SpaceX's First Falcon Heavy Launch Will Now Take Place In 2018 (engadget.com) 131
The launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket has been delayed to 2018. In an email to Aviation Week, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said, "We wanted to fly Heavy this year. We should be able to static fire this year and fly a couple of weeks right after that." Engadget reports: The static fire test will be the first time that all of Heavy's 27 Merlin engines will be fired at once. And if all goes well there, Falcon Heavy should be ready for launch within the first few weeks of 2018. There have been multiple launch delays with Heavy, which Elon Musk has attributed to the development of such a large and powerful rocket being "way, way more difficult" than SpaceX expected. "Falcon Heavy requires the simultaneous ignition of 27 orbit-class engines," Musk said at the ISS R&D conference in July. "There's a lot that can go wrong there." And because of that, Musk has been very clear about where everyone's expectations should be going into Falcon Heavy's first launch. "There's a real good chance that it does not make it to orbit. I hope it gets far enough away from the launch pad that it does not cause pad damage -- I would consider that a win," he said.
Werner Von Braun said (Score:2)
Re:Werner Von Braun said (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody was launching 64-tonne-to-LEO rockets in 1942. Ask Wernher von Braun about the difficulty of scaling up rockets to that stage and about the huge chain of embarrassing failures along the way.
Re:Werner Von Braun said (Score:4, Insightful)
the SaturnV was doing 140 tonne payloads into LEO in the 60s and 70s.
It wasn't very good at soft landings, though.
Re:Werner Von Braun said (Score:5, Informative)
The Saturn V was also a hand built assemblage of unique components for each launch. Yes, there were no S5 launch failures but that could have easily become the case had they continued to launch. The manual brazings for on the injector & nozzle for the F1 were impressive feats that I really wouldn't want to count upon for high reliability.
Re: Werner Von Braun said (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an interesting read:
https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/contents.htm
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Thank you for the great link. My current non-fiction reading slot needed a boost.
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Did "that"? What is "that"? Made things explode frequently? Yes. Yes they did.
But "that" is not just a "fifty years ago" thing. "That" continues up to the present. Even today, launches of new rockets are extremely risky. The problem is that there's a lot that you really can't test properly except in flight; there's only so much you can do on the ground.
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Those rocket scientists can only dream about employment in the US. At least, they would be cured out of their tapeworms.
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On the other hand, I don't think the Soviets get enough credit, and the Germans get too much.
The US swept up most of the important rocketry figures with Operation Paperclip; the Soviets got a lot fewer, and most were line workers; only a couple had any positions of significance in the Soviet program. Also, while the US integrated the Germans into its rocket program, the Soviets mainly just collected information from those that they gathered up, and as soon as they felt they knew everything they needed to f
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** positions of significance in the German program.
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That is not correct, in numbers, if not in talent, the soviets captured more rocket scientists than the americans.
But unlike the americans the rocket scientiests were allowed to work on rockets right away.
Werner von Braun and others were kept silent out of work and joined the american rocket orograms relatively late.
Hence the russians had the first sattelite up and the first man in space.
Bottom line both big space programs were: German. The russian even more than the US one.
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The simple fact is that Operation Overcast, then Operation Paperclip occurred first. And were incredibly successful at getting almost everyone of significance from the German program. Operation Osoaviakhim, the more forceful Soviet equivalent, occurred afterwards, and as a consequence was only able to clean up the scraps. Mainly line workers, as I mentioned. They had a couple fairly high ranking people (such as Helmut Gröttrup, Ferdinand Brandner, and Fritz Preikschat), but not many - nothing compa
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That is a glorified after war propaganda.
The americans did not "acquire", "capture" any german rocket scientist.
The rocket scientists convinced Hitler that it is a good idea to "hide" in south Germany/Bavaria in "remote" areas which have "underground cities" aka very deep bunkers for relatively large populations.
They deposited about 14tonnes paper with research results, plans etc. there and lived there until the area was "liberated" by american forces. And then they simply came out of the bunker and said: "
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Doing what - lifting comparably heavy payloads to orbit? Yeah, we've done that before, but it's been a while. And it needed massive rockets designed specifically for the task.
What *is* a big whoop is the ability to slave multiple first stages together to dramatically boost launch capacity using existing "off the shelf" rockets with minimal redesign - as I recall that strategy has only even been attempted once before, by the Russians I think, though I can't recall enough details to find more information.
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ULA's Delta IV Heavy does this, and has been flying since 2004. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That said, it's lower payload to orbit than FH, and lacks the reuseability. The soviets never built a rocket like this. yes, they have plenty of rockets with strap-on liquid fueld boosters (such as Soyuz), but the boosters are of radically different design than the center core.
What you're probably getting crossed in your mind is the issues the soviets had with their N1 rocket. They had significant combustion st
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So it does, I stand corrected. Though with only one engine each it probably doesn't have the potential torsion issues of a cluster of mutli-core rockets. I suspect the issue will be not so much keeping the thrust through the center of mass, the Falcons seem to have worked out pretty accurate engine throttling, as in keeping the linkage stresses within acceptable limits while avoiding (or dealing with) barrel rolls and other aerodynamic complexities of a non-cylindrical rocket.
You're quite possibly right ab
Schedule Transparency (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a Morton's Fork for project managers: give repeated updates to a changing schedule, slips and all, or to give a vague window that conceals these schedule slips. The benefit of the former is that onlookers can get an increasingly precise estimate of final delivery, whereas the benefit of the latter is that it appears more professional. The downside of the former is a constant request for updates (which one feels obligated to answer) and doom and gloom from onlookers every time the schedule slips; for the latter, it's that few people know when the project will be completed until it's almost done and a release date is easy to nail down, and it's difficult to plan around such a nebulous release window. Those who choose transparency often are stressed out by the scrutiny, sometimes wishing they maybe hadn't been so transparent.
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Just sayin'.
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They should've been more vague about the launch date, given it's been delayed 12 years so far. The people who control NASA expect it to deliver one thing: Pork. And it does so on time, every time. Investor/consumer confidence doesn't affect NASA much. They should just move to a "when it's done" deadline system... if the politicians would let them.
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I'm not sure how exactly a vague window looks any more professional.
Unless of course we're talking the "We're know we're lying, you know we're lying, but we're all going to sit around and pretend we've said something informative" brand of "professional".
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So, by your theory it's the transparency of Open Source projects that dooms them to failure? :-)
F9 is already "heavy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone lining up to criticise SpaceX for the delays to Falcon Heavy needs to be reminded that the current iteration of the standard Falcon9 rocket is now more powerful on its own than the original specs for Falcon Heavy.
Several of the payloads that were originally booked with FH have already been launched on single F9s.
So the Falcon Heavy that is being rolled out now is a substantially more significant piece of hardware than it would have been if we'd been watching this event two or three years ago.
The lessons learned from developing Falcon Heavy will also pay forward into the development process for BFR. Even if FH never flies again, the process was still worth it.
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Because he's egotistical, self promoting, and wins because he's already a winner? You might find me a minor annoyance too, then. :-)
I think it might need people like that to get big things done.
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The Russians just fucked up a Soyuz rocket launch, burning 19 satellites. You better pay Elon to keep your satellites in orbit and having american workers.
This Is About ROI (Score:5, Insightful)
Whilst this launch is certainly experimental, SpaceX will want to get the maximum possible return on that investment - it's their USP after all - and that means having a good degree of confidence that it will work. Something that blows up on the pad after giving half a second of telemetry isn't much use to anyone except the afternoon news shows and YouTube. Well, and ULA.
This is all about balancing the need to test [in order to get data] with the need to test successfully [in order to get data]. And although the cost of an F9 Heavy launch [to SpaceX] certainly won't be three times the cost of a regular F9 launch, it won't be cheap, either. If regular F9 launches are $60MM, then the cost of F9H must be at least in the order of $120MM or so.
Worth taking the time to give it a reasonable chance of success.
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Assuming there's thrust and torsion gauges on the static firing apparatus, they will potentially have already worked out a lot of the thrust balancing issues - and they do have experience with the basic problems since an F9 is already having to balance the output from 9 engines.
Of course, releasable linkages are going to be a far cry from integrated infrastructure, in terms of both strength and rigidity, so there's an awful lot of relative unknowns to test as well. I'll be rooting for them. And like he sa
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One question occurred to me though: although it's been a while since I studied Physics, each force applied to the vehicle structure [i.e. thrust from the rockets] will act around a moment [a point at a determinable, perpendicular distance from the point on which the force [thrust] acts]. So in essence, as the "width" of the vehicle is extended by scaling from a single, circular cross-section, to essentially, a bea
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Young Sheldon (Score:3)
Lesson learned from KSP (Score:2)
Do the math, and remember the USSR moon rocket... (Score:3)
If each engine is x% reliable against kabooming the whole mess, then the chances of success are:
% Chance of success
99 76%
98 57%
97 43%
96 33%
95 25%
There is a rather dismal history on many-engine rockets. The USSR's attempt at that failed rather miserably.
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The Merlin engine has proven to be very reliable. The fact that they get to recover most of the engines and inspect them should help to keep reliability high, or even improve it. Also keep in mind the multiple engine configuration also allows the rocket to complete the mission successfully if one of the engines fails.
Re:Do the math, and remember the USSR moon rocket. (Score:5, Interesting)
You assume that an engine failure dooms the mission. The whole point is engine-out capability that doesn't. In such a case, the reliability increases the more engines you have.
The problem with the N1 was a combination of A) its engine-out failures tended to be cascading (aka, the engines were not properly protected from each other), B) its rate of engine-out failures was huge, C) lots of miswiring, and D) overcautious software that killed missions it shouldn't have, and outright destroyed a launch pad when it didn't need to.
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A proper engine design can't "boom". It can burn violently until propellant can be cut off (you can't really stop that, when you're dumping fuel and oxidizer together), but if you design properly, you prevent backflowing "hammer" effects in feedlines, have proper debris catching around turbopumps, etc.
SpaceX has lost Merlins in flight before. No boom, at least so far :) A new Block 5 development engine was initially reported to have exploded on the test stand, but it turned out to be a failure of the tes
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They actually lost an engine and completed the mission on one of their earlier launches ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]) .
From what I've read, there's a chance they might even be able to make it to orbit while losing two of them, depending on how heavy the payload is.
And since they're planning all three cores of the FH, there's going to be more margin to bring the payload up in expendable mode if an engine fails.
So the question is, do you prefer the chance of losing one big engine and the whole mission,
history lesson (Score:2)
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It's also important that we realize that there has been no significant technical progress since the N-1 project was started in 1965. And that engineering and manufacturing in the USA in 201
Lowered Expectations.. (Score:2)
I love it!
"I hope it gets far enough away from the launch pad that it does not cause pad damage -- I would consider that a win,"
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I love the way that someone "realises" that it's not as easy as everyone in the field has been saying for decades but somehow this is an "oh, wow, we never would have guessed" moment.
Like, it's not fucking rocket science, is it? :-)
Launch a teapot into orbit around the sun! (Score:1)
Re:Seems reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
The statement is clearly preemptive damage control. That said, given the track record of "first launches of new rocket systems" around the world, probably well warranted.
I'm sure if SpaceX could turn back time they would have skipped the development of FH altogether and focused entirely on BFR; the development process turned out to be much harder than they anticipated. But, they've come this far, so it's time to get this bird in the air.
Re:Seems reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
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The things they learn from launching FH will probably help them a lot putting BFR together. The fact that it turns out to be this hard for them to develop FH means that they probably could use the experience before scaling up.
From what I have read, what they learned was adding outboard boosters is a bad idea. They thought they could just strap three Falcon 9's together and get a massive increase in capacity. Turns out that's really inefficient. Most of the complexity is in the need to consume all of the fuel in the outboard boosters without using the fuel in the central booster in order to get the efficiency they wanted.
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But it worked in Kerbal Space Program...
Re:Seems reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
As the head of the German rocket program in WW2, Walter Dornberger, said:
"We might well have been daunted by the multiplicity of the task before us. Luckily the difficulties were for the most part still entirely unknown to us. We attacked our problems with the courage of inexperience and had no thought to the time it might take us to solve them."
Re:Seems reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
if SpaceX could turn back time they would have skipped the development of FH altogether and focused entirely on BFR
The deciding factor seems to have been second-stage recovery. About a year ago, I recall Elon saying something about trying to recover a 2nd stage "next year" (2018). Then, a few months later, he announced his intention to reveal a new, scaled-down version of the BFR at this year's IAC.
Like Falcon Heavy, recovering that second stage turned out to be a lot harder than expected. Meanwhile, they'd just completed a ton of work on figuring out the BFR's lifting-body spaceship, which is a combination of 2nd stage and payload all in one vehicle. Why waste time and resources on 2nd stage recovery when you've already got the whole reusability enchilada figured out?
I think the real "light-bulb moment" for Elon was realizing that his grand vision for Mars didn't have to be so grand as to be impractical for the existing space market. Instead of building "old fashioned" stick-and-capsule rockets to pay for the development of the BFR, a slightly smaller BFR could eventually pay for itself.
That said, however, they really need the FH to be successful. They've sunk a lot of time into it, and they already have several customers lined up for it. Assuming it works, it will still be a huge step forward, both in payload capacity and launch costs. With F9 and FH, they can lead the market quite comfortably for the next few years as they work on the new BFR.
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>Why waste time and resources on 2nd stage recovery when you've already got the whole reusability enchilada figured out?
I don't know that they've got it figured out, but yeah, at least they have a plan. I'd be interested to see if they try a scaled-down prototype designed to ride the Falcon 9 or Heavy
As for the value of the Heavy - you left out the technology would also likely scale to the BFR, which would let you lift *really* large payloads. I recall pretty much all the early interplanetary launch pl
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if it works , he has to make money off it in the semi real commercial world and not keep feeding at the goverment money tit.
Government satellite launches legitimately serve the public interest.
I do not want my government to depend on Russian-made rocket engines, or Russian-made anything, for launches that serve national security interests.
I want my government to spend my tax dollars on the most cost-effective provider of launch services.
Right now, that is SpaceX.
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Let me guess, you own Boeing stock and are angry they're being underbid for NASA and military contracts.
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The statement is clearly preemptive damage control. That said, given the track record of "first launches of new rocket systems" around the world, probably well warranted.
Yep. Turns out that a very good way to make a new vehicle is to just try it, see what goes wrong, and fix it.
This means that failures should be expected: they're part of the process. That's how you learn.
But the publicity and public outcry around a launch failure doesn't allow for the fact that failure is an important part of the process. So it's good to "preemptively" remind people of that beforehand.
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Actually, the far enough to not damage the launch pad part is quite important. They're just now back up to 2 launch pads after a previous explosion put one out of use for a year. That's why they've spent so many years trying to get Falcon Heavy right before launching -- they can't afford to keep blowing up launch pads.
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Yep. Turns out that a very good way to make a new vehicle is to just try it, see what goes wrong, and fix it. This means that failures should be expected: they're part of the process. That's how you learn.
IIRC the Shuttle had something like 2.5 million parts and each part probably has more than one failure mode. Even if SpaceX got it down to 1/10th the complexity fixing faults by trial and error ain't really happening, that'd take centuries. And that's only if you have the kind of problems where it consistently fails every time, if it's more like a dice roll it'll take forever to get anything reliable. This meme that failures are "expected" and a great "learning experience" is mostly hogwash. Those engineers
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I didn't read it as damage control, I read it as "Realist".
Has there been *any* successful on first go for a new rocket design?
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I didn't read it as damage control, I read it as "Realist".
Has there been *any* successful on first go for a new rocket design?
There's this obscure (but well known in enthusiast circles) rocket called "Saturn V".
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Most of it has been fully tested.
Still, I agree with you. There is a LOT that can wrong here.
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*most* :P
That means there's something new... *boom*
Re:Musk the Hypocrite. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most launches aren't to the space station at all but just satellite launches.
Re:Musk the Hypocrite. (Score:5, Interesting)
Satellite launches that improve quality of life here on Earth. Mainly communications and monitoring.
Also, expect a significant decrease in emissions per unit mass launched to orbit over time. BFR, for example, will burn methane rather than RP1, and will have a much higher payload fraction. And as for the ground operations, I strongly expect SpaceX to be a major early customer of the Tesla Semi once they're available. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the first megacharger routes to go live connects SpaceX facilities with their Florida launch pads.
So long as natural gas is cheap, they'll probably continue using it for methane supply for BFR. But if its price ever rises enough and/or the cost of producing it from electricity and CO2 ever drops enough, I'd strongly expect them to switch to synthesized methane. We're far from that at present, however - you'll need to see natural gas disappearing from baseload grid power generation first, as an early indicator.
Re:Musk the Hypocrite. (Score:4, Informative)
** Ed: also connecting Vandenberg AFB. Vandenburg through LA (access to Hawthorne), out on I-10, through Texas (passing 150mi from McGregor), along the Gulf Coast to Jacksonville, then down I-95.
Obviously they'll also be running Semi between Gigafactory and Fremont, but you don't really need a megacharger network in there. Perhaps one station.
The cost of synthesizing Methane (Score:2)
And as for the cost of synthesizing methane using carbon dioxide and electricity, well, Musk does just happen to have another couple of companies, one of which produces solar panels and another which produces huge storage batteries...
When you think about that, you realise that he's thinking seriously long-term, because he's actually hedging against the inevitable increa
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If you think rocket launches use a lot of fuel, you're probably underestimating the amount of fuel burned in road vehicles. Just the USA alone burns 1.5 million gallons of gasoline per hour (extrapolated from https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php)
Tesla's push to electrifying road cars will save many orders of magnitude more fuel per year than SpaceX will burn in total.
Re:Musk the Hypocrite. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because GPS, weather forecasts, telecommunications, global warming science, astronomy and so on are anything but useful for mankind?
Think again. And also think scale: a small town and it's cars burns more fuel daily than a big rocket bringing sattelites into orbit.
If you want to fight pollution, aim your arrows against military uses. Coal fuel plants. The slow adoption rate of renewals. The power of oil companies. Inefficient use of heating & cooling. Air freight. Datacenters. Hell, aim your arrows against bitcoin or so for wasting energy if you wish so.
Almost anything you can think of makes more sense than complaining about space launches.
Re:Musk the Hypocrite. (Score:5, Insightful)
>because he wants to cut pollution and save the planet
He wants to go to Mars.
Space-X gets him there, Tesla powers the planet, Boring Company builds living space and connective tunnels, Hyperloops gives him transport (and easier, since Mars' low pressure means you probably don't even bother evacuating the tubes).
If Musk next starts in on magnetically confined plasma shielding technology and closed-loop environmental systems... you'll know for sure. He will want to get to Mars without the elevated cancer risk and survive there without constant resupply from Earth.
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> He will want to get to Mars without the elevated cancer risk
Not so much need for fancy shielding for one man, just fly solo in the middle of a densely packed cargo ship, you only need the equivalent of a few meters of rock to get the approximate shielding benefit of Earth's atmosphere, and I think it's only like a meter or so necessary to absorb most of the cosmic ray particle cascade.
As for closed loop environmental systems - there's already been tons of research done on the subject, and even the very
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>Not so much need for fancy shielding for one man, just fly solo in the middle of a densely packed cargo ship, you only need the equivalent of a few meters of rock to get the approximate shielding benefit of Earth's atmosphere, and I think it's only like a meter or so necessary to absorb most of the cosmic ray particle cascade.
True enough, but without a much faster rocket (as opposed to the 'merely' much less expensive one Musk is pushing), a smart traveller is probably going to want some artificial grav
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Living in zero gravity for as long as a year is a solved problem. You're not comfortable when you arrive back on a planet, you can't exert heavily for a while and you may have vision issues, but you're functional if you've been doing your exercises. No doubt more functional on Mars than on Earth. Nobody's going to Mars to have an easy comfortable time anyway.
As for what 0.38 gravity does to a person, is there really any reason at all to suspect serious negative side effects? Zero gravity's problems arise ma
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>Living in zero gravity for as long as a year is a solved problem.
Not by a long shot; it causes a temporary severe reduction in health with a smaller permanent reduction, and the deterioration only stops when you return to Earth.
>As for what 0.38 gravity does to a person, is there really any reason at all to suspect serious negative side effects?
ABSOLUTELY! The human body is a collection of 'hacks' blindly put together by evolution. Our fundamental environment has been constant throughout our evolut
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You know what else causes a small but permanent reduction in health? Living on Earth for a year. There's certainly room for improvement, but a solution does exist.
You seem to be assuming that being able to live on Mars means living just as long and healthily as if you had staid on Earth. Why should that be the case? Colonists have *always* seen reduced lifespans compared to those who stayed home, and especially for the early waves of colonists into such an isolated and unforgiving environment, it probab
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The fact that Biosphere 2's first mission lasted the full two years, despite several difficulties, was incredibly impressive. And on Mars you've got a steady flow of new atmospheric gasses available, and artificial control of lighting, so the biggest problems don't translate.
Water and CO2 together, supplemented with nitrogren compounds and other trace elements, get you plant life - which means food, air, and extremely versatile and useful cellulose-based construction materials.
And point in fact we do NOT n
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>As far as mining and industry are concerned - what exactly do you think the early colonists are there to do?
Survive; there has to be enough infrastructure to give a reasonable chance of survival. I would assume the colonists will do a better job than the robots, but having the initial site built before anyone gets there is important unless you think they should depend entirely on the rocket they arrive in (which may not be the worst plan in the world, but I don't think it's the best, either).
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Certainly you'd prefer to have at least basic habitats in place before you land, maybe even greenhouses up and running, but after that all you really need is agriculture to survive in the short term. And it's expected that it will take years, maybe several decades, before a colony could have a good chance of survival if the shipments from Earth stopped. That's risk is inherent in the endeavor - if you're not willing to accept it, don't go. Those who don't want to put their life on the line to colonize a
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all you really need is agriculture to survive in the short term
Also oxygen, heating, water, waste disposal, replacement parts, medical supplies... list goes on.
That's risk is inherent in the endeavor - if you're not willing to accept it, don't go.
SpaceX depends on government funds, so that puts the risk into realm of public scrutiny. Why should we pay for a bunch of people to commit mass suicide in the most convoluted way in human history?
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Then again, we don't actually HAVE magnetically confined plasma shielding yet, we just know it's possible.
Hu? You never hold a magnet in your hands?
Never heard about electro magnets and electric engines?
Having an magnetic shield is suoer simple, no idea why you think 'we don't have it'.
The peercentage of CO2 is super low, so the O2 produced from it is super low, too. No idea again for what you are aiming here.
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>Having an magnetic shield is suoer simple, no idea why you think 'we don't have it'.
Well... first because I didn't say 'magnetic shield' (though we don't have those for spacecraft yet, either). I said, 'magnetically confined plasma shield'. There's an extra couple of words in there, and they are important. The plasma is used to absorb what the magnetic field can't deflect.
The concept was seriously proposed in the 1990s, and last I heard some kind of lab proof of concept was planned about a decade ago
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Erm ... ...
You release some gas, usually hydrogene, into the magnetic bottle.
The sun wind strips electrons away and you have a plasma.
It is as simple as that
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Three choices:
1 - English isn't your first language.
2 - You're deliberately misunderstanding me.
3 - You're an idiot.
I really don't care which, I only care that the end result is there will be no meaningful discussion with you.
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True to 1, 2 not so likely, you claim there is no working magnetic plasma shield, right? So you are wrong.
3, unlikely.
Re: Musk the Hypocrite. (Score:2)
even the very first large scale attempt, Biosphere 2, was impressively successful.
So you don't actually know anything about Biosphere 2. Oops?
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Mission 1 lasted for the full 2-year plan. They had a LOT of problems, but they persevered and completed their mission. And those problems were the whole *point* of the experiment - to find out what problems they didn't already know about. If it had gone off without a hitch then the whole experiment would have been completely useless except as "proof" that we already knew everything.
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I'm going to LMAO when Elon Musk gets to Mars and realizes he has given up a life of luxury for a tin can on a frozen airless rock.
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Sure there will be - a much larger population to interact with, and a mcuh larger environment to work in. Small-group dynamics can get particularly ugly over long periods, especially with a bunch of self-important egos involved (they are scientists after all, possibly even worse than actors for large egos).
You also have the fact that your colonists will be people self-selected (and hopefully further screened) to be willing to travel to another planet on what may very well turn out to be a one-way trip, to
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Biosphere 2 was not the first one, as the number 2 clearly indicates.
Both, Biosphere 1 and Biosphere 2 were failures.
But I guess the technical problems could be solved.
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Yes it was - Biosphere 1 is also known as "Earth". They were attempting to recreate the critical parts on a much smaller scale.
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So, why do the guys who conducted the experiment call it a failure then? ... so: a failure.
For starters: they had atmosphere problems, it was not self contained as in food as they planned originally
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Can you offer any reference for that claim? The *media* reported it as a failure, I don't recall ever hearing anything from the scientists in that regard, except with a bunch of qualifiers that make it clear that it only failed to reach the ideal goal - which is why they were doing the experiment in the first place.
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It was declared a failure 20 years ago, so it should be easy to google.
Here is the wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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My fault. ... as the building ... was running 2 experiments.
Biosphere 2
I thought the first one was called Biosphere 1.
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> He will want to get to Mars without the elevated cancer risk
Not so much need for fancy shielding for one man, just fly solo in the middle of a densely packed cargo ship, you only need the equivalent of a few meters of rock to get the approximate shielding benefit of Earth's atmosphere, and I think it's only like a meter or so necessary to absorb most of the cosmic ray particle cascade.
The radiation exposure for 6 months in interplanetary space is about 60 cSv (60 rems). This is 12 years of the maximum allowable dose for a radiation worker. NASA currently allows a 55 year old astronaut to accumulate 400 cSV (Musk is 46, and won't be going for many, many years). So the radiation exposure is within currently accepted occupational limits. So this is not really a problem.
As for closed loop environmental systems - there's already been tons of research done on the subject, and even the very first large scale attempt, Biosphere 2, was impressively successful. Besides, one of the things that makes Mars so much more appealing than the Moon is that you don't *need* to be closed system - you've got nigh-unlimited supplies of water and CO2 available on-site to work with, the bulk components of life. And you'd better believe finding easily harvestable sources of nitrogen and important trace elements is going to be a priority.
Getting nitrogen is easy. Just compress and liquefy the Martian air. At lower Martian elevations the pressure is about the
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That's the radiation exposure at the surface of the ship. Hence the "middle of a densely packed cargo ship" - the cargo doubles as radiation shielding. It only takes a few meters worth of rock-equivalent mass (14 pounds of shielding per square inch of surface) to duplicate the shielding effects of Earth's atmosphere. You don't get the benefit of the magnetosphere - but I believe that doesn't so much stop a lot of things that would otherwise reach all the way to the surface, as stop those particles from s
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Elon Musk: 'I'm planning to retire to Mars'
https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]
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Strange, I remember when his rockets landing was called space nuttery.
I remember when the roadster first came out the main car companies were calling it Elecric Car nuttery.
I remember when he start pushing solar tile that was also called Solar nuttery.
I remember the 100 MWH battery for Australia in 100 days also being called nuttery.
I remember and still hear people calling The Boring Company nuttery even while the test tunnels are being dug.
And the HyperLoop is called nuttery even as governments are making
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This is silly fallacy.
What you are saying is that since some people somewhere called each one Musk's ventures "nuttery" (although actually nothing you list is really implausible - only founding a new car company was a stretch), then no one anywhere can point to any of his claims as being factually suspect.
Not quite the "they laughed at Galileo" fallacy, but close.
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Nothing much stopping us at this point but the will to throw enough money at the problem, and Musk seems to have the will, if not the money. And SpaceX is beginning to rapidly lower the pricetag.
The only missing piece to start the attempt is rockets big enough to transport people and cargo effectively - you don't need much high technology to make airtight underground terrariums with solar-powered LED lighting. Not if you're bringing the electronics from Earth.
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Brings out the Tesla because he wants to cut pollution and save the planet, sets up space company which has a rocket that'll burn a million pounds of fuel in a matter of seconds just to send stuff to a space station that just sits there spinning round the globe.
Rated "Troll" I see, which is appropriate, but let me show just how stupid this post really is.
Last year the U.S. conducted a total of 22 space launches. The current Falcon 9's full up launch weight is 549 tonnes. If we assume that that weight is all fuel (it is mostly) then a Falcon 9 launch burns 549/3.56 = 154 tonnes of RP-1 kerosene (since the LOX to RP-1 mass ratio is 2.56/1), so this is an upper bound on the fuel used.
A fuel fuel load of a 747-400 is 165 tonnes, more than the Falcon 9. If every one of