44th Moon Landing Anniversey

[Sabelkatten]

You've got a point, but I think my 'message' was clear. If there was a way to earn tons of money by getting to the Mars, we'd be there in no time.

Sorry. I've actually heard the argument used that a solid gold asteroid would get everyone racing for it, so I guess I was a bit too picky. If there was something you could actually make a profit from - a guaranteed profit - people would of course be working very hard at getting there!

But, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything. AFAIK Helium3 isn't even a candidate, from what I've read it's not very common on Mars.

Rare Earth minerals on asteroids are, potentially, so cheap to extract and refine (compared to down here) that there might be a profit in them. In fact, there was a report several years ago when a small group of engineers and scientists calculated that it could potentially be profitable to bring back a simple nickel/iron asteroid if the purities some scientists were speculating about (IIRC 70-80% pure metal) was correct.

[Stormlion1]

Bringing back a asteroid for mining could be a guaranteed gold mine for a investor long term. But placing it in Earth orbit could also be a big mistake. Sure its easier to resupply and send down the goods, but you essentially have a species killing asteroid hanging over the planets head. Lunar orbit is much safer even if it does extend the resupply range. And once it is played out the tunnel system could be converted to a orbiting station as a shipyard or resupply point for expansion outward to the outer planets. In fact using several asteroids between Earth and Mars could be a good way to resupply any offworld colonys. Particularly if you hollowed them out and grew food inside of them and used them as supply depots.

[guardiandashi]

Bringing back a asteroid for mining could be a guaranteed gold mine for a investor long term. But placing it in Earth orbit could also be a big mistake. Sure its easier to resupply and send down the goods, but you essentially have a species killing asteroid hanging over the planets head. Lunar orbit is much safer even if it does extend the resupply range. And once it is played out the tunnel system could be converted to a orbiting station as a shipyard or resupply point for expansion outward to the outer planets. In fact using several asteroids between Earth and Mars could be a good way to resupply any offworld colonys. Particularly if you hollowed them out and grew food inside of them and used them as supply depots.

actually it seriously depends on the orbit if the rock is in the right orbits the risk to earth is minimal, where the big issue is IMO is LEO (low earth orbits) and also the injection orbits, if you put the rock into the wrong orbits /orbital paths, you are essentially setting up a potential earth impactor (on purpose) if on the other hand you set up a "close miss" path that you then force into a "capture" orbit, as long as its far enough away the risk is manageable.

there is a fairly good scifi novel based on the pros and cons of some of the orbital ideas, called "the farside cannon" by Roger MacBride Allen note it doesn't go into extensive detail, IE all the numbers calculations etc, but it does go over some of the general topics

what is kind of interesting is a lot of the rare earths heavy elements and etc on earth are heavily sourced from asteroid impacts because much of that stuff migrated towards the planetary core during earths formation.  it might be somewhat more accessible on the moon but other than crater mining, most of the deep deposits would likely be so far down towards the lunar core that they just aren't practical.  this is where asteroid mining is potentially so attractive because if you can find the "right" rocks they would have the "good stuff" where you can actually get at all of it.

edit typos

[Taurevanime]

Rare earth minerals aren't expensive or hard to get. All the mines that aren't in China simply closed down because China not having to deal with certain safety and environmental requirements and possessing a low minimum wage was just simply capable through sheer force of size force every other rare earth mining operation out of business (They now mine over 90% of the world supply IIRC). But much like with oil as world demand increases, it's becoming viable for old mines to be reopened and new sources are being found.

So it's gonna require something really special that can be mined in space and make a profit.

[I am Belch II]

I wish something like that would happen a life changing event for all mankind that was a achievement when people worked hard and the impossible becomes possible,

[Stormlion1]

Actually my worry about a life ending impact has more to do with the stupidity of man (and I won't go into details, as it easily can fall into politics)  than anything else. Better to just keep the thing away from the planet and around the moon because if something does go wrong, its a airless ball of rock getting hit and not a life harboring one. 

[Lazarus Jaguar]

You've got a point, but I think my 'message' was clear. If there was a way to earn tons of money by getting to the Mars, we'd be there in no time.

I saw an intersting quote on this in New Scientist magazine a week or two ago on this. From the head of the Mars One project.  I forget the exact wording but the gist is:  the technical guys (engineers) tell him they could get us there easily, but no way would they be able to raise the money.  Meanwhile, when he talks to the accounting guys, they tell him raising the money is no problem, but pointless since it's probably impossible from a technical standpoint.

[SCC]

Anyone want to bet we'll get something special for the 50th anniversary?

[amanharan]

I can't watch the moon landing without it becoming a Dr Who reference...of course it was decades before i was born..

[Stormlion1]

I saw an intersting quote on this in New Scientist magazine a week or two ago on this. From the head of the Mars One project.  I forget the exact wording but the gist is:  the technical guys (engineers) tell him they could get us there easily, but no way would they be able to raise the money.  Meanwhile, when he talks to the accounting guys, they tell him raising the money is no problem, but pointless since it's probably impossible from a technical standpoint.

So what your saying is we need to get the finance boys and the engineers together in one room and then stand over them with a baseball bat so they will talk to one another?

[glitterboy2098]

So what your saying is we need to get the finance boys and the engineers together in one room and then stand over them with a baseball bat so they will talk to one another?

i suspect the two groups are using different criteria.. the tech guys may be thinking "well, if we can get the money to take this research from paper to hardware, we can go. but the price is huge." while the accounting guys are probably thinking "we can scrape up a couple billion to run a program, but there is no way to get there using our currently achievable tech"

[Taurevanime]

Following Winslow Wheeler's writing, I am convinced that the accountants are the correct ones.

Engineers tend to over promise when there is the promise of an near unlimited budget. And then when they money starts running out they will say "Give us more and we can totally do it."

[worktroll]

We're missing one of two precursor technologies that could make it feasible.

1) Long-term fully-independant lifesystems. It takes 9 months to go to Mars using ballistic launchers, and 9 months to get back. Mir and Freedom show we can live in tin cans for extended periods, provided we have regulatr pizza (and oxygen) delivery, and are happy to throw our trash overboard. Freedom does have a limited water recycling setup, but it's nowhere near efficient enough for 18+ months. And the mass of disposable food and water is beyond our current capacities to send to Mars.

2) A better drive. Ballistic missions launched by chemical rockets take too long. An ion drive delivering 0.01g continuously reduces this to a few months; a VASIMR-style delivering 0.1g continuously makes it a fortnight. Either way, problem #1 suddenly becomes managable.

Here's hoping ...

[Lazarus Jaguar]

i suspect the two groups are using different criteria.. the tech guys may be thinking "well, if we can get the money to take this research from paper to hardware, we can go. but the price is huge." while the accounting guys are probably thinking "we can scrape up a couple billion to run a program, but there is no way to get there using our currently achievable tech"

I think the point was they're both wrong.  The engineers don't get how to raise money, so don't know how much can be raised.  While the finance guys don't get how advanced the tech is.

[Stormlion1]

Actually were thinking small. We could easily launch supply's ahead of time and land them at some point on Mars surface and have everything waiting for a crew to land. Resupply is just as easy. In fact we could easily launch supply's inside satellites and use drone technology to have them move to a certain point then come to a stop between Earth and Mars and have those act as resupply points as well as communication points. Also any ship sent to Mars doesn't have to be small either. A ship can be built out of multiple sections like the International space station and then that is used to go to Mars. Maybe with one section carrying multiple landers that can act as a taxi service to the surface and back. New landers can be sent as needed and dock with whatever ship is sent to replace used landers. Expensive and time consuming yes but eminently workable. The same technology that lets us use drones and control rovers on Mars makes this doable.

[guardiandashi]

Actually were thinking small. We could easily launch supply's ahead of time and land them at some point on Mars surface and have everything waiting for a crew to land. Resupply is just as easy. In fact we could easily launch supply's inside satellites and use drone technology to have them move to a certain point then come to a stop between Earth and Mars and have those act as resupply points as well as communication points. Also any ship sent to Mars doesn't have to be small either. A ship can be built out of multiple sections like the International space station and then that is used to go to Mars. Maybe with one section carrying multiple landers that can act as a taxi service to the surface and back. New landers can be sent as needed and dock with whatever ship is sent to replace used landers. Expensive and time consuming yes but eminently workable. The same technology that lets us use drones and control rovers on Mars makes this doable.

IMO the bolded part would be really bad for transiting spacecraft

what IMO would be better is to have things like supplies, landers station parts etc, "slow boat" from earth to mars (or the moon) because it doesn't matter how long it takes for that stuff to get there (other than things like hydrogen fuel which bleeds off over time)

the better way to do it IMO is I will use my idea for a "permanent moon base"
step 1 you start launching supply missions to head to the destination, and land near the intended base area, (robotic lander systems)
step 2 repeat step 1 until the specified preset amount of supplies are cached in the area (say 6 months or a years worth of supplies or so)
step 3 send the "personnel" or at least the initial batch, "fast transit" with say a couple weeks or 1 months worth of supplies with the crew.
step 4 additional supplies keep getting sent "slow boat" until the facility can "sustain itself" if ever.

[Stormlion1]

Actually its a pretty good idea for transiting spacecraft because we do it all the time in orbit and have for quite some time. We use drone resupply shuttles to resupply the ISS so a drone resupply point could easily be used to resupply a transiting spacecraft. The main issue is that a spacecraft needs to be able to miss one or two without running out of supplies! That and these resupply points are one shots, once the supplys are used up all you have is a empty supply cache and and maybe a communication satellite. A alternative is to use parts from the cache's as raw materials later on at Mars.

Sustaining itself should be easy if adequate greenhouses can be set up. The advantage of growing food, even if its a vegetarian diet and the ability to scrub co2 with plants cannot be denied. But that's the rub, the moon is pretty much rock and dust, right? So one of the things needed to be launched to make a greenhouse system work is something that's nice and heavy and will cost a bundle to launch into space and will serve only a single purpose. Dirt. But it only needs to be done enough times to get several greenhouses up and running then it begins to pay for itself.

[guardiandashi]

supply cache stations at the start and end of the trip TOTALLY make sense in the middle, not so much especially not "stationary" caches between earth and the moon, or earth and mars.

the reason "stationary" supply caches are dumb is in order to use them you have to accelerate towards your destination (spend fuel) and then slow down and match speed with the supply cache, then accelerate again towards the destination etc.

what makes a LOT more sense is build a supply cache in orbit, use it to load up the "transit craft" and take off towards the destination as fast as possible, with enough supplies for the transit, and enough fuel to stop at the destination (even if you use sling shot and aerobraking maneuvers to ease the fuel requirements.

as far as growing plants you don't need 1 ounce of dirt to grow plants.  Read up on hydroponics, but even if you decided to use "dirt" greenhouses you could still use regolith (lunar "soil") its powdered rock mostly, you can grow plants in rock powders but they do a lot better if there is organics mixed in (fertilizer) so don't take the "dirt up" that's just wasteful, take the organic materials and "stretch it" with the powdered rock from the lunar surface.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics that may help, but if you notice one of the notes explicitly mentions growing plants in sterile or "inert media"

[worktroll]

Interestingly enough, it would take more energy to send a "drone" to Mars as to send it to a half-way orbit. Breaking Earth orbit is the kicker, and getting to Mars means matching Mars orbital speed. Mid-point orbital speed is greater, so you'd need to leave faster. Counterintuitive? Yes; but that's orbital mechanics for you. To catch up with something ahead of you in in orbit, slow down*.

It would be simpler to send the supplies directly to Mars, if one had confidence that

a) they'd land safely, and survive intact over a long period. Mars probes have a dodgy track record as is, and the Martian surface is suprisingly hostile.

b) We could land close enough to them - again, not to be taken for granted with people involved.

A far more sensible approach, albeit not much less expensive, would be to put the supplies in orbit. Then send a crewed "tug", to capture the supplies and base off Phobos. Orbit is the ultimate "dry storage" environment, and arriving in orbit is far less risky than landing. Then assemble your lander, fuel it up, and Boris is your uncle, comrade!

W.

[guardiandashi]

Interestingly enough, it would take moreLESS energy to send a "drone" to Mars as to send it to a half-way orbit. Breaking Earth orbit is the kicker, and getting to Mars means matching Mars orbital speed. Mid-point orbital speed is greater, so you'd need to leave faster. Counterintuitive? Yes; but that's orbital mechanics for you. To catch up with something ahead of you in in orbit, slow down*.

It would be simpler to send the supplies directly to Mars, if one had confidence that

a) they'd land safely, and survive intact over a long period. Mars probes have a dodgy track record as is, and the Martian surface is suprisingly hostile.

b) We could land close enough to them - again, not to be taken for granted with people involved.

A far more sensible approach, albeit not much less expensive, would be to put the supplies in orbit. Then send a crewed "tug", to capture the supplies and base off Phobos. Orbit is the ultimate "dry storage" environment, and arriving in orbit is far less risky than landing. Then assemble your lander, fuel it up, and Boris is your uncle, comrade!

W.

I think that's what you meant
you could do a variation on the drone delivery wt by sending "drone" pods to mars orbit to "hang out" until the crew arrives, then have the crew act as local "traffic control" getting the cargos to Drop "better" because they are only dealing with say 1/2 second ish light speed delays, instead of someone trying to remote correct from earth

[Taurevanime]

Freedom does have a limited water recycling setup

Freedom? I was under the impression that project was cancelled and what we have is the rather boringly named International Space Station.

[worktroll]

I just love the old conjunction of Mir (Peace) and Freedom ... ;)

[Stormlion1]

Anybody ever her of Project Orion? Essentially a overlarge space battleship that used dropped nukes as its power source and armed with artillery and nukes. Never got off the ground but someone came up with a long term design that could be adapted to travel to Mars.

[guardiandashi]

yep
I have seen orion several times, the most recent is in john ringos series, live free or die, citadel, and the hot gate

[ANS Kamas P81]

Anybody ever her of Project Orion? Essentially a overlarge space battleship that used dropped nukes as its power source and armed with artillery and nukes. Never got off the ground but someone came up with a long term design that could be adapted to travel to Mars.

There's been a number of stories; one of the earliest was Footfall.  Good novel by Niven and Pournelle; had some interesting ideas on aliens and alien mindsets.  And well, a starring role for Old Bang Bang herself, not to mention the single best (and likely most accurate) description for riding an Orion-drive ship.

WHAM

WHAM

WHAM

God was knocking, and he wanted in bad.

WHAM

WHAM

WHAM

Easily one of my favorite book quotes.  But as for how the real thing would have done, well...a lot of  estimates were done with various concepts, and while they're all suffering from "engineer's-promises" it brought up spectacular performance compared to anything before or since.  Well, there was that minor issue about launching one requiring something like a hundred 35KT weapons going off in a very close (vertical) area over a few minutes, just to take off and get exoatmospheric.

[Stormlion1]

Actually I'm not talking about a fictional Project Orion but one that was actually proposed to build back in the early 60's. You will have to look it up though, it very easily hits that wall called Politics. But I will say that whoever proposed it brought a demonstration model of what it might look like that was as big as a Buick. A Google search should bring it up.

[worktroll]

No, it hit a brick wall called "do you really want that many nucs going off that close to the ground?" By definition every launch is a groundburst. Orion makes great sense once you're in orbit, but alien invasion is one of the few circumstances when ground launch makes sense otherwise. Same reason why PLUTO/SLAM never flew, and NERVA. There wasn't a good enough reason to deal with the aftermath.

(Another might be the "Armageddon" scenario - incoming dinosaur-killer. Interestingly the "Messiah" in Deep Impact is labelled an Orion Drive spaceship.)

[Sabelkatten]

IIRC NERVA didn't have a good enough thrust to weight ration to launch in 1G. And since its only practical use would have been interplanetary travel - and no one was willing to spend the money on that - it simply died.

PLUTO/SLAM was simply impractical (ICBMs did the same thing cheaper and more efficiently). ORION broke both the atmospheric test ban treaty and the space disarmament treaty, so not only was it an environmental nightmare, it was also politically impossible.

[Taurevanime]

No, it hit a brick wall called "do you really want that many nucs going off that close to the ground?" By definition every launch is a groundburst. Orion makes great sense once you're in orbit, but alien invasion is one of the few circumstances when ground launch makes sense otherwise. Same reason why PLUTO/SLAM never flew, and NERVA. There wasn't a good enough reason to deal with the aftermath.

It was actually the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that killed it. Since it banned the testing of air burst nuclear devices.

Actually I'm not talking about a fictional Project Orion but one that was actually proposed to build back in the early 60's. You will have to look it up though, it very easily hits that wall called Politics. But I will say that whoever proposed it brought a demonstration model of what it might look like that was as big as a Buick. A Google search should bring it up.

It was proposed by Stanislaw Ulam, the man who holds the patent for nuclear and thermonuclear bombs. Freeman Dyson (of Dyson Sphere fame) also worked on the project and a bunch of other of the great minds of the 20th century.

If I recall correctly Dyson calculated at the time that there was less than a 50% chance a person would die (on earth, not the ship) of the nuclear fallout of the bombs used. And with that okay they actually moved ahead with the project. (They didn't want to cause any deaths)

One thing you will find is that a lot of thinkers and engineers still tend to come back to nuclear pulse propulsion as the best way of moving a spaceship over great distances. Especially with a large crew or cargo. But the only way you would ever see it used in the future would be if the spaceship was constructed and launched in space rather than within earth's atmosphere.

[ANS Kamas P81]

If I recall correctly Dyson calculated at the time that there was less than a 50% chance a person would die (on earth, not the ship) of the nuclear fallout of the bombs used. And with that okay they actually moved ahead with the project. (They didn't want to cause any deaths)

As an aside, fallout does a lot more than simply kill folks; the risk of it isn't terribly high but the potential is literally nightmarish.  The biggest problem, though, isn't so much fallout as "you just detonated HOW many atomic bombs where you built and transported this thing?  There's nothing there anymore to launch anything else?"  Hell, when N1 choked on a bolt, it had a total fuel energy budget of less than seven kilotons, and not all of that went up at once like an atomic detonation would.  A 35KT standard launch charge would vaporize whatever structures were at ground zero; the next hundred as it goes up help scatter the debris and once you get into the higher atmosphere start really messing with EMP on basic infrastructure.  You're limited to something like a distant island somewhere in the Pacific, and you only get one.

Building and launching the things in space, well, that's why Earth has a delicious magnetosphere.  The hard part then becomes getting half a million tons of unbuilt ship in orbit without using nukes...