On Sep/21/2019 at 12:25, Rocket Man wrote :
"JF Mezei" wrote in message
...
At KSC, they'll have a nice tower, elevator, and air conditioned arm to
bring people between the tower and the BFS/Starship.


What about when it lands on Mars? Do they just open the door high up,
and unroll a rope ladder to the ground and hope that ladder stays on so
they can one day climb back onto the ship? Just curious if a flexible
ladder over such a long distance would be viable?

If they need attach points for latter at regular intervals, would such
present aerodynamic challenges for take off/Landing or be small enough
to be a no brainer? (for re-entry, such attach points would conduct
heat to the structure under heat shield would they not?

I assume there would be a floor for cargo with its own hatch, and arm
that can be extended out and a winch to lowr pallets to the ground?


I wondered about the same thing. What if the elevator breaks down when
they're on the surface. How are they going to climb back up into the
habitable section? Are there emergency stairsteps in the side of the rocket?

That's a very minor problem to solve. But the thing is, there are many
such minor and a little less minor problems to solve before they can
send humans to Mars. SpaceX seems to be solving the main issue of
building a suitable rocket. But I don't see much going on about all the
other things. Oh, some people will talk about designing space suits for
Mars, and things like that. But talk is cheap. I'm not aware of anyone
working on actually making a space suit for Mars.

My hope is that after the SpaceX presentation next week in Boca Chica, a
human mission to Mars will start looking quite real enough that serious
work will start on all those little things. Still, I think that at some
point, SpaceX will have a vehicle ready to send humans to Mars, but an
actual mission will have to wait until some relatively minor details are
worked out.


Alain Fournier