The thread for space cadets!

[Thorgalaeg]

Falcon Heavy can deliver a limited cargo to Mars solar orbit, not Martian orbit. Think about it as a rocket that can get your an intercept with Duna versus a rocket that can get all the way to Duna orbit. To get a payload to be captured into Mars orbit, there would have to be some sort of intermediate stage (which can be part of the payload) that can do it. Falcon Heavy would have dead batteries and no propellant by the time it got there.

Now if you are particularly risk-happy, Falcon Heavy could launch a payload to go straight into a Mars intercept such that the payload never goes into orbit. I looked up the stats and Falcon Heavy is listed to be capable of 16.8 metric tons of payload for trans-Mars injection.

I don't think Falcon Heavy will factor in heavily in the Mars colonization scheme. 16.8 metric tons is certainly a lot to send to Mars but compared to the needs of manned colonial flights, it's peanuts. And even though it is the cheapest per pound ride into space right now, it's probably an order of magnitude more expensive than the BFR plans to be. In fact the intention is to retire all of the Falcon line as soon as the BFR begins flying regularly.

BFR will absolutely need to be refueled on Mars. The first few flights (likely unmanned) will be about setting up the in-situ fuel processing plants to refuel them. The ship will arrive with only enough fuel to land; to come back it will have to be topped off.

The last I heard (but it's been a while), the tickets to Mars will be ~$500,000 each. These will be round-trip tickets because a lot less people will go if they think they can never go back. Plus the ships have to come back anyways so the tickets will be priced to cover the cost of a few returnees and profit on all those that stay.

I plan on making the trip but I've been wanting to go live on Mars longer than SpaceX has existed so that's a no-brainer. I'm incredibly lucky that things are picking up steam now.

How weird would it be if we first met in person on Mars? That would be epic.

$500k? Unless bitcoin price reach 1 million i will have to make the voyage hidden in the landing gear compartment. I hope it is pressurised or it will be very uncomfortable.

 

[red_elk]

Guys, make sure you know how to grow potatoes, just in case

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'm so happy that I took the time to learn KSP all those years ago now. Thanks again for teaching me all those basics back then, it not only helped me to actually play the game and get so much enjoyment out of it, but it also by extension helps me understand all this real space stuff too.

So I guess in real life you usually have an orbit insertion stage too? As opposed to KSP where most people just have 1 interplanetary stage that does both the burns to get intercepts with planets, but also the orbit insertion part. And I guess the BFR just does everything becuse it's so F B?



Would that not be done because the entry speed/vector would be too crazy? In KSP I always get in orbit around planets I'm landing on first, and I get everything to the lowest possible orbit before I land. That seems to be the best way to land on things. If I come in straight into Duna's or Kerbin's atmosphere I'm usually going way too fast and things blow up



Wow, really? What about putting small satellites into orbit and stuff? Wouldn't you want a smaller rocket around for smaller jobs?



That's currently out of my price range, even if I sell my place. I'm going to have to start figuring out how to make more money. Is there an age limit on this? Will they test you to see if your body can handle it? Will you have to be in shape?

Any estimates on when such flights might begin? Does there have to be a place to go, i.e. a colony already set up with a habitat and support structures, etc. before it happens?



Hopefully there's some cute single girls going, so that we can double date, since I'm assuming your wife would join you. I really just want to drop by for a couple weeks or months and that's it, though. I guess unless it all starts up when I'm 65 and it's time to retire and die soon anyway. If Musk is dying on Mars maybe I can get a grave nearby somewhere.

How long would that flight be, a couple months? What would the layout of the interior be like? From what I remember it's supposed to hold a whole bunch of people - but I presume we don't get our own rooms.. or do we? That would probably get awkward after a while. What would we talk about? I'm an introvert so I'd want lots of alone time, but it seems that there would just be people all around me all the time. I also suppose they would probably do psychological tests to make sure all people going can handle it.

Aren't they also planning on using the BFR for earth2earth transportation? I swear I remember Musk saying that this will cost similar to what a flight costs.. so let's say $1,000-$2,000 to fly in the BFR from new york - into space - and then down to Hong Kong or wherever. But isn't getting into orbit the hard part? Why is the flight to Mars 300-500 times more?

Hey when it comes to KSP, you are now the master.

Yes, in reality, you need some sort of insertion stage or on-board prop for your satellite to get into orbit. This system that Rocket Lab debuted on their second flight is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Spoiler :

The Russians use a similar system called Fregat. The Americans tend to use small solid propellant motors for the same purposes. Many interplanetary landers actually do use a direct injection without getting into orbit. This requires a heat shield but even if you got a craft into orbit first, you'd still need a heat shield anyways plus an intermediate stage so they usually just skip that step and go straight in.

Allegedly, launch costs on the BFR will be so low that it won't make sense to keep Falcon around, even for small payloads. For one, it's completely re-usable (Falcon loses a S2 and fairings every launch); for another, it's supposed to come down directly on the launch mounts so recovery costs are negligible too. Also, they think they can get the post-launch checks down to being as quick as airline checkouts so that cost will come way down and finally they also think they won't need to do any refurbishment between launches, just the checkouts.

I don't know what the age/health limits will be for going to Mars. My guess is they will fall squarely between airline passenger health restrictions and NASA astronaut restrictions. Launch and space flight are definitely more taxing on your body than an airline flight but at the same time the limits imposed on astronauts are justifiably asinine. By this I mean they are justified in that there are only a handful of astronaut spots and they are going to invest millions into them so they need to set a very high bar to ensure maximum safety and to cull the applicant pool. But they are asinine in that they eliminate candidates based largely on perceived risk rather than actual health risks. (And they are made doubly-asinine by the fact that they still strapped 7 astronauts into a known death trap and killed them all - twice). I don't know what kind of physical or psychological tests they will require but I assume they won't be nearly as rigorous as astronaut tests. I feel that psychological fears over long duration spaceflight are massively overblown but that's a whole other post. Really I think only people who are really motivated to go will go through with it and that alone will remove a lot of unsuitable personalities.

Elon has said he wants manned Martian flights to begin this decade but I think it's safe to say they won't start until the 2030's. Once the flights begin in earnest they will likely send 10+ ships at once rather than one or two.

When I began dating my wife, I straight up told her that I was going to spend my life working on getting to Mars and that if an opportunity arose to go, I would be going and she had to be fine with that. It was like on our third date and at the time I was just a high school dropout working in restaurants and yet she believed I was serious. She says she would go too but we'll see when the time comes. Not that I doubt her now, it's just who knows what our situation will be when and if the time comes to choose. She had faith in me through all these years and it should be noted that I told her this long before SpaceX was a big thing and talking about going to Mars.

They will have to have a very basic infrastructure set up either when the first colonists get there or they will bring it with them. But it will be very bare bones for a long time and colonists will have to work very hard to establish themselves. If you want to go and come back, it's likely you will have to wait for a couple of years for the planets to re-align to get back. The trip times are estimated to be 2-4 months or so (the ITS has enough fuel to take a non-fuel optimized trajectory) but will still require the planets to be lined up.

For the layout of the cabin, go watch Elon's two talks on the BFR/ITS on youtube - especially the second one with the revised (smaller) rocket design. He does a fly through of the proposed cabin. He says it's meant to be luxurious like a cruise ship and I believe it will have individual cabins but they will be teeny tiny and likely just have fabric walls.

Elon did talk about using the ITS for point-to-point flights on Earth to raise money. Those spots are going to be a lot cheaper than a Mars flight because they will be going on all the time and so you don't have to extract maximum profit from ~100 people one time in 2 years. You can make money with smaller profits through daily flights like an airline. Plus it won't require the booster so that saves a lot of money too. Those flights will not go fully orbital either, just suborbital hops.

whew I think I covered everything. Let me know if I missed something.

I think this will be particularly true when Blue Origin picks up production in Huntsville and the GOP space senators can hold on to their space jobs.

For the same political reasons, I hope that SpaceX does go forward with significant BFR production in Texas and maybe even find an excuse to make something in Alabama.

Blue Origin and SpaceX jobs will be a lot less lucrative than NASA jobs, unfortunately. But given the way politicians are engaged in a race to the bottom when it comes to wages I don't think the relevant congressman will care. But yeah, geographical spread for these companies will help ensure government support.

I would note however, that in order for these companies to get the same kind of support as Lockheed/Boeing, it will take some congressmen literally dying off. SpaceX hasn't engaged in the same level of deep-pocket political donations that the Lockheed and Boeing have (I don't know about BO) and as such have been under constant, vicious attacks by the likes of Richard Shelby in Congress. Really it's been quite disgraceful how blatantly the pro-traditional aerospace congressmen have played the favoritism game.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I have seen that pictures like this have been making the rounds on Russian social media:

Spoiler :

With captions like: Symmetrical Response

 

[warpus]

Hey when it comes to KSP, you are now the master.

Only because I beat you in that Laythe rescue mission .. when was that even? feels like years ago! Overall I don't feel like a master when I watch what other people do in the game. But thinking back to how difficult I used to find getting into orbit and docking.. yeah

Allegedly, launch costs on the BFR will be so low that it won't make sense to keep Falcon around, even for small payloads.

So why develop Falcon Heavy in the first place, if it's going to be discontinued so soon after it's built and put into use? Is this a "lessons learned" type of project that will help them design the BFR and beyond?

I don't know what the age/health limits will be for going to Mars. My guess is they will fall squarely between airline passenger health restrictions and NASA astronaut restrictions. Launch and space flight are definitely more taxing on your body than an airline flight but at the same time the limits imposed on astronauts are justifiably asinine. By this I mean they are justified in that there are only a handful of astronaut spots and they are going to invest millions into them so they need to set a very high bar to ensure maximum safety and to cull the applicant pool. But they are asinine in that they eliminate candidates based largely on perceived risk rather than actual health risks. (And they are made doubly-asinine by the fact that they still strapped 7 astronauts into a known death trap and killed them all - twice). I don't know what kind of physical or psychological tests they will require but I assume they won't be nearly as rigorous as astronaut tests. I feel that psychological fears over long duration spaceflight are massively overblown but that's a whole other post. Really I think only people who are really motivated to go will go through with it and that alone will remove a lot of unsuitable personalities.

Elon is older than I am by a bunch of years, so on one hand I assume if it's safe for him, it'll be safe for me. Then again he's the guy with the $$$, they might let him fly if he's 75 but cut off at 65 for everybody else or something.

For the layout of the cabin, go watch Elon's two talks on the BFR/ITS on youtube - especially the second one with the revised (smaller) rocket design. He does a fly through of the proposed cabin. He says it's meant to be luxurious like a cruise ship and I believe it will have individual cabins but they will be teeny tiny and likely just have fabric walls.

I read a bit more into it.. Sounds amazing! I'd just bring a whole bunch of books, my ipad, some board games.. I guess a laptop I can play KSP on, too. Assuming there'd be USB plugs in the walls so I can recharge my electronics.

I guess with the thin walls it's going to be really awkward hearing all the banging going on throughout the ship. Key seems to be to bring really good headphones.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I read a bit more into it.. Sounds amazing! I'd just bring a whole bunch of books, my ipad, some board games.. I guess a laptop I can play KSP on, too. Assuming there'd be USB plugs in the walls so I can recharge my electronics.

You mean KSP 4: Jebediah's Revenge.

 

[Berzerker]

Humans are the only hope this planet's life has to survive in the long run. *Maybe* something intelligent would evolve after us but the odds are pretty terrible. On the other hand, the odds that all life will go extinct here one way or another (and sooner or later) is 100% without us.

I like to think about us as the reproductive system for all life on earth. Just like gestation takes a toll on a mother, so too must the Earth suffer while we come of age and mature. It really sucks that we've done so much damage but it is my hope and expectation that we will make more than good on these birth pains by spreading life across the cosmos. Sure, there may already be a lot of life out there but we can spread our own world's biosphere to the many empty rocks in the void.

Worthy of its own thread, but it deserves more than dying as the government shuts down

comments?

 

[warpus]

I dunno, I don't see a way for humanity to stop the eventual heat death of the universe. I mean, maaaaaybe, but it seems very doubtful. All good things come to an end, and all the bad things do too

 

[Berzerker]

ah, but maybe there is a way to survive the universe... Maybe life already did. "If" the universe is cyclical with expansion following contraction, then life from an earlier universe might have survived the transition.

Imagine life on a planet or moon on the outskirts of the universe falling toward the coming 'big bang'. The tiny resilient life on that body survives to seed the next universe.

Maybe...

 

[warpus]

I think when the heat death happens, all elementary particles get "stretched out" and eventually lose most of their energy and just sort of fall apart. Don't quote me on that, but I don't think we'd survive a heat death.

In sci-fi novels civilizations that manage to figure a way out create wormholes to other universes and escape to them, and keep doing that forever. But that's assuming that other universes exist.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

So why develop Falcon Heavy in the first place, if it's going to be discontinued so soon after it's built and put into use? Is this a "lessons learned" type of project that will help them design the BFR and beyond?

I guess with the thin walls it's going to be really awkward hearing all the banging going on throughout the ship. Key seems to be to bring really good headphones.

Well Elon just admitted that he tried to kill FH three separate times because it was so much harder to execute than he initially imagined and it has marginal use so it's a great question - why did they do it? The real reason is the DoD. The US military is far and away the largest consumer of space services and due to all of their unique requirements, they pay out the wahzoo for said services. That's the real driver for Falcon Heavy - to launch very big and sophisticated satellites for the military which are very profitable. It's also likely that they are hoping for a 'if you build it, they will come scenario' where civil institutions (NASA/ESA) begin designing missions that can't exist without a vehicle like Falcon Heavy - and to a lesser extent this applies to commercial ventures as well.

And look at this way - now that they've proven the concept, they just have to begin converting over a small portion of they're already flown boosters to be side boosters and build a small number of dedicated center cores (the center cores are unique, the boosters are stock Falcons with nose cones and some other mods) and then re-use those stacks over and over again. For a marginal cost, they can absolutely demolish the competition in the heavy lift market. Their next competitor is the Delta IV Heavy and it costs 4-10 times as much for less than half the payload.

And the projections for when BFR/ITS begin flying are on Elon time. I suspect he knows that despite his projections that the system will be up and running in 2 years, it'll probably be closer to 10 before it really starts flying regularly. So that's a long time where they can soak up market share with the already cheap Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.

As to all the banging - I suspect society will have to deal with Martian births and all that entails very soon after flights begin. I mean that is the point of colonization after all.

Worthy of its own thread, but it deserves more than dying as the government shuts down

comments?

Thanks!

I really do mean what I said there and it's a big part of why I chose this career path. Even though I'm no longer working directly on a Mars colonization project, I'm still contributing to the effort that will get humanity and (by extension) life off this planet. And life here really is doomed in my opinion if it doesn't get off this rock. There have been multiple mass extinction events that have nearly destroyed the biosphere. It's just a matter of time.

So while obviously it does suck enormously the damage we have done to the biosphere, we're really the only hope that life has of not being extinguished in the long run. Hopefully we can get our own house in order and spread out to the cosmos before we become the cause of the final extinction event ourselves.

And yes, I'm aware that there could be a big freeze, or a big rip, or a reversal to a big bang that ends everything. I mean if the universe itself ends then it ends but that's not a reason to not strive to keep the flame of life alive while we can.

 

[Lexicus]

I prefer vast lifeless voids

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I do not.

 

[Berzerker]

yeah, the big freeze seems kinda sad... but a big crunch? Imagine the sky full of stars as we head toward the 'singularity'

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I prefer vast lifeless voids

Errr... Sauron?

 

[Lexicus]

The Big Crunch isn't going to happen. The universe is just going to thermodynamically "run out" until the last event happens and then there will just be nothingness for eternity.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The Big Crunch isn't going to happen. The universe is just going to thermodynamically "run out" until the last event happens and then there will just be nothingness for eternity.

This is an awfully bold claim. It may be the opinion of a lot of scientists but less than a hundred years ago the entire universe was confined to our own galaxy. As always, more data is needed.

 

[red_elk]

This is what's going to happen:

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Apparently the rush of investment money going into crypo-currencies is diverting investments away from the space industry.

I guess it's obvious that investment is about what people think they can make the most money on, not what is most useful for society. It's just sad to see things play out like this.

http://spacenews.com/foust-forward-...mpetition-for-investment-dollars-or-bitcoins/

 

[Berzerker]

The Big Crunch isn't going to happen. The universe is just going to thermodynamically "run out" until the last event happens and then there will just be nothingness for eternity.

Like a firework running out of sizzle... It does look that way, but maybe the same (or similar) force that caused inflation so unbelievably fast can snap back the universe. Given how everything seems to work by orbits from the atom to galaxies, maybe the universe is rotating and others are nearby. I find it strange that everything spins but cant remember hearing if the universe does. Would the pre-big bang singularity spin?
The universe doesn't form a disk so maybe not.