What's NASA Up To And Other Space Stuff

[Steely Glint]

To fly by the end of the decade.

Blue Origin have extremely ambitious plans.

[EyeKhan]

To fly by the end of the decade.

Blue Origin have extremely ambitious plans.

I haven't heard what their up to beyond taking tourists to low orbit or something. Looking at that big ass rocket, I'm thinking there's more to it. They're not as chatty about things as Musk and Space X...

[Aimless]

"New Armstrong" planned. Lunar colony here we come.

[Steely Glint]

I haven't heard what their up to beyond taking tourists to low orbit or something. Looking at that big ass rocket, I'm thinking there's more to it. They're not as chatty about things as Musk and Space X...

If I had to guess, and make a bet, I'd say it was for launching station modules.

Falcon heavy can actually outlift New Genn on the first stage (but not the second), but due to it's wee tiny-winy fairing designed by elves and pixies (joke, it's actually because FH is just a Falcon 9 with two boosters strapped to the side) it can't actually launch things like the Biglow B330. So if Biglow ever get their act together, they'll have to look somewhere else but SpaceX to launch their space hotels. And given Elon's laser like focus on Mars and the BFR they probably aren't going to develop another class of rocket which can take physically larger payloads any time soon. BFR will be absolutely enormous and ridiculous overkill for just going to orbit.

So, there's a bit if a gap in the market there. If Blue Origin want to facilitate Space Tourism as something more than just going straight up and straight down again, they need something that can launch large vehicles into orbit.

[EyeKhan]

My current views on Moon/ Mars colonization are relatively pessimistic these days. I doubt almost to the point of certainty that NASA will ever send astronauts beyond the Earth/ Moon system. And the idea of a colony anywhere isn't remotely on the NASA table. Private companies might make the attempt, but NASA doesn't have the funding for even the most minimal of missions, and unless US politics morph radically, they never will. Maybe if the Chinese make a serious attempt, the US might feel compelled to compete. But there simply isn't any economic reason to send people beyond low Earth orbit. While there may be big money in, and/or environmental justification for, space mining, manufacturing and power generation, if it's ever done it will be 100% robotic -- because it's safer and WAY WAY cheaper.

[Steely Glint]

[Steely Glint]

More: https://imgur.com/a/20nku#GsyREf7

Ambitious is not the word, but if his goal was to make it all seem doable I think he succeeded.

[wiggin]

He thinks he's going to develop a vehicle to put 550 thousand kilos in LEO?!? He thinks he will be able to have a working automated propellant plant within a few years? Ditto for the life support systems and radiation shielding issues?

I'd say it's long on ambition and very short on details. I have no doubt that something like the Red Dragon flights will work, but anything additional seems far-fetched for now.

[Steely Glint]

The first flight in 2023 seems wildly optimistic, the latter half of the 2020s seems more likely and the 2030s likelier still. He said in his presentation that the timeline in that image was only if everything went smoothly, and I anticipate they'll have all kinds of problems with that booster.

The technical details they seem to have a pretty solid handle on. It's was the financing. political and, for what of a better word, sociological aspects of the plan where things seem to get a bit hand-wavy. Since they're a bunch of engineers and rocket scientists operating under a very silicon valley like corporate culture that probably shouldn't surprise us.

[wiggin]

I am not convinced they have such a good handle on the technical details. The Falcon 9 has its own issues, let alone their plans for the Falcon Heavy. The move from that to a beast of the magnitude he is imagining is not at all straightforward - it is literally unprecedented. The biggest lift vehicles we've got are far smaller, and the problems you get with scaling are often unpredictable. Not to mention that he's essentially banking on new technology to exist before he gets to certain stages of the project - technology that at the moment seems fanciful (I'm particularly concerned about his local propellant production issues on Mars).

Financing is a big issue that I have highlighted before, as is his reliance on NASA for certain high end (and expensive) capabilities. But I wouldn't discount the technical hurdles as mere details.

[EyeKhan]

I am not convinced they have such a good handle on the technical details. The Falcon 9 has its own issues, let alone their plans for the Falcon Heavy. The move from that to a beast of the magnitude he is imagining is not at all straightforward - it is literally unprecedented. The biggest lift vehicles we've got are far smaller, and the problems you get with scaling are often unpredictable. Not to mention that he's essentially banking on new technology to exist before he gets to certain stages of the project - technology that at the moment seems fanciful (I'm particularly concerned about his local propellant production issues on Mars).

Financing is a big issue that I have highlighted before, as is his reliance on NASA for certain high end (and expensive) capabilities. But I wouldn't discount the technical hurdles as mere details.

Accepting all of that, SpaceX are the only ones seriously working for the goal of a multi-planet/ space-faring humanity. Not just talking about it, but doing the engineering, design and testing to make it happen. It's audacious and optimistic in the extreme, and refreshingly so. So much of our civilization is now just boiled down to a big profit-generating economic treadmill with no further ambition or goal than that -- nothing positive or inspiring in the future for any of us, even from generation to generation, beyond mundane work, aging, disease, and death. Yeah there's the promise of better, faster, smaller, more distracting gadgets and goodies, and longer, healthier, more peaceful lives, but in the end, it's all a fine-tuned treadmill. With SpaceX we have a grand vision/dream/project that reaches well beyond the grind of life -- something, good god, inspiring. It doesn't matter whether the odds of success are barely above nil, that's not deserving of a sneer. They've rolled up their sleeves and gone to work doing it.

[Steely Glint]

I am not convinced they have such a good handle on the technical details. The Falcon 9 has its own issues, let alone their plans for the Falcon Heavy. The move from that to a beast of the magnitude he is imagining is not at all straightforward - it is literally unprecedented. The biggest lift vehicles we've got are far smaller, and the problems you get with scaling are often unpredictable. Not to mention that he's essentially banking on new technology to exist before he gets to certain stages of the project - technology that at the moment seems fanciful (I'm particularly concerned about his local propellant production issues on Mars).

Financing is a big issue that I have highlighted before, as is his reliance on NASA for certain high end (and expensive) capabilities. But I wouldn't discount the technical hurdles as mere details.

The implied leap there between 'they will face unforeseen technical problems and engineering challenges' and 'they will be unable to solve those technical problems or meet those engineering challenges' seems just a little bit premature.

EDIT: in-situ resource production on Mars is a feature of most proposed Mars missions I've read about (i.e Mars Direct), not just SpaceX's architecture - I'm not sure what about it strikes you as fanciful?

[Aimless]

Commentary rolling in:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/...ybe-all-three/

[Aimless]

Accepting all of that, SpaceX are the only ones seriously working for the goal of a multi-planet/ space-faring humanity. Not just talking about it, but doing the engineering, design and testing to make it happen. It's audacious and optimistic in the extreme, and refreshingly so. So much of our civilization is now just boiled down to a big profit-generating economic treadmill with no further ambition or goal than that -- nothing positive or inspiring in the future for any of us, even from generation to generation, beyond mundane work, aging, disease, and death. Yeah there's the promise of better, faster, smaller, more distracting gadgets and goodies, and longer, healthier, more peaceful lives, but in the end, it's all a fine-tuned treadmill. With SpaceX we have a grand vision/dream/project that reaches well beyond the grind of life -- something, good god, inspiring. It doesn't matter whether the odds of success are barely above nil, that's not deserving of a sneer. They've rolled up their sleeves and gone to work doing it.

Finally we all have a truly compelling reason to eat our fruits and veg and get regular exercise

[wiggin]

Accepting all of that, SpaceX are the only ones seriously working for the goal of a multi-planet/ space-faring humanity. Not just talking about it, but doing the engineering, design and testing to make it happen. It's audacious and optimistic in the extreme, and refreshingly so. So much of our civilization is now just boiled down to a big profit-generating economic treadmill with no further ambition or goal than that -- nothing positive or inspiring in the future for any of us, even from generation to generation, beyond mundane work, aging, disease, and death. Yeah there's the promise of better, faster, smaller, more distracting gadgets and goodies, and longer, healthier, more peaceful lives, but in the end, it's all a fine-tuned treadmill. With SpaceX we have a grand vision/dream/project that reaches well beyond the grind of life -- something, good god, inspiring. It doesn't matter whether the odds of success are barely above nil, that's not deserving of a sneer. They've rolled up their sleeves and gone to work doing it.

I actually disagree. I was thinking about this recently - suppose that Clinton or Gates or whoever comes to Musk and asks him for a billion dollars to help improve education or health or development for some of the world's most desperately poor people. Musk might reasonably argue that all of his capital is tied up in SpaceX and that by some reckoning his project is more important - reducing the risk to our species by making us interplanetary and, maybe some day, interstellar. So he could conceivably argue that his priority is higher than that of the billions of people who have truly awful lives. But I disagree - I think that the advances in social sciences and technology make it actually possible that with a lot of work and resources we might be able to make sure everyone lives (in the words of the Gates Foundation) 'healthy, productive lives'. That is inspiring to me, and a whole hell of a lot more important than putting a million people on Mars within a couple centuries, likely requiring frequent resupply from Earth for critical needs. I am excited about the potential reality of a post-scarcity economy - not actually post-scarcity in the sense that people will still have to work for a living, but where everyone gets a decent start on their life and has an opportunity to make something of themselves.

This is not fine-tuning; this is truly revolutionary and has the opportunity to mitigate a truly awful amount of human misery. And I think that if we are successful, we could usher in a Golden Age the likes of which has never been seen before. This is not an economic argument, but a human one, and I think it matters. Frankly, as Musk's initiatives go, I think Tesla/Solarcity are far more compelling and inspiring than SpaceX. I love SF and love the idea of humanity as a spacefaring civilization. But I am inspired by things that actually solve immediate, nearly intractable problems and fundamentally change how our current civilization functions. Sending some rich people to Mars is exciting but not inspiring.

I laud Musk for his willingness to take on big, challenging problems and his attempts to solve them using technology. I question some of his specific choices, but I find no fault in trying to reduce the launch costs of spacecraft given the myriad very important uses to which they can be put. And I'm obviously excited about the possibility of a Mars colony, albeit skeptical of the technological and financial limitations. But I think that lots of other projects are much more inspiring, notably those involving fundamentally improving the quality of life of people around the world on a massive scale.

(Note: Musk has, I believe, signed the 'Giving Pledge' and I am not doubting his philanthropic credentials. I am just trying to draw a contrast between his 'great project' and those of others.)

edit:

The implied leap there between 'they will face unforeseen technical problems and engineering challenges' and 'they will be unable to solve those technical problems or meet those engineering challenges' seems just a little bit premature.

EDIT: in-situ resource production on Mars is a feature of most proposed Mars missions I've read about (i.e Mars Direct), not just SpaceX's architecture - I'm not sure what about it strikes you as fanciful?

The unknown unknowns are the hardest to predict, and often hardest to solve. The Saturn V was an enormous and technically challenging undertaking, and he's proposing to develop something several times larger in addition to a whole host of other related and unprecedented technologies. I am not convinced that we know enough about the unknown unknowns to evaluate how challenging those barriers may be.

Re: in situ resource production, I agree it's a feature of most proposed missions. But it's not a feature of those missions because the technology to do it is straightforward or already exists; it's the plan because that is the only feasible way to make a return trip work. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but there's no guarantee. The challenges here are enormous and require a lot of very different technologies to achieve pretty impressive advances. It's not impossible, no, but managing a robotic rocket fuel factory in a hostile environment that cannot fail and is on another planet is full of extreme challenges. No one has demonstrated convincingly that those challenges can be addressed. (I love KSR's Mars trilogy, especially because of its realism, albeit optimistic realism. But what I found most difficult to believe about his early Mars colony was the advances in automation and materials technology that allowed them to rapidly begin developing highly sophisticated chemical processes to make most of the raw ingredients they needed. Being able to do that by the 2020s, as suggested in his books, seemed far-fetched to me. It still does today.)

[EyeKhan]

Finally we all have a truly compelling reason to eat our fruits and veg and get regular exercise

<sigh>

[EyeKhan]

I am excited about the potential reality of a post-scarcity economy - not actually post-scarcity in the sense that people will still have to work for a living, but where everyone gets a decent start on their life and has an opportunity to make something of themselves.

This is not fine-tuning; this is truly revolutionary and has the opportunity to mitigate a truly awful amount of human misery. And I think that if we are successful, we could usher in a Golden Age the likes of which has never been seen before. This is not an economic argument, but a human one, and I think it matters.

I very seriously doubt there will ever be a post-scarcity human civilization. Case in point - the US has been the wealthiest nation on the planet at least since WW2 and we haven't come anywhere near eliminating scarcity. Indeed we don't appear to be even trying anymore. Is it worth trying, worth the expense? Hell yes! But I think the odds of that success are less even than of Musk getting a self-sustaining population on Mars.

[Steely Glint]

The unknown unknowns are the hardest to predict, and often hardest to solve. The Saturn V was an enormous and technically challenging undertaking, and he's proposing to develop something several times larger in addition to a whole host of other related and unprecedented technologies. I am not convinced that we know enough about the unknown unknowns to evaluate how challenging those barriers may be.

It's interesting you should mention Saturn 5, because the gap between NASA going from no rockets at all to the Saturn 5 which is (currently) the biggest and most powerful rocket to have ever flown was approximately 10 years, which is a similar time-scale to what Musk is proposing. No doubt, had we been born back then and the internet existed, we would have been having a similar conversations about the feasibility of the Apollo program.

So just think about that.

Late 50s me would have been right, is what I'm saying.

Because they did go to the moon.

That's the point.

They went to the moon.

Re: in situ resource production, I agree it's a feature of most proposed missions. But it's not a feature of those missions because the technology to do it is straightforward or already exists; it's the plan because that is the only feasible way to make a return trip work. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but there's no guarantee. The challenges here are enormous and require a lot of very different technologies to achieve pretty impressive advances. It's not impossible, no, but managing a robotic rocket fuel factory in a hostile environment that cannot fail and is on another planet is full of extreme challenges. No one has demonstrated convincingly that those challenges can be addressed.

Ok, but the technology required for ISRU, and other required technologies for Mars which you are anxious about, will not be developed unless someone actually makes an attempt to go there. The unknown unknowns will not become known unknowns without someone actually sitting down and tries to build the technology.

Your position here seems to be that it's too early to go to Mars, and that Musk, NASA et al should wait for the technologies to become more developed before making the attempt. The fault there it's some kind of stealth 'nothing should be done for the first time' argument, the technology won't simply develop itself - the backslide in space technology since the days of the Apollo program should be proof enough of that - and therefore waiting till it appears before attempting to use it will just ensure that it never actually appears.

(I love KSR's Mars trilogy, especially because of its realism, albeit optimistic realism. But what I found most difficult to believe about his early Mars colony was the advances in automation and materials technology that allowed them to rapidly begin developing highly sophisticated chemical processes to make most of the raw ingredients they needed. Being able to do that by the 2020s, as suggested in his books, seemed far-fetched to me. It still does today.)

I really need to read those books.

[wiggin]

I very seriously doubt there will ever be a post-scarcity human civilization. Case in point - the US has been the wealthiest nation on the planet at least since WW2 and we haven't come anywhere near eliminating scarcity. Indeed we don't appear to be even trying anymore. Is it worth trying, worth the expense? Hell yes! But I think the odds of that success are less even than of Musk getting a self-sustaining population on Mars.

Perhaps I wasn't clear from my post - I don't think we will ever reach a post-scarcity economy in the classical sense. Human nature and capitalism always will have us create scarcity, of something, in order to compete for whatever it is. But the US is indeed already living in a largely post-scarcity economy in some senses - fundamentally, no one need go hungry or in need of shelter any more, which is not the case for large chunks of the global population. (I recognize that some people do go hungry or without shelter in the US, but by and large food and shelter can be obtained for free because they are so cheaply produced. The realities of making sure everyone has said food and shelter are more of a social services problem than anything else.)

My point is that I'd like it if everyone in the world grows up with adequate nutrition and health and education so that they can, by dint of hard work, achieve everything else they might want. By my limited definition, this would be 'post scarcity' in that the bare minimum needed for people to survive and thrive is a given. We're not there yet, but I think we could get there within a century, which would be a first for our civilization and of tremendous importance.

It's interesting you should mention Saturn 5, because the gap between NASA going from no rockets at all to the Saturn 5 which is (currently) the biggest and most powerful rocket to have ever flown was approximately 10 years, which is a similar time-scale to what Musk is proposing. No doubt, had we been born back then and the internet existed, we would have been having a similar conversations about the feasibility of the Apollo program.

So just think about that.

Late 50s me would have been right, is what I'm saying.

Because they did go to the moon.

That's the point.

They went to the moon.

It cost $100 billion. And there was no shortage of substantial technological challenges involved, but they threw money at the problem until they had an okay solution. Musk is talking about doing this on an industrial scale, with a shoestring budget ($10 billion? Really?). His approach has been tried before, also, for a super-heavy lift vehicle the Russians were working on, and it failed miserably (cf N1 rocket explosion). That isn't to say he can't succeed - frankly, I think the life support and Mars habitat/factory issues are going to be bigger challenges than the lift vehicle itself - but it won't be easy or cheap.

Ok, but the technology required for ISRU, and other required technologies for Mars which you are anxious about, will not be developed unless someone actually makes an attempt to go there. The unknown unknowns will not become known unknowns without someone actually sitting down and tries to build the technology.

Your position here seems to be that it's too early to go to Mars, and that Musk, NASA et al should wait for the technologies to become more developed before making the attempt. The fault there it's some kind of stealth 'nothing should be done for the first time' argument, the technology won't simply develop itself - the backslide in space technology since the days of the Apollo program should be proof enough of that - and therefore waiting till it appears before attempting to use it will just ensure that it never actually appears.

That's not precisely my position. My position is that certain technologies, like the rocket, are going to be expensive but feasible (probably) to develop. I question whether they are worth the expense and I definitely question the timescales. Other technologies are relying on future developments that we can imagine but haven't a clue about how to get there - e.g. automated and reliable fuel production on another planet, life support and shielding for 100 people for 3 months in space, self-sustaining habitats, etc. These are not simple technological solutions, and at least some of them will use technologies we would already develop here - dual use technologies, if you will. And I think it's possible for us to realistically evaluate based on the current state of the art if those technologies are close to fruition or not.

Put another way, there are engineering problems and there are science problems. Engineering problems are fundamentally solved through the application of enough brainpower, time, and money. Science problems may never be solved, or may be solved at an indefinite time in the future. This is kinda like the issues with building a space elevator - we can imagine the engineering work required to design and build it, but we just don't have certain scientific tools - notably materials - that can do the job. We don't even know if such materials can exist.

I am not suggesting that Musk is an idiot for his ambition - I think it's awesome! I certainly don't mind the R&D effort he is working on, and I think he will make some useful technologies as a byproduct of his effort. I question, however, if his ambition is feasible with the currently conceivable technology, and whether there might be a better use for the resources he is deploying. I would love to be proven wrong; we all win if he succeeds! I'm just skeptical.

[Steely Glint]

It cost $100 billion. And there was no shortage of substantial technological challenges involved, but they threw money at the problem until they had an okay solution.

They were also doing it literally from scratch - as in, they were inventing the technological base of space flight from the ground up, and they were doing it in the 60s without the benefit of such handy innovations as CAD/CAM or modern super computers.

Musk is talking about doing this on an industrial scale, with a shoestring budget ($10 billion? Really?).

$10 billion is, I believe, just for the initial rocket and space craft, and the first few missions. Not the subsequent mass colonisation effort, should it materialize.

That isn't to say he can't succeed - frankly, I think the life support and Mars habitat/factory issues are going to be bigger challenges than the lift vehicle itself - but it won't be easy or cheap.

It's a shame they haven't said more about this - too bad the Q&A during the presentation was an absolute clusterfuck otherwise someone could have, you know, asked him about it. He seems to think living on Mars is considerably easier than getting there, so the opposite approach you, and has also said that the risks posed by radiation on the trip to Mars are exaggerated.

That's not precisely my position. My position is that certain technologies, like the rocket, are going to be expensive but feasible (probably) to develop. I question whether they are worth the expense and I definitely question the timescales. Other technologies are relying on future developments that we can imagine but haven't a clue about how to get there - e.g. automated and reliable fuel production on another planet, life support and shielding for 100 people for 3 months in space, self-sustaining habitats, etc. These are not simple technological solutions, and at least some of them will use technologies we would already develop here - dual use technologies, if you will. And I think it's possible for us to realistically evaluate based on the current state of the art if those technologies are close to fruition or not.

I am finding it difficult to continue this part of the discussion in the absence of specifics e.g. 'life support for 100 people is a step change compared to the dozen on the ISS', 'no it isn't', 'yes it is' etc.

But it's important to note that what the plan calls for is not 2023: the first missions with fly with 100 people read to start building habitats but, rather, the first missions will perhaps have a dozen or so people there for flag and foot print style missions. I wouldn't expect to see any kind of mass colonisation effort this side of 2050.

[wiggin]

They were also doing it literally from scratch - as in, they were inventing the technological base of space flight from the ground up, and they were doing it in the 60s without the benefit of such handy innovations as CAD/CAM or modern super computers.

Granted, but also remember that there was a massive military investment in parallel technologies for the development of the ICBM, as well as a national-level investment in developing space technologies - everything from high school science fairs, university curricula, etc. were geared specifically towards this problem. I don't think people realize quite how much support the Apollo program and its predecessors got, and not just in funding.

$10 billion is, I believe, just for the initial rocket and space craft, and the first few missions. Not the subsequent mass colonisation effort, should it materialize.

Even so, I find it fanciful. It's hard to get numbers for the costs for development of rockets (most are either classified or corporate secrets), but I think the new Ariane 6 is going to cost somewhere on the order of $5 billion in development costs. That's for a much smaller vehicle that is an evolution of existing designs, doesn't require fundamentally new technologies, and doesn't require design of a crew capsule with the attendant life support and higher reliability needs. Sure, I have no doubt that the ESA et al are inefficient as hell (what rocket designed by committee will be cheap?) but I doubt the cost could be better than halved by the most hyper-efficient organization on the planet. To do something so much more difficult on $10 billion and support a few multi-year missions.... no way. $50 billion I would be skeptical but might think it was at least possible.

It's a shame they haven't said more about this - too bad the Q&A during the presentation was an absolute clusterfuck otherwise someone could have, you know, asked him about it. He seems to think living on Mars is considerably easier than getting there, so the opposite approach you, and has also said that the risks posed by radiation on the trip to Mars are exaggerated.

I think radiation isn't a problem if you're sending people who are not planning on having kids (likely true of the first crews) and not too worried about cancer. We're not talking about radiation sickness here, just a higher dose of radiation than is healthy. For building a colony, though, you're going to need to solve the issues - and not just during transport, but also on the Martian surface (at least on the surface you can spend more mass on shielding). More on living issues later.

I am finding it difficult to continue this part of the discussion in the absence of specifics e.g. 'life support for 100 people is a step change compared to the dozen on the ISS', 'no it isn't', 'yes it is' etc.

But it's important to note that what the plan calls for is not 2023: the first missions with fly with 100 people read to start building habitats but, rather, the first missions will perhaps have a dozen or so people there for flag and foot print style missions. I wouldn't expect to see any kind of mass colonisation effort this side of 2050.

I think if you can reasonably solve the issues for 10 people you can probably solve them for 100. The issue, though, is that the ISS is designed to be regularly resupplied from Earth with everything from food to oxygen to CO2 scrubbers. You really can't do that for a self-sustaining colony, so you're going to need to grow crops - lots of them - at decent pressures, temperature, and atmosphere. That's a lot of energy and materials required, and no one knows if there will be issues growing crops on Mars (KSR suggests that building soil will also be a problem; I don't know enough about botany or soil biology to understand if this is the case). You'll probably also need relatively sophisticated atmospheric control systems that are incredibly robust.

So, so far we've determined that we need:
- Either lots of building materials or equipment necessary to synthesize/mine them on site
- Lots of energy, not tied to solar panels - probably a modest nuclear reactor
- Lots of soil and technology for extraterrestrial agriculture
- A sophisticated, automated, nearly unbreakable chemical plant for the production of a variety of things, most notably propellant
- Sophisticated ways to control atmospheric gases

And this is just to keep a small number of people alive indefinitely. We haven't even gotten to the much greater number of things necessary for a self-sustaining colony - trying to maintain a high technology civilization in such hostile circumstances without much external input will not be easy.


The reason I'm more skeptical about this than the rocket is that, as you say, in principle a bigger rocket is just a bigger rocket (though I suspect there are a lot of subtle problems that will arise for such a big rocket). But a self-sustaining extraterrestrial presence is *not* the same as putting humans in LEO for a few months at a time.

[Steely Glint]

Granted, but also remember that there was a massive military investment in parallel technologies for the development of the ICBM, as well as a national-level investment in developing space technologies - everything from high school science fairs, university curricula, etc. were geared specifically towards this problem. I don't think people realize quite how much support the Apollo program and its predecessors got, and not just in funding.

Here I could take about the support SpaceX gets from NASA, working with a higher technology base, SpaceX's cultural differences vs traditional aerospace (pros and cons) and the presence of Musk himself, and we could go back and forth on that more or less indefinitely. And the end of the day, it is extremely difficult to quantify these different factors that make Musk's endeavours more/less ambitious than Apollo and thus get a handle on how feasible Musk's scheme in comparison.

Even so, I find it fanciful. It's hard to get numbers for the costs for development of rockets (most are either classified or corporate secrets), but I think the new Ariane 6 is going to cost somewhere on the order of $5 billion in development costs. That's for a much smaller vehicle that is an evolution of existing designs, doesn't require fundamentally new technologies, and doesn't require design of a crew capsule with the attendant life support and higher reliability needs. Sure, I have no doubt that the ESA et al are inefficient as hell (what rocket designed by committee will be cheap?) but I doubt the cost could be better than halved by the most hyper-efficient organization on the planet. To do something so much more difficult on $10 billion and support a few multi-year missions.... no way. $50 billion I would be skeptical but might think it was at least possible.

A more relevant comparison would be Falcon 9, since it was developed by the same organisation using the same methodology. A quick google says Falcon 9 cost $300 million to develop, plus another $90 million for Falcon 1. Make of that what thou wilt.

I don't know if that's just an empty sheet of graph paper to the first physical rocket that put a payload in orbit, or it if it includes the constant revisions and upgrades to the design they've been doing since the first Falcon 9 flew.

I think radiation isn't a problem if you're sending people who are not planning on having kids (likely true of the first crews) and not too worried about cancer. We're not talking about radiation sickness here, just a higher dose of radiation than is healthy. For building a colony, though, you're going to need to solve the issues - and not just during transport, but also on the Martian surface (at least on the surface you can spend more mass on shielding). More on living issues later.

I don't really have time to look into this, but the SpaceX position is that the radiation dosage you'd get in the transit times they're aiming for is just a bit above what is considered healthy, except in cases of solar activity - flares and such - in which case their plan is to point the back of the spacecraft at the sun and put the fuel and back plate between it and the passengers, plus talk of some kind of water shielding.

I think if you can reasonably solve the issues for 10 people you can probably solve them for 100. The issue, though, is that the ISS is designed to be regularly resupplied from Earth with everything from food to oxygen to CO2 scrubbers. You really can't do that for a self-sustaining colony, so you're going to need to grow crops - lots of them - at decent pressures, temperature, and atmosphere. That's a lot of energy and materials required, and no one knows if there will be issues growing crops on Mars (KSR suggests that building soil will also be a problem; I don't know enough about botany or soil biology to understand if this is the case). You'll probably also need relatively sophisticated atmospheric control systems that are incredibly robust.

The first missions will be supported by a bunch of unmanned cargo flights - also a common feature of Mars missions - so they would not necessarily need to be self-sufficient from the get go. Presumably, the first people on Mars can entertain themselves for two years by working on finding out the answers to those questions while they wait for the next Earth-Mars alignment.

The reason I'm more skeptical about this than the rocket is that, as you say, in principle a bigger rocket is just a bigger rocket (though I suspect there are a lot of subtle problems that will arise for such a big rocket). But a self-sustaining extraterrestrial presence is *not* the same as putting humans in LEO for a few months at a time.

They'd better get on with it then, hadn't they?

In seriousness, if I was forced to bet on what SpaceX will have achieved by, say, the time Musk dies I'd be more inclined to bet on a permanent Mars presence in the form of an Antarctic-style science base than a self-sustaining colony. The further away they get from talk of boosters and delta-v the more handwavey things get. On one level, it makes sense to focus on first getting to Mars rather than spending time and money drawing up elaborate plants for automated fuel plants and Martian greenhouses when you're not even sure you'll be able to get there. On another level, there's a pervasive attitude in tech culture that social problems will just sort of magically solve themselves through some kind of vague market-place-of-ideas cobblers without they, the tech companies having to put any time or thought, into solving problems when they'd rather be doing cool stuff like writing code or building rockets. This is what has turned most social media platforms into nightmarish Lord of the Flies-esque dystopias. Musk's ideas for how the colonisation process and the colony will work have a whiff of that same kind of, for him uncharacteristic, wishful thinking.

[wiggin]

I honestly don't think we disagree all that much, we just place different emphasis on the risks and challenges compared to the potential payoff. I think your last point is an interesting one; I don't really have a handle on the tech culture (in the sense of Silicon Valley computer stuff) to know how sophisticated their forward planning is.

Perhaps this is really a cultural issue on my side as well. I work in one of the most highly regulated industries in the planet (for good reason), where the time between conceiving of an idea of actually commercially using it can easily be measured on the order of a decade or more. None of this 'fail fast, fail often' stuff, where barely functional stuff gets put out on the market and it is iteratively improved. There's obvious reasons for this (generally it's considered a bad idea to make an inferior technology that might kill thousands or millions of people), but it changes the way I assess risk. I spend a lot of time thinking about long-lead and low probability risks that I won't be able to accurately evaluate for years but need to start mitigating now, and literally hundreds of millions of dollars of capital spending over the next decade might be influenced by the decisions I make now. It makes me focus on the totality of a problem rather than just the immediate barrier. Perhaps as a result I am unfairly biasing my concerns towards future issues with his more pie-in-the-sky ideas rather than the (much more achievable) idea of sending a few astronauts for a brief jaunt on Mars.

[Steely Glint]

I spend a lot of time thinking about long-lead and low probability risks that I won't be able to accurately evaluate for years but need to start mitigating now

I think Elon's trying to do the same thing, albeit on a somewhat grander scale.

[EyeKhan]

I think the larger point to this story is not that they are looking at sabotage, but that they can't figure out why the rocket blew up. That's about the worst outcome for any catastrophic accident -- can't launch again until you figure out what went wrong (and no revenue until launches resume), but can't figure out what went wrong. So, now what?

Was SpaceX's Exploding Falcon 9 Rocket Sabotaged?

The investigation into the September explosion of a SpaceX rocket has taken a strange turn, as a SpaceX employee requested access to a competitor's property that had a clear line of sight to the spacecraft's launchpad to see if there was evidence of anything unusual, The Washington Post reports.

As part of the investigation, a SpaceX employee reportedly asked competitor United Launch Alliance if he or she could be shown the roof on a building that is near what would have been the rocket's launch site. This request purportedly came after careful examination of stills from a video taken on the day of the September 1st explosion reportedly revealed something suspicious. According to the Post, SpaceX had screenshots revealing a shadow on the roof in one frame, followed by a white spot in a later one.

When requesting access to the roof of the building, SpaceX officials made it clear to ULA employees that the company was just trying to clear out any possible leads in the investigation, the Post says. The ULA, however, rejected SpaceX's request; instead, the company called Air Force investigators to inspect the roof for any possible links to SpaceX's rocket explosion. The building, which is used for refurbishing rocket motors and is located more than a mile away from SpaceX's launchpad, was ruled free of any suspicious issues by federal investigators.

Following the explosion, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk appears to have been struggling to wrap his head around the situation. As it stands, neither he nor his company are completely sure of what caused the incident.

Is it likely that someone took out the rocket from a competitor's roof a mile away? No. But with all the obvious explanations ruled out, SpaceX appears to be exploring every other possibility.

Link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/spacexs-e...210720268.html

[EyeKhan]

This is pretty cool. First working design I've seen of mining robots.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nasa-blue...142620428.html

[ar81]

Scarcity happens because our world economy is designed to produce scarcity out of abundance.
If there was scarcity of food, you would not see food in the supermarket.
What people lack is money, and money is not even paper anymore.
And there are enough dollars printed to create a planetary hyperinflation.

World economy is designed to distribute scarcity in a parasite based economy, where receiving more and giving less is a sign of success. The opposite, distribution of wealth is very often impopular.
The solution is to have a giving oriented society, where parasites are frowned upon. It has nothing to do with rockets.

What Musk is doing is interesting. In the past you had space or military technology moving later to civilian society. Today you have Musk's technology on the streets that can move up to space.

[EyeKhan]

Congrats Blue Origin!

‘One hell of a booster’: Blue Origin’s spaceship totally survives what should have been a fiery flight

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is a happy man today, now that the wildest test flight ever conducted by his Blue Origin space venture has ended in the safe landing of an empty crew capsule as well as a fuel-filled rocket booster.


The most important outcome was the survival of the New Shepard spacecraft’s capsule, demonstrating that Blue Origin’s in-flight escape system works. The booster was a bonus.

<snip>

The video at the link is pretty cool.

Link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/no-kaboom...180002040.html

[ar81]

Congrats Blue Origin!



The video at the link is pretty cool.

Link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/no-kaboom...180002040.html

What Bezos does is really interesting.

[EyeKhan]

Sorry about your Exolander, ESA. That sucks.

And in other news, Juno's having troubles at Jupiter....

NASA's Juno Probe Sidelined Just Before Jupiter Flyby
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | October 19, 2016 05:12pm ET


NASA's Juno spacecraft has encountered its second problem at Jupiter in less than a week.

The probe went into a protective "safe mode" at 1:47 a.m. EDT (0547 GMT) this morning (Oct. 19), preventing the spacecraft from gathering any data during today's highly anticipated second close flyby of the solar system's largest planet, NASA officials said.

"At the time safe mode was entered, the spacecraft was more than 13 hours from its closest approach to Jupiter," Juno project manager Rick Nybakken, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement today. [Awesome Jupiter Photos by NASA's Juno]

"We were still quite a ways from the planet's more intense radiation belts and magnetic fields," Nybakken added in the same statement. "The spacecraft is healthy, and we are working our standard recovery procedure."

Juno went into safe mode when a "software-performance monitor" caused the probe's onboard computer to reboot, NASA officials said. The issue is not related to an apparent problem with a set of valves in Juno's propulsion system, the officials added.

<snip>

Link: http://www.space.com/34453-juno-jupi...adline+Feed%29