Burt Rutans plans for a manned mission to Mars

(Eric Chomko) wrote:

:Hop David ) wrote:
:: Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
:
:: Premise: Launch costs have dropped to $250/kg.
::
:: Proposition: Said drop in launch costs will lead to small companies
:: and even college researchers sending folks to orbit to do things like
:: the typical 'graduate student' work tending experiments that currently
:: occurs here on Earth.
::
:: Premise stemming from Proposition: There is someplace for those
:: people to go in orbit with their business, experiments, etc.
::
:: Discuss among yourself, El Chimpo.
::
:
:: Quick review (again) of context:
:: -----
:: Alain Fournier: $250/kg isn't low enough for Joe MiddleClass to take
:: vacations in space, but it is low enough for a small company to send
:: someone to do an experiment. It is also low enough for a researcher to
:: apply for a government research grant to send his grad student do an
:: experiment. So you don't get millions of people going to space every
:: year but you do get thousands of people.
:: -----
:: Fred McCall: No, it's not really low enough for those uses, either.
:: ... Either have someone already up there do it for you or else spend
:: another $5k to make it automatic so it 'does itself' and sends you the
:: results.
:: -----
:: Rand Simberg: How do you know it's only "another $5K" to do, with any
:: assurance as to reliability of such automation, when you know nothing of
:: the nature of the experiment?
:: -----
:: Eric Chomko: McClod, you DO realize that electronics in space must be
:: radiation hardended in order to work, right? That that 486 on the HST is
:: the same one that you used in your PC 10+ years functionally but totally
:: different physically due to the environmental differences on earth
:: compared to being in space. You knew that, right?
:: -----
:: Fred McCall: You're wrong (by the way).
:: -----
:: Eric Chomko: Oh, how so?
:: -----
:: Fred MCall: Because they routinely fly COTS laptop computers.
:: -----
:: Eric Chomko: On the shuttle, which is radiation protected. You are
:: arguing for and against manned and unmanned spaceflight to the point of
:: having no point!
:: If you want unmanned spaceflight so as to not have to send up a grad
:: student, then stop claiming that laptops are of any use!
:: -----
:: Fred McCall: I am neither arguing for or against
:: manned or unmanned spaceflight. I'm merely arguing that for most
:: experiments (excepting biosciences experiments which typically require
:: care and feeding) it will make more economic sense to automate the
:: experiment than it will to send a grad student up to watch it, even if
:: prices for launch services drop as low as $250/kg.
:: Nobody said there were no people out there. The assumption I made was
:: that the experiment was going to SOME facility (otherwise it makes no
:: sense to even discuss whether sending a grad student along makes sense
:: or not).
:: ======
:
:: A caveat has crept into McCall's argument: He's excluding bioscience
:: experiments. Fournier didn't specify the nature of experiments. Perhaps
:: biosciences alone might create the market Alain suggested was possible.
:
:: Also his automated equipment is now on a facility (I guess a place with
:: air, some people and low radiation). How many experiments can be sent up
:: to this facility without sending additional personnel to keep an eye on
:: these automated experiments?
:
:Good question. Fred, is backpeddling about having ANYONE overseeing his
:experiments because when I mention ISS (the only place now where people are in
:space), he claims that ISS isn't needed. Therefore, unmanned experiments by
:default, that he believes will work without radiation protection (something he
:hasn't proven).

Jesus, even when he goes back and finds the thread El Chimpo
apparently is unable to follow it!

Go read the paragraph you quoted from Alain Fournier again, dumbass.
Is ISS big enough for that sort of thing? NO!

Hence nobody is talking about ISS but you.

But then, given your personality and intellect I suspect you spend a
lot of time talking to yourself while everyone around you ignores
you....

--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Fred J. McCall wrote:

(Eric Chomko) wrote:

:Hop David ) wrote:

:: Quick review (again) of context:
:: -----
:: Alain Fournier: $250/kg isn't low enough for Joe MiddleClass to take
:: vacations in space, but it is low enough for a small company to send
:: someone to do an experiment. It is also low enough for a researcher to
:: apply for a government research grant to send his grad student do an
:: experiment. So you don't get millions of people going to space every
:: year but you do get thousands of people.
(snip much of thread recap)
:
:: A caveat has crept into McCall's argument: He's excluding bioscience
:: experiments. Fournier didn't specify the nature of experiments. Perhaps
:: biosciences alone might create the market Alain suggested was possible.
:
:: Also his automated equipment is now on a facility (I guess a place with
:: air, some people and low radiation). How many experiments can be sent up
:: to this facility without sending additional personnel to keep an eye on
:: these automated experiments?
:
:Good question. Fred, is backpeddling about having ANYONE overseeing his
:experiments because when I mention ISS (the only place now where people are in
:space), he claims that ISS isn't needed. Therefore, unmanned experiments by
:default, that he believes will work without radiation protection (something he
:hasn't proven).

Go read the paragraph you quoted from Alain Fournier again, dumbass.
Is ISS big enough for that sort of thing? NO!

The COTS are evidently in an atmosphere and low radiation environment.
If not in the ISS, then in facilities like the ISS. Perhaps McCall
believes it'd be cheaper to establish ISS like environments sans humans
and populated by COTS.

And again, what about the bioscience caveat (see 2nd unsnipped paragraph
above).


But then, given your personality and intellect I suspect you spend a
lot of time talking to yourself while everyone around you ignores
you....


Not everyone.

On Fri, 26 May 2006 17:39:40 -0700, in a place far, far away, Hop
David made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such
a way as to indicate that:

Fred J. McCall wrote:

(Eric Chomko) wrote:

snipped

But then, given your personality and intellect I suspect you spend a
lot of time talking to yourself while everyone around you ignores
you....


Not everyone.

Well, even I don't ignore him (in the limited sense that he's not in
my killfile). But I doubt that very many respect his opinion
on...anything.

Ever try to draw blood (for example) using waldos?

I think you're going to see 'live operators' present for most
biosciences work.

It might surprise everyone to learn that telepresent surgery has in
fact been performed. The motivation is not so much to replace humans as
to provide an extremly high precision cut for keyhole surgery etc.

In fact you can look at this in many ways in the same light as an
ultrastable telescope or gravitational wave detector. Astronauts cannot
man ultra stable platforms.

I have a better idea for an experiment. Let's each start with a fixed
number of dollars. You use NASA launch costs and facilities and rad
hard parts and all and I'll get to assume launch costs of $250/kg and
can use COTS.

Let's see who gets the most done.

Hang on a bit. At $250/Kg isn't lead the simple answer? Just put COTS
into a ball and surround it with 5cm or so.

wrote:

:I have a better idea for an experiment. Let's each start with a fixed
:number of dollars. You use NASA launch costs and facilities and rad
:hard parts and all and I'll get to assume launch costs of $250/kg and
:can use COTS.
:
:Let's see who gets the most done.
:
:Hang on a bit. At $250/Kg isn't lead the simple answer? Just put COTS
:into a ball and surround it with 5cm or so.

Certainly one approach. As launch prices drop shielding gets
relatively cheap.

--
"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

Unfortunately tethers and similar radical solutions require technology
that may or may not be feasible, and an investment much larger than
anything the world has so far put into spaceflight. NASA was stung by
the failure of the tethered satellite project; even a simple tether so
small that could be carried on a reel in the payload pay was subject to
electrical and mechanical problems that had not been apparent in the
design. Solutions that look simple on paper can be a lot more expensive
in real hardware.

The cost of the energy required to get into orbit even with a rocket is
not particularly large. Even with the Shuttle the cost of the fuel is
only a tiny fraction of the launch cost. Most of the cost is in
replacing or maintaining the hardware. Unless we can master these
problems and build a viable space infrastructure, there will not be the
resources to investigate more challanging solutions like tethers.

On 28 May 2006 05:01:57 -0700, wrote:

Unfortunately tethers and similar radical solutions require technology
that may or may not be feasible, and an investment much larger than
anything the world has so far put into spaceflight.

With modern materials, a rotating tether could mass no more than the
ISS.

NASA was stung by
the failure of the tethered satellite project; even a simple tether so
small that could be carried on a reel in the payload pay was subject to
electrical and mechanical problems that had not been apparent in the
design. Solutions that look simple on paper can be a lot more expensive
in real hardware.

The problem is not that the experiment failed, but that NASA then gave
up.

The cost of the energy required to get into orbit even with a rocket is
not particularly large. Even with the Shuttle the cost of the fuel is
only a tiny fraction of the launch cost. Most of the cost is in
replacing or maintaining the hardware. Unless we can master these
problems and build a viable space infrastructure, there will not be the
resources to investigate more challanging solutions like tethers.

A big problem has been that investment for the future is such a low
priority because it doesn't pay off in the current election cycle.
Imagine if all the money spent on Apollo (or wasted on Shuttle) was
just invested in a broad-based US stock or real estate fund. There'd
be enough money in it to do anything, by now.

-- Roy L

wrote:
A big problem has been that investment for the future is such a low
priority because it doesn't pay off in the current election cycle.
Imagine if all the money spent on Apollo (or wasted on Shuttle) was
just invested in a broad-based US stock or real estate fund. There'd
be enough money in it to do anything, by now.

And what would the pricetag be for all infrastructure, R&D, training,
etc. ? Anything would mean very little in the absence of know-how.
Remember the $400 B Mars exploration plan NASA cooked for Bush Sr.? It
(supposedly) benefitted from 30+ years of experience. So you'd have
half a trillion in the bank, that don't impress me much!
Ah, almost forgot: pork-barrel + welfare + infrastructure "crumbling".