Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.
1) Astronauts that travel for a year without gravity to Mars (which has gravity) will be non-functional in a gravity environment. They will need to be exposed to a gravity environment to be able to perform their mission. Otherwise, they'll be bed ridden when they get to Mars.
2) Robots are not people. The astronauts will be travelling outside of the Earth's magnetic field for the period of a year and they will be exposed to many solar flares during that time. It is not a matter of luck. There is a 100% chance they'll be hit by high doses of solar radiation from these events. This is not a large concern within the Earth's magnetic field. However, this would be deadly to anyone travelling outside of that field and was exposed without significant radiation shielding.
3) Micro-meteorites. Again, this demonstrates you have no clue that you know what you are talking about. The craft we have sent were robotic unpressurized vehicles designed to survive in the harsh environment of space. The problem is that we aren't talking about sending a robot. We are sending people in a pressurized capsule. People aren't designed to take hits from micro-meteorites. If a micro-meteorite goes through the capsule, it de-pressurizes. If it goes through a persons head, heart, or major artery or vein - they'll die. Get the picture? Also, you didn't understand my comment about Earth's gravity well either. The space around Earth is relatively empty of these micro-meteorites because the Earth's mass pulls them in like a huge vacuum cleaner. That is not true once you leave the Earth's gravity well.
So honestly, where did you get your expertise and not know a damn thing about anything?
First, Mars Direct is a pipe dream. Anyone going on that death trap is going to die. It doesn't even pretend to address the big three problems that is going to kill anyone going to Mars (the lack of gravity, radiation from the Sun, and micro-meteorites). Second, LEO is not Mars. It isn't even the Moon. It is so far beyond any concept of what we have ever thought about doing that it is ridiculous. Third, Elon Musk is rich and wants to spend trillions of American tax payer dollars on space. All that tells me is he is a rich idiot, nothing more.
Ok, you can survive 437.7 days in microgravity. You do realize they have to land on Mars and it has gravity. They will be in no shape to land or do anything after that long without having been in a gravity environment along the way. The other problem is lets suppose they use water. Water isn't exactly light and for the same amount of protection, you will probably have to put up 15 times as much water as lead making the vehicle even bigger. Also, your estimate that the vehicle would be 50 tons is ridiculous. Anything with rotating sections, a large radiation shield, and the fuel alone is going many times heavier (probably on the order of 1,000 tons). It is a simple fact this is all purely science fiction and nobody will go to Mars in our lifetimes.
You do realize there is a HUGE difference between a 1 hour flight and an 18 hour flight don't you? Also, the Concorde was not significantly faster compared to a slower transatlantic flight. And I'm not claiming it would be inexpensive, but they are already building this stuff for space tourism. Why not employ it to get you somewhere instead? That at least is a worthwhile national goal.
Factories and forges that assemble themselves from raw materials automatically (even with a starter factory) do not exist anywhere but in science fiction. It would probably take 30 years (who knows - maybe a 100 years) or more to design such a system that actually worked (and that is if you had the materials in ready supply). This is the kind of delusion that all people that want to go back to the Moon engage in. I'll give you my prediction, all of this is going to blow up in people's faces when they understand how truly expensive this is and 50 years from now - the only thing that is going to be on the Moon is the American flag and maybe a Chinese flag. Each having cost hundreds of billions to place there.
There is nothing to mine in LEO. We are talking about an operation on the Moon, not LEO. The costs aren't nearly going to be the same. We are talking about facilities, mining, food, water, shelter, transportation, fuel. It cost $250 billion to get the moon with the Saturn rockets. It is going to cost at least that to get back to the Moon, and then you have to prospect it since all we know about on there is dust, rocks, and maybe some water. If there is nothing there, you are out easily hundreds of billions, then you have to build all that stuff. It'll cost easily a trillion or more just for that. There is no way the American public is going to support a prospecting mission/mining operation to the moon for that amount of money. Not in our liftetimes at least.
And why can't I cite the American Chamber of Commerce exactly? You obviously are aware of what they have to say about this matter, so it is completely biased of you to disregard an organization actually dedicated to promoting American business don't you think? Certainly it is disingenous to demand a citation and then state known citations that strongly disagree with your position as being off limits.
You do realize it would probably cost a trillion dollars or more to build facilities on the Moon. Just to go back to the moon would cost a few hundred billion by itself. I think we can find a lot of iridium on Earth for that price.
Again, if China would change its policies and let foreign companies operate freely in China, there wouldn't be the need for these restrictions (imposed by the companies themselves). The restrictions mostly have to do with China since your company undoubtedly has a Chinese partner and there is a concern they will simply take the technology (a very legitimate concern). Obviously since your company operates outside of the US and you can easily get the technology in other countries this is the case. It is disingenous to blame the US (or any other country) when this is the real reason that companies are doing this. My own company has a sales office in China and I regularly go there, but no one in our company would ever consider opening plants or facilities in China because of their partnership requirement. It is simply a license to steal technology and in today's world, that is a sure way to end up out of business in a few years.
A few problems with your little theory. It was a simulation. I think you missed that point. It was in full Earth gravity. It was inside the Earth's magetic field. And so it wasn't realistic at all. The problem you failed to recognize is that sitting in micro-gravity for a year is very deterious on the body. The other problem is once you leave the Earth's magnetic field, you are bombarded by high energy particles from the Sun and need a radiation shield which would undoubtedly be lead. That is extremely heavy to get into space. The whole ship would have be enormous to even have a hope of carrying all the supplies, protection, rotating sections (for artificial gravity), and other things required. It simply isn't technologically practical any time in our future. Maybe in 500 years it will be.
Ah, so this is all a supposedly educated Chinese can muster? No counter argument. No reponse. No denials. The only thing you can do is call me names? I guess everything I said China is true, in particular, what I said about the Chinese people. And I'll add that they are extremely dimwitted too.
Yes, it costs hundreds of billions of dollars to go to the Moon. Great. The US doesn't have hundreds of billions of dollars to waste on a pile of rocks in space. Don't be completely ridiculous.
This is completely inaccurate. The problem with your supposed analysis is that China it is literally sitting on trillions of dollar of foreign capital reserves and they can easily buy the manufactured products and servies necessary to clean up and modernize their plants and infrastructure from the West. The fact is, the US and other western countries (including Japan) would be eager for the business. The real reason China doesn't do this is because they want to build it themselves (or bring in partners and steal the technology that way). All Japanese companies and many successful western companies realize this is a recipe for disaster and that is why China doesn't have the needed infrastructure. No company is going to partner with a Chinese firm nowdays that understands what China is doing and has a technological advantage. It is better not to do business with China at all then lose their technology to China.
Go where exactly? You are clearly deluded by too much science fiction in your diet. There is nothing out there and we are so technologically backward, it will be literally centuries till we have the technology to go anywhere economically in our own solar system. After we develop economical fusion power, can feed and cloth all the people on the planet, and have a stable world political and economic system - then MAYBE that might be the time to start thinking about exploring with manned missions. Right now, we are nowhere close to any of that and it will be centuries (if we don't blow ourselves up first) till we are.
Despite Chinese propaganda, only speculators were hurt in the economic meltdown on Wallstreet. The real US economy wasn't affected and only people that lost jobs worked in the speculative bubble of finance and real estate. BTW - China has a real estate bubble 100x larger, with whole cities and apartment blocks built that are empty. Can't wait for that bubble to implode and see the millions of chinese out of work as a result. Maybe that will deflate their ego a little.
So what? The Chinese are so stupid they can't learn from anyone else so they have to repeat every other country's mistake? Have fun in that polluted hell-hole you've created for yourselves. Most civilized people know not to take a dump where they live. The Chinese decided to take a collective dump on their whole country.
Maybe that is why they are going to space? Because they haven't polluted it yet and their own country is unlivable.
Unlmited resources to waste apparently on foolish national projects. Why don't they pour that money into cleaning up their environment? Last time I visited China, the air was polluted, the water was polluted and the whole place stank. China is really a modern cesspool of manufacturing pollution. It's really is a dirty, filthy, polluted third-world country with delusions of grandeur.
What resources are you talking about? There are rocks, and lots of dust and maybe some water. WoW!!! We have that here. And it only costs a couple of hundred billion to get there to get those off the Moon. Do you even have any idea what you are talking about? Despite what you think, the Moon is not made of cheese or gold.
You do realize many international flights are 16-18 hours plus in length. Try flying to Japan someday. I'm sure people would happily trade that for a 1 hour flight instead.
Elon Musk has no credibility on going to Mars and talking out of his hat. What is required to go to Mars is a truly mammoth ship with rotating sections, radiation shields, sealed sections, and so on. It would cost trillions to send anyone with our current technology and many of those that went would have a very good chance of ending up dead. Bear in mind that going to Mars means leaving the earth's gravity well, magnetic field, travelling for two years there and back and so on. Without adequate supplies, artificial gravity, radiation protection, and so on, you are going to die. And even with that, there is a good chance a micrometeorite will kill you on the way.
We can't get people to Mars economically or technologically even. Anyone you send will just die from a number of factors including exposure to solar radiation, micrometeorites, lack of gravity, and we can't physically take enough oxygen, food, and water there and back. Plus, if anything else were to happen, they'd be dead too because nobody could reach them in time to help them. It's a fool's journey.
Agreed. The money is in satellites. Even space tourism is stupid. There is no hotels in space. The SpaceX guys should work on delivering payloads to low earth orbit inexpensively and suborbital travel. You should be able to deliver people anywhere in the world in an hour with that. Now, that is something people will pay for.
We don't need to go back to the Moon. We went there, planted a flag, and left. There is no reason to go back to the Moon or to Mars. If China wants to waste a few hundred billion dollars on space, let them. That is one expensive flag planting ceremony.
Not much. The elevator itself is actually not in orbit, so anything detaching from it immediately starts falling down, accumulates some funny velocity (it's falling down in vacuum, so it won't reach a terminal velocity as when falling in atmosphere) and fiercely burns up on reentry.
The Earth-side construction side might be damaged by the low-altitude debris but the high altitude part of the elevator (which makes up for about ~99% of it) should burn-up safely in the atmosphere due to high accumulated velocity.
On the other hand - blowing up a space elevator on a body with no or low atmosphere - you'll probably get a nice 1:1 globe with a finely engraved equator line.:)
I wasn't talking about the orbital pieces. I really don't know what would happen for certain to those. Large parts of it might just go flying off becoming a huge debris problem in orbit (like we don't have that problem already as well). I'm talking about the miles of construction in the atmosphere getting up there. That stuff isn't going to burn up and is going to land on someone. Just look at what happened when the twin towers came down. Now imagine 60 miles of that stuff coming down.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.
1) Astronauts that travel for a year without gravity to Mars (which has gravity) will be non-functional in a gravity environment. They will need to be exposed to a gravity environment to be able to perform their mission. Otherwise, they'll be bed ridden when they get to Mars.
2) Robots are not people. The astronauts will be travelling outside of the Earth's magnetic field for the period of a year and they will be exposed to many solar flares during that time. It is not a matter of luck. There is a 100% chance they'll be hit by high doses of solar radiation from these events. This is not a large concern within the Earth's magnetic field. However, this would be deadly to anyone travelling outside of that field and was exposed without significant radiation shielding.
3) Micro-meteorites. Again, this demonstrates you have no clue that you know what you are talking about. The craft we have sent were robotic unpressurized vehicles designed to survive in the harsh environment of space. The problem is that we aren't talking about sending a robot. We are sending people in a pressurized capsule. People aren't designed to take hits from micro-meteorites. If a micro-meteorite goes through the capsule, it de-pressurizes. If it goes through a persons head, heart, or major artery or vein - they'll die. Get the picture? Also, you didn't understand my comment about Earth's gravity well either. The space around Earth is relatively empty of these micro-meteorites because the Earth's mass pulls them in like a huge vacuum cleaner. That is not true once you leave the Earth's gravity well.
So honestly, where did you get your expertise and not know a damn thing about anything?
First, Mars Direct is a pipe dream. Anyone going on that death trap is going to die. It doesn't even pretend to address the big three problems that is going to kill anyone going to Mars (the lack of gravity, radiation from the Sun, and micro-meteorites). Second, LEO is not Mars. It isn't even the Moon. It is so far beyond any concept of what we have ever thought about doing that it is ridiculous. Third, Elon Musk is rich and wants to spend trillions of American tax payer dollars on space. All that tells me is he is a rich idiot, nothing more.
Ok, you can survive 437.7 days in microgravity. You do realize they have to land on Mars and it has gravity. They will be in no shape to land or do anything after that long without having been in a gravity environment along the way. The other problem is lets suppose they use water. Water isn't exactly light and for the same amount of protection, you will probably have to put up 15 times as much water as lead making the vehicle even bigger. Also, your estimate that the vehicle would be 50 tons is ridiculous. Anything with rotating sections, a large radiation shield, and the fuel alone is going many times heavier (probably on the order of 1,000 tons). It is a simple fact this is all purely science fiction and nobody will go to Mars in our lifetimes.
You do realize there is a HUGE difference between a 1 hour flight and an 18 hour flight don't you? Also, the Concorde was not significantly faster compared to a slower transatlantic flight. And I'm not claiming it would be inexpensive, but they are already building this stuff for space tourism. Why not employ it to get you somewhere instead? That at least is a worthwhile national goal.
Factories and forges that assemble themselves from raw materials automatically (even with a starter factory) do not exist anywhere but in science fiction. It would probably take 30 years (who knows - maybe a 100 years) or more to design such a system that actually worked (and that is if you had the materials in ready supply). This is the kind of delusion that all people that want to go back to the Moon engage in. I'll give you my prediction, all of this is going to blow up in people's faces when they understand how truly expensive this is and 50 years from now - the only thing that is going to be on the Moon is the American flag and maybe a Chinese flag. Each having cost hundreds of billions to place there.
There is nothing to mine in LEO. We are talking about an operation on the Moon, not LEO. The costs aren't nearly going to be the same. We are talking about facilities, mining, food, water, shelter, transportation, fuel. It cost $250 billion to get the moon with the Saturn rockets. It is going to cost at least that to get back to the Moon, and then you have to prospect it since all we know about on there is dust, rocks, and maybe some water. If there is nothing there, you are out easily hundreds of billions, then you have to build all that stuff. It'll cost easily a trillion or more just for that. There is no way the American public is going to support a prospecting mission/mining operation to the moon for that amount of money. Not in our liftetimes at least.
Just a FYI. Los Angeles isn't a country. China is.
And why can't I cite the American Chamber of Commerce exactly? You obviously are aware of what they have to say about this matter, so it is completely biased of you to disregard an organization actually dedicated to promoting American business don't you think? Certainly it is disingenous to demand a citation and then state known citations that strongly disagree with your position as being off limits.
You do realize it would probably cost a trillion dollars or more to build facilities on the Moon. Just to go back to the moon would cost a few hundred billion by itself. I think we can find a lot of iridium on Earth for that price.
Again, if China would change its policies and let foreign companies operate freely in China, there wouldn't be the need for these restrictions (imposed by the companies themselves). The restrictions mostly have to do with China since your company undoubtedly has a Chinese partner and there is a concern they will simply take the technology (a very legitimate concern). Obviously since your company operates outside of the US and you can easily get the technology in other countries this is the case. It is disingenous to blame the US (or any other country) when this is the real reason that companies are doing this. My own company has a sales office in China and I regularly go there, but no one in our company would ever consider opening plants or facilities in China because of their partnership requirement. It is simply a license to steal technology and in today's world, that is a sure way to end up out of business in a few years.
A few problems with your little theory. It was a simulation. I think you missed that point. It was in full Earth gravity. It was inside the Earth's magetic field. And so it wasn't realistic at all. The problem you failed to recognize is that sitting in micro-gravity for a year is very deterious on the body. The other problem is once you leave the Earth's magnetic field, you are bombarded by high energy particles from the Sun and need a radiation shield which would undoubtedly be lead. That is extremely heavy to get into space. The whole ship would have be enormous to even have a hope of carrying all the supplies, protection, rotating sections (for artificial gravity), and other things required. It simply isn't technologically practical any time in our future. Maybe in 500 years it will be.
Ah, so this is all a supposedly educated Chinese can muster? No counter argument. No reponse. No denials. The only thing you can do is call me names? I guess everything I said China is true, in particular, what I said about the Chinese people. And I'll add that they are extremely dimwitted too.
Yes, it costs hundreds of billions of dollars to go to the Moon. Great. The US doesn't have hundreds of billions of dollars to waste on a pile of rocks in space. Don't be completely ridiculous.
This is completely inaccurate. The problem with your supposed analysis is that China it is literally sitting on trillions of dollar of foreign capital reserves and they can easily buy the manufactured products and servies necessary to clean up and modernize their plants and infrastructure from the West. The fact is, the US and other western countries (including Japan) would be eager for the business. The real reason China doesn't do this is because they want to build it themselves (or bring in partners and steal the technology that way). All Japanese companies and many successful western companies realize this is a recipe for disaster and that is why China doesn't have the needed infrastructure. No company is going to partner with a Chinese firm nowdays that understands what China is doing and has a technological advantage. It is better not to do business with China at all then lose their technology to China.
Go where exactly? You are clearly deluded by too much science fiction in your diet. There is nothing out there and we are so technologically backward, it will be literally centuries till we have the technology to go anywhere economically in our own solar system. After we develop economical fusion power, can feed and cloth all the people on the planet, and have a stable world political and economic system - then MAYBE that might be the time to start thinking about exploring with manned missions. Right now, we are nowhere close to any of that and it will be centuries (if we don't blow ourselves up first) till we are.
Despite Chinese propaganda, only speculators were hurt in the economic meltdown on Wallstreet. The real US economy wasn't affected and only people that lost jobs worked in the speculative bubble of finance and real estate. BTW - China has a real estate bubble 100x larger, with whole cities and apartment blocks built that are empty. Can't wait for that bubble to implode and see the millions of chinese out of work as a result. Maybe that will deflate their ego a little.
So what? The Chinese are so stupid they can't learn from anyone else so they have to repeat every other country's mistake? Have fun in that polluted hell-hole you've created for yourselves. Most civilized people know not to take a dump where they live. The Chinese decided to take a collective dump on their whole country. Maybe that is why they are going to space? Because they haven't polluted it yet and their own country is unlivable.
Unlmited resources to waste apparently on foolish national projects. Why don't they pour that money into cleaning up their environment? Last time I visited China, the air was polluted, the water was polluted and the whole place stank. China is really a modern cesspool of manufacturing pollution. It's really is a dirty, filthy, polluted third-world country with delusions of grandeur.
What resources are you talking about? There are rocks, and lots of dust and maybe some water. WoW!!! We have that here. And it only costs a couple of hundred billion to get there to get those off the Moon. Do you even have any idea what you are talking about? Despite what you think, the Moon is not made of cheese or gold.
You do realize many international flights are 16-18 hours plus in length. Try flying to Japan someday. I'm sure people would happily trade that for a 1 hour flight instead.
Elon Musk has no credibility on going to Mars and talking out of his hat. What is required to go to Mars is a truly mammoth ship with rotating sections, radiation shields, sealed sections, and so on. It would cost trillions to send anyone with our current technology and many of those that went would have a very good chance of ending up dead. Bear in mind that going to Mars means leaving the earth's gravity well, magnetic field, travelling for two years there and back and so on. Without adequate supplies, artificial gravity, radiation protection, and so on, you are going to die. And even with that, there is a good chance a micrometeorite will kill you on the way.
We can't get people to Mars economically or technologically even. Anyone you send will just die from a number of factors including exposure to solar radiation, micrometeorites, lack of gravity, and we can't physically take enough oxygen, food, and water there and back. Plus, if anything else were to happen, they'd be dead too because nobody could reach them in time to help them. It's a fool's journey.
Agreed. The money is in satellites. Even space tourism is stupid. There is no hotels in space. The SpaceX guys should work on delivering payloads to low earth orbit inexpensively and suborbital travel. You should be able to deliver people anywhere in the world in an hour with that. Now, that is something people will pay for.
We don't need to go back to the Moon. We went there, planted a flag, and left. There is no reason to go back to the Moon or to Mars. If China wants to waste a few hundred billion dollars on space, let them. That is one expensive flag planting ceremony.
Not much. The elevator itself is actually not in orbit, so anything detaching from it immediately starts falling down, accumulates some funny velocity (it's falling down in vacuum, so it won't reach a terminal velocity as when falling in atmosphere) and fiercely burns up on reentry.
The Earth-side construction side might be damaged by the low-altitude debris but the high altitude part of the elevator (which makes up for about ~99% of it) should burn-up safely in the atmosphere due to high accumulated velocity.
On the other hand - blowing up a space elevator on a body with no or low atmosphere - you'll probably get a nice 1:1 globe with a finely engraved equator line. :)
I wasn't talking about the orbital pieces. I really don't know what would happen for certain to those. Large parts of it might just go flying off becoming a huge debris problem in orbit (like we don't have that problem already as well). I'm talking about the miles of construction in the atmosphere getting up there. That stuff isn't going to burn up and is going to land on someone. Just look at what happened when the twin towers came down. Now imagine 60 miles of that stuff coming down.