Missions To Mars With Starship Could Only Take Three Months (phys.org) 159
alternative_right shares a report from Phys.Org: Using conventional propulsion and low-energy trajectories, it takes six to nine months for crewed spacecraft to reach Mars. These durations complicate mission design and technology requirements and raise health and safety concerns since crews will be exposed to extended periods in microgravity and heightened exposure to cosmic radiation. Traditionally, mission designers have recommended nuclear-electric or nuclear-thermal propulsion (NEP/NTP), which could shorten trips to just 3 months. In a recent study, a UCSB physics researcher identified two trajectories that could reduce transits to Mars using the Starship to between 90 and 104 days.
The study was authored by Jack Kingdon, a graduate student researcher in the Physics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is also a member of the UCSB Weld Lab, an experimental ultracold atomic physics group that uses quantum degenerate gases to explore quantum mechanical phenomena. [...] As outlined on its website, conference presentations, and user manual, the SpaceX mission architecture consists of six Starships traveling to Mars. Four of these spacecraft will haul 400 metric tons (440 U.S. tons) of cargo while two will transport 200 passengers. Based on the Block 2 design, which has a 1,500 metric ton (1,650 U.S. ton) propellant capacity, the crewed Starships will require 15 tankers to fully refuel in low Earth orbit (LEO). The cargo ships would require only four, since they would be sent on longer low-energy trajectories. Once the flotilla arrives at Mars, the Starships will refuel using propellant created in situ using local carbon dioxide and water ice. When the return window approaches, one of the crew ships and 3-4 cargo ships will refuel and then launch into a low Mars orbit (LMO). The cargo ships will then transfer the majority of their propellant to the crew ship and return to the surface of Mars. The crew ship would then depart for Earth, and the process could be repeated for the other crew ship.
Kingdon calculated multiple trajectories using a Lambert Solver, which produces the shortest elliptical arc in two-body problem equations (aka Lambert's problem). The first would depart Earth on April 30th, 2033, taking advantage of the 26-month periodic alignment between Earth and Mars. The transit would last 90 days, with the crew returning to Earth after another 90-day transit by July 2nd, 2035. The second would depart Earth on July 15th, 2035, and return to Earth after a 104-day transit on December 5th, 2037. As Kingdon explained, the former trajectory is the most likely to succeed: "The optimal trajectory is the 2033 trajectory -- it has the lowest fuel requirements for the fastest transit time. A note that may not be obvious to the layreader is that Starship can very easily reach Mars in ~3 months -- in fact, it can in any launch window, over a fairly wide range of trajectories. However, Starship may impact the Martian atmosphere too fast (although we do not know, and likely SpaceX don't either actually how fast Starship can hit the Martian atmosphere and survive). The trajectories discussed are ones that I am confident Starship will survive." The paper describing the work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The study was authored by Jack Kingdon, a graduate student researcher in the Physics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is also a member of the UCSB Weld Lab, an experimental ultracold atomic physics group that uses quantum degenerate gases to explore quantum mechanical phenomena. [...] As outlined on its website, conference presentations, and user manual, the SpaceX mission architecture consists of six Starships traveling to Mars. Four of these spacecraft will haul 400 metric tons (440 U.S. tons) of cargo while two will transport 200 passengers. Based on the Block 2 design, which has a 1,500 metric ton (1,650 U.S. ton) propellant capacity, the crewed Starships will require 15 tankers to fully refuel in low Earth orbit (LEO). The cargo ships would require only four, since they would be sent on longer low-energy trajectories. Once the flotilla arrives at Mars, the Starships will refuel using propellant created in situ using local carbon dioxide and water ice. When the return window approaches, one of the crew ships and 3-4 cargo ships will refuel and then launch into a low Mars orbit (LMO). The cargo ships will then transfer the majority of their propellant to the crew ship and return to the surface of Mars. The crew ship would then depart for Earth, and the process could be repeated for the other crew ship.
Kingdon calculated multiple trajectories using a Lambert Solver, which produces the shortest elliptical arc in two-body problem equations (aka Lambert's problem). The first would depart Earth on April 30th, 2033, taking advantage of the 26-month periodic alignment between Earth and Mars. The transit would last 90 days, with the crew returning to Earth after another 90-day transit by July 2nd, 2035. The second would depart Earth on July 15th, 2035, and return to Earth after a 104-day transit on December 5th, 2037. As Kingdon explained, the former trajectory is the most likely to succeed: "The optimal trajectory is the 2033 trajectory -- it has the lowest fuel requirements for the fastest transit time. A note that may not be obvious to the layreader is that Starship can very easily reach Mars in ~3 months -- in fact, it can in any launch window, over a fairly wide range of trajectories. However, Starship may impact the Martian atmosphere too fast (although we do not know, and likely SpaceX don't either actually how fast Starship can hit the Martian atmosphere and survive). The trajectories discussed are ones that I am confident Starship will survive." The paper describing the work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
I love science fiction! (Score:2, Insightful)
Its a brand name, and its currently being tested (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently in the future we're sending crews to reach Mars in six to nine months, but wait! If we have this fictional "Starship" we need just 3 months, wow. Hope such a thing exists in the coming years. Decades. Centuries possibly.
You realize "Starship" is a brand name for a particular make and model undergoing testing today. Its not referring to the general concept of a ship that travels between solar systems.
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Re:Its a brand name, and its currently being teste (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Its a brand name, and its currently being test (Score:2)
The population mentioned is one of two ways discussed. The other is to take a different, faster transfer orbit than the traditional Hohhman transfer.
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This guy seems to be hoping to get Musk's attention and maybe a job out of it, given that there is no reason why Starship needs to be used here. Starship isn't using the kind of propulsion he proposes, and offers no other benefits for his plan.
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This guy seems to be hoping to get Musk's attention and maybe a job out of it, given that there is no reason why Starship needs to be used here. Starship isn't using the kind of propulsion he proposes, and offers no other benefits for his plan.
Does the proposed propulsion require a rather large vehicle?
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You mean the one that's known for popularizing the acronym RUD?
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It is not referring to the general concept of spaceflight at all.
You realize the post you responded to made that point? :-)
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The post I responded to is talking about a "model" undergoing "tests", as if it is something real.
Which it isn't.
Those tests are flight tests. The things flying are quite real.
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Not anymore, they are cancelled on one side and dismantled on the other.
You see what happens when you vote for idiots and suck ketamine junkies' dicks?
LOL.
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Is DMB short for dumb?
LOL, re-read. "DRNB".
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"When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it," - Donald Trump
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Ah, the Pepperidge Farm remembers!
They used math (Re:I love science fiction!) (Score:2, Interesting)
Did you read the same article I did? What changed the trip from 6 months to 3 months was calculating a different orbit. Given this has been a problem people have been working on, with various devices to aid in their computations, for somewhere close to a century now this is a rather surprising development. I'd like to know more on what new mathematics they were using to get to this discovery.
I fully expect some new mission to Mars to test out this orbit. It might not be a SpaceX Starship, it doesn't hav
Re: They used math (Re:I love science fiction!) (Score:2)
The new mathematics Iâ(TM)m afraid isnâ(TM)t terribly new, or exciting, itâ(TM)s just stuff that takes a long time. Specifically, itâ(TM)s just trying lots of computations and seeing what works. We havenâ(TM)t done it before because the space (pun intended) to explore for this particular optimisation problem is *huge* and we donâ(TM)t have very good tools for figuring out the global minimum.
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No, what changed the trip was the large deltaV available. Assuming Musk, who promised teslas would self drive without a driver at all from LA to NY within 2 years in 2016, isn't being overly optimistic about his orbital fueling plan and his rockets firing just fine after weeks in orbit.
Yes, people haven't bothered plugging those parameters into the old software because there's no need to calculate fantasy trajectories. Well I'm sure someone at spaceX has - likely with a lot of different values for fuel amou
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Apparently in the future we're sending crews to reach Mars in six to nine months, but wait! If we have this fictional "Starship" we need just 3 months, wow. Hope such a thing exists in the coming years. Decades. Centuries possibly.
Is this a calendar month or a Musk month? If it's 3 Musk months that means it'll never happen. FSD has been 3 months away for 5 years now.
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FSD has been 3 months away for 9 years, now. 2016 was the original announcement and launch of cars that were supposed to be capable. I've lost track of how many hardware revisions we have had, but it's more than 4. From what I heard anyone with the old hardware is SOL as Tesla's promised free upgrades have been cancelled, and their vehicle will never achieve full self driving, assuming it doesn't rust away first.
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The combined missions from Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo happened over 11 years, and that resulted in a lot of progress in chemical rocket propulsion. At the same time (or at least roughly contemporaneous) there was NERVA testing nuclear rocket propulsion. NERVA didn't take flight but it did prove many theories correct and provided a lot of practical experience and data. This demonstrates the potential for relatively rapid development of rocker propulsion with the right funding and motivations. Given that
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2035 to return
No, never return. One-way mission. We don't know what kind of organisms/plague they'll bring back. They need a way to generate their own food and otherwise sustain themselves onsite.
Sure (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's keep chucking scarce resources at a frozen, irradiated and poisonous planet we have zero chance of populating.
That will accomplish... .something.
Re:Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Cold wars are better than hot wars.
Re:Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Attitudes like yours are cancer. Fuck your cynicism you stupid cunt.
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Well, if you really think cancer is better than limb loss all I am doing is feeling sorry for you.
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Well, if you really think cancer is better than limb loss all I am doing is feeling sorry for you.
Pedantry corner: It depends on the cancer (and, I suppose, the limbs involved). I happen to have been living with multiple (well, two) cancer diagnoses for years, but as they are low-grade cancers that are not metastasizing, I experience no significant symptoms and no impact on my lifestyle, and I do not expect that to change before I die of old age. So in my case, I would much rather have these diseases that I wouldn't even know I had if I hadn't been told about them rather than lose any limbs. YMMV.
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Some cancers are highly treatable. Some (like yours) don't need to be treated, as you're likely to die of old age before they become dangerous to your life.
In fact, most cancers fall into one of these 2 categories.
Re:Sure (Score:4, Funny)
Our species is garbage. We belong dead.
You must be fun at parties.
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Our species is garbage. We belong dead.
OK, that's interesting, let's take a step back a bit. Why do humans deserveto die?
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Why do humans deserveto [sic] die?
This can be a fun debate topic, and I've been a fan of formal debate for years. However, I'm not so sure that the person you're responding to is very good at it, and I'm not really going to do that whole formal debate thing.
The question you ask can be easily reversed. Why do humans deserve to live?
This can get pretty into the weeds with topics like assuming we're the peak of evolution and shit like that.
We can also point to history (and our ongoing treatment of other humans) as an example of why we should b
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fucked killed and then eaten.
Worse. There are several re-arrangements of that order with probabilities pretty far from zero.
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That's why we (jokingly) did a cadence of 'rape, murder, pillage, burn'.
Any order other than that is just barbaric!
NOTE: None of those things are really all that socially acceptable.
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The question you ask can be easily reversed. Why do humans deserve to live?
The question can't be answered at all without defining moral preferences. In some moral systems, the strong deserve to kill the weak, if they so desire.
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Yeah, it can be a pretty fun debate topic. I'm not sure that I'm willing to invest the energy into doing so, as there's no real benefit.
Even if we reached a point of agreement, or even enlightenment, there'd be little benefit. Few people are willing to change a firmly held belief, even when faced with conflicting information. It happens but we're rationalizing beings instead of rational beings.
That said, I think many people might (if properly coaxed) agree that we, from a view of pragmatism, should 'cull th
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"Our species is garbage. We belong dead." ***Speak for yourself*** You sound like a vile liberal/progressive doomer and climate cultist. Why don't you set an example by ending YOURSELF?
This thinking of humanity willfully choosing extinction to "save the planet" or whatever is a kind of thinking that is unlikely to succeed. While these "doomers" choose to remain childless there will be others that hold on to an optimistic future and so will have many children. Not likely as many children in the past when infant and child mortality was high, but likely more than enough to make up for those that choose to not have any children. The shrinking size of families is in part from optimism, they
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Missions to Mars could be how we save humanity, bringing life to another planet so that if something catastrophic happens on Earth then humanity can continue.
Throwing resources at missions to Mars could also be how we drive the last nail into the coffin of our native planet's ability to support human civilizations.
The "doomers" see humans going to Mars as humanity "polluting" another planet, as if bringing life to a dead planet is destroying something worthy of perpetual preservation.
I think you may have constructed a straw man there. I am strongly against efforts to colonize Mars, or any other planet, when we need all hands on deck to drastically slow down the rate of warming, and to try to reverse it. But in general I'm all for exploring and colonizing other planets. So am I a doomer?
I just think it's stupid to try to build a new
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Surely the resources required to launch manned missions to Mars are a tiny fraction of those available on Earth? Yet you're in favor of exploring and colonizing other planets? Which ones?
I apologize for not being clearer. I realize that Mars and the Moon are the most viable planets on which to establish colonies. When I said "other planets" I had those two in mind. I was trying to say that I'm in favour of space exploration and that I'm not against trying to establish extraterrestrial colonies.
Humanity can do two things at once - take drastic steps to protect the environment, and take its first baby steps into space.
I disagree. I think that ALL of our available science and engineering effort should be devoted to slowing and possibly reversing climate change, mitigating its effects, preparing for disruptions in th
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Missions to Mars could be how we save humanity, bringing life to another planet so that if something catastrophic happens on Earth then humanity can continue.
Evidence you know less than nothing about the topic and can - indeed should - be ignored.
Anyone looking at the stupidly excessive mass of humanity and thinking it is completely divorced from the destruction of the only climate capable of supporting it is, frankly, delusional. The sort of delusional idiocy that appears to infect minds *already* well trained on self-delusional religious dogma. Weird that these are the same chuckledinks hell-bent on creating even more excess humans.
Re:"Our species is garbage" (Score:4, Insightful)
Ha, "Climate cultist". How to tell us you favor ideology over science and demonizing the other side over ensuring future generations enjoy a good quality of life without saying as such.
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Objectively a war is better for the planet than a mission to Mars.
No lol. "Better" is always subjective.
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You're just arguing for the sake of arguing
Actually I was making a facetious point for the sake of comedy and am really concerned that you took my comment so literally. But since you want to argue:
No lol. "Better" is always subjective.
No, "better" is always objective. What is subjective is the conditions you are choosing to compare.
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Let's keep chucking scarce resources at a frozen, irradiated and poisonous planet we have zero chance of populating.
That will accomplish... .something.
Or maybe we could send sensors instead of people. Oh wait, that's already happened, so this really is just a pissing contest.
Re:Sure (Score:5, Funny)
We could send Elmo and tell him to get back to us on what he finds. Think of him as a somewhat dimwitted sensor. Suit'im up, he's ready!
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We could send Elmo and tell him to get back to us on what he finds. Think of him as a somewhat dimwitted sensor. Suit'im up, he's ready!
Thanks for the laugh! I would make one small change - send Elmo and tell him "don't call us, we'll call you".
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The reality is that getting people on Mars doesn't cost all that much in the scheme of things. A small fraction of the US military budget, for example. It's worth doing just to advance technology - look at all the stuff we got from Apollo.
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The point of Apollo wasn't to get to the moon. It was to demonstrate to the Soviets we have rockets big enough to plant a nuclear warhead anywhere on Earth. We proved we had the navigation and computing technology for making these rockets land with considerable precision. We proved we had life support systems to keep humans alive in environments like high flying aircraft, or in deep sea submarines. We proved we had the money for doing such things over and over, so if the Soviets got froggy then they'd k
Re: Sure (Score:2)
You think China or Russia can't put a satellite in a high orbit? You're weird.
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The point of Apollo wasn't to get to the moon. It was to demonstrate to the Soviets we have rockets big enough to plant a nuclear warhead anywhere on Earth.
Absurdly incorrect.
We had rockets capable of doing that in 1959.
The rockets we built in the coming decade could nuke Pluto.
The Russians weren't particularly militarily concerned with that capacity.
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They should spend all that money on fixing the man made mistakes on this planet.
Do you realize how many technologies came from the Apollo missions that have solved so many problems for so many people on Earth? It might be nice to think we could have got to the same place without the "waste" of putting men on the moon but those missions were meant to solve problems we created on this planet. We had Soviets that believed they could beat NATO in war. This was proved wrong with Apollo by showing we had better rockets, better computers, better medicine and life support, better logistics
Re: Sure (Score:2)
First, the most revolutionary of those "Space Race" technologies were likely inevitable.
Second, there is absolutely no reason to believe a second "Apollo" program would result in the same advances, in the same time frame. NASA has been funding research into all of these areas for literally decades, and no miracle breakthroughs have occurred. Simply setting a deadline to launch will not accelerate this, if the miracle technology is even possible. It's like all the claims that AI will bring about utopia - evi
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Yeah, not so many of those 'space race tech' things were really all that relative. We like to imagine so. People like to say so.
Here's NPR being optimistic and trying to explain all the great things that came from the Apollo missions:
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/20... [npr.org]
There really isn't that much. For some reason, we remember history differently. We look at the grand accomplishment (which it was) and seem to have to believe that it had some great benefits for mankind as a whole. Maybe that's how we justify it
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You do know that you can buy insulin needles without a prescription, right?
If you're not mainlining your Tang, you're doing it wrong.
Zero now for sure (Score:3)
But if some alternative propulsion tech to rockets, nuclear or otherwise that doesn't involve chucking matter backwards to go forwards is developed in the coming centuries (no, I've no idea what) and the time to Mars is reduced to weeks or even days then it just might become feasible to get enough equipment, food and water there to build something useful. But for now and the near to mid term future that's going to remain sci fi.
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Mars has nothing to offer us.
The Moon would serve the same purpose at a fraction of the stupid costs.
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And moon dust is very very sharp and it gets everywhere. That is a problem for a permanent base.
Re:Zero now for sure (Score:5, Interesting)
Mars has more gravity. Kinda important in the long run.
Nowhere near enough. Plus - we have enough trouble with childbirth on this planet imagine trying that when your vascular system is compromised.
And moon dust is very very sharp and it gets everywhere. That is a problem for a permanent base.
Martian regolith presents the exact same problems whilst also being irradiated *and* presenting high perchlorate concentrations.
Re:Zero now for sure (Score:4, Interesting)
Mars has nothing to offer us.
The Moon would serve the same purpose at a fraction of the stupid costs.
Mars has a very Earth like day/night cycle, and dirt that has been weathered by wind and therefore not having the "shattered glass" texture of dirt on the moon. This is important so that people on Mars could build greenhouses to grow food. With the reduced solar flux from being further from the sun than Earth there may be a need to supplement the sunlight but it is still an improvement from the moon where night lasts for 14 Earth days.
The atmosphere on Mars is so thin that it could be considered little better than the vacuum of interplanetary space. As thin as it is there's CO2 and nitrogen that can be drawn in to habitats to create something that could be safe for humans and plants. There would be a need to add oxygen but that's a nearly trivial matter of splitting oxygen off some CO2, a much easier process than extracting oxygen from moon rocks. There's water ice on the moon from which oxygen could be extracted but that water is an already valued resource for sustaining human life. Mars has water too, and that could also be extracted from the thin atmosphere than having to dig it up from rocks and dirt.
I'm not going to say that it is impossible to have colonies on the moon. I expect that in time there will be permanent settlements on the moon. Given the difficulties in extracting resources on the moon versus that on Mars the moon is likely to take much longer to become self sustaining than a similar effort on Mars.
Given enough time and people on Mars there's at least a chance for Mars to become quite Earth-like. Maybe not to where it is a shirt-sleeve environment outside a habitat but it could be like going out on a high mountain where people would need little more than a kind of snowsuit and an oxygen mask. Getting Mars to where crops could be grown outside the habitat is at least a possibility, on the moon the people there may as well be living in a cave or submarine. This might not be too bad since we have people that live in submarines for six months at a time with no real detrimental effects on their health. This also goes for people living on ISS and similar orbital habitats, people have lived there for months and returned to life on Earth in good health. A big part of this, at least by my understanding of the issue, is that people in these situations know they can return to life on planet Earth in a matter of hours (perhaps days) should anything go seriously wrong. Life on Mars would mean weeks to months for a return trip, without some means to reach an approximation of life on Earth would wear on the body and mind of most any human. Because Mars is already quite Earth-like the potential for making life safe and comfortable for humans is almost trivial.
Mars has plenty to offer us.
Re:Zero now for sure (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately the large fly in the ointment is the perchlorates in the soil. Even if somehow the mars atmosphere was terraformed so walking outside without a suit was possible, the soil would still remain toxic to earth life.
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There's no doubt that the Martian soil contains perchlorates, and that these substances are toxic, but here's plenty of ways to remove these chemicals from the soil.
Perchlorates are water soluble and so they can be rinsed from the soil as it is brought in for growing potatoes like Mark Watney in The Martian. If the Martian potato farmers did not take this precaution first then the toxic effect has been described as being like growing food in soil contaminated with some heavy metals, it wouldn't be exactly
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Umm, you do realise reactionless drives that work against earths magnetic field are already used in satellites? Unfortunately no use outside a magnetic field. But if I had a quid for everyone who once upon a time said something was impossible (eg human flight) I could afford to build my own rocket.
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Those aren't really reactionless drives. They're pushing on the Earth. The Earth is the reaction mass.
Re: Sure (Score:2)
Re: Sure (Score:2)
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I find that I pity them. People who now have anti-Musk bumper-stickers on their Teslas clearly just bought their cars as political statements. That seems so incredibly sad to me. How much of their lives are devoted to partisan display? How sad and angry must they be to keep living that way (or is it from living tha
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They say it's about reaching Mars. And I guess it is. But I'll tell you a "secret", that you can easily see is true from what happened when we first sent humans to the moon: It is a LOT more about the things we will learn and the technologies we will develop in the attempt, which will then be turned around for application here on Earth. You're literally kvetching about a "wasteful" space program using technology developed in part because of it.
Looking forward to the Cybertruck ... (Score:2)
If you think the above is ridiculous. Consider that a Falcon Heavy put a Roadster into solar orbit.
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I think the above is ridiculous. Consider that a Falcon Heavy put a Roadster into solar orbit because it was a test flight and had spare capacity, whereas every kilo to Mars will cost (initially) millions.
Every kilo to earth orbit costs too. Are you saying Space X / Musk are not capable of expensive stunts? I think the Roadster demonstrates otherwise.
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So they did a stunt.
It cost them nothing.
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I just want to steal the tesla in orbit, land it on utopia planatia,and do donuts until I hit something, becoming the first space pirate!
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I just want to steal the tesla in orbit, land it on utopia planatia,and do donuts until I hit something, becoming the first space pirate!
Sounds more like the first space delinquent. Pirates generally go well beyond the doing donuts stage. :-)
Which "starship"? (Score:1, Troll)
The one that explodes every time because it is defective by design?
I won't hold my breath.
Re: Which "starship"? (Score:2)
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Well Block 1 finished its tests correctly
Of course, because it doesn't have the power output that is destroying the current iteration.
And the power isn't going down, so the issues are not going away.
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They also had a lot of problems during testing of Falcon 9, but now it is the workhorse of current space exploration/launches..
Not really, no.
They had problems landing it- but that was expected.
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I apologize profoundly and stand corrected.
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Same shit, different century (Score:2)
The idea of nuclear powered spaceships has been around since the 1950s.
A non-nuclear test model was actually built to study propulsion via explosion, but it got abandoned when most of the world signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty which prohibited nuclear explosions in space.
Re: Same shit, different century (Score:3)
Not all nuclear rockets are powered by throwing bombs out the back (in fact, thatâ(TM)s a relatively out there idea). Instead, the more commonly proposed design is to simply use a nuclear reactor to make a propellant extremely hot. That propellant is usually hydrogen, because it gives you the best specific impulse by being extremely light, and easy to accelerate.
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A nuclear powered spaceship for this exact task was also in Popular Science like 20 years ago. It has nothing to do with the 1950s drop a nuclear bomb behind you to propel you faster, it was using a nuclear reactor to power an ion drive with a time to Mars around 30 days. Gen IV fast nuclear reactors may even speed that up. Russia has the advantage there, since the US government abandoned fast fission in 1994, but private companies may catch up (they are behind, BN-350-800 leads the US by far).
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That is not a nuclear engine, but an ion drive engine.
The simplest principle is a long pipe with a radioactive coating on the inside that produces enough heat to simply expand and accelerate gas (or water).
Completely different principles, no conversion to electricity needed and: much much higher thrust.
What makes me wonder however: why are the vasimir plasma engines not an option? I thought they work nicely and only wait for an early adaptor?
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
However I see at the end: at
Let me guess (Score:2)
They are going to pay for all of this with BitCoin.
So, this means 45 days to Mars with NTP? (Score:3, Insightful)
The fine summary tells us that there's two ways we know of to get to Mars in about 90 days. We can use NTP on the orbits we have been using for decades, or we can use the same propulsion technology on a new orbit. Doesn't this mean we can get to Mars in 45 days by using both NTP and this new orbit they calculated?
But then I've been seeing plans to get to Mars in 45 days for some time. Here's one example: https://www.popularmechanics.c... [popularmechanics.com]
If there is a newly discovered orbit that can shorten the trip for chemical rockets from 6 months to 3 months, and we expect a nuclear rocket to make that trip become more like 45 days, then couldn't we get to Mars with a nuclear rocket and this new orbit in less than a month?
The hard parts of getting people anywhere beyond Earth orbit is protecting people from radiation and having enough food stored up for the trip. With people on the moon or on Mars the risks of radiation exposure is immediately cut in half because they are standing on a big rock. Add in that the people can pile up pieces of these rocks over an enclosure the risks of radiation become little more than we'd see on Earth.
Getting food to people on the moon or Mars becomes less of an issue because with some rocks to work with there is the potential to have materials to build greenhouses for growing food. If there's a need to send them food then it's a simpler issue of getting close enough for a buggy ride to pick up the care package than needing to be precise enough that the care package needs to dock with them in orbit.
Once people are on some kind of solid ground many problems of keeping people alive get so much easier. The shorter we can make the trip to solid ground the greater chance we have to get people there alive and healthy. If nuclear propulsion means cutting the transit time in half then i see it as inevitable that we will be using nuclear propulsion to get to the moon and Mars. I doubt we'd ever see a manned mission to Mars that did not use nuclear propulsion.
One way death trip, send Musk first (Score:2)
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If one of the astronauts was an asshole drug addict who used his wealth to compromise the government, then yes I would feel the same way.
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And welcome to Popular Science 3 years ago (Score:2)
Ha, yeah, nuclear powered spacecraft can do the trip quick, like 30 days, but beating public indoctrination of anti-nuclear is probably impossible. An ion drive (with a fast nuclear fission engine) was actually in Popular Science like 20 years ago, with 30 days to Mars, I'm actually applying to fast fission and fusion nuclear jobs, so I've done a ton of research.
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but beating public indoctrination of anti-nuclear is probably impossible /FACEPALM
A nuclear propulsed space ship has nothing to do with a Chernobyl or Fukushima like reactor.
Coming right after the robotaxi (Score:3)
Robotaxi is going live and taking over the world this very month, doncha know? Shortly after that, Starship launches for Mars. Honest.
Yes keep pretending that Starship works (Score:2)
SpaceX can't get Starship into stable orbit, much less to the moon, without bits of it exploding randomly, so forget about getting it to Mars. We'd be better off chucking all of Starship funding back into the open pool and letting everyone, including universities, to design and build a functional heavy lift rocket. Preferably one that doesn't explode like it's the 1950's all over again.
Let SpaceX fund
This is pump and dump (Score:2)
It'll probably work. He's got billions of dollars and the news media is on his side whether they want to be or not. Since they are owned by his billionaire buddies.
What I'm curious about is right now slashdot has a unfavorable opinion of musk. So much so that the muskbots can't keep control
Could (Score:2)
I could get to Mars in 12 minutes (Score:2)
If I used my fictional Spaceship with lightspeed drives. That beats their fictional Starship.
Nice. *How* many launches? (Score:3)
So, one trip for one ship takes 16 launches?
And the reason we don't toss that tosser, and put up a *real* space station, and shuttle real spaceships, that never land, but go from orbit to orbit, using at *least* nuclear-thermal propulsion?
Refuel on carbon dioxide and water (Score:2)
Starships will refuel using propellant created in situ using local carbon dioxide and water ice
What chemical reaction would extract energy from carbon dioxide and water ice? I guess they would need to first turn it into methanol or methane, but that requires an energy source. Are they going to install a nuclear reactor on Mars?