly where the $500k per person round trip to Mars comes from.
Who says it is just Phobos? What other space infrastructure would be put in and around Mars before somebody finally gets around to building the space elevator?
Sure, steering around Phobos and Deimos might be "easy" (god help you if you need to squeeze between both Moons) but it is all of the other stuff that is a problem too. And it presumes you have the steering mechanism set up and going too. Still, that doesn't get over the all-or-nothing issue that space elevators present in terms of the low altitude orbits needed while the elevator is under construction... or do you simply propose that while the elevator is under construction that all spaceflight activity stop on that planet?
Good luck with that one.
When I hear somebody say that you should colonize Antarctica before Mars, I have to say.... let me! The reason and the only reason you don't see cities in Antarctica (beyond something like McMurdo that doesn't have a permanent population) is politics. If you tried to set up a permanent settlement there and did something like drilled for oil, mined coal, or did other things on that continent to support a real city you would get your hand slapped so fast and put into prison that it would make your head spin.
Simply put, it isn't because we can't build a city in Antarctica, but because the politicians won't let us. There may even be valid reasons for stopping that from happening, but it has nothing to do with the technical capability of doing so or even the willingness of people to go there. That argument is not only tired and old, but misleading and presuming something that isn't even true. The arguments for stopping colonization of Antarctica really don't apply to Mars, the Moon, or other places in the universe though... unless you think development on Mars is going to cause global warming on the Earth due to industrial activity on Mars (or the Moon for that matter). Indeed I would argue exactly the opposite, and Mars could use some global warming.
Once you get into space you can also use other technologies for propulsion, like ion thrusters (low thrust.... but they can operate for a very long time with continuous thrust and insane specific impulse numbers) or even nuclear rocket engines like NERVA.
In theory, you can travel from the Earth to Mars in about six weeks and possible even less if you had the right engines. Yes, that takes a whole lot of energy.... but space is also full of a whole lot of energy too!
There are also things like Aldrin Cyclers and mission profiles that don't need to worry about how much mass is traveling between the Earth and Mars, so it becomes more like a cruise vacation on the journey complete with 5-star accommodations and staff along with entertainment. Those spaceships can literally be as big as you care... as large as any major cruse ship or larger. They can also be expanded to accommodate more passengers on each cycle or even have the construction crew "on staff" while in flight. It would be a bit of a trick to get the thing built initially, but the per passenger cost would be minimal and doesn't even need to worry about delta-v or even fuel at all and the staff can even be rotated out on each cycle. Food can be grown in such a vehicle, with air and water recycled as necessary... such a system is even being done on the ISS at the moment even though I'll admit it does need to improve to become practical on a larger scale. Solar arrays can be used for what energy needs such a vehicle might have. If you are going insane when running around a spaceship the size of a cruise ship, I can't help you out much. It may not look like a cruise ship, but then again stuff in space doesn't have to look like anything on Earth or even anything like what you've seen Hollywood come up with for spaceflight either.
In other words, it takes changing the notion of how things are done. The first few flights and getting the infrastructure set up are going to be expensive, but once that is built it doesn't have to be expensive for ongoing costs. The tough part is getting to and from the Earth to LEO or at worst to a "Earth Transfer Orbit" position. The sitting "as a sardine in a can" would only be for a couple days, and even then something like an Aldrin Cycler could be built to transfer between LEO and those other positions relatively near the Earth to get to the Earth-Mars cycler.
The idea that you are going to build a disintegrating pyramid starting from sea level at KSC bringing everything with you needed for the trip as you throw parts of your spaceship away is where the perception is flawed. Such a design methodology was useful in a wartime situation like how the Apollo program was built, but that doesn't need to be the only way to travel to other worlds. If anything, getting to the Moon with the Lunar Lander was about the limit of what you can do with chemical rockets flying on the disintegrating pyramid and Mars is simply unreachable. It is that mentality which creates the trillion dollar manned Mars missions too.
The Space Shuttle suffered not from extreme abuse upon reentry, but rather from going through the bureaucratic grinding mill known as the United States Congress and the fact that it was envisioned to be "The One True Launcher" that would be used for everything and thus had to do everything possible in space and was built like a swiss army knife. It had to fly polar orbits, have cross-range ability to avoid "enemy" interception, carry a huge payload, and do all sort of other things that ate into its budget to meet the needs of every federal agency (not just NASA)...and that wasn't all. The cost of the orbiter started to go up because there were many early costs that were deferred until later because the bean counters felt they could go for a cheaper solution during the design stage and the early development that would end up costing more when it finally got to flight status. So many compromises were made on the Space Shuttle that frankly it ought to be a textbook example for how not to design a spacecraft and what happens when you let non-engineers become involved in key engineering decisions.
Seriously, don't use the Space Shuttle as an excuse for why reusable spacecraft fail. A much better design was with the "Crew return vehicle" that was designed and even had some metal bent, but never made it into space due to shifting priorities on the part of the U.S. Congress. That should say something too, where there hasn't been a single spacecraft designed by the NASA manned spaceflight program which has made it from the drawing boards to making an actual flight into space for over 40 years (the last one was the Space Shuttle). It hasn't been for a lack of ideas or even billions of dollars spent toward building something else, it is just that every time something is tried *something* goes wrong and the design is scrapped for the next better thing. That happened so many times that America doesn't even have a spacecraft any more for astronauts to use.
NASA hasn't gone too much beyond where they were in the mid 1960's and in some ways are going backward. The SLS isn't anything more than a scaled down version of the Saturn V made with used parts from earlier spacecraft, so if SpaceX is at the same level that NASA was in the mid 1960's... in 10-15 years they will be far ahead of anything NASA is doing at the moment. It is sad to say, but Skylab pretty much was the pinnacle of the manned spaceflight program and it has been going downhill since. They've improved some procedures, but NASA hasn't really done anything genuinely inspiring with the manned spaceflight program other than repair the Hubble telescope. The Shuttle flights looked cool.... but really?
It terms of daring to go where nobody has gone before, NASA just isn't where it is at any more. Heck, they can't even duplicate Alan Shepard's first flight, even though Richard Branson is trying to make that happen.
At the moment, flight crew costs on most spacecraft are statistical noise, and the fuel costs are less than the catering budget for the public relations team and the people they are hosting at the launch. For the Space Shuttle it was the maintenance costs and the flight monitoring costs (analogous to the ATC crews for aircraft) that ate up most of the budget and had staff in the tens of thousands. Airlines wouldn't ever make a profit if they had to work under that kind of structure.
While I agree that fuel costs won't be the only factor in a fully reusable spacecraft design like Elon Musk proposes, if it was made much more significant due to the fact that the current way that spacecraft were flown was modified to be more like airline operations the general cost for getting to space could drop significantly.
An interplanetary spacecraft would operate more like long haul oceanic ships, depending on the method of operation. The actual spaceship itself would likely never fly in the Earth's atmosphere, so maintenance issue would not be an issue in terms of being designed for the stresses of atmospheric flight and might even be more like maintenance issues for buildings instead. Yes, they would need to be kept in good shape, but there would be relatively few urgent issues that would need immediate attention and could be done on an as needed basis and even prioritized were some issues could be put off for days, weeks, or even months.
The hard part has always been simply getting from the Earth to LEO and back. Flying through the air and being able to reach orbital velocity is tough, and using chemical rocket engines requires the vehicles to be solidly built. Those vehicles are going to be the work horse to drop costs, but I think it is indeed possible for them to be put onto a schedule similar to trans-oceanic aircraft on a per-flight basis. In terms of what happens once you get into LEO... that is a completely different story.
Ah.... Earth-orbit rendezvous missions. The concept was originally dreamed up by none other than Werner Von Braun (and it wasn't even original then but he was in a position to make major decisions of that nature). That was the original plan for going to the Moon until the Lunar-orbit rendezvous plan was created.
In terms of a place to rendezvous around Mars, I think a landing on Phobos would be in order and would be a proven stable location that could be used for transfer between a low-Mars orbit and the Martian surface. Besides, the delta v necessary to get away from Phobos is a joke, and Phobos has some interesting things that would be worth doing for its own reason.
On the whole though, I agree with your mission plan outline. The trick is the details... as you've pointed out too.
Why does it cost billions in order to travel to Mars? Explain that one then I might agree with you. If you are only suggesting it costs billions because the only way government bureaucrats have been able to figure out how to expand their empires to include a manned Mars mission is to ask for a trillion dollars from congress, then that is one approach.
The issue really is one of simply getting into low-Earth orbit cheaply. Drop that cost and getting to Mars can be done quite a bit cheaper. I don't know about a half million per seat, but it certainly could be done for less than a billion dollars a seat much less mutliples of a billion dollars. If mankind is ever going to get to Mars and doing anything realistic there, it simply must be cheaper.
The proof of this concept is simply letting Elon Musk have the legal ability to be able to try to do this, and to do so with his own money. Either he can get it done or not, but if idiots like you go around rewriting laws in Congress so people like him simply can't even try, we will never know if it is even possible. Space exploration is stagnating and the costs are escalating faster than inflation precisely because some groundhogs don't think there is any cheaper or easier way to get into space.
Elon Musk did say that he wanted to retire by living on Mars, and wants to make sure that he isn't alone there either. Given his age and what he has accomplished so far, he might just make it too.
It sure is a whole lot more sane than spending $30 billion dollars for a rocket that is half as powerful as the Saturn V and costs twice as much per pound as the Space Shuttle designed by the incredibly talented engineering firm known as the United States Senate. Which future do you really want to live in?
If you think that a $50 used moped is just as sexy as a Tesla Roadster and has the same performance characteristics, I suppose you are correct.
As for "taking tax dollars", the only tax money that was dumped into Tesla Motors was a loan program put together under the W. Bush administration originally intended to be for General Motors, but somehow Elon Musk was able to work it out that Tesla qualified for the same program and got some of the money. It was also a loan that had to be paid back.
As for the cost of the vehicle, if you don't like it, don't buy it. The only reason why Tesla is currently "losing money" is because they are ramping up the factory in Fremont, California (the former NUMMI plant) and getting ready for production of the Model S. Tesla Motors did make money off of the Roadster... not just a technical profit but a rather substantial amount. It was enough that Toyota decided to become one of those "venture capitalists" investing in Tesla... where I hope the Toyota corporation knows a thing or two about how to manufacture automobiles. Yes, they are just a minority owner in the company, but it also wasn't a tiny investment either.
Space elevators are stuff of dreams and the distant future... if they will ever be built. It is an interesting idea, but I'm still not convinced that the technology ever could be built to make them work... Carbon nanotubes and other claims about materials that might be able to withstand the tensile strength needed to get the job done withstanding. It certainly is something that needs the kind of technological progress we've seen over the past 200 years to continue on for another 200+ years.
Also, a Martian space elevator is going to need to perform an even more massive task: Moving Phobos. If the technology to move asteroid sized pieces of rock is commonly available, who needs stuff like space elevators? I guess several well placed nukes might get the job done, but that would be several bombs like the Tsar Bomba and perhaps even more powerful that would be needed to get the job done.
The reason why Phobos is a problem is that its orbit is inside the radius needed to build a space elevator, and that it would run into any elevator built eventually. The same issue applies to a space elevator on the Earth as it would shut down all spaceflight activity in LEO and for that matter just about everything closer than GEO. It is the kind of thing that is all or nothing: When it gets built, everything else must shut down. You can't have a partially completed and semi-functional space elevator built as a prototype.
I guess a whole lot is going to be riding on this next Falcon 9 launch. If it blows up on the launch pad I would think you might be right. Somehow I doubt that will happen, but who knows?
The problem with your reasoning is that Elon Musk is launching stuff into space and building real spacecraft, hiring real astronauts and getting stuff done. He also has that "crew-rated space capsule" and has even done the math to get it to Mars. In terms of the "long manifest", they are paying deposits to get onto that list, so there must be some actual people with money who are willing to spend several million dollars risking that something is going to happen.
I agree that SpaceX needs to go through the manifest, but Elon Musk does seem like he is able to deliver on his promises.
If the teacher brought in some real porn, why didn't the reporters and even the school district mention that instead of trying to drag Orson Scott Card's name through mud? If anything, that might just set up a libel suit that should be followed for that reason alone where something is being factually asserted which is patently false.
Yup.... Song of Solomon in particular. It amazes me to see some of these hardcore religious nuts try to defend that book at the same time wanting to get rid of "lewd books" like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.
If anything, getting this book banned, particularly for that reason, should put Orson Scott Card in good company of other censored authors due to zealots who are clueless about the book or overly sensitive.
I can't even imagine what this school district would have done with my high school literature teacher after we read "To Kill a Mockingbird" as a class. At least that book talked about a sex act, where I can't even imagine what reference is in "Ender's Game" other than the fact that Ender was born to a woman who conceived him naturally.
There was a brief mention that Ender's mother was Mormon, but that because of the official government view towards religion she kept her religious views to herself and didn't even share them with her children. That was apparently one of the motivations for why Ender was born, as she did make the petition to have a third child (where most families in the novel only had one or two at the most due to extreme population control).
Mostly though, you are correct that religious views were kept out of the book and even the whole book series. Orson Scott Card isn't shy about putting religion into his books, but in this instance it wasn't a major factor. "Speaker for the Dead" drew upon Mr. Card's experience as an LDS missionary who served in central Brazil, but that was mostly portraying a more realistic jungle environment and his use of the Portuguese language rather than religious imagery.
SpaceX is being very cautious with this particular flight. The largest problems might come from scheduling conflicts with other launchers though, including D.O.D. payloads from the adjacent Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Considering the schedule slip so far, it wouldn't surprise me that this flight gets pushed into May or even June, and I don't think Elon Musk is going to have "go fever" in order to simply get this to launch. He is taking enough of a risk by combining the first two of the original test flights for commercial cargo delivery.
Sure, the actual console might look different, but it isn't going to be "Spam in a can" either. I merely referenced the link to show there is going to be a real pilot of the spacecraft and that they will be following American manned spaceflight traditions as opposed to a capsule that is controlled from the ground entirely... like what goes on with Chinese space capsules and the real piloting is on the ground.
BTW, I think that escape system that SpaceX has come up with is pure genius, particularly where the escape system is also going to be the retro-rockets for re-entry as well (saves some payload weight through their dual use). That the performance envelope is enough that they may not even need a parachute upon reentry may be over the top, but that is stinking cool that it is even being considered.
No doubt there will be many changes even between now and when the actual flight happens, so even if you saw what might be a mock-up today at the El Segundo factory there will be still further changes before it finally gets implemented. The cargo version of the Dragon is really what they are working on right now.
Sure, the next time you go flying on Delta Airlines, tell me how their safety record is and how they keep killing passengers on every flight they make (or even every once in awhile). While no doubt there are some slackers in the airline industry, there aren't that many.... they simply wouldn't be flying.
Also note that the FAA has jurisdiction over the flying of spacecraft too... from the Office of Commercial Space Transportation. While they are admittedly taking reference information from NASA in terms of human spaceflight experience and safety guidelines, ultimately that vehicle can't fly without FAA approval and even a flight worthiness certificate. Since the Dragon spacecraft is also docking on the ISS, SpaceX also needs to meet NASA standards, as well as JAXA, and Roscosmos standards too! If any one of them says "No", it can't dock up there (or rather be "bearthed" to the ISS as the remote manipulator arm attaches it to the ISS).
Your assertion that the first flight is going to end up with everybody dying is not only trolling, but it should be noted that SpaceX has already flown the spacecraft too... although that flight was unmanned as will be the next several flights as well. It will be on about flight six before any crew is even suggested to go up, where any really risky issues should have been resolved. SpaceX also has some full-time astronauts who are involved with the flight safety protocols who also wouldn't mind being among the first of those going up.... do you think those astronauts are going to risk their own necks on something that doesn't work?
Where SpaceX is saving money is both on the procurement costs and construction of the vehicle, because they don't need to send everything out for a GSA competitive bid nor do they have some congressmen poking them in the side to move some of their production to multiple congressional districts to ensure "their district" gets some more pork. On top of that, SpaceX has done an amazing job of streamlining the production process of building spacecraft by moving almost all of the part production in house and even in the same factory. As was said in the 60 Minutes piece, raw metal comes in one door and spacecraft come out the other. That doesn't happen for other spacecraft by the major builders for many of the reason I mention above and others as well.
The Dragon isn't being build with a cost-plus contract in part because SpaceX doesn't need to. There may be valid reasons to offer such a contract, but putting people into space has long been a solved engineering problem where it is possible to even understand the financial risks of putting people into space. That may not have been possible 50 years ago, but it is today.
Besides, it is in the interest of SpaceX to keep its passengers alive as killing off customers is bad for the bottom line. Elon Musk isn't that stupid.
Yes, there is a pilot console for the astronauts in this cabin, and even a separate "mission commander's" console that has been planned. If you want to see at least a simulation of what is envisioned, checkout this video:
http://www.spacex.com/multimedia/videos.php?id=6
It certainly has real pilots running the vehicle and doing some actual piloting. As a matter of fact, the "ground crew" for the Falcon 9 is considerably less than anything NASA has done for manned spaceflight even though there will be a "mission control" center monitoring the functions of the vehicle like you may have seen with other spacecraft.
While I will be the first to say that the congressional testimony of Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernen about commercial spaceflight was more shilling for the traditional launcher builders (Lock-Mart, Boeing, ATK) than about any real concerns, there is a legitimate issue at hand in terms of moving to commercial services. There are examples of commercial outsourcing for government services that fall flat on their face (Blackwater Security... to give an example) where it does work better if they are government employees doing the job.
On the other hand, these same guys shilling for the SLS vehicle are also dissing well established vehicles like the Delta IV and Atlas V, suggesting those vehicles are so unreliable that shipping multi-billion dollar satellites into orbit isn't proof that they can also ship people into orbit too.
I don't think the issue at hand is that spaceflight should be special, but that these two former astronauts simply don't accept the possibility that some of these new companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin have the right motivations to be able to provide a safe and effective way to get into space. There is also the distinct possibility that these younger companies simply don't know enough about spacecraft engineering to be able to compete against the traditional companies either. There are examples of some of these companies having to "relearn" lessons from the past by blowing up rockets or other mistakes which caused a mission failure that the more traditional companies wouldn't have done, so the concern that perhaps what these young upstarts are doing could in the long run cost more is legitimate.
The problem with this line of thought is that it is presuming that the federal government is going to be footing the tab for failures by private companies. Instead, what you actually do see is that private commercial spaceflight developers are risking their own money (or the money of their investors) and when they make too many mistakes, the companies simply go bankrupt. Organizations like Benson Aerospace, Kistler, or "Space Services, Inc. of America" have tried in the past to build rockets and have failed to do so. Indeed there is a big list of failed companies. On the bright side, there seem to be several companies who have learned the lessons from the past and are being successful today in spite of those past failures of others.
If you really think a CEO acts without consequences, you simply don't understand corporations.
It may be possible for somebody who somehow was able to raise capital and owns 100% of a corporation to be a total ass and be lazy. Then again, such CEO simply don't exist in the real world so your point is irrelevant.
Yes, there are consequences for CEOs who don't perform. What you may see when a CEO or major corporate leader is goofing off is just a public view of that person. Some CEOs are lousy in terms of public relations and what their employees perceive of them, but if you really don't think there are consequences to their actions, you are completely mistaken. If anything, the level of responsibility and the things demanded of a CEO are by far and away much greater than what is expected of ordinary employees. That is one of the reasons they get the big bucks, because their liability is also huge if they are goofing off.