Mars Bound Spacecraft Example

I was thinking about actual design of the hardware. The inflatable hull has a debris limit in earth orbit. Old spacecraft pieces cloud the orbits. These pieces will in general not challenge the steel hulls. This is because of the rather low relative velocities.

On a path to Mars the issue is ultra high speed impacts. It just may be that if the event causes a inflatable hull breech it would also cause a steel hull breech. Negating the advantage of steel over fabric hull selection. A hybrid use is allowed therefor.

SO I submit the large revolving classical artificial gravity section made of fabric. This is in addition to the smaller steel portions. Use brute force design and place sensors over the hull to detect holes. A sensor every square four inches. The issue is how to then gain access to place a patch..

This simply means use something like army cots to sleep on. Everything on the walk way is to be hand moveable for effortless patching. Make it a rather garden like gravity park.

The center has ladders to climb up into at instrumentation overhead.

In general a station in the steel command module is to be manned 24 hours a earth day.

A nuclear battery system of several 10's of kilowatts is a good target power source value.

SO the basic parameters are not challenging for the transit spacecraft. And the hard part is the lander.

The moon mission plans also require landers. A common design would help hugely. A basic lander? Earth, moon, Mars capable. In general there are two modalities of landing. One for the couple of astronauts and one for cargo. Moving humans is a fairly small endeavor. While cargo includes takeoff craft.

The lander for the astronauts can be two way. While cargo can be also. What modality is required?

Land cargo always. This is why passenger aircraft carry cargo. It is free.

Taking of with no cargo? This is nontrivial system theory. The cargo to return to earth needs to be clarified and used in the lander design. It is a critical value. Shuffling cargo in the human craft with out occupants is free once more. Auto control human/cargo dual design.

I would submitted that the size of several astronauts should suffice for all return to earth cargo.

The question becomes travel and land and return or travel and occupy a Mars base module for a while. Here is where the fabric colony shines.

All in all design the cargo capacity of the lander plus astronauts as capable of self carriage of a real Mars fabric module. Carry one-way. Simple space in lander is required for the module. But it never returns.

The system concepts lead I hope to a design. Space is cheap in a lander. Low density cargo weighs small with large volume.

I hope the concepts make some sense. Just use the cargo density as a critical concept.

On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 10:02:59 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I was thinking about actual design of the hardware. The inflatable hull has a debris limit in earth orbit. Old spacecraft pieces cloud the orbits. These pieces will in general not challenge the steel hulls. This is because of the rather low relative velocities.

On a path to Mars the issue is ultra high speed impacts. It just may be that if the event causes a inflatable hull breech it would also cause a steel hull breech. Negating the advantage of steel over fabric hull selection.. A hybrid use is allowed therefor.

SO I submit the large revolving classical artificial gravity section made of fabric. This is in addition to the smaller steel portions. Use brute force design and place sensors over the hull to detect holes. A sensor every square four inches. The issue is how to then gain access to place a patch.

This simply means use something like army cots to sleep on. Everything on the walk way is to be hand moveable for effortless patching. Make it a rather garden like gravity park.

The center has ladders to climb up into at instrumentation overhead.

In general a station in the steel command module is to be manned 24 hours a earth day.

A nuclear battery system of several 10's of kilowatts is a good target power source value.

SO the basic parameters are not challenging for the transit spacecraft. And the hard part is the lander.

The moon mission plans also require landers. A common design would help hugely. A basic lander? Earth, moon, Mars capable. In general there are two modalities of landing. One for the couple of astronauts and one for cargo. Moving humans is a fairly small endeavor. While cargo includes takeoff craft.

The lander for the astronauts can be two way. While cargo can be also. What modality is required?

Land cargo always. This is why passenger aircraft carry cargo. It is free.

Taking of with no cargo? This is nontrivial system theory. The cargo to return to earth needs to be clarified and used in the lander design. It is a critical value. Shuffling cargo in the human craft with out occupants is free once more. Auto control human/cargo dual design.

I would submitted that the size of several astronauts should suffice for all return to earth cargo.

The question becomes travel and land and return or travel and occupy a Mars base module for a while. Here is where the fabric colony shines.

All in all design the cargo capacity of the lander plus astronauts as capable of self carriage of a real Mars fabric module. Carry one-way. Simple space in lander is required for the module. But it never returns.

The system concepts lead I hope to a design. Space is cheap in a lander.. Low density cargo weighs small with large volume.

I hope the concepts make some sense. Just use the cargo density as a critical concept.

even inorbit debris are at very fast speeds

sadly the reportm i saw said that even a tiny debris impact on a spacewalking astronaut will incenerate the person and the suits interior

On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 10:02:59 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I was thinking about actual design of the hardware. The inflatable hull has a debris limit in earth orbit. Old spacecraft pieces cloud the orbits. These pieces will in general not challenge the steel hulls. This is because of the rather low relative velocities.

On a path to Mars the issue is ultra high speed impacts. It just may be that if the event causes a inflatable hull breech it would also cause a steel hull breech. Negating the advantage of steel over fabric hull selection.. A hybrid use is allowed therefor.

SO I submit the large revolving classical artificial gravity section made of fabric. This is in addition to the smaller steel portions. Use brute force design and place sensors over the hull to detect holes. A sensor every square four inches. The issue is how to then gain access to place a patch.

This simply means use something like army cots to sleep on. Everything on the walk way is to be hand moveable for effortless patching. Make it a rather garden like gravity park.

The center has ladders to climb up into at instrumentation overhead.

In general a station in the steel command module is to be manned 24 hours a earth day.

A nuclear battery system of several 10's of kilowatts is a good target power source value.

SO the basic parameters are not challenging for the transit spacecraft. And the hard part is the lander.


I tried to figure the basic parameters. My first fallacy was to require the Earth/Moon/Mars landing craft capacity. The Moon and rare atmosphere Mars need identical rocket descent.

The original Apollo lander is likely still the best idea. Just size the cargo bay in the lander stage for the maximum expected cargo volume. This means some efficiency loss foe sub-volume cargo because of the needed lander structure otherwise.

And have return cargo in the takeoff orbiter. Just like Apollo. So the lander is conceptually the same as Apollo. Just use seats for the astronauts..

By refueling from a tank on the transit craft, the same take-off orbiter can shuffle down several landing stages.

Tiny and very capable aircraft, using tiny engines and controls,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaNZzUg5Opg

combined with the production of arrays of small engines, attached to carefully designed airframes, will revolutionize aviation and space travel in the coming months.

Bringing about the long delayed and still born commercial supersonic transport

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neswVVVwhns

Using flying wing with oblique wing and vectored thrust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxgg0BXMoqU

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1603610/posts

Like the Northrup switchblade body SST flying wing.

built in very tiny airframes enclosing a single astronaut in a long duratipon echanical counter pressure suit, lying within supersonic flying wings powered by vectored ram rockets.

http://www.flightglobal.com/assets/g...px?ItemID=9844

A 14,250 lb oblique flying wing carries an 1,200 lb oblate spheroid into space and returns to Earth. The 1,200 lb spheroid carrys an astronaut. The spheroid boosts from Low Earth orbit to lunar orbit, and lands on the lunar surface. It then returns to Earth and re-enters, carrying the astronaut back to the launch point, landing safely.

A similar system is capable of boosting an astronaut to a Hohmann transfer orbit to mars, and entering the Martian atmosphere and landing there. It will take close to 1000 days to complete the trip.

http://www.alicesastroinfo.com/wp-co...02/Orbit-1.jpg

Solar powred microscale reactors that recycle waste streams into fresh air and water using sunlight make this possible. Food is another problem. Only a few weeks of supply. This is addressed by the perfection of a research topic right now - suspended animation - hibernation.

A version of which is in clinical trials.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/23/te...mation-trials/

In combination with drugs like EX-RAD which allow survival from intense radiation doses - its possible for individuals for less than $1 million to fly to orbit, the moon, Mars and the asteroid belt.

With swarm robotics and solar energy, it will be possible for them to build what they need from the materials found there.

Large arrays of small engines building very large vehicles were described in another post. These will provide the ability to transport 100,000 pounds and later 1,000,000 pounds between worlds.

On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 6:23:24 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Wednesday, February 17, 2016 at 10:02:59 AM UTC-5, wrote:

By refueling from a tank on the transit craft, the same take-off orbiter can shuffle down several landing stages.

So try to solidify the exact values. shuffling landers using the launch orbiter always can waste the manned trip. So allow lander stages to automatically land. Drop cargo with the one design lander stage. It is optionally mounted with the launch orbiter.

Do not have special first stages. The cargo only version is simply hold sized to handle all expected needs. If fitted with return orbiter the landers cargo mass allowance must be reduced.

All things considered size the cargo hold for a secondary usage. Allow its reuse as a command station. Empty the cargo, reseal and open up control stations for the real base command module.

This means a large proportion distinction relative to Apollo. An outsized lander stage hold means a small orbiter relative to the lander stage size. Apollo was about 1 to 1 volumes. This system is about 10 to one!

All in all ev suits are worn while landing. EV to the command station implies an airlock on the cargo hold?

The ascent orbiter efficiency appears the critical technology. Wearing ev suits inside allows for reduced orbiter wall mass.

Sizing the engine for Mars is required. The Moon simply has an excess engine capacity. Just reduce the fuel load relative to the Mars usage.

I would submit a target of 2000 pound craft as a challenge goal. It is important to remember it is for ascent only. It needs no heat shields anyways..

The fabric wall ascender is a philosophic concept. How lightweight to make?

The altitude of transit craft orbit is allowed to be lower than earth orbit altitudes.

Another factor is atmosphere density. Mars is real low making almost an irrelative wind drag. Model the cost by inverting the reentry heat. If you have to ablative reduce incoming capsule energy by huge plasma drag, that can be thought of as the amount of cost reduction of Mars ascents relative to Earth ascents. Well maybe I am not sure!

A Mars ascent energy is equal to the free fall energy of the craft dropped stationary at orbit altitude. This equation is allowed on Mars. I think.

That is a ???

I am not sure just a concept here.

I believe there is a formal barrier here to lander design success. Having to use aa Falcon9 to return to orbit appears necessary. This means maybe auto landing a Falcon9 and ev'ing to it to ascend. The lander would be used also ass a one-way system. Maybe formalize the ascent orbiter to be a cargo return only craft. In general consider the down landing to be emergency able to use the ascent orbiter to land with also.

That Falcon9 is a huge cost!

It really means a program re-think. Consider the first step as automatic landing Falcon9's. Start to send human return orbiters first. I feel confident that independent Mars Landers is the way to go. With a nearby Falcon9. The cargo hold issue is important to maintain. Just land the Falcon9 with no cargo demanded.

A real rocket advance needs funding. The contest system is needed.

Landing Mars space shuttles is an example of any alleyway concept. The Lander system using rare gas to glide in. Using little fuel for Falcon9 or Lander both given wings.

The UPHILL is treacherous.

We need better fuel I guess.

Somebody I believe proposed using high explosive pellets to be fuel.

the use of high explosives is limited by the strength of the pressure chamber of the engine. SO target for 10 times the strength of titanium. But where?

Massive carbonfiber engine cases?

So much for some rambling. fuel is a barrier still.

Somekind of exotic high explosive self implosion. HE sheets are used as a plane detonation to weld steel sheet to sheet. So make two sheets of HE on opposite sides of the center material. The focus is an imploding sheet. No encasement pressure chamber is used. Implode to self destruction and eject the center material as gas. No massive walls would be required.

etc concepts

Here is a contest example.."Ascent Orbiter Engine"

by Douglas Eagleson inventor Public Disclosure.
217 East Deer Park Dr.
Gaithersburg MD




Use the Apollo Lander already discussed. How to fuel the ascent?

Make a Hybrid engine. Hydrazine/Magnetohydrodynamic(MHD) . Put an MHD coil around the engine exhaust.

Put a high voltage high current power plant in the correct location of the launching range. 1.

Lay out wiring from plant on the ground. 2 miles backrange and 2 mile return to plug cable into ascent orbiter. Have the orbiter "wire guide" aa powerliine.

This high voltage will cause efficient carriage resistance.

Power the MHD booster until the 4 miles altitude is released at.

A critical state allows fuel carriage for the rest of the ascent.

Longer power line are possible. A lifting balloon could be employed to place wire "pre-lifted"

This invention is stated.

On 18/02/2016 10:23 AM, wrote:

I tried to figure the basic parameters. My first fallacy was to
require the Earth/Moon/Mars landing craft capacity. The Moon and
rare atmosphere Mars need identical rocket descent.

The atmosphere of Mars is thin, true enough, but it can still provide a
useful deceleration, and parachutes are still effective. I'd be
surprised if a manned lander wasn't designed around that, making it
substantially different from a lunar lander.

Sylvia.

"Sylvia Else" wrote in message ...

On 18/02/2016 10:23 AM, wrote:

I tried to figure the basic parameters. My first fallacy was to
require the Earth/Moon/Mars landing craft capacity. The Moon and
rare atmosphere Mars need identical rocket descent.

The atmosphere of Mars is thin, true enough, but it can still provide a
useful deceleration, and parachutes are still effective. I'd be surprised
if a manned lander wasn't designed around that, making it substantially
different from a lunar lander.

Sylvia.

You may want to check out the most recent Air & Space magazine. It's not
quite that easy.

And especially for larger, more massive craft.

It's one reason they used the "sky crane" for Curiosity.
--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

wrote in message
...

I was thinking about actual design of the hardware. The inflatable hull
has a debris limit in earth orbit. Old spacecraft pieces cloud the orbits.
These pieces will in general not challenge the steel hulls. This is
because of the rather low relative velocities.

Actually current designs suggest inflatables are MORE resistant to debris
issues.


On a path to Mars the issue is ultra high speed impacts. It just may be
that if the event causes a inflatable hull breech it would also cause a
steel hull breech. Negating the advantage of steel over fabric hull
selection. A hybrid use is allowed therefor.

Since there's no such advantage, this doesn't make much sense. And it's most
likely easier to scale up the thickness of an inflatable than it is to make
a metal (most likely aluminum, not steel) hull stronger.


SO I submit the large revolving classical artificial gravity section made
of fabric. This is in addition to the smaller steel portions. Use brute
force design and place sensors over the hull to detect holes. A sensor
every square four inches. The issue is how to then gain access to place a
patch.

Or, go with the acoustic detection that can hear the ultrasonic (and sonic)
whistles caused by a hull breach.


This simply means use something like army cots to sleep on. Everything on
the walk way is to be hand moveable for effortless patching. Make it a
rather garden like gravity park.

An inflatable already will most likely have its main hardware in the center
core. That said, making stuff detachable from the wall is not hard.

Your hole size will determine things too. If it's small enough, you may
simply allow it to vent until you can space walk and patch it from the
outside.
If it's large enough that this isn't practical, you may be losing so much
air anyway, that your simply have to depressurize that module and plan for a
later IVA.


The center has ladders to climb up into at instrumentation overhead.

If you're rotating, the center will be at Zero G. Simply float.


In general a station in the steel command module is to be manned 24 hours a
earth day.

Why?


A nuclear battery system of several 10's of kilowatts is a good target
power source value.

"nuclear battery" What exact is that? And why not go solar, we know it
works. (not to say an actual nuclear reactor doesn't have its own
advantages, but it also has some huge disadvantages, including the weight of
the paperwork that needs to be completed simply to launch it.)


SO the basic parameters are not challenging for the transit spacecraft.
And the hard part is the lander.

Actually they are, because ever kg you have in your transit craft is going
to cost money. You want to make it count. You also need to make it reliable.
You WILL have failures over a multi-year mission, so redundancy will be
important. We learned this on Apollo 13.

In some ways, your transit craft is probably the hardest part since it's the
one part that absolutely has to work.


The moon mission plans also require landers. A common design would help
hugely.

No, a common design is going to unnecessarily complicate things. For
example, for Earth landing, you're going to use some form of aerobraking.
This won't work on the Moon at all. You have to be purely rocket powered.
Mars is in some ways more complex, you can't use just aerobraking and
parachutes and you don't want to use just rockets.

So, optimize for each.

A basic lander? Earth, moon, Mars capable. In general there are two
modalities of landing. One for the couple of astronauts and one for
cargo. Moving humans is a fairly small endeavor. While cargo includes
takeoff craft.


Moving humans is the much harder endeavor. They're much more sensitive to g
forces, temperatures and other environmental conditions.

The lander for the astronauts can be two way. While cargo can be also.
What modality is required?

Land cargo always. This is why passenger aircraft carry cargo. It is free.

Taking of with no cargo? This is nontrivial system theory. The cargo to
return to earth needs to be clarified and used in the lander design. It is
a critical value. Shuffling cargo in the human craft with out occupants is
free once more. Auto control human/cargo dual design.


I can't even make sense of what you're saying here.

I would submitted that the size of several astronauts should suffice for
all return to earth cargo.

The question becomes travel and land and return or travel and occupy a Mars
base module for a while. Here is where the fabric colony shines.

All in all design the cargo capacity of the lander plus astronauts as
capable of self carriage of a real Mars fabric module. Carry one-way.
Simple space in lander is required for the module. But it never returns.

The system concepts lead I hope to a design. Space is cheap in a lander.
Low density cargo weighs small with large volume.

I hope the concepts make some sense. Just use the cargo density as a
critical concept.

No, this makes no sense.
--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net