Wasn't too hard to launch from the Moon without a launchpad... Mars is only 1/2g as opposed to 1/6g, so the only difficulties to overcome are the symptoms of journey time (I think the new ion engines can cut that to two months each way) and sending enough fuel beforehand in an unmanned mission to launch the lander back to the ship left in orbit.
The difficult thing about Mars is the entering and exiting the atmosphere with it's massive wind/dust storms and etc . Moons are so much easier since you have little-to-no atmosphere to deal with.
There will be no such thing as private space flight as long as there is no profit motive or survival motive. It's only in science fiction where there is a linear or exponential progression of technological improvement like it is a manifest destiny.
May I suggest having a look at the Virgin Galactic waiting list.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world rich enough to finance a heck of a lot of suborbital and orbital flights... They would pay for a chance to be part of those flights either in person, or through sponsorships, technology licensing, etc. Once this is in play Mars would be the next logical playground of the rich... Forget buying islands, supercars and partying with models all night. That's old hat.
Throw in some international government co-operation and you could have the perfect storm for a new era of space exploration. Tell me China doesn't want a piece of the space action. The US, Europe and Russia still want to be involved. No individual government can bear the individual cost of the next era of space. Working together and working with the private sector and facilitating space tourism is the only logical way forward.
And yes, as a poster mentioned, there's no other way to put this. More people are going to have to die and bigger risks will have to be taken. Some colonists on Mars could return to earth but have to be wheelchair-bound or hooked up to assistive mechas like the Japanese are pioneering. Of course, they could (and should) always go back to Mars. Death and disability has and will remain the price of human endeavour... At least until we figure out how to backup our consciousness and re-implant them into cloned bodies.
The only thing where I would say humanity is behind the 8-ball is in terms of energy. We need way better mastery. Yes renewables are great for Earth use but for space and colonies on Mars and the moon, a significant leap in energy ability would deliver the propulsion and habitat management necessary to make things an order of magnitude more practical. 8 months to Mars is way too long, you spend too much resources into making the 8 months bearable and survivable.
Grew up with Star Trek, then the development and first flight of the shuttle, and in high school I saw a conceptual image of a spinning spacecraft that looked like a huge bicycle wheel. Left an impression that lives on and I have found myself on the odd Sunday or so toying with the concept in Sketchup. It's fun and I've created a few whacky designs. It is fun to sit back and dream.
After the tsunami here in March, my Sunday time has been spent on earth looking into disaster response systems and recovery for Japan. One item that could be on the revolving spacecraft that also has use here would be an indoor farm. I'm looking at tower farming now, and how it could fit into Japanese society.
The use of water to block radiation lead me to wonder if they couldn't make a suit for the workers at the Daichi plant. The weight, however, would require motors to assist movement, but there are concepts for these already. Size would be another major factor; the plant was not designed for a large hard shell suit. Maybe they could quickly build another of the special robots that was sent to the ISS and functions as a human torso...
I had a revelation the other day. Star Trek and all that fired up our collective imagination. We see it today in an IT revolution no one could have dreamed of would take place so quickly. We see it in a lot of novel medical research that still has a long way to go to practical application but it's getting there.
I think between 2012 and 2100 will be more baby steps into the solar system and understanding how humans adapt in space. I think the energy revolution will truly happen, we are at the equivalent stage of when computers were "mechanical adding machines"... In terms of energy we haven't even gotten to the vacuum tube equivalent in computing.
Faster-than-light travel to other stars and so on may be possible should there be some breakthroughs in science that would define humanity's evolution into a spacefaring race. It could be 50 years off, or 500.
But once these breakthroughs happen, Star Wars and Star Trek and Aliens will all look quite antiquated... We think of needing "ships" to "travel"... That there will be "fleets" of these ships doing things like mining, trucking and so on. But once space and time can be bent at will it will be a real pandora's box. You may not need a ship. You could create portals to other dimensions. You may experience different space and time experiences through neural connections to probes. We could really travel to any part of the universe without moving.
May I suggest having a look at the Virgin Galactic waiting list.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world rich enough to finance a heck of a lot of suborbital and orbital flights... They would pay for a chance to be part of those flights either in person, or through sponsorships, technology licensing, etc. Once this is in play Mars would be the next logical playground of the rich... Forget buying islands, supercars and partying with models all night. That's old hat.
Here's an analogy. Climbing Mt. Everest is dangerous to your health too. There are a lot of people who pay a handsome price to climb it, but I don't see anyone proposing to go live there or found a city there. The Arctic (Greenland) and Antarctic latitudes are dangerous places, there are stations in some places there, and even some cities that get close to those latitudes. There are people who pay a handsome price to make treks there. Yet, there isn't anyone forking over lots of money to build a society there.
Those places on Earth will orders of magnitude easier, safer and cheaper to build colonies there than in Earth orbit or the Moon. Yet, we as a society really don't do it. Their needs to be a profit motive and or a survival motive. These places will kill you for any little mistake and will take huge expenditures to live there.
Quote:
And yes, as a poster mentioned, there's no other way to put this. More people are going to have to die and bigger risks will have to be taken. Some colonists on Mars could return to earth but have to be wheelchair-bound or hooked up to assistive mechas like the Japanese are pioneering. Of course, they could (and should) always go back to Mars. Death and disability has and will remain the price of human endeavour... At least until we figure out how to backup our consciousness and re-implant them into cloned bodies.
Not worried about safety. The worrying thing are the costs and the motives. We're not at a point where life here on Earth is so bad that we as a society feel an urgent need to escape and live somewhere better. If or when we get to that point, it will take the wealth of nations (material resources, labor) to get an actual space colony.
Maybe there is a conglomerate of crazy billionaires that put 100+ billion into it, but that's a long shot.
Branson, Allen, and Rutan ??? ... They've put a re-useable vehicle into space twice already ... with a turnaround time of ONE WEEK. (With a total development and launch cost of less than that required to do a single Space Shuttle launch.)
Like I said, they haven't done anything yet.
All they did was a high altitude Mach 3 jaunt. Since they got about 100 km or 60 miles altitude, one could say they were in space, but they were, and will be with Virgin Galactic, woefully short of actually being in orbit or even a suborbital trajectory. They were more than 8x short. To get into orbit, they need to get 8x faster. That's just to get to low earth Orbit.
As long as we're using thermochemical processes for propulsion, it's going to be expensive to get into orbit. An analogy would be like asking you to drive from Barrow, Alaska to Miami, Florida, all without refueling. You'd be driving a car where 95% of the mass of your car is fuel. 95%. (All Spaceship One did was drive to Fairbanks, Alaska.) If you want to go further, like say, Argentina, that fraction gets even bigger.
The difficult thing about Mars is the entering and exiting the atmosphere with it's massive wind/dust storms and etc . Moons are so much easier since you have little-to-no atmosphere to deal with.
No, no, no. Atmospheric pressure on Mars is 170x less than it is on Earth (at mean surface levels). It is very very thin. Wind and dust mean nothing at those pressures. The bigger risk is that dust which may contaminate systems.
The difficult thing about Mars is orbit insertion and landing. For low mass payloads, less than 2000 lb, you could use parachutes, airbags, and stuff to slow down and land. This is for a mass that is about half as much as your typical SUV. If you're lucky to have a Lotus Elise, 2000 lb is about a Lotus Elise with a passenger. For larger masses, the problem is slowing down and landing.
The easiest is retro-propulsion. But that means you have to launch 2x the mass off Earth. There are other lower-mass techniques, but those are kind of stopgaps until we can afford to do retro-propulsion, as the stopgaps can't scale or are one-off applications.
... And then you went on to describe what they did... And it wasn't "nothing".
What they did was to prove that their concept works... They did the hard part. As you said, achieving orbit, now, is merely a matter of scaling up the engine. Ability to aunch and re-entry have been proven.
No, no, no. Atmospheric pressure on Mars is 170x less than it is on Earth (at mean surface levels). It is very very thin. Wind and dust mean nothing at those pressures. The bigger risk is that dust which may contaminate systems.
The difficult thing about Mars is orbit insertion and landing. For low mass payloads, less than 2000 lb, you could use parachutes, airbags, and stuff to slow down and land. This is for a mass that is about half as much as your typical SUV. If you're lucky to have a Lotus Elise, 2000 lb is about a Lotus Elise with a passenger. For larger masses, the problem is slowing down and landing.
The easiest is retro-propulsion. But that means you have to launch 2x the mass off Earth. There are other lower-mass techniques, but those are kind of stopgaps until we can afford to do retro-propulsion, as the stopgaps can't scale or are one-off applications.
I think you would find the costs and risks of landing and launching on the Martian surface are significantly greater than doing the same thing on the Martian moon Phobos. While I want to see people on the surface of Mars one day, I would be more than happy if we landed on Phobos as a preliminary step towards that goal.
... And then you went on to describe what they did... And it wasn't "nothing".
What they did was to prove that their concept works... They did the hard part. As you said, achieving orbit, now, is merely a matter of scaling up the engine. Ability to aunch and re-entry have been proven.
You're not understanding. Achieving orbit will be 10x hardware than getting to Mach 3. Scaling up will be a problem. And launch and re-entry from orbital velocities will be totally different problems.
I think you would find the costs and risks of landing and launching on the Martian surface are significantly greater than doing the same thing on the Martian moon Phobos. While I want to see people on the surface of Mars one day, I would be more than happy if we landed on Phobos as a preliminary step towards that goal.
Like I said, the problem with these beyond Earth-Moon system visits will always be slowing down. They are not much different and Phobos may be harder as you can aerobrake with Mars and save some mass. And Phobos' micro-G environment doesn't sound like a walk in the park to me.
You're not understanding. Achieving orbit will be 10x hardware than getting to Mach 3. Scaling up will be a problem. And launch and re-entry from orbital velocities will be totally different problems.
Yes, scaling up will HAVE it's problems (but it won't BE a problem)... they can be overcome. That's the whole point of experimental exploration.
And no, launch and re-entry from orbital velocities will NOT be "totally different" from what's already been demonstrated. Different, yes... but the differences are known now, and are planned for. It really is just a matter of scaling up. (And the costs that go with that.)
Yes, scaling up will HAVE it's problems (but it won't BE a problem)... they can be overcome. That's the whole point of experimental exploration.
And no, launch and re-entry from orbital velocities will NOT be "totally different" from what's already been demonstrated. Different, yes... but the differences are known now, and are planned for. It really is just a matter of scaling up. (And the costs that go with that.)
With the current design, I do not believe they will be able overcome issues with scaling it up to orbital velocities. The current design is a one-off specifically to get above 62 miles at as low a velocity as possible.
If they want to get into orbit, they will go with a different design.
With the current design, I do not believe they will be able overcome issues with scaling it up to orbital velocities. The current design is a one-off specifically to get above 62 miles at as low a velocity as possible.
If they want to get into orbit, they will go with a different design.
Different the way Apollo was different from Mercury. Same technology, just "scaled up".
Mercury was nothing more than proving runs to get ready for Apollo. In the same vein, Spaceship One and White Knight was never intended to be anything other than a proof of concept for the next iteration... but the net iteration will use the same technology pioneered by version 1.
The future of space travel is in the hands of nuclear fusion, which is in the hands of nanotechnology. half a liter of heavy water can send 1000 tons into LEO. At this point, probably within 20 years of said technological breakthrough, sending chemical rockets up is just plain stupid, unless there's a succinct, commercial reason to do so. When you have an energy source like fusion, all of these silly problems of mass and aerodynamics melt away.
Here's an analogy. Climbing Mt. Everest is dangerous to your health too. There are a lot of people who pay a handsome price to climb it, but I don't see anyone proposing to go live there or found a city there. The Arctic (Greenland) and Antarctic latitudes are dangerous places, there are stations in some places there, and even some cities that get close to those latitudes. There are people who pay a handsome price to make treks there. Yet, there isn't anyone forking over lots of money to build a society there.
Those places on Earth will orders of magnitude easier, safer and cheaper to build colonies there than in Earth orbit or the Moon. Yet, we as a society really don't do it. Their needs to be a profit motive and or a survival motive. These places will kill you for any little mistake and will take huge expenditures to live there.
Not worried about safety. The worrying thing are the costs and the motives. We're not at a point where life here on Earth is so bad that we as a society feel an urgent need to escape and live somewhere better. If or when we get to that point, it will take the wealth of nations (material resources, labor) to get an actual space colony.
Maybe there is a conglomerate of crazy billionaires that put 100+ billion into it, but that's a long shot.
Okay, if we don't focus so much on the habitation but just the adventure then you've agreed with me that there's a lot of rich crazy people that will pay handsomely for an adventure. Such as going into orbit... They don't have to stay too long, a few hours orbiting the earth and that's enough... Some might want to stay in the ISS or extremely rudimentary stations in the future. Same for Mars... Just like Everest you don't just walk up and come down... You camp out along the way. Anyone going to Mars will have to "camp out" on Mars for at least a month before coming back. Some may want to stay longer.
So, I reckon the profit motive in the "adventure, fame, ego and sponsorship" component of earth orbit, space station, and Mars travel is definitely there.
I would say in the next 100 years the travel to Mars and beyond is more important than colonisation. Colonisation requires a lot more technology than travel and temporary habitation for adventure and research. Mars colonisation certainly has to involve some level of terraforming or at least living in large biodomes initially, maybe powered by Martian resources. Definitely a long term thing. As for orbiting space stations, yeah, I wouldn't say it would be so great to live up there until we have space elevators and such.
Anyways I reckon if we can't have a manned mission to Mars under the equivalent of 100 billion of today's dollars in direct costs by 2050 "we're doing it wrong". 100 billion from private enterprise and governments is a piss in the lake compared to the cash pumped in to keep our failing global monetary system from collapsing.
When it comes to the government properly assessing it's budget on any of it's programs, one should consider that when the Space Shuttle was being sold to congress it was pitched that it would only cost 7 million dollars per launch. In reality, over the last 30 years (and when you factor in all associated costs) the Space Shuttle has cost nearly 1 billion per launch. So one can easily say that when it comes to space we have a problem of under budgeting.
Different the way Apollo was different from Mercury. Same technology, just "scaled up".
Mercury was nothing more than proving runs to get ready for Apollo. In the same vein, Spaceship One and White Knight was never intended to be anything other than a proof of concept for the next iteration... but the net iteration will use the same technology pioneered by version 1.
I doubt it. Virtually none of the composites that Scaled specializes in will be applicable for orbital flights. They'll have to move to aluminum construction for primary structure, probably cryogenic propellents (at least oxidizer) which means new main engine design, thermal protection design is always a problem and it will be a problem for this design, actual environmental systems have to be designed. The list just goes on and on.
Mercury's design was scalable. A horizontal launch & landing, two stage to orbit, reusable design like SS1 + White Knight? I'm thinking not.
The future of space travel is in the hands of nuclear fusion, which is in the hands of nanotechnology. half a liter of heavy water can send 1000 tons into LEO. At this point, probably within 20 years of said technological breakthrough, sending chemical rockets up is just plain stupid, unless there's a succinct, commercial reason to do so. When you have an energy source like fusion, all of these silly problems of mass and aerodynamics melt away.
But you still need to carry a "propellent". Thrust is provided by throwing stuff at high velocities out the back. Nuclear thermal propulsion just replaces the heat source from a chemical based one to a nuclear one. With nuclear, you're still pumping a fluid through the reactor, heating and pressurizing it up, than accelerating it through a nozzle. You could do it with nuclear fission today if the will is there.
Unless you are talking about fusion bombs... which we could do today too (I think).
But you still need to carry a "propellent". Thrust is provided by throwing stuff at high velocities out the back.
You are mistaken. Thrust is provided by force being applied in equal and opposite directions. A fusion reaction creates a _force_. Expansion of gas in a chemical reaction is also a _force_, and the exhaust is really just a byproduct of the gas expansion. This is basic newtonian physics. Before you try to lodge further arguments on the matter, you should do some research & homework.
The idea of a fusion rocket is old enough, and thoroughly conceptualized, that it has manifested into basically all sci-fi. The only thing that is missing is the steady-state fusion.
Comments
Wasn't too hard to launch from the Moon without a launchpad... Mars is only 1/2g as opposed to 1/6g, so the only difficulties to overcome are the symptoms of journey time (I think the new ion engines can cut that to two months each way) and sending enough fuel beforehand in an unmanned mission to launch the lander back to the ship left in orbit.
The difficult thing about Mars is the entering and exiting the atmosphere with it's massive wind/dust storms and etc . Moons are so much easier since you have little-to-no atmosphere to deal with.
There will be no such thing as private space flight as long as there is no profit motive or survival motive. It's only in science fiction where there is a linear or exponential progression of technological improvement like it is a manifest destiny.
May I suggest having a look at the Virgin Galactic waiting list.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world rich enough to finance a heck of a lot of suborbital and orbital flights... They would pay for a chance to be part of those flights either in person, or through sponsorships, technology licensing, etc. Once this is in play Mars would be the next logical playground of the rich... Forget buying islands, supercars and partying with models all night. That's old hat.
Throw in some international government co-operation and you could have the perfect storm for a new era of space exploration. Tell me China doesn't want a piece of the space action. The US, Europe and Russia still want to be involved. No individual government can bear the individual cost of the next era of space. Working together and working with the private sector and facilitating space tourism is the only logical way forward.
And yes, as a poster mentioned, there's no other way to put this. More people are going to have to die and bigger risks will have to be taken. Some colonists on Mars could return to earth but have to be wheelchair-bound or hooked up to assistive mechas like the Japanese are pioneering. Of course, they could (and should) always go back to Mars. Death and disability has and will remain the price of human endeavour... At least until we figure out how to backup our consciousness and re-implant them into cloned bodies.
The only thing where I would say humanity is behind the 8-ball is in terms of energy. We need way better mastery. Yes renewables are great for Earth use but for space and colonies on Mars and the moon, a significant leap in energy ability would deliver the propulsion and habitat management necessary to make things an order of magnitude more practical. 8 months to Mars is way too long, you spend too much resources into making the 8 months bearable and survivable.
Grew up with Star Trek, then the development and first flight of the shuttle, and in high school I saw a conceptual image of a spinning spacecraft that looked like a huge bicycle wheel. Left an impression that lives on and I have found myself on the odd Sunday or so toying with the concept in Sketchup. It's fun and I've created a few whacky designs. It is fun to sit back and dream.
After the tsunami here in March, my Sunday time has been spent on earth looking into disaster response systems and recovery for Japan. One item that could be on the revolving spacecraft that also has use here would be an indoor farm. I'm looking at tower farming now, and how it could fit into Japanese society.
The use of water to block radiation lead me to wonder if they couldn't make a suit for the workers at the Daichi plant. The weight, however, would require motors to assist movement, but there are concepts for these already. Size would be another major factor; the plant was not designed for a large hard shell suit. Maybe they could quickly build another of the special robots that was sent to the ISS and functions as a human torso...
I had a revelation the other day. Star Trek and all that fired up our collective imagination. We see it today in an IT revolution no one could have dreamed of would take place so quickly. We see it in a lot of novel medical research that still has a long way to go to practical application but it's getting there.
I think between 2012 and 2100 will be more baby steps into the solar system and understanding how humans adapt in space. I think the energy revolution will truly happen, we are at the equivalent stage of when computers were "mechanical adding machines"... In terms of energy we haven't even gotten to the vacuum tube equivalent in computing.
Faster-than-light travel to other stars and so on may be possible should there be some breakthroughs in science that would define humanity's evolution into a spacefaring race. It could be 50 years off, or 500.
But once these breakthroughs happen, Star Wars and Star Trek and Aliens will all look quite antiquated... We think of needing "ships" to "travel"... That there will be "fleets" of these ships doing things like mining, trucking and so on. But once space and time can be bent at will it will be a real pandora's box. You may not need a ship. You could create portals to other dimensions. You may experience different space and time experiences through neural connections to probes. We could really travel to any part of the universe without moving.
May I suggest having a look at the Virgin Galactic waiting list.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world rich enough to finance a heck of a lot of suborbital and orbital flights... They would pay for a chance to be part of those flights either in person, or through sponsorships, technology licensing, etc. Once this is in play Mars would be the next logical playground of the rich... Forget buying islands, supercars and partying with models all night. That's old hat.
Here's an analogy. Climbing Mt. Everest is dangerous to your health too. There are a lot of people who pay a handsome price to climb it, but I don't see anyone proposing to go live there or found a city there. The Arctic (Greenland) and Antarctic latitudes are dangerous places, there are stations in some places there, and even some cities that get close to those latitudes. There are people who pay a handsome price to make treks there. Yet, there isn't anyone forking over lots of money to build a society there.
Those places on Earth will orders of magnitude easier, safer and cheaper to build colonies there than in Earth orbit or the Moon. Yet, we as a society really don't do it. Their needs to be a profit motive and or a survival motive. These places will kill you for any little mistake and will take huge expenditures to live there.
And yes, as a poster mentioned, there's no other way to put this. More people are going to have to die and bigger risks will have to be taken. Some colonists on Mars could return to earth but have to be wheelchair-bound or hooked up to assistive mechas like the Japanese are pioneering. Of course, they could (and should) always go back to Mars. Death and disability has and will remain the price of human endeavour... At least until we figure out how to backup our consciousness and re-implant them into cloned bodies.
Not worried about safety. The worrying thing are the costs and the motives. We're not at a point where life here on Earth is so bad that we as a society feel an urgent need to escape and live somewhere better. If or when we get to that point, it will take the wealth of nations (material resources, labor) to get an actual space colony.
Maybe there is a conglomerate of crazy billionaires that put 100+ billion into it, but that's a long shot.
Branson, Allen, and Rutan ??? ... They've put a re-useable vehicle into space twice already ... with a turnaround time of ONE WEEK. (With a total development and launch cost of less than that required to do a single Space Shuttle launch.)
Like I said, they haven't done anything yet.
All they did was a high altitude Mach 3 jaunt. Since they got about 100 km or 60 miles altitude, one could say they were in space, but they were, and will be with Virgin Galactic, woefully short of actually being in orbit or even a suborbital trajectory. They were more than 8x short. To get into orbit, they need to get 8x faster. That's just to get to low earth Orbit.
As long as we're using thermochemical processes for propulsion, it's going to be expensive to get into orbit. An analogy would be like asking you to drive from Barrow, Alaska to Miami, Florida, all without refueling. You'd be driving a car where 95% of the mass of your car is fuel. 95%. (All Spaceship One did was drive to Fairbanks, Alaska.) If you want to go further, like say, Argentina, that fraction gets even bigger.
The difficult thing about Mars is the entering and exiting the atmosphere with it's massive wind/dust storms and etc . Moons are so much easier since you have little-to-no atmosphere to deal with.
No, no, no. Atmospheric pressure on Mars is 170x less than it is on Earth (at mean surface levels). It is very very thin. Wind and dust mean nothing at those pressures. The bigger risk is that dust which may contaminate systems.
The difficult thing about Mars is orbit insertion and landing. For low mass payloads, less than 2000 lb, you could use parachutes, airbags, and stuff to slow down and land. This is for a mass that is about half as much as your typical SUV. If you're lucky to have a Lotus Elise, 2000 lb is about a Lotus Elise with a passenger. For larger masses, the problem is slowing down and landing.
The easiest is retro-propulsion. But that means you have to launch 2x the mass off Earth. There are other lower-mass techniques, but those are kind of stopgaps until we can afford to do retro-propulsion, as the stopgaps can't scale or are one-off applications.
Like I said, they haven't done anything yet.
... And then you went on to describe what they did... And it wasn't "nothing".
What they did was to prove that their concept works... They did the hard part. As you said, achieving orbit, now, is merely a matter of scaling up the engine. Ability to aunch and re-entry have been proven.
No, no, no. Atmospheric pressure on Mars is 170x less than it is on Earth (at mean surface levels). It is very very thin. Wind and dust mean nothing at those pressures. The bigger risk is that dust which may contaminate systems.
The difficult thing about Mars is orbit insertion and landing. For low mass payloads, less than 2000 lb, you could use parachutes, airbags, and stuff to slow down and land. This is for a mass that is about half as much as your typical SUV. If you're lucky to have a Lotus Elise, 2000 lb is about a Lotus Elise with a passenger. For larger masses, the problem is slowing down and landing.
The easiest is retro-propulsion. But that means you have to launch 2x the mass off Earth. There are other lower-mass techniques, but those are kind of stopgaps until we can afford to do retro-propulsion, as the stopgaps can't scale or are one-off applications.
I think you would find the costs and risks of landing and launching on the Martian surface are significantly greater than doing the same thing on the Martian moon Phobos. While I want to see people on the surface of Mars one day, I would be more than happy if we landed on Phobos as a preliminary step towards that goal.
... And then you went on to describe what they did... And it wasn't "nothing".
What they did was to prove that their concept works... They did the hard part. As you said, achieving orbit, now, is merely a matter of scaling up the engine. Ability to aunch and re-entry have been proven.
You're not understanding. Achieving orbit will be 10x hardware than getting to Mach 3. Scaling up will be a problem. And launch and re-entry from orbital velocities will be totally different problems.
I think you would find the costs and risks of landing and launching on the Martian surface are significantly greater than doing the same thing on the Martian moon Phobos. While I want to see people on the surface of Mars one day, I would be more than happy if we landed on Phobos as a preliminary step towards that goal.
Like I said, the problem with these beyond Earth-Moon system visits will always be slowing down. They are not much different and Phobos may be harder as you can aerobrake with Mars and save some mass. And Phobos' micro-G environment doesn't sound like a walk in the park to me.
You're not understanding. Achieving orbit will be 10x hardware than getting to Mach 3. Scaling up will be a problem. And launch and re-entry from orbital velocities will be totally different problems.
Yes, scaling up will HAVE it's problems (but it won't BE a problem)... they can be overcome. That's the whole point of experimental exploration.
And no, launch and re-entry from orbital velocities will NOT be "totally different" from what's already been demonstrated. Different, yes... but the differences are known now, and are planned for. It really is just a matter of scaling up. (And the costs that go with that.)
Yes, scaling up will HAVE it's problems (but it won't BE a problem)... they can be overcome. That's the whole point of experimental exploration.
And no, launch and re-entry from orbital velocities will NOT be "totally different" from what's already been demonstrated. Different, yes... but the differences are known now, and are planned for. It really is just a matter of scaling up. (And the costs that go with that.)
With the current design, I do not believe they will be able overcome issues with scaling it up to orbital velocities. The current design is a one-off specifically to get above 62 miles at as low a velocity as possible.
If they want to get into orbit, they will go with a different design.
With the current design, I do not believe they will be able overcome issues with scaling it up to orbital velocities. The current design is a one-off specifically to get above 62 miles at as low a velocity as possible.
If they want to get into orbit, they will go with a different design.
Different the way Apollo was different from Mercury. Same technology, just "scaled up".
Mercury was nothing more than proving runs to get ready for Apollo. In the same vein, Spaceship One and White Knight was never intended to be anything other than a proof of concept for the next iteration... but the net iteration will use the same technology pioneered by version 1.
Here's an analogy. Climbing Mt. Everest is dangerous to your health too. There are a lot of people who pay a handsome price to climb it, but I don't see anyone proposing to go live there or found a city there. The Arctic (Greenland) and Antarctic latitudes are dangerous places, there are stations in some places there, and even some cities that get close to those latitudes. There are people who pay a handsome price to make treks there. Yet, there isn't anyone forking over lots of money to build a society there.
Those places on Earth will orders of magnitude easier, safer and cheaper to build colonies there than in Earth orbit or the Moon. Yet, we as a society really don't do it. Their needs to be a profit motive and or a survival motive. These places will kill you for any little mistake and will take huge expenditures to live there.
Not worried about safety. The worrying thing are the costs and the motives. We're not at a point where life here on Earth is so bad that we as a society feel an urgent need to escape and live somewhere better. If or when we get to that point, it will take the wealth of nations (material resources, labor) to get an actual space colony.
Maybe there is a conglomerate of crazy billionaires that put 100+ billion into it, but that's a long shot.
Okay, if we don't focus so much on the habitation but just the adventure then you've agreed with me that there's a lot of rich crazy people that will pay handsomely for an adventure. Such as going into orbit... They don't have to stay too long, a few hours orbiting the earth and that's enough... Some might want to stay in the ISS or extremely rudimentary stations in the future. Same for Mars... Just like Everest you don't just walk up and come down... You camp out along the way. Anyone going to Mars will have to "camp out" on Mars for at least a month before coming back. Some may want to stay longer.
So, I reckon the profit motive in the "adventure, fame, ego and sponsorship" component of earth orbit, space station, and Mars travel is definitely there.
I would say in the next 100 years the travel to Mars and beyond is more important than colonisation. Colonisation requires a lot more technology than travel and temporary habitation for adventure and research. Mars colonisation certainly has to involve some level of terraforming or at least living in large biodomes initially, maybe powered by Martian resources. Definitely a long term thing. As for orbiting space stations, yeah, I wouldn't say it would be so great to live up there until we have space elevators and such.
Anyways I reckon if we can't have a manned mission to Mars under the equivalent of 100 billion of today's dollars in direct costs by 2050 "we're doing it wrong". 100 billion from private enterprise and governments is a piss in the lake compared to the cash pumped in to keep our failing global monetary system from collapsing.
Different the way Apollo was different from Mercury. Same technology, just "scaled up".
Mercury was nothing more than proving runs to get ready for Apollo. In the same vein, Spaceship One and White Knight was never intended to be anything other than a proof of concept for the next iteration... but the net iteration will use the same technology pioneered by version 1.
I doubt it. Virtually none of the composites that Scaled specializes in will be applicable for orbital flights. They'll have to move to aluminum construction for primary structure, probably cryogenic propellents (at least oxidizer) which means new main engine design, thermal protection design is always a problem and it will be a problem for this design, actual environmental systems have to be designed. The list just goes on and on.
Mercury's design was scalable. A horizontal launch & landing, two stage to orbit, reusable design like SS1 + White Knight? I'm thinking not.
The future of space travel is in the hands of nuclear fusion, which is in the hands of nanotechnology. half a liter of heavy water can send 1000 tons into LEO. At this point, probably within 20 years of said technological breakthrough, sending chemical rockets up is just plain stupid, unless there's a succinct, commercial reason to do so. When you have an energy source like fusion, all of these silly problems of mass and aerodynamics melt away.
But you still need to carry a "propellent". Thrust is provided by throwing stuff at high velocities out the back. Nuclear thermal propulsion just replaces the heat source from a chemical based one to a nuclear one. With nuclear, you're still pumping a fluid through the reactor, heating and pressurizing it up, than accelerating it through a nozzle. You could do it with nuclear fission today if the will is there.
Unless you are talking about fusion bombs... which we could do today too (I think).
But you still need to carry a "propellent". Thrust is provided by throwing stuff at high velocities out the back.
You are mistaken. Thrust is provided by force being applied in equal and opposite directions. A fusion reaction creates a _force_. Expansion of gas in a chemical reaction is also a _force_, and the exhaust is really just a byproduct of the gas expansion. This is basic newtonian physics. Before you try to lodge further arguments on the matter, you should do some research & homework.
The idea of a fusion rocket is old enough, and thoroughly conceptualized, that it has manifested into basically all sci-fi. The only thing that is missing is the steady-state fusion.
... A fusion reaction creates a _force_...
No, a fusion reaction releases energy. That energy still needs a reaction mass to turn the energy into force.
Perhaps you know that, and we're just not making our thoughts clearly understood at these keyboards.