SpaceX Intends To Send a Red Dragon To Mars As Early As 2018 (blastingnews.com) 119
Reader MarkWhittington writes: SpaceX has announced that it intends to send a version of its Dragon spacecraft, called "Red Dragon," to Mars as early as 2018. The mission, to be launched on top of a Falcon Heavy rocket, would be the first to another planet conducted by a commercial enterprise. The flight of the Red Dragon would be the beginning of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's long-term dream of building a settlement on Mars.Ars Technica reports: According to the company, these initial test missions will help demonstrate the technologies needed to land large payloads propulsively on Mars. This series of missions, to be launched on the company's not-yet-completed Falcon Heavy rocket, will provide key data for SpaceX as the company develops an overall plan to send humans to the Red Planet to colonize Mars. One of the biggest challenges in landing on Mars is the fact that its atmosphere is so thin it provides little braking capacity. To land the 900kg Curiosity rover on Mars, NASA had to devise the complicated sky crane system that led to its "Seven Minutes of Terror." A Dragon would weigh much more, perhaps about 6,000kg. To solve this problem, SpaceX plans to use an upgraded spacecraft, a Dragon2 powered by eight SuperDraco engines, to land using propulsion.
as early as, but not before (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:as early as, but not before (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know what you're complaining about, the statement made it crystal clear that it would launch at some point between 2018 and never. How much more specific do you need??
bonus points for the church organ version (Score:4, Funny)
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What else would you call a "dragon" you sent to the "red planet"
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What else would you call a "dragon" you sent to the "red planet"
Up Goer.
intentions = hype (Score:1)
forget delays, forget budget overruns, forget subsidies, forget failures, forget others, just focus on hype and dreams!
at this rate musk will land on mars using hype alone. and fanboys will take that for the real thing.
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and fanboys will take that for the real thing.
also note if you post something critical of SpaceX, they will flame your butt. One person who continually posted critical remarks (or negative as some saw it) about the New Space crowd in many space forums and was banned from all of them except one (comments in Spudis lunar blog). He had reasons, whether people agreed or not but he did raise some interesting points such as if going beyond earth orbit need LH2/LOX and also raised caution of Ayd Rand policies for space programs.
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such as if going beyond earth orbit need LH2/LOX and also raised caution of Ayd Rand policies for space programs.
Sounds like there was a good justification for the flaming. I've run into people who care about the danger that there might be libertarians or objectivists in space. These people are to a man dumb.
Why should we worry more about libertarians in space than progressives in space? Well, aside from the former being more likely to be in space? Har har har.
Also, a lot of the criticism of New Space, SpaceX, and similar topics is rather dumb (you might see a theme here). I don't admire the ability to ignore 60
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Decades ago, aerospace research was all private, then the government started buying in because it realised the benefit to the miliatary.
FTFY
I guess WWI was 'a few decades' but governments have been heavily involved in aerospace for quite some time. Remember, Jules Verne and Robert Heinlein never actually built anything.
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The government has been involved in developing aerospace technology since WW1. The government doesn't actually research or build anything. They pay the private sector to research and build things. The private companies supply the US military with aerospace technology but they are also in the business of building commercial aircraft.
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but the missions themselves were managed centrally - the most efficient and effective approach (by definition).
Only if the management is done right.
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For top level organisation, the free market is a great first approximation, but that's all. One moves away from it, not toward it.
The best idea is to keep moving to the best solution, without useless dogma.
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Decades ago, aerospace research was all private, then the government started buying in because it realised the benefit to society. For a while, the government managed aerospace research, and for a while, the US accelerated at a magnificent pace. Then neoliberalism came along, and for no reason at all we're contracting management back out to private industry. SpaceX has the best marketing machine in aerospace.
Sorry, but this is rather stupid historical revisionism. NASA didn't stop "accelerating" because some market enthusiasts or whatnot (the so-called "neoliberals"). They stopped accelerating because their political masters never cared where NASA was going. Once JFK's commitment was fulfilled by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1969, that was it for "acceleration". The entire life of NASA (from birth in 1957) has been theater with a few big photo ops for the involved politicians to exploit.
N.B. This isn't a post against involvement of private industry: one should always choose the best specialist, and they're often found in the private sector. This is what NASA used to do, but the missions themselves were managed centrally - the most efficient and effective approach (by definition).
Sure, any political vote buying
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"Environmental" groups that see any human advancement as an affront to the "natural order"
A bunch of bullshit. You might find one or two kooks, but the vast majority don't have a problem with it.
politicians who have spent years touting the "difficulty" of space travel and necessity of vast expenditures in money/resources to their states/districts
So SpaceX will find space travel hard because politicians and the aeronautics industry will make it hard? What if space travel is simply a challenging field?
Your views are ignorant and misinformed---and some of them are not not particularly falsifiable. Brilliant thinking. (sarcasm there)
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I'm having a hard time believing its going to happen anytime soon, but not due to technological hurtles and not even necessarily due to financial ones either. Any US company/individual interested in traveling out into the solar system on their own is going to face a gauntlet of red tape. "Environmental" groups that see any human advancement as an affront to the "natural order". Entrenched business interests that see it as a threat to their profit margins. And politicians who have spent years touting the "difficulty" of space travel and necessity of vast expenditures in money/resources to their states/districts. Against that SpaceX is going to have one heck of an uphill battle, though they did face a similar one just getting into the launch industry so while it might take a while they could very well succeed.
What, PETA has found 'Mars Hamsters' or something? Greenpeace has the "Vacuum Warrior"?
The Sierra Club is going to stand on "Of Course I'll Still Love You" and try to block a launch?
When was the last time you past the Turing Test?
A good start (Score:5, Interesting)
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o.0 Huh?
The Falcon Heavy hasn't flown, he's never been beyond LEO (the difference in thermal environment is of particular concern here), and no Dragon of any kind has ever landed propulsively. (Though there have been some short test hops IIRC.) Or, to put it another way, pretty much none of the precursors to this mission have been demonstrated, let alone
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o.0 Huh? The Falcon Heavy hasn't flown, he's never been beyond LEO (the difference in thermal environment is of particular concern here), and no Dragon of any kind has ever landed propulsively. (Though there have been some short test hops IIRC.) Or, to put it another way, pretty much none of the precursors to this mission have been demonstrated, let alone successfully.
Seriously, are Musk fanboys just completely clueless when it come to space technology, or are their blinders that thick?
I guess you missed SpaceX landing the Stage 1 boosters on land (Florida) and at sea recently after accomplishing their missions, in both cases using propulsion. Expanding that for the additional stages should actually be an *easier* task than what they've already done.
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Landing the second stage will be the most difficult because it will be traveling at orbital speed.
Not really that big of an issue compared to what comes after the slow down.
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You're the second clueless fuckwit with the reading comprehension of used bubble gum that doesn't seem to grasp that a Dragon isn't a Falcon, and Mars isn't Earth.
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Landing Dragon should be *WAY* easier than landing a Falcon 9 first stage. You're coming in from higher and faster, but you have a heat shield, parachutes, redundant engines designed to operate at the scale of a landing craft (rather than a first-stage booster), far more structural integrity than a booster with depressurized tanks, no bending moment to speak of, engines places around your center of mass rather than at a single point below it, throttle capability sufficient to hover at least in Earth gravity
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You're the second clueless fuckwit with the reading comprehension of used bubble gum that doesn't seem to grasp that a Dragon isn't a Falcon, and Mars isn't Earth.
As cbhacking kindly pointed out, those are not as big an issue. SpaceX has already demonstrated hovering capabilities (see videos for the Falcon9 for their testing - with propulsive take-off and subsequent landing on Earth). Yes, they may not be slowing down from orbital velocity, but that's not a huge issue - a far bigger issue is what to do when you slow down enough and get close enough to the ground that you have to deal with both (a) slow movement and (b) time to impact - SpaceX has demonstrated knowled
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The Falcon Heavy hasn't flown, he's never been beyond LEO
Who is "he"? As far as I know Musk hasn't been in space at all, I don't know if Dragon has ever been outside LEO but SpaceX have delivered several satellites to GEO and one to L1, so certainly the rockets can reach Mars. And he hasn't landed a Dragon propulsively, but a huge shell of a rocket with wind or waves to deal with actually seems harder than Mars, except you don't get a paved landing pad. Isn't that more similar to what NASA did in the 60s than what SpaceX did just recently? That said I do expect a
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Since the question wasn't whether or not they can reach Mars, how are the payloads delivered even remotely relevant?
SpaceX will be first, and then... (Score:2)
SpaceX will be the first entity to place humans on Mars.
And even after that upset is in the history books, there will still be some people who cling to the fantasy that government does things more efficiently than private enterprise.
I really wish we'd go to Venus instead (Score:1)
It's much warmer there, and with all that energy and thick atmosphere, there is a lot more to work with. It is comparatively alive compared to Mars.
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It's also far more hostile to equipment, and there's zero chance of a manned mission there in any foreseeable future. Mars has potential for human habitation. Venus does not.
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That hostility has to be exploited, not avoided. It's free energy. And all those chemicals, what couldn't DuPont and Monsanto do with them? Fertilizers and catalysts galore! A hot tasty primordial soup just waiting to be served. I believe the Genesis Project has a much better chance on Venus, and would ultimately require much less human effort.
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Oh god, that is literally the entire plot to the first 2/3 of The Expanse series.
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Sorry, I wouldn't know. Last thing I remember watching was "Lost in Space".
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I take that back, obviously I saw the Star Trek movies. I had to look up "The Expanse"
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The books are much better than the TV series, but the TV series is still interesting.
Magnetosphere (Score:2)
The problem with Venus, as with Mars, is the lack of a decent magnetosphere. Earth's magnetosphere is it's "Secret Sauce." It's difficult to get a decent biome going when every medium-sized gamma burst from the sun bombards the planet's surface. You could build lead-lined underground bunkers and grow everything using redirected light from sonotubes, but then you might as well just colonize the moon.
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Yeah, the moon should be first choice anyway as a base camp for building, testing and launching the long distance stuff. I don't understand the lack of interest in that phase. Along with the food and water, you just gotta get or build a smelter up there and mechanize the process as much as possible. Easy, right? A lot easier than doing it on Mars, that's for sure. You don't need extra lead for the radiation, a thick layer of moon dirt is sufficient.
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Actually the upper bounds of the atmosphere on Venus is relatively habitable. The catch is you need a floating structure that can maintain a certain height from the ground for long periods of time (potentially decades or more). It's the lower levels of Venus which would require serious effort to manage do to pressure, temperature, and atmospheric content. This by the way is why you can google Aerostats.
Btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Actually the upper bounds of the atmosphere on Venus is relatively habitable
It also gets very boring quickly.
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The only problem is that out of control capitalism and the Venusian Oil Cartel has led to a runaway global warming on Venus, the locals there screwed the planet up before we could get to it. They should have used Solar Power, I hear it was quite efficient there. ;)
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what you can pull out of the atmosphere
We can mine Venus for CO2 and bring it back to Earth.
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Sounds like regular cryogenics to me. And the metals we use for gas turbines already can handle higher temperatures than found on Venus. It appears very difficult now, but the moon landing appeared even more so in the 1800s.
Hopefull (Score:1)
I really hope this is a success, this would demonstrate the viability of the private industry moving humanity into space. We as a race need to see this happen.
New impact craters (Score:2)
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So can you explain why Spacelab's orbit decayed?
I mean, since thin air has no effect, right?
Difficult to explain since "Spacelab" never existed.
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Correction - there was a "Spacelab" that was carried up in the Shuttle and back down to Earth in the Shuttle. It had no independent orbit, and did not decay.
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A decent system for sending more (Score:2)
Regardless, if SpaceX is successful, which I would be shocked if they are not, then it will dramatically change how we study Mars.
Best of all, this will costs a fraction of what the other missions have costs. Heck, we should be able to send a red dragon AND
But who will fill the potholes on my road? (Score:2)
if not NASA? (n/t)
Start sending support resources into space. (Score:2)
One thing good about the dragon heavy is the capacity. The best thing they could do is maximize every launch by taking more raw resources into space and leaving them up there in storage. Imagine if they created storage depots both in front of and behind space stations. That would minimize risk to manned space stations due to space garbage.
We seriously need to build fuel storage depots up there along with junkyards where metal can be recycled so we can start building in space.
So... (Score:2)
Paid for by? (Score:2)
Shouldn't use a Red Dragon (Score:4, Funny)
Since Red Dragons are Chaotic Evil, it seems that they might lose control of it. They should send a Gold Dragon instead, since they're Lawful Good.
Re:Shouldn't use a Red Dragon (Score:5, Informative)
Dragon to the moon? (Score:2)
I've speculated before on /. about how much effort/cost it would be for SpaceX to do a manned moon mission.
If they can do this Mars mission (landing on Mars but not returning), exactly the same hardware can do a lunar landing and return. From here [wikipedia.org] we see for Mars mission:
Delta-v LEO to Mars transfer typical value 4.3 km/s
Transfer orbit to Mars capture orbit 0.9 km/s
Capture orbit to low orbit 1.4 km/s
Low orbit to surface 4.1 km/s
Total delta-v from LEO: 10.7 km/s
Lunar mission:
LEO to low lunar orbit: 1.3 km/s
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Oops, some 'less than' signs got eaten by HTML.
LLO to Earth intercept: < 1.3km/s (then you can aerobrake and re-enter)
Total delta-v from LEO: < 6.4 km/s
SpaceX ownership (Score:2)
This mission seems very hard to justify from a commercial view point.
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] says
"As of May 2012, SpaceX had operated on total funding of approximately $1 billion in its first ten years of operation. Of this, private equity provided about $200M, with Musk investing approximately $100M and other investors having put in about $100M."
So (as of four years ago) Musk only owns about 50% of SpaceX, so it isn't his plaything to do with as he wishes. How is this squared with the other investors?
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This mission seems very hard to justify from a commercial view point.
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] says
"As of May 2012, SpaceX had operated on total funding of approximately $1 billion in its first ten years of operation. Of this, private equity provided about $200M, with Musk investing approximately $100M and other investors having put in about $100M."
So (as of four years ago) Musk only owns about 50% of SpaceX, so it isn't his plaything to do with as he wishes. How is this squared with the other investors?
I don't know the exact percentage of share ownership in SpaceX, but my understanding is that Musk owns a lot more than 50% of it and can pretty much call the shots. Just because the investors put in the same amount of money doesn't mean they got the same amount of equity as he did.
Musk has been quoted more than once saying how much harder it would be to run a company where he was answerable to shareholders.
In any case, he has been open about his goal of getting to Mars even since before he started SpaceX, s
We'll See ... (Score:1)
We'll see when they start paying their bills on time.
Suppliers may start putting them on a short leash with their credit limit.
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Contemporary culture is turning into mass hallucination - we're becoming our own cargo cult.
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I bet neither of you get invited to many parties.
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1. Prior performance is not a guarantee, but it can be a good indicator. Tesla, in particular, is a suitable benchmark since both firms deal primarily with engineering challenges, supply logistics, and government regulatory bodies.
2. Not exactly a suitable comparison. The European conquerors couldn't bring their own air or constitute fuel and food from basic compounds. We can. I question why we should bother, but we certainly can adapt to less favorable terrain better than they could.
3. The Pyramids are a h