The thread for space cadets!

[Berzerker]

planet of glass shards

https://phys.org/news/2018-07-toxic-side-moon.html

okay, silicate shards... Erosion makes animal life possible

 

[hobbsyoyo]

planet of glass shards

https://phys.org/news/2018-07-toxic-side-moon.html

okay, silicate shards... Erosion makes animal life possible

This is a known hazard of the moon. It could turn out to be devastating or a nothingburger. Devastating for obvious reasons but a potential nothingburger because we shouldn't go off the Apollo example for how this might affect a base there for a few reasons. For one, they had no idea how bad the regolith (moon dust) would be before they got there. For another, they had 0 precautions for keeping it out of their tiny lander. There was no airlock to de-suit in, they had to come inside and undress without any place dedicated to clean up.

Obviously a follow on landing and base will have better precautions for preventing regolith contamination of the inside of habitats and landers, which may prove the problem a nothingburger. On the other hand, it may be much harder to deal with than we're anticipating so it may become a major issue to contend with when we go back to the moon.


---------

China unveiled plans for their Long March 8 & 9 rockets. Long March 8 has been updated since a couple of years ago to now include booster landings and re-use. Long March 9 will slightly outclass the Block 2 version of the SLS at 140 metric tons of payload.
http://spacenews.com/china-reveals-...ng-march-9-and-reusable-long-march-8-rockets/

 

[warpus]

I wonder if it's going to be so easy for them to simply make booster landings/reusability happen? If it were a simple case of simply looking at what spaceX did and copying it, then other companies would already be doing that. It seems like a tough challenge you need to figure out by collecting data, trial and error, etc.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I wonder if it's going to be so easy for them to simply make booster landings/reusability happen? If it were a simple case of simply looking at what spaceX did and copying it, then other companies would already be doing that. It seems like a tough challenge you need to figure out by collecting data, trial and error, etc.

Other companies are taking the same approach, yes. Blue Origin actually sued* SpaceX for patent infringement for landing rockets on a drone ship at sea and pulled off a vertical landing (with a suborbital booster) about a month before SpaceX did. I've linked in this thread to video of the Chinese firm OneSpace experimenting with a miniature, throttleable rocket to learn how to apply it to their larger launch vehicle under development.

I don't say it is easy to develop this technology but it is straight forward and requires no truly novel principals of design. There isn't much 'secret sauce' in the vertical landing recipe and SpaceX (surprisingly) is currently not a major developer of brand new technology. Instead they focus on finding the highest, best use of already-existing technologies and novel applications thereof. Same with Blue Origin.

I will say that SX (and to a lesser extent, BO, which still hasn't launched a payload into orbit or carried a human passenger) is reaching an inflection point where they will have to begin inventing technologies that don't exist yet. Taking tourists into space for a thrill ride and landing large masses (and people!) on the surface of Mars and the Moon will actually require a lot of new technologies.

But to answer the question that started this - yes, there is a lot of trial and error associated with learning to land rockets but the technologies to do it are widely understood.

*BO lost the law suit. Among other things, SpaceX was able to show that BO's own patents were invalid as there already existed a patent (by some rando engineer) that covered the barge-landing concept. The owner of that patent was on record as not wanting to enforce his patent rights and was happy that not only did two major companies come to the same technical conclusion to the problem as he but one of them was already practicing it!
(I'm way too excited talking about random rocket patent disputes lololol)

--------

Cool video from ISRO:

They practiced a pad abort with a capsule escape system they developed. Unfortunately, due to political reasons, ISRO does not have nor is developing a capsule system. The government has yet to authorize a manned space program that ISRO badly wants. ISRO has developed a rocket that could launch a capsule (the GSLV MK III) and now this pad abort system. There is a proposal to begin a full-on manned program before the Indian government but no clear indications it will be approved. ISRO has been aggressively developing new space technologies but have also suffered two major catastrophes recently when their PSLV rocket failed (fairing stuck) and one of their communications satellites died almost immediately upon reaching space.

The cool grid fins that deploy before launch were originally developed for use with the Soyuz capsule and have saved cosmonaut lives during a real pad abort situation.

According to this article from the Times of India, ISRO is also developing its own reusable 2-stage rocket. Cool stuff all around.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...f-crew-escape-module/articleshow/64864269.cms

 

[warpus]

I guess I meant more that nobody else is landing rockets in a commercial capacity. Everybody else is still working on designs it seems, while spaceX is already doing this every couple weeks while completing contracts for paying customers. That's why I assumed it was a tough challenge, if it wasn't more companies would already be competing with spaceX by having their own fleets of reusable rockets in play, but spaceX seems way ahead of everybody else in that regard.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I guess I meant more that nobody else is landing rockets in a commercial capacity. Everybody else is still working on designs it seems, while spaceX is already doing this every couple weeks while completing contracts for paying customers. That's why I assumed it was a tough challenge, if it wasn't more companies would already be competing with spaceX by having their own fleets of reusable rockets in play, but spaceX seems way ahead of everybody else in that regard.

The vast majority of its competitors working on this now just started within the last two years or less. It took SpaceX 8 years to get to this point. Blue is the only company that started working on this problem around the same time and have nailed the technique at a smaller scale.

Everyone else will catch up it just takes time because it isn't easy.

This industry is extraordinarily tied to 'heritage' - this can be thought of as precedent in legal settings. No one wants to be the first guy to do something because the first guy gets to find the 10,000 ways a concept doesn't work (and blowing a lot of money and prestige) before getting it right. Look how many iterations SX went through - they started with parachute landings in water and now have a rocket on steroids with superchilled, densified LOX and landing legs that can retract themselves after landing with the help of a robot to grab the booster and hold it stationary. There were many steps and failures on that path and now everyone else can skip a lot of those steps. So while it took SX 8 years to get to this point, everyone else will probably be doing it in less than 5 after they start development.

But I come back to the point that while it is a tough challenge, it is straightforward. I don't know if that distinction is clear or not but it means that you are not developing all new systems to make this work. You can instead use systems that already work in novel ways. This makes the overall task less risky and quicker to implement.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Go China!
China claims progress in new landing technology for crewed spacecraft, Mars landings

There a lot of cool pictures in the article. They are developing new capsules to go to the Moon and Mars and testing parachute systems. One of these 'parachutes' is actually an inflatable hypersonic decelerator (of Kerbal fame) that NASA is also developing.

The article concludes with a Canadian research professor throwing serious shade on the Chinese efforts. Boo! I get that he's pushing back against some of the staged propoganda aspects of the press release but come on, this is a peaceful program that advances space technology. I don't care if they're behind other players so long as they're working on these programs at all. I mean yeah, rah rah rah the west does it best. Who cares?

 

[Ferocitus]

Go China!
I mean yeah, rah rah rah the west does it best. Who cares?

Have any space eggheads here seen this very recent BBC article about
European astronauts training with the Chinese?
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180626-why-europes-astronauts-are-learning-chinese

 

[Ajidica]

*BO lost the law suit. Among other things, SpaceX was able to show that BO's own patents were invalid as there already existed a patent (by some rando engineer) that covered the barge-landing concept.

Landing on a barge is a patentable concept?

Tell me there is something more behind the patent, and that barge-landing patents aren't the aerospace equivalent of Apple trying to patent the concept of the rectangle.

 

[Cutlass]

This is a known hazard of the moon. It could turn out to be devastating or a nothingburger. Devastating for obvious reasons but a potential nothingburger because we shouldn't go off the Apollo example for how this might affect a base there for a few reasons. For one, they had no idea how bad the regolith (moon dust) would be before they got there. For another, they had 0 precautions for keeping it out of their tiny lander. There was no airlock to de-suit in, they had to come inside and undress without any place dedicated to clean up.

Obviously a follow on landing and base will have better precautions for preventing regolith contamination of the inside of habitats and landers, which may prove the problem a nothingburger. On the other hand, it may be much harder to deal with than we're anticipating so it may become a major issue to contend with when we go back to the moon.

I've heard something about Moon dust and magnetic fields mean that a damaging amount of Moon dust eventually coats everything on the surface. How do you handle that?

 

[uppi]

This is a known hazard of the moon. It could turn out to be devastating or a nothingburger. Devastating for obvious reasons but a potential nothingburger because we shouldn't go off the Apollo example for how this might affect a base there for a few reasons. For one, they had no idea how bad the regolith (moon dust) would be before they got there. For another, they had 0 precautions for keeping it out of their tiny lander. There was no airlock to de-suit in, they had to come inside and undress without any place dedicated to clean up.

Obviously a follow on landing and base will have better precautions for preventing regolith contamination of the inside of habitats and landers, which may prove the problem a nothingburger. On the other hand, it may be much harder to deal with than we're anticipating so it may become a major issue to contend with when we go back to the moon.

I doubt it will turn out to be a non-issue. Obviously there will be procedures to mitigate the problem, but it will be hard to get rid of all of it every time and avoid accumulation inside a habitat. Even if you manage to do that, this will cause a lot of attrition on all materials involved. You can probably build filters that are effective at catching that stuff, but it seems quite aggressive, so I don't expect those filters to last very long. And the very act of cleaning space suits from moon dust is probably going to damage them. In a place, where you don't have an endless supply of space suits and filters this can turn out to be a problem very quickly.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Landing on a barge is a patentable concept?

Tell me there is something more behind the patent, and that barge-landing patents aren't the aerospace equivalent of Apple trying to patent the concept of the rectangle.

You can patent a non-obvious concept and barge-landing fits that bill and was patented. But the guy who did it first didn't really want to enforce it, just claim credit for inventing it. BO somehow got a similar patent approved and then sued SX over infringement and then they lost their patent altogether because of the earlier one.

I've heard something about Moon dust and magnetic fields mean that a damaging amount of Moon dust eventually coats everything on the surface. How do you handle that?

I doubt it will turn out to be a non-issue. Obviously there will be procedures to mitigate the problem, but it will be hard to get rid of all of it every time and avoid accumulation inside a habitat. Even if you manage to do that, this will cause a lot of attrition on all materials involved. You can probably build filters that are effective at catching that stuff, but it seems quite aggressive, so I don't expect those filters to last very long. And the very act of cleaning space suits from moon dust is probably going to damage them. In a place, where you don't have an endless supply of space suits and filters this can turn out to be a problem very quickly.

I'm with @uppi in that I don't think this will be an easy challenge to solve. However, I may a very broad allowance for hands-on experience potentially showing us easy ways to overcome this. It's really difficult to know how to fix a situation you can't really simulate on Earth without being in the situation. At one point people legitimately thought everything that landed on the Moon would sink into the regolith but this was found to be largely unwarranted.

The guys we sent and their landing craft was not built to handle the regolith at all so it's not really fair to make conclusions based on that experience. The guys had to depressurize the entire LM, exit, then return inside it with their dirty suits and rocks, re-pressurize and unsuit themselves. This is literally the worst way to handle regolith contamination. There are already designs for spacesuits that function as an airlock - they attach to the side of a habitat/rover and people climb out through a hatch in the back. This means only the hatch on the suit actually enters the module which should make keeping regolith out much easier.

Further, there may be some really obvious solution(s) that manifest when people start landing there regularly and have to deal with this.


On the other hand, yeah it may prove to be a massive, insurmountable challenge. We just can't say for certain now. But yeah, the dust is toxic and extremely abrasive, coats everything and just not good for man or machine.

 

[Cutlass]

OK. Pressure suits aside, assume you have to power your Moonbase with solar panels. How do you keep the faces of the solar panels dist free?

 

[Cutlass]

http://ritholtz.com/2018/07/planet-nine/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

 

[hobbsyoyo]

OK. Pressure suits aside, assume you have to power your Moonbase with solar panels. How do you keep the faces of the solar panels dist free?

Wipers

 

[Michkov]

If you are not sitting on a crater rim at the poles you got to deal with 14days of night on the moon. Solar isn't know to work all that well at night. Something nuclear would be needed if you want to get serious about an inhabited base.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

If you are not sitting on a crater rim at the poles you got to deal with 14days of night on the moon. Solar isn't know to work all that well at night. Something nuclear would be needed if you want to get serious about an inhabited base.

It has serious advantages and will most likely play a part in setting up lunar bases but nuclear is not the only route.

For the same resources it would take to build a big nuclear reactor (to power a full town, not just a 10 man base or whatever) on the moon you could excavate enormous caverns that you pressurize with oxygen (refined from the regolith) to act as a power source during the long nights. This also provides buffer gas to deal with leaks in the main habitats.

 

[Michkov]

but I like nuclear.

The caverns would work like the pressurized ex salt mines in Germany?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah I think so @Michkov
-------------------



This is RainCube. I didn't design or build this one but I have been flying it all weekend. That big honking antenna stows into a small canister. JPL knows how to crank up the Kerbal dial.

Spoiler The Canister :

 

[hobbsyoyo]

A Scottish town has been selected as the first official spaceport of the UK. Two companies have announced plans to launch out of Sutherland. One is an untested startup and the other is a Lockheed Martin effort to launch Electron vehicles with a new upper stage.
https://spacenews.com/how-a-small-scottish-town-aims-to-transform-commercial-spaceflight/