Musk plans for mars

One of the spacecraft videos shows a ship pulling up to a spinning space station so he may be thinking the cycler concept proposed by Aldrin a few years back. Aldrin was a big promoter of a reusable first stage with upper stages later all throughout the shuttle era.

A cycler is an independent colony that has a two year orbit and uses gravity assist during fly by to adjust orbit to maintain contact between earth and mars. That way you have living space on board and bring minimal supplies used on trip.

This is alternative to suspended animation and is the first class where stasis is economy class.

Early adopters who are looking for adventure are different than settlers who want to build something.

Early adopters will likely be styled as survey teams to identify and name and claim key features (within the confines of the law) This will be a motivator for them. Claim the best property and sell it on for profit and retire as the most interesting person you know. Lol.

This will last three synodic cycles from 2020 through 2027 assuming the first manned mission 2020.

This will start with a minimum of three ships of 100 each and will scale from there.

With three launches per day and a loiter time on orbit of up to 100 days (launching closer to synodic window costs more) up to 300 ships with 60,000 people paying up to $5,000,000 each fill this type mission.

You basically launch 3 ships directly to mars on the day of ideal alignment.. If more come than you can handle that day you lower price and offer launch to orbit and wait for departure from orbit. This works for as many as you need.

Survey teams are assigned areas that are opened to development in three different regions of the planet to survey and develop. 600 people in 3 ships cover 9 regions with 200 persons per region. 60,000 people cover 900 regions

We are looking for 1400 city sites and placing 1400 self replicating machine swarms at the 1409 most interesting and viable sites.

Later arrivals will have more modest goals. To build a life free of the constraints and costs of life on earth. They will acquire a small compound an alloidal estate replete with self replicating utility fog providing support in combination with planetary self issued credit.

The $200,000 and up buys transport and this infrastructure. Settlers also typically have skills and buy into a business. $200,000 deposited in Musks Mars Bank acts as hot money in the bank. It's an asset that if it were leveraged as much as the US federal reserve would support $15 million in loan activity. There is no need for that degree of leverage for this population facing this world.

JF Mezei wrote:


How realistic is it to build a ship with 100 or as Musk really wants 200
people enclosed for ~3-4 months, and expect these people to be
functional after being lethargic in 0-g all that time ?


Why would they be 'lethargic'? They wouldn't even be particularly
sedentary.


Also, when they land, since there won't be a JFK airport with airtight
jetways to welcome the people, won't they each need to have their own
suit (perhaps a requirement to live on mars anyways) and that would take
up a lot of space as cargo.


Not so much space. And volume is easy. Also keep in mind that you
don't need the sort of 'hard suit' that you're probably thinking of,
since there is at least some atmospheric pressure on Mars.

And why would everyone need their own pressure suit, anyway? You
could unload the passengers in groups and not everyone is going to
have jobs that require them to go outside pressurized habitat.

Hey, it's a great opportunity. Someone could open "Mookie's Mars-suit
Rentals" and make a fortune!


The logistics of unloading the ship would be interesting.


Probably no more so than unloading any other large transport vehicle.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

bob haller wrote:

On Saturday, October 1, 2016 at 5:33:54 PM UTC-4, JF Mezei wrote:
How realistic is it to build a ship with 100 or as Musk really wants 200
people enclosed for ~3-4 months, and expect these people to be
functional after being lethargic in 0-g all that time ?

Also, when they land, since there won't be a JFK airport with airtight
jetways to welcome the people, won't they each need to have their own
suit (perhaps a requirement to live on mars anyways) and that would take
up a lot of space as cargo.

The logistics of unloading the ship would be interesting.


just send lots of cargo ships, with redundant everything. so some failures can be tolerated


And this is probably the solution. Musk has said that he expects to
launch around 10 cargo ships to support a shipload of inhabitants.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

bob haller wrote:

at some point a nuke booster for travel from earth orbit to mars will be necessary..


Why? Musk seems to think he can cut the trip down to 2-3 months with
conventional rockets.


to shorten travel time, and lessen supplies for the manned portion of flights.

a realtively small but very fast booster would be nice to have available for emergencies.

hey the water recycler is totally kaput, get earth to sen a replacement immediately!


Hey, if you're stupid enough to have only a single copy of some
critical piece of equipment with no repair parts, you probably deserve
to die.


--
"Then tomorrow we may all be dead. But how is that different
from every other day?"
-- Morpheus

JF Mezei wrote:

On 2016-10-01 20:29, Alain Fournier wrote:

It isn't easier for a person to be functional after ~3-4 months enclosed
with 5 others to be functional than for the same person to be functional
after the trip with 100 others.


Think space for the "gym". You're not going to be able to keep 100
people fit with just one threadmill and one stationary bike. And you
can't say 24 persons can use the threamill 1 hour each day, so you only
need 4 threadmills because people don't want to exercise just before
they go to bed (otherwise you won't sleep). And since mechanical
exercise devices break down, you also need to have extra machines for
when one breks down until it is repaired.

100 people exercising every day also produces much more CO2, and
increases water requirements (which also increases need for water
reclamation capacity from sweat that has evaporated into cabin air).


These ships are BIG. Space shouldn't be a problem and you need all
that stuff anyway.


So unless you do like in Avatar and put everyone into a tube where they
fall asleep for months (and none of their body functions/muscles
weaken), then you are likely to need for more space and ECLSS capacity
than for a short suborbital trip from new York to Sdyney with 100 pax.


Well, of course, Captain Obvious. Nobody is talking about people
spending 100 days sitting in an airline seat here. And nobody but
Mook thinks 'hibernation' is a viable approach.


The other aspect: once you start to add enough gear to support 100
people for months including the gym, toilets etc, do you really want to
bring all that down to mars and then back up ? Might make sense to have
a lot fo the stuff put in orbit at Mars so you don't have to brakme it
down and accelerate it back up (depending on its mass).


But now you've got the problem of connecting all that stuff with a
little narrow airlock/docking tunnel. You can build more robustly if
you make it all one piece.



It's not as if you have to unload the ship in 15 minutes. I don't see
a problem here.


How big/bulky would the spacesuits need to be for each passenger?


Why does each passenger need one?


Shuttle EVA? Sokol?n (not just for the trip, but also to live on Mars.
You,.ll need one to go out to walk the dog every day :-)


A soft suit like those that were worn by SR-71 pilots should be
sufficient. You don't need a pressure suit unless your job involves
going outside. Habitat and vehicles would probably be pressurized.


And how much autonomy would a suit have to have at time of landing?
(what if it lands off target, 2 hours walking distance from base, and
suits only have 1 hour autonomy ?)


If you're landing 2 miles off target you've got bigger problems than
not enough air. That would mean you can't reliably put down a colony
at all, since your cargo and settlers would be scattered all over.

If you're worried about 'one off' errors, in that case they just stay
with the ship until someone sends a bus for them.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

William Mook wrote:

On Sunday, October 2, 2016 at 10:33:54 AM UTC+13, JF Mezei wrote:
How realistic is it to build a ship with 100 or as Musk really wants 200
people enclosed for ~3-4 months, and expect these people to be
functional after being lethargic in 0-g all that time ?

Suspended animation solves this problem. So does virtual reality with a suit that has motorised movement.


As does magic pixie dust.

Mook lab fantasies elided


--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine

William Mook wrote:


Suspended animation ...


Which we don't have.


... allows launching people on a regular basis in drones, ...


Why 'drones'? It's ORBIT.


... that remain in earth orbit with zero boil off cryogenics,


Which we don't have.


... until the synodic period alignment, and they are all blasted to Mars around the same time.


Mook, you always want to complicate the **** out of everything.

snip MookSpew of complications


--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine

William Mook wrote:

On Sunday, October 2, 2016 at 11:54:14 AM UTC+13, bob haller wrote:
at some point a nuke booster for travel from earth orbit to mars will be necessary..

to shorten travel time, and lessen supplies for the manned portion of flights.

a realtively small but very fast booster would be nice to have available for emergencies.

hey the water recycler is totally kaput, get earth to sen a replacement immediately!

of course sending one manned vehicle to mars with 2 backups flying close by will also help

Suspended animation, ...


Which we don't have.


... improved virtual reality, ...


Which is unnecessary.


in combination with a long-duration second skin type spacesuit, ...


Gods, he FINALLY suggested something that we might actually be able to
put into production in a few years.


... can do much to achieve very efficient travel along hohman transfer orbits from Earth to Mars and back.


snip remaining Mookie fantasies


--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine

On Monday, October 3, 2016 at 7:20:49 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:


Suspended animation ...


Which we don't have.

Yes we do, and it will be adequate to this task by 2022 when we start sending large numbers of people off world at low cost.



... allows launching people on a regular basis in drones, ...


Why 'drones'? It's ORBIT.

A drone is an unmanned aircraft or ship (including spaceship) that can navigate autonomously, without human control. Putting people in suspended animation aboard a drone ship that can last for years in space, powered by the sun, is the absolute lowest cost way to send people off world.

So, it will be done, and soon, after we start doing that.


... that remain in earth orbit with zero boil off cryogenics,


Which we don't have.

Yes we do

Here's a 2002 paper

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...0020017748.pdf

Here's a 2010 paper

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...0110004377.pdf

The reason SpaceX likes LOX/LNG is that both have demonstrated zero boil off technology and you can make LOX/LNG from resources found on Mars (sunlight, carbon dioxide, water)

D. Frank, E. Roth, J. Olson, B. Evtimov, and T. Nast
Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center Palo Alto, CA

B. Sompayrac and L.D. Clark
Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center Denver, CO

Achieved ZBO for both LOX and LNG in a 635 litre tank using a 15 Watt pulse tube cryocooler massing 8 kg in 2007. Considerable advances have been made since that time.


... until the synodic period alignment, and they are all blasted to Mars around the same time.


Mook, you always want to complicate the **** out of everything.

Obviously you don't know how Hohman transfer orbits work do you?

If you wish to reduce costs to a minimum you must maximise your payload for a given lift capacity. To do that you've got to minimise the speed you must reach to travel to Mars. To do that you've got to leave at the right time. The lowest energy launch window to Mars occurs once every 2.1 years. If you are limited in your launch capacity to three times a day, and you need to launch say thirty payloads to Mars at the time of the launch window, the best way to do that is to launch payloads into a parking orbit before they move on to Mars.


snip MookSpew of complications

You don't really understand astrodynamics do you? Things like planetary motion and delta vee, they're just complications to you aren't they? lol.

They're not complications - they're necessary steps to successful interplanetary navigation.

http://fgg-web.fgg.uni-lj.si/~/mkuha...White-1971.pdf

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronaut...lecture-notes/

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronaut...ics-fall-2008/



--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine