I Moon vs Earth for launch to Mars

[sophiecentaur]

1.25s lag is not significant for remote operation.

I would assume that any robot prospecting / mining equipment would be pretty well autonomous and would not need to be micromanaged. A 1.25s delay would be of no more consequence than if the managers on Earth were telling the staff at the coal face what to do.
I am very impressed by what Curiosity has done, despite the long delay in the loop. Reliability has been pretty stunning and that is a really essential requirement for anything that has to operate away from Earth. In an environment where there are no life forms to speak of, the problem of bugs getting into the system and causing unforeseen problems. No much fun to live in but benign for a robot.

 

[russ_watters]

They succeeded (wildly) as a launch provider.

This would depend on one's definition of "success". As a launch provider company, mine would require them to be profitable over a long-term so they don't go out of business 10 years from now. They are not publicly traded yet but best I can tell, they are not profitable. What is definition/criteria that leads to "wildly successful" as a result?

Cost of launch was the largest obstacle for all of humanity's space efforts, Moon/Mars programs included. SpaceX dramatically lowered that. Now, even if SpaceX magically disappears right this day, it would not matter: now we _know_ how to make launch much cheaper.

I don't think I've ever seen a cost analysis, so where did you get that from? E.G., what is the cost per pound to LEO vs, say, a Titan IV -- keeping in mind that if the company isn't profitable, the price is for some reason being kept impossibly low and my have to rise.

What are you talking about? With his prices and accelerating launch rate, Musk is already killing Proton and ULA. Arianespace is next to the chopping block. What "crash and burn"?

Those are all start-ups. Many if not most start-ups "crash and burn", so you appear to be setting the bar of "wildly successful" right on top of the bar for "crash and burn". To me, if you want to judge SpaceX as "wildly successful", you should be comparing them to Lockheed.

 

[russ_watters]

For industry, vacuum is beneficial - no convective heat loss(more problems with cooling but Mr.Stirling may help in more than 1 way)...

This is badly backwards. For the vast majority of machines and other electrical devices we use, convective heat loss is not a problem; it is a requirement to keep them functional. Cooling equipment on the moon will be a massive problem. A quick calc tells me that 1MW of heat dissipation (a small manufacturing plant) at 50C requires a 45x45 meter radiator -- which will only function at night; 2 weeks a month. So, double that and add thermal energy storage.

A small piece of mobile equipment (a digging machine for example) with a 10 kW motor would require a 4.5x4.5 meter radiator - and again, could only function 2 weeks a month. Mobile, daytime operation would require "cold" tanks or some exotic form of cooling such as the ice sublimation system (needs water) that the astronauts used.

This type of problem is why building an entire industry on the moon is a monumental challenge, even without the extremely high cost of getting it there. An awful lot of engineering will need to be invented just to make it work, at very high cost.

 

[mfb]

This would depend on one's definition of "success". As a launch provider company, mine would require them to be profitable over a long-term so they don't go out of business 10 years from now. They are not publicly traded yet but best I can tell, they are not profitable. What is definition/criteria that leads to "wildly successful" as a result?

As far as I see, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences/Orbital ATK are the only launch providers worldwide with self-developed rockets with (a) no guaranteed government launches and (b) more than a couple of launches. I'm not sure if Orbital Sciences never had cost+ contracts from the US but let's give it the benefit of the doubt.
The 43 launches of Pegasus had a combined maximal payload of about a single Falcon 9 launch, and all Minotaur launches combined have about the same payload, and the 7 Antares launches together have the payload of 2 Falcon 9. In other words, Orbital ATK launches much smaller rockets. SpaceX is the only fully commercial company launching large rockets (with the largest existing rocket sitting on the launch pad at the moment). That alone is quite some success.

SpaceX makes money. The Motley Fool comes to that conclusion as well. Despite having the cheapest rocket in its size class. The first estimate is from June 2017, the second is based on launches until October and not including booster reuses. SpaceX now reused five, and out of the next five missions four will reuse a booster (one satellite is too heavy for that). Not reusing boosters is getting the exception, and you can use the reusability numbers from the first link for the costs per launch. That increases the profit a lot.

E.G., what is the cost per pound to LEO vs, say, a Titan IV

Titan IV: 21700 kg to LEO for $432 million (1999 dollars), or $630 million in 2017 dollars. $30,000/kg.
Falcon 9: ~16000 kg to LEO for $62 million (2017 dollars), or $3800/kg. Note that the payload is an estimate because you don't get the $62 million any more if the rocket has to fly expendable.

I don't know why you picked Titan IV, as it is a particularly expensive rocket. You can get an Atlas V lifting 15,000 kg to LEO for $130 million, or $8700/kg (if you take the very cheapest option everywhere), and Ariane 5 can lift 16,000 to 20,000 kg for $165 to $220 millions, roughly $10,000/kg. Both ULA and Arianespace have guaranteed launch contracts from the US and the EU, respectively, unlike SpaceX they only have to pay for the rocket and launch itself with these prices.

What are you talking about? With his prices and accelerating launch rate, Musk is already killing Proton and ULA. Arianespace is next to the chopping block. What "crash and burn"?

Those are all start-ups. Many if not most start-ups "crash and burn", so you appear to be setting the bar of "wildly successful" right on top of the bar for "crash and burn". To me, if you want to judge SpaceX as "wildly successful", you should be comparing them to Lockheed.

Proton, ULA and Arianespace are not start-ups. Proton is not even a company.
Lockheed (now launching via ULA) is officially a company, but the financing looks like a government project. They get a lot of money every year even without any launches just to keep existing, and have additional "cost+" contracts: "Whatever you have to spend for the rocket, we pay it, and then give you x% extra". That is not what you would expect from a company.

 

[Ilythiiri]

Erm, I wouldn't go that far.
It is very hard to control things consistently without collisions etc. with that degree of lag.

I would assume that any robot prospecting / mining equipment would be pretty well autonomous and would not need to be micromanaged.

I rather had in mind teleoperated repairs of machinery and navigation path/task forming(like current military drone operators), not micromanagement.
I imagine moon dust(+statics) will be in a category of "aggresive sandpaper environment" rather than "nuisance", for moving parts/joints.

This is badly backwards. For the vast majority of machines and other electrical devices we use, convective heat loss is not a problem; it is a requirement to keep them functional. Cooling equipment on the moon will be a massive problem. A quick calc tells me that 1MW of heat dissipation (a small manufacturing plant) at 50C requires a 45x45 meter radiator -- which will only function at night; 2 weeks a month. So, double that and add thermal energy storage.

I work in a chemical industry, so it was rather industrial process angle - 50cm of insulation for chemical reactor with quite a surface area. Same with (s)melter.
Orbital processing facility would be superior to Moon one - you wouldn't actually need tankage/high temperature materials. Structural required only for inertia, not weight. Heating raw material into a blob held together by surface tension and some magnetic fields, and heat loss limited to radiative cooling by vacuum and volume/surface ratio.
Some angular moment(maybe applied during heating by precision targeting of solar mirrors) and you have a melt pie or bar for easier processing/cooling.

Disposing of waste heat - yes it's a big problem, when you can't have evaporative cooling tower with free convection (:
Waste heat accumulation in nearby regolith is not a trivial problem either. Same with industrial vacuum contamination.
But your 45x45 meter radiator(i assume) is passive and flat(also scaling up = more engineering challenges).
"which will only function at night" - print an umbrella, pick coating and angles, then it's "reduced efficiency during day".
Heat pumps will require power but will be smaller/ligher.
Making fractal surface radiator might be easier, if manufacturing is not machining but vapour deposition.
Heat pump is a Stirling engine backwards, in functionality but not in design - it can be engineered as dual purpose lego module.
If heat transfer is mostly conductive - you can guide heat like electricity(wires not pipes).

I have read about sealed Stirling engine, using ultrapure water both as medium and lubricant. But i can't find any reference to it now so might be fake.

As timescale is a 'known unknown', I would have expected it to be discussed.

Timescale, i consider to be not within the scope of this discussion, so i adressed it in a roundabout way.
Again - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615?via=ihub

I take gold member question as a permission to speculate about it:
Building up mountains of know-how, making those shoulders of giants to stand on.
In a nutshell - no director board will approve of investments of this timescale, gaming economical/political/financial system is currently uncomparably more profitable and reliable.
Board of directors - because corporations are bigger and more aggresive than national governments, money/influence wise. For ex. United States are not rich, US banking and war corporations are.
Changing current political\economical system gradually is not realistic, entropy is undoing changes faster than they happen and accelerating.
Economics/manufacturing is global now, so replacing parts is not viable - pull one string and ripples spread everywhere, to an extent and delay.
And radical change will involve transitionary period - no old system already and no new system yet.
This means crash and burn, and new society will be shaped not by will but by ruins of old system.
So, as of now - never? Sorry for offtopic.IMO, purified question of OP would sound:
"Elon, what the hell? Why Mars, why are you skipping steps?" :)

 

[sophiecentaur]

Timescale, i consider to be not within the scope of this discussion, so i adressed it in a roundabout way.

I think timescale is extremely relevant to any such discussion. The word 'investment' appears everywhere when non-governmental projects are involved. Investors always want a return on their investment and time is as big a factor as how much they invest.
Whenever space travel is discussed, the enthusiasts have a habit of moving goalposts in order to justify opinions. They switch from specific details to generalities, as it suits. When pushed, the response is to allow extra time. That's fine (or at least more reasonable) for governments with deep pockets and long term (relatively) plans but a private company can easily fold or withdraw interest and a project can sink without trace (along with minor investors' money). History often repeats itself.
Energy is a huge factor and we do not have fusion yet. When it does arrive, we could make some real progress but . . . .timescale?

 

[nikkkom]

Proton is not even a company.

ILS is a launch company, though, currently launching exclusively Protons.
2012: 8 launches
2013: 7 launches
2014: 3 launches
2015: 4
2016: 2
2017: 3

Aug 4, 2014, Forbes. "International Launch Services Reduces Staff By 25%"

 

[mfb]

ILS is a company, but it is not a startup either. They used an existing rocket, with existing resources and expertise of the companies that founded ILS.

 

[Ilythiiri]

I think timescale is extremely relevant to any such discussion. The word 'investment' appears everywhere when non-governmental projects are involved. Investors always want a return on their investment and time is as big a factor as how much they invest.
Whenever space travel is discussed, the enthusiasts have a habit of moving goalposts in order to justify opinions. They switch from specific details to generalities, as it suits. When pushed, the response is to allow extra time. That's fine (or at least more reasonable) for governments with deep pockets and long term (relatively) plans but a private company can easily fold or withdraw interest and a project can sink without trace (along with minor investors' money). History often repeats itself.
Energy is a huge factor and we do not have fusion yet. When it does arrive, we could make some real progress but . . . .timescale?

Compact fusion would be a game changer for many things :)
But as of now - photovoltaics and generators=heat pumps.

Timescale meaning schedule?
Micro-scale test facility (some tanks, pipes, mirror array, wires, drives, valves, coils, magnets(bearings), electronics, sensors) - 2-3 tons is plenty. Solar farms, cooler farms, cryo heat pump, drones, vacuum 3D print, ion thrust.
All of techologies required have multiple papers published + lot of know-how from sattelite industry and IS.
It's a project - it was said and implications discussed in many previous posts.
Tasks for installing test industrial facility in Moon is as for any project(actually multiple ones in parallel) - management, patent/HR dance, engineering, construction, logistics.
It's all heavily related to budget. Also, money has smell in this case - govt funding vs billionaire will would result in different bureaucracy and scheduling.
Motivated team with 10 billion in less than 15 years would be quite safe bet, judging on a number of latest NASA projects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_mission_timeline

For space drones and vacuum 3D printing, this one:
https://www.sciencealert.com/3d-print-space-craft-missions-made-in-space
"... next stage of the project is to test the combination of printers and robotic arms and fly a demonstration mission in Earth's orbit.
If we are lucky, we'll see the technology deployed into space by the mid 2020s."