“Moar” is a humorous misspelling of “more” that’s popular in some corners of the Internet. I think it originated from silly cat pictures, where people would attach captions (often misspelled, on the theory that cats aren’t very smart and hence can’t spell well) to cute or funny pictures of cats.
EDIT:
Lumpy, don’t forget about tethers orbiting close to airless worlds like Luna or Mercury, to act as skyhooks.
Humor: It is a difficult concept.
Sometimes, even for me.
:dubious:
nm. Ninja’d unto death. By moar light sabers than I can deflect. Even by spinning around and briefly turning my back on my opponents.
I see the big item here as: “Will require NASA to work with PRIVATE companies”.
IOW: Uh, NASA: about that Space Launch System you and your fellow dinos at ULA are muddling towards: See SpaceX. They just announced a private system that is decades ahead of you and your “Pet Private Company”, Blue Origin.
I can’t decode which is embarrassing itself the greatest: NASA, ULA, or Blue Origin.
It’s really not that big of a problem in the scale of things. A “beanstalk” would orbit in a very specific and well-characterized trajectory. It may be that this will require the need to periodically reposition satellites that may approach too close, especially in the already crowded Low Earth Orbit, but then we already need that capability to protect the LEO and MEO environment from cascading impacts (the so-called “Kessler syndrome” somewhat inaccurately depicted in the film Gravity) and to salvage useable materials already in orbit to save costs on having to fly new structure from Earth’s surface. That is all relatively feasible with just modest extensions of extant technologies and developing standards for satellite interfaces to a hypothetical servicing tug.
A crewed mission to Mars, on the other hand, faces some pretty fundamental hurdles that are beyond “just engineering” using the state of the art, including protecting the crew from exposure to conditions in interplanetary space (freefall, unshielded cosmic radiation, psychological and logistic isolation, et cetera), the difficulty of delivering dozens of tons (crew and supplies) to the surface of Mars, providing sufficient provision for the transit (8-9 months each way) and layover (~15 months), preventing forward contamination of Mars with bacteria that are native on and within human astronauts, generating power to support ground operations, et cetera. And even if we accept the naive assumption that human astronauts encumbered in pressure suits are more flexible than subsequent generations of rovers and probes, the fact remains that we could pepper the surface of Mars with hundreds of semi-autonomous vehicles that do not bear the burden of having to be returned in toto to Earth at the end of mission for the cost of a single crewed mission which would be localized to one landing site.
From a scientific standpoint, the science value per dollar spent is vastly greater for robotic exploration, notwithstanding that there are environments that we are unlikely to ever send human crewed missions to, e.g. the Galilean moons of Jupiter or the crushing oven of the Venusian surface. There is, of course, the prestige factor of being the first to put footprints and plant a flag, but that is typically dictated in contest to another would-be competitor. Fanciful adoration of Sino-space enthusiasm to the contrary, the Chinese space program is essentially a vanity project that isn’t doing anything particularly novel.
There are certainly technologies that would support a crewed mission to Mars or elsewhere that would also support other space exploration and exploitation missions which could be of much greater eventual benefit. But going to Mars as the singularly focused goal–as we term it a “destination oriented program”–pretty much guarantees spending minimal effort and money to develop that infrastructure in favor of making the goal soonest before the budget is cut, often at ridiculous risk. It would be much more logical and effective to develop the infrastructure to explore interplanetary space with the goal of extracting and processing resources to permit habitation that is not dependent upon resources lifted from Earth’s heavy gravity well, and then use those mature technologies to go to Mars when it is a relatively straightforward logistical exercise rather than a high risk and gaspingly costly effort that will falter at the first failure.
[quote=“usedtobe, post:84, topic:709477”]
Uh, NASA: about that Space Launch System you and your fellow dinos at ULA are muddling towards: See SpaceX. They just announced a private system that is decades ahead of you and your “Pet Private Company”, Blue Origin./QUOTE]SpaceX just presented a PowerPoint presentation of the propulsion aspect of a crewed Mars mission that was long on self-promotion and short on actual technical detail. SpaceX is no more prepared to actually send people to Mars and sustain them than I am to play in the NBA.
Stranger
What hurt manned space travel is we took greed out of the equation. I don’t believe countries can claim large areas of planetary bodies. Some kind of stupid international agreement. When we first went to the moon. if we could have claimed 1000 square miles around the landing sites as permanent property of the USA, how long do you think it would have taken the Russian, British, French and others to get there and put their claims in? Same thing with Mars. Even individual companies would be trying to set up autonomous states free of any regulations.
I can disregard the puff about “and then we go to Mars”
But I do see a difference in both tone and substance regarding what BO is bragging about (BE4) and the demonstrated Raptor.
BO is still talking about how far it is advanced over both the Russian engines ULA uses and whatever “competition” they are talking about.
They refuse to even acknowledge SpaceX, apparently.
From BO’s page about their BE4 Engine:
What the Hell are they smoking and who is this “next closest” engine developer?
I love the part about how so far advanced the Russian engine is and why BO can’t be expected to deliver such a “high performance” engine.
Sad. Very, very Sad.
The treaty governing the claiming of national sovereignty over celestial objects is the 1967 “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies”, commonly referred to as the Outer Space Treaty. The treaty prohibits the claiming of celestial objects by nations with the intent of preventing or at least forestalling the militarization of space. Nothing in the treaty prohibits private individuals or companies from claiming or using specific resources in space, and in fact there is virtually no law regarding non-military or private operations beyond High Earth Orbit, nor any way to practically enforce anyone from staking a claim (or legally defend such claim).
Claiming land around a lunar landing site would not have spurred other nations to develop lunar space programs insofar as there is no real practical impetus to do so. It does not provide a strategic advantage, and there is no feasible way to develop profitable enterprise from resources extracted on the Moon in the foreseeable future.
The alternative engine developer is Aerojet Rocketdyne, which is the conglomeration through mergers and acquisitions of Rocketdyne, Pratt & Whitney, and Aerojet General, all of which were at one time fundamental innovators in rocket propulsion technology but who collectively have not developed a new large scale rocket engine since the RS-68. The other large engine manufacturer, TRW, basically shut down their propulsion division when the company was acquired by Northrop Grumman and one of their senior propulsion engineers, Tom Mueller, took the basic design of the Low Cost Pinole Engine as the basis of the Merlin family of engines (although the Merlin has significantly evolved away from the simple ablatively cooled LCPE).
The Soviets spent about two decades developing extremely high performance (in terms of specific impulse) oxygen-rich kerosene/LOX engines, often with painful and halting development cycle, and operating at the limits of material and turbopump technology. The problem with these engines is they require a high degree of fabrication expertise and have made other design compromises (the RD-180 uses two separate combustion chambers, and the RD-170 from which it was derived used four in order to prevent combustion instability) that are not necessarily ideal for low cost high volume manufacturing, just as a Honda Civic doesn’t offer the dramatic performance of a Bugetti Veryon but also costs an order of magnitude less. P&W actually attempted to manufacture and qualify a license-built version of the RD-180 about fifteen years ago and failed spectacularly after spending somewhere on the order of US$1B.
Given that the BE-4 is a methane/LOX engine, direct comparison to the operating conditions of the RD-180 engine is fairly obtuse. The reason that Blue Origin doesn’t reference the SpaceX Merlin or Raptor engines in competition is because SpaceX doesn’t (and has vowed to not) sell engines. They are providing launch services to space, not propulsion systems or launch vehicles for sale.
Stranger
Slightly tangential, but some may enjoy this documentary about the RD-180 and the path it took from the abandoned N1 to now. The Engines That Came In From The Cold - And how The NK-33/RD-180 Came To The USA - YouTube
Recently NASA learned that Mars is coated with calcium perchlorate, a chemical toxic to human life: Toxic Mars: Astronauts Must Deal with Perchlorate on the Red Planet | Space
It may also be covered with hexavalent chromium, a potent human carcinogen: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2246-mars-mission-dangers-set-out/
If humans ever get to Mars, the equipment and procedures will be nothing like Apollo, where the astronaut’s skin and the lunar module interior was covered with lunar dust and grime. It will also be nothing like the Matt Damon movie The Martian, where he is also covered in Mars dust.
It might be more like “glove suits” in the movie Andromeda Strain, a real-world example shown here for examining toxic environments: https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-FhjSnWt/0/O/i-FhjSnWt.jpg
This would further restrict the mobility and usefulness of human astronauts. There might be other engineering solutions such as some type of perfect decontamination airlock but all the weight, space and consumables for that – plus a backup since it’s mission critical – would add to the cost and complexity of the mission.
I think you greatly exaggerate the dangers of Martian soil chemicals. Perchlorates and Cr(VI) compounds are water-soluble (thus problems we face on Earth with contaminated ground water). A shower in the airlock would rinse everything off, and the contaminated water could be treated pretty easily. After all, these particular compounds are toxic because they are strong oxidizing agents. Once reduced, they’re harmless.
(I looked into the problem of perchlorates after discussions of the farming in The Martian. It turns out that there are plenty of soil bacteria that use perchlorate as an alternative electron acceptor during respiration, in the absence of oxygen or nitrates. Remediation may be as simple as rinsing and composting in an anaerobic environment.)
Also, there are concepts for space suits that never enter an airlock, rather there is a built in hatch in the back that acts as a “suitlock”. This port would connect to a matching port on the habitat/spacecraft.
Overall, the problem of toxic Martian soil will require some non-trivial engineering and equipment, but it’s not that big a deal compared to everything else involved in a manned Martian mission.
Then again, though, most of those problems could be solved just by throwing enough mass at them. That’s not practical with current technology, because it costs so ludicrously much to get mass into orbit, but if we had true cheap access to space, as with a space elevator, it’d be a different story. Need a thousand tons of radiation shielding? OK, then, lift a thousand tons of radiation shielding.
That seems to be a fundamental problem with any Mars mission. At the moment all we can think of is a scaled up Apollo mission. Where the scaling up comes at exponential increase in price.
For the sort of money involved, it might be hoped we could actually step up to something like a space elevator.
Right now I suspect that a manned Mars mission will remain about two decades away for significantly more than a couple of decades.
Edit: already said by lazybratsche
Which gets us to the “Yellow Brick Road” NASA is following.
I take that NASA is, essentially, marking time until it gets real direction, and more importantly, real budget to do Something.
It seems that we go from one “Look at this” from SpaceX - the Raptor, and then switch channels to find NASA concentrating on their supply of RS-25 - the friggin’ Space Shuttle Main Engines - and some of the inventory actually flew on the Shuttle.
Here we have 2016, now to check in with 1980… :eek:
Are we going to get to the point that NASA becomes a driver/co-coordinator instead of a developer/owner?
I understand that SpaceX’s planned Mars shot will be assisted by NASA for telemetry and/or communication.
If a private company has rockets going to Mars, does it really make sense to try to develop that capability starting from technology of 1980? :smack:
What is wrong with 1980 engines?
1960 rockets are still launching satellites.
If the RS-25 is all that great, why would ULA buy the Russian RD-180?
Note the last line from the BO quote I posted:
The "NEW! Breakthrough! engine - the Methane BE-4 is slightly more than 1/2 the power of the RD-180.
But NASA is still curating its Shuttle engines.
BO is still trying to brag about being able to land and re-use a sub-orbital booster.
SpaceX did that - they called theirs the “Grasshopper”.
And, if BO wants to bad-mouth Aerojet Rocketdyne while bragging about its capsule abort capability, perhaps it should remember that Aerojet Rocketdyne (claims to have) provided the rockets BO used for that test.
Forget hover cars and food pills–what I want to know is, where are the flying cars??? :mad:
Can’t have flying cars without sky-roads. We need to target sky-road technology first.
I wonder, with gravity being so much lower, is setting up a beanstalk or orbital tower on Mars now feasible?
