Plan to colonize the moon and mars.

[spacester]

Here's the formula:
R = (9.81 * G) / [(pi * rpm) / 30]^2
Where
R is the radius in meters
G is the desired g-force (fraction of normal Earth gravity)
rpm is revolutions per minute

If you have a 38 meter spin radius and you spin at 3 rpm,
G = (R / 9.81) * [(pi * rpm) / 30]^2
G = (38 / 9.81) * [(pi * 3) / 30]^2 = 0.382 which is very close to the gravity on Mars.
If you increase the rotation to 4.2 rpm, you get 75% of Earth Normal and at 4.85 rpm you get full Earth Normal gravity. Well not all that "normal?, is it? :D

 

[Scia]

NICE!

My first test of a proposed space architecture is self-consistency, and the second test is consistency with real world technology. Your plan is not too shabby by those tests, not bad at all really.

But it looks like you've got a long ways to go for my third test (btw I've been doing this for years, these tests aren't something I'm just now making up). What is the first step?

To state the obvious, building a von braun station in LEO is certainly beyond our current capability. But is it beyond current technology? Meaning: Can we start designing the craft stem to stern right now, or are their 'enabling technologies' that need to be developed first?

Certainly one of these enabling techs, or "risks to be retired" is to conceive and develop and deploy hardware to do the assembling. Central to this solution will be the need for some kinds of vehicles to move things around and do manufacturing ops, IOW maneuverability, IOW delta V. This ability to get around and do things would presumably require conventional thrusters and engines, it's not like they would all have VASIMR drives.

Are you assuming we need to go with the current fleet of EELVs (including Falcon 9 and considering Falcon 9 Heavy) to get the mass up there? (I have an alternative for that in mind btw).

How would you arrange the BA-330 in a wheel? The problem is that you need a large radius to create a benign environment. The main point of posting my cruiser's image was to show the scale of the ship compared to the BA-330s themselves. It has a 100 meter spin radius, which at 3 rpm turns out to be very close to 1.0 gee. Neat trick of the math when you plug in 3 RPM: divide the spin radius in meters by 100 and you have the gee force equivalent at that radius.

3 rpm is not at all arbitrary. There is only a tiny amount of research on this subject, but in my judgment after reviewing it anything faster than 3 rpm is not going to provide the benign environment I seek.

So you could reduce the spin radius to 38 meters and get Mars-level spin gravity (0.38 g) at 3 rpm. Perhaps one mode of operation would be to spin up as required to get 1.0 g, and perhaps the Coriolis forces and other strangeness would be no big deal.

We won't know until we do it, actually. It might be bad news, and we have to have a big radius like mine, or maybe it turns out that as long as you've got *some* gravity, you're good to go for long term stays. It amazes me how few answers we have to this question, and I've been meaning to find out if Obama's NASA is pursuing anything along these lines. We need that research to inform our designs.

So how many BA-330s would you be looking at? You'll have to look up the numbers yourself, my craft's calcs are buried I know not where. Bigelow's site should have dimensions.

Oh, and how many crew on a Mars voyage are you looking at? I was thinking, using a swag, 7 people per BA-330.

Yes the sad thing is I had never taken a physics class in my life(i will next year+advanced trigonometry)

After i get the mathmatical and physics down i will work out the specifics of the plan

 

[Scia]

So anyone else have any opinions of my revised plan?

 

[Scia]

So any new ideas to improve the plan?

 

[sophiecentaur]

any good plan needs a timescale. We're talking in terms of at least une hundred years for this one. When you consider a really worthwhile project like Fusion, that's the order of magnitude involved and, until energy ceases to be a problem, the Dan Dare stuff will not be affordable. There are one or two other projects that could also be said to have priority.

 

[Scia]

any good plan needs a timescale. We're talking in terms of at least une hundred years for this one. When you consider a really worthwhile project like Fusion, that's the order of magnitude involved and, until energy ceases to be a problem, the Dan Dare stuff will not be affordable. There are one or two other projects that could also be said to have priority.

Well I don't know the timescale it depends on how much funding the project gets.

 

[Pattonias]

You could start by researching the process by which a group could receive funding for a project of this magnitude. Setting yourself up as a future subject matter expert could one day be very important.

 

[sophiecentaur]

A rough costing in units of GDP might be interesting, too.

(What a curmudgeon! LOL)

 

[Pattonias]

A rough costing in units of GDP might be interesting, too.

(What a curmudgeon! LOL)

Do you want him to summarize the percentage in terms of the entire project from start to finish which may span a hundred years, or do you want him to break it up into smaller steps that would make the cost accessible. Why not offer some real advice on the matter?

Theorize how he could accomplish this instead of telling him it is impossible. Do you really think that we will be confined to the planet for eternity due the impossibly high cost, or do you think that people like this guy will eventually get us there with steady vision and determined process?


http://www.virgingalactic.com/" isn't waiting around for anyones permission to push forward.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I actually, seriously doubt that space colonisation will be a reality within hundreds of years because there is so little in it for us compared with the cost. It may be one of the sexiest idea around but it is way at the back of a very long queue of justifiable "challenges".
The very name "Virgin Galactic" says it all. What is "galactic" about the project"? It's a Fun Project in which a few rich people will see a black sky, felt microgravity and feel that they've been 'in space'. Mr B has spotted an excellent and possibly achievable commercial venture - good luck to him. But that's all it is. The numbers count in engineering and space colonisation needs to satisfy cost-benefit analysis to get off the ground. To my mind it represents extremely bad value compared with feeding the existing population. We are a long long way, even from that.

 

[Pattonias]

Well, you devote yourself to the development of better agricultural tech, and those of us whose interests are different will devote our lives to those things we want to happen. What benefit is there in just repeating the same old mantra "it is too expensive, their are other things on which we can spend money." If we devoted the money, the resoruces available in space would more than make up for the investment. Yes, it will take probably the next hundred years to happen, but so what.
You said hundreds of years, look at the progress of tech over the last hundred, we are experiencing exponential development right now. Which lacking technology do you feel will hinder us for hundreds of years?

Look at the Virgin Galactic website on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic" . Virgin Glactic plans to use the launch vehicles to launch satellites as well. The tech isn't just to launch tourists in space, he intends to use the investment to advance other purposes as well. Just as we suggested here.

What purpose does all this nay-saying serve, are you working personally to feed the entire world and feel a lack of funding due to the space programs both public and private?

Why don't we start another thread discussing the cost effectivness of feeding everyone in the world and the percentage of the GDP required to do that? Surely, it is possible if we became a country dedicated to this cause. Why not devote your life to advances in this regard.

The purpose of threads like this is to look at what we want to do and then look at what we can do now to reach that goal.

Yes, if we decided that we wanted to mine asteroids at the end of the year; we would have to dedicate 40% (I made up this number) of the GDP to the cause and risk receiving little or no return.

Yes, it will take many years for the tech to develope at the current rate.

No, we should not force people to only discuss short-term goals because we don't feel like we will see the long term ones for many years.

No, we should not stop talking about the possibilities because the process of moving forward is a difficult one.

Now, if we want to be productive; we should help the OP learn what tech is lacking at the moment for him to see his dream come to fruition, and maybe he will be the one who makes a breakthrough in the field that allows his vision to become reality. (And he might just do it in his garage, thus saving you from having to worry about the GDP)

 

[Scia]

I actually, seriously doubt that space colonisation will be a reality within hundreds of years because there is so little in it for us compared with the cost. It may be one of the sexiest idea around but it is way at the back of a very long queue of justifiable "challenges". The very name "Virgin Galactic" says it all. What is "galactic" about the project"? It's a Fun Project in which a few rich people will see a black sky, felt microgravity and feel that they've been 'in space'. Mr B has spotted an excellent and possibly achievable commercial venture - good luck to him. But that's all it is. The numbers count in engineering and space colonisation needs to satisfy cost-benefit analysis to get off the ground. To my mind it represents extremely bad value compared with feeding the existing population. We are a long long way, even from that.

well that attitude never got us anywhere

 

[sophiecentaur]

Realism has got us a very long way, actually. If everyone was given resources for every 'challenge' they dreamed up there would be no resources for the less fanciful projects.
I know that there are many quotable examples of seemingly impossible dreams coming to fruition but, for every 'crazy scheme that has worked, there have be dozens of crazy schemes that were just that.
Of course the idea of zapping off to strange worlds and finding exciting things is very attractive (to me also) BUT there are certain actual quantities associated with the sort of space use that is proposed here which make it very, very tenuous. Why are people ignoring that on this thread ?

A Mars mission would be nice. Very informative and a real achievement if /when it happens. But that is not colonisation and it's not space tourism.

You will not find me 'po-pooing' medical research, LHC, fusion or any of the other big endeavours. It's just the Boys' Own, 1950s romantic thing that I can't take seriously. I sometimes think that people actually believe the Azimov trilogy is fact - right down to the Psychohistory thing. At least do some serious sums before you get too carried away with Space fiction.

 

[Pattonias]

Realism has got us a very long way, actually. If everyone was given resources for every 'challenge' they dreamed up there would be no resources for the less fanciful projects.
I know that there are many quotable examples of seemingly impossible dreams coming to fruition but, for every 'crazy scheme that has worked, there have be dozens of crazy schemes that were just that.
Of course the idea of zapping off to strange worlds and finding exciting things is very attractive (to me also) BUT there are certain actual quantities associated with the sort of space use that is proposed here which make it very, very tenuous. Why are people ignoring that on this thread ?

A Mars mission would be nice. Very informative and a real achievement if /when it happens. But that is not colonisation and it's not space tourism.

You will not find me 'po-pooing' medical research, LHC, fusion or any of the other big endeavours. It's just the Boys' Own, 1950s romantic thing that I can't take seriously. I sometimes think that people actually believe the Azimov trilogy is fact - right down to the Psychohistory thing. At least do some serious sums before you get too carried away with Space fiction.

How, in any way does his ultimate goal of colonizing detract from his interest in designing the system that would eventually lead to that goal. Since when on this forum are we supposed to shoot down people's questions because we personally don't think they are cost effective. Instead of telling him that it will never be cost effective, challenge him to find a way to make it cost effective. Explain how cost to benefit analysis works and guide him in a direction that could make it work in the long term.

I'll challenge you to quit shooting down every statement he makes with purely negative comments and try and actually teach him something about how large scale projects like this work.

You say that we are ignoring these things, but we aren't. We point them out and say here is a challenge that you need to be aware of. We don't sit here and simply say that it will never work or it isn't worth the trouble of trying.

If you can't at least take a more positive note in your comments, why don't you just take your opinions back to horizen level and let the inane dreaming carry on between us who will never understand how pointless this all is despite your best efforts.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I thought that the style of this forum was to be realistic - no anti G schemes or perpetual motion.
I very strongly feel that we are almost in those realms when talking of space colonisation.
I would be with you all the way if the thread were to be discussing ways of getting an unmanned craft somewhere with minimal energy / cost. That is a fascinating engineering problem. But colonising Mars such a different proposition. The whole idea would lead us to the starship enterprise - which is where colonisation would have to be taking us and, not surprisingly, we would have to include Warp drive to reach that stage.
Are you really doing Scia any favours by supporting the scheme?
Could we not take the feasible bits and develop them rather than encourage stuff which is so very tenuous? After all, we haven't actually established the point of doing it apart from 'because someone in the '50s proposed it'.

 

[Pattonias]

I thought that the style of this forum was to be realistic - no anti G schemes or perpetual motion.
I very strongly feel that we are almost in those realms when talking of space colonisation.
I would be with you all the way if the thread were to be discussing ways of getting an unmanned craft somewhere with minimal energy / cost. That is a fascinating engineering problem. But colonising Mars such a different proposition. The whole idea would lead us to the starship enterprise - which is where colonisation would have to be taking us and, not surprisingly, we would have to include Warp drive to reach that stage.
Are you really doing Scia any favours by supporting the scheme?
Could we not take the feasible bits and develop them rather than encourage stuff which is so very tenuous? After all, we haven't actually established the point of doing it apart from 'because someone in the '50s proposed it'.

Are you reading a different thread from the rest of us?
So far everything he proposed has either been theorized or proposed as actual solutions. He has said nothing to even hint at "anti G", "perpetual motion", "enterprise", or "Warp drive".
At what point does one take the anti-imagination stance in engineering?

 

[sophiecentaur]

I have thought a lot about this and I have now realized why I 'took against' the idea.
It was nothing to do with the engineering aspect at all. I don't think I have made any serious adverse comments about that, although there are several 50 year old ideas in the proposal. Von Braun and Clarke were giants in their time but the politics, economics and technologies are not the same now. The date in "2001 a space odyssey" shows how wrong one can be!
My problem was, essentially, with the social aspect of the ideas in the original model. The word "tourism" strongly suggests a privileged elite enjoying the benefits of their wealth. Yes, there is a certain amount of 'spreading around' of that wealth in the tourist locations and there are spin-offs but, in what would be a very high-tech project, who would benefit? Tourism is not an altruistic affair. How many space trips would the average / underprivileged citizen expect and who would be prepared to subsidise some rich guy's holiday?
Also, there may be a good reason for space exploitation - getting materials from the Moon and Mars. That would be a very laudable idea and could make economic sense. But that wouldn't involve 'colonisation'. To be economically viable a space mining project would be more like a deep water Oil rig which, even though only a few miles offshore, is very spartan and not, by any stretch, a 'colony'.

So my objections are basically against the two words "tourism" and "colony" and have not been against the Physics or Engineering aspects at all - which is, surely, what the forum is about. More power to your elbow when you want to discuss practical solutions.

 

[Scia]

So guys is there any way to make my plan cost effective?

 

[Mech_Engineer]

So guys is there any way to make my plan cost effective?

To make your "plan" to colonize the Moon and Mars cost-effective, you need to find a valuable resource (hopefully very, very valuable) that can be mined and/or produced on them but cannot be found/produced on Earth. For example, the first thing that I think of when "mining" and "the Moon" are mentioned together is Helium-3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3). I'm not sure what you could mine on Mars however, perhaps some rare minerals or something.

Overall just returning soil/rock samples of the moon and/or Mars would never cover costs, because the more you returned the less valuable it would become. By the time they were colonized, their dirt would be worthless (where as right now they're basically priceless).

 

[sophiecentaur]

So guys is there any way to make my plan cost effective?

Just find something that is incredibly valuable on Mars that you can't manufacture on Earth by using all that energy and those resources which the space trip would involve. Of course, the initial exploration / prospecting would need to be funded with absolutely no assurance that anything worthwhile is there in the first place.
I can't understand why no one seems to think this is crucial. It's not just a mere detail.

 

[Scia]

So anyways how do i get it funded who do i go to? Goverment or private sector

 

[D H]

You don't. One person, even a person as rich as Bill Gates, could not fund such an undertaking.

There are many problems with this thread. First and foremost, it is science fiction rather than engineering. Some other problems:

You are basing your plans on technology that does not exist (yet) (e.g, SSTO, a big spinning space station), that is at a very immature stage of development (e.g., VASIMIR), or is inappropriate (a big spinning space station in a eccentric orbit). This might be OK for a science fiction writer. It is not engineering.

The thread assumes that colonization of the Moon and Mars are the right things to do in space. Why, and why Mars? The Moon, maybe. Mars is too much of a long shot. There are a number of people, including some rather influential people in space policy development, who will fight tooth and nail to make sure human landings on Mars never happen if Mars is shown to presently support life in any form.

Even the Moon is a long shot. I have doubts that any single nation could replicate the Apollo program today. Perhaps China or India, but certainly not the US and certainly not ESA (which isn't one nation). If we can't replicate the Apollo program, why shoot even higher? Your plan is politically doomed to failure.

Assuming for the sake of argument that we do have the means to send lots of people into space, why go back down a gravity well? What is wrong with setting up lots of those spinning space stations in low Earth orbit and have the colonization base be in space, and sending out probes/manned missions to asteroids for mining? Getting into orbit is a very costly endeavor. Going back down into a gravity well takes many all of the advantages of getting those people/material into space. The presence of some valuable resources on the Moon would be a viable argument for down to the Moon.

Regarding your spinning space station in an eccentric orbit: That eccentric orbit doesn't buy much. Arguably it adds a lot of cost and risk. It certainly adds an incredibly health risk. That orbit crosses the Van Allen belt twice per orbit. Moreover, you have vastly increased the delta-V needed to dock at perigee and undock at apogee compared to just going to the target directly. A space station in a reasonably inclined orbit in low Earth orbit makes sense from a science fiction point of view. (The ISS is not in a reasonably inclined orbit.) Do keep in mind that building such a thing currently remains in the realm of science fiction.

 

[Scia]

You don't. One person, even a person as rich as Bill Gates, could not fund such an undertaking.

There are many problems with this thread. First and foremost, it is science fiction rather than engineering. Some other problems:

You are basing your plans on technology that does not exist (yet) (e.g, SSTO, a big spinning space station), that is at a very immature stage of development (e.g., VASIMIR), or is inappropriate (a big spinning space station in a eccentric orbit). This might be OK for a science fiction writer. It is not engineering.

The thread assumes that colonization of the Moon and Mars are the right things to do in space. Why, and why Mars? The Moon, maybe. Mars is too much of a long shot. There are a number of people, including some rather influential people in space policy development, who will fight tooth and nail to make sure human landings on Mars never happen if Mars is shown to presently support life in any form.

Even the Moon is a long shot. I have doubts that any single nation could replicate the Apollo program today. Perhaps China or India, but certainly not the US and certainly not ESA (which isn't one nation). If we can't replicate the Apollo program, why shoot even higher? Your plan is politically doomed to failure.

Assuming for the sake of argument that we do have the means to send lots of people into space, why go back down a gravity well? What is wrong with setting up lots of those spinning space stations in low Earth orbit and have the colonization base be in space, and sending out probes/manned missions to asteroids for mining? Getting into orbit is a very costly endeavor. Going back down into a gravity well takes many all of the advantages of getting those people/material into space. The presence of some valuable resources on the Moon would be a viable argument for down to the Moon.

Regarding your spinning space station in an eccentric orbit: That eccentric orbit doesn't buy much. Arguably it adds a lot of cost and risk. It certainly adds an incredibly health risk. That orbit crosses the Van Allen belt twice per orbit. Moreover, you have vastly increased the delta-V needed to dock at perigee and undock at apogee compared to just going to the target directly. A space station in a reasonably inclined orbit in low Earth orbit makes sense from a science fiction point of view. (The ISS is not in a reasonably inclined orbit.) Do keep in mind that building such a thing currently remains in the realm of science fiction.

Look on page 3 I rewrote then plan
and the VASIMR is at technology readynes level 6/10 its going along very well

 

[D H]

The VASIMR is at technology readynes level 6/10 its going along very well

That was the VX-50, which produced a paltry 0.5 Newtons of thrust. The VX-200 (flight test in 2013) is maybe at TRL 6 if you look at it with rose colored glasses. The VX-200 is expected to produce 5 N of thrust. That is not the kind of thrust that is needed to move huge colonization vehicles around. Think of it this way: The Saturn V third stage produced 1 million Newtons of thrust, and that was what was needed to put a tiny little vehicle on a path to the Moon. (The first stage produced 34 million Newtons of thrust). You are implicitly assuming that VASIMIR can scale up by six orders of magnitude or more! That is not engineering. It is science fiction.

 

[Scia]

That was the VX-50, which produced a paltry 0.5 Newtons of thrust. The VX-200 (flight test in 2013) is maybe at TRL 6 if you look at it with rose colored glasses. The VX-200 is expected to produce 5 N of thrust. That is not the kind of thrust that is needed to move huge colonization vehicles around. Think of it this way: The Saturn V third stage produced 1 million Newtons of thrust, and that was what was needed to put a tiny little vehicle on a path to the Moon. (The first stage produced 34 million Newtons of thrust). You are implicitly assuming that VASIMIR can scale up by six orders of magnitude or more! That is not engineering. It is science fiction.

As i said in my plan it will only be used in space. The VASIMR can't be used to to take off from earth. Also the specific Impulse is much higher then the saturn 5

 

[D H]

scia, I was talking about the Saturn V third stage. That too was only used on orbit.

From post #45,

After that we take a small shuttle using VASIMR technology to a second station orbiting the moon.

How big is this small shuttle? How many people will it carry? How long will it take to go from the LEO station to the lunar station?

One plan for the supposedly TRL 6 VX-200 (five Newtons of thrust) is to use one to carry cargo from the Earth to the Moon -- in six months time. Low thrust engines, and five Newtons is very low thrust, cannot do what you envisioned in post #45. You are ignoring the huge discrepancy between the five Newtons of thrust to be tested in 2013 and the millions of Newtons required by your plan. That is not engineering. It is science fiction.

 

[Pattonias]

It seems to me that the closest trigger that we may see lead to another real move into space exploration would be successful fusion. If ITER is able to produce stable fusion then we may see a clear road to space exploration as many of the power challenges could be overcome with a plentiful power source. Unfortunatly, even if ITER is successful it will probably be 50 to 75 years after ITER that we will see real implimentation of fusion power in a big way. Until then, we will still be confined to probes and unmanned exploration in space, due to the high cost.

 

[sophiecentaur]

You do not seem to rate "probes" as being very exciting. Could you imagine a manned crew, launched at the time of the Voyager probe, being capable of anything but going mad, by now? Don't knock robots. They are the way forward.

 

[Pattonias]

Probes aren't very exciting when compared with manned exploration. The goal is manned exploration, what's the point if the closest we ever get to the rest of the solar system is a robot. I'm not naive enough to think that we will be walking on other planets in my lifetime, but to think that probes are the end product doesn't really make me very excited. Don't get me wrong, I am excited about the progress we have made with probes and the information that they can give us, but why confine ourselves to them?

 

[Scia]

Probes aren't very exciting when compared with manned exploration. The goal is manned exploration, what's the point if the closest we ever get to the rest of the solar system is a robot. I'm not naive enough to think that we will be walking on other planets in my lifetime, but to think that probes are the end product doesn't really make me very excited. Don't get me wrong, I am excited about the progress we have made with probes and the information that they can give us, but why confine ourselves to them?

But NASA says there going to put a man on Mars in the 2030's

 

[sophiecentaur]

It depends on what you find exciting. The sort of information that 'probes' can yield is likely to be at least as useful and exciting as the information that a manned expedition might yield. A manned mission is never going to reveal gravity waves, for instance.

What did the Moon landing actuall tell us that an unmanned mission couldn't / hasn't, apart from the fact that it was possible?,

 

[Scia]

It depends on what you find exciting. The sort of information that 'probes' can yield is likely to be at least as useful and exciting as the information that a manned expedition might yield. A manned mission is never going to reveal gravity waves, for instance.

What did the Moon landing actuall tell us that an unmanned mission couldn't / hasn't, apart from the fact that it was possible?,

The point of manned missions is to pave a path for colonization
or showing off to russia

 

[sophiecentaur]

Showing off to Russia I can agree with. Nothing in this thread has given credance to the colonisation thing.

 

[Scia]

Showing off to Russia I can agree with. Nothing in this thread has given credance to the colonisation thing.

... the goal isn't just scientific exploration ... it's also about extending the range of human habitat out from Earth into the solar system as we go forward in time ... In the long run a single-planet species will not survive ... If we humans want to survive for hundreds of thousands or millions of years, we must ultimately populate other planets. Now, today the technology is such that this is barely conceivable. We're in the infancy of it. ... I'm talking about that one day, I don't know when that day is, but there will be more human beings who live off the Earth than on it. We may well have people living on the moon. We may have people living on the moons of Jupiter and other planets. We may have people making habitats on asteroids ... I know that humans will colonize the solar system and one day go beyond.

– Michael D. Griffin

 

[Pattonias]

Hopefully, this thread won't be used by our world leaders to find justification for space exploration.

To me the attraction of space is that it is the next stage of human evolution. Even Steven Hawking believes that in order for our species to survive we will have to leave this planet. (Of course, he also believes that we should restrict the signals that we send out to space to prevent aliens from taking advantage of us.)

 

[Scia]

Hopefully, this thread won't be used by our world leaders to find justification for space exploration.

To me the attraction of space is that it is the next stage of human evolution. Even Steven Hawking believes that in order for our species to survive we will have to leave this planet. (Of course, he also believes that we should restrict the signals that we send out to space to prevent aliens from taking advantage of us.)

I Agree its the next step for human civilzation

 

[luma]

Send me to Mars to die after a few months with no prospects and I'd snap call.

Get people to Mars before NASA's funding disappears and it never happens.

 

[Scia]

Send me to Mars to die after a few months with no prospects and I'd snap call.

Get people to Mars before NASA's funding disappears and it never happens.

I will make it a private industy

 

[Scia]

So guys should I take this to the government or the private sector? I am leaning twords the private sector

 

[D H]

The private sector is not going to undertake some effort that will require the wealth of nations and hundreds of years of time (if ever) to realize a profit.

 

[luma]

What's the problem with the NASA Design Reference mission? It's supposedly within NASA's current budget.

 

[D H]

What's the problem with the NASA Design Reference mission? It's supposedly within NASA's current budget.

First off, the Mars Design Reference mission is not a colonization plan. This thread is about colonization. The Mars DRM is a plan to send a small number of astronauts to Mars and then return back to Earth after spending some time on Mars. Secondly, while defining/refining that Design Reference Mission is within NASA's budget, allocating money to implement those plans is not.

NASA uses design reference missions as the basis for costing a concept. Think about it this way: NASA (or any organization, for that matter) needs to have some idea regarding how much something will cost before approving and allocating monies for that activity. The Mars Design Reference Mission provides the basis for that costing exercise. Those missions are not within NASA's budget. The costs far exceed NASA's budget.

 

[sophiecentaur]

The private sector is not going to undertake some effort that will require the wealth of nations and hundreds of years of time (if ever) to realize a profit.

People will only put their hands in their pockets when the first asteroid looks seriously as though it's going to swipe us. It would have to be that scale of emergency.
Lets face it, the Great Public aren't interested in long term ecological threats on Earth. Why should they be interested in long term (thousands of years) planning for Space Living?

 

[spacester]

any good plan needs a timescale. We're talking in terms of at least une hundred years for this one. When you consider a really worthwhile project like Fusion, that's the order of magnitude involved and, until energy ceases to be a problem, the Dan Dare stuff will not be affordable. There are one or two other projects that could also be said to have priority.

Hi sophiecentaur, before I comment let me just say that I really like your posts elsewhere. But when it comes to this subject you are way off target.

Saying it is hundreds of years away as a founding premise is a total load of crap. Talk about a defeatist attitude.

Some of us like working on this stuff and you can keep that week stuff to yourself if you don't mind. I've read all this thread's posts to date and I'll deal with your more substantive criticisms in a few minutes.

I will commend you for your constructive criticisms if and when I find them.

The word galactic in a company's name proves what? Hello? Get a grip, please. Rationality is not to be applied here?

Energy will always be the issue. Are you saying mankind is too darn stupid to even try to solve the conundrum? Answers are in fact abundant.

 

[spacester]

I actually, seriously doubt that space colonisation will be a reality within hundreds of years because there is so little in it for us compared with the cost. It may be one of the sexiest idea around but it is way at the back of a very long queue of justifiable "challenges".
The very name "Virgin Galactic" says it all. What is "galactic" about the project"? It's a Fun Project in which a few rich people will see a black sky, felt microgravity and feel that they've been 'in space'. Mr B has spotted an excellent and possibly achievable commercial venture - good luck to him. But that's all it is. The numbers count in engineering and space colonisation needs to satisfy cost-benefit analysis to get off the ground. To my mind it represents extremely bad value compared with feeding the existing population. We are a long long way, even from that.

In the following, "We" = Space development enthusiasts and "You" = Those who think like sophie, who is far from alone in her perspective.

We refuse to let our dreams be held hostage due to a failure of Your imagination. You do not think any of this can be done, so You don't sit around finding solutions. Solutions abound. If you want to hear them, great, stick around, and put your listening cap on please.

So many fallacies in the above post. Funding is not perfectly fungible. Allocations to space development do not automatically come from funds for feeding "the existing population". By the way, those who pursue that noble goal could use a dose of the kind of scrutiny space flight development plans always work under. Bunch of fuzzy headed liberals who don't know how the real world works, for the most part. You can't even define the problem.

. . . an excellent and possibly achievable commercial venture - good luck to him. But that's all it is. The numbers count in engineering and space colonisation needs to satisfy cost-benefit analysis to get off the ground.

That's all it is?? A complete failure of Your imagination. First, this endeavor will have a huge cultural impact and today's kids will grow up in a world where visiting space is a growth industry. Secondly, these rich bastards - look, I am as egalitarian as they come, but that just means we have a green light to exploit rich bastards - will pay off the capitol investment in the new space infrastructure ALLOWING COSTS TO COME DOWN. Third, it doesn't stop with this generation of hardware, this business model has no limits.

To deny that the future space tycoons such as Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow, Sir Richard, Jeff Bezos, John Carmack et al are working to lower costs so that very large numbers of people of moderate means will have the opportunity to visit space is to call every one of them a liar. That's what they all want.

You darn tooting the numbers matter. I'm all over the numbers, just try me. And cost/benefit isn't the only way to look at things, at least not on the time scales our corporate consumer culture operates.

 

[spacester]

Well, you devote yourself to the development of better agricultural tech, and those of us whose interests are different will devote our lives to those things we want to happen.

(snip)

Now, if we want to be productive; we should help the OP learn what tech is lacking at the moment for him to see his dream come to fruition, and maybe he will be the one who makes a breakthrough in the field that allows his vision to become reality. (And he might just do it in his garage, thus saving you from having to worry about the GDP)

BRAVO! Well done!

 

[spacester]

BUT there are certain actual quantities associated with the sort of space use that is proposed here which make it very, very tenuous. Why are people ignoring that on this thread ?

It's just the Boys' Own, 1950s romantic thing that I can't take seriously. I sometimes think that people actually believe the Azimov trilogy is fact - right down to the Psychohistory thing. At least do some serious sums before you get too carried away with Space fiction.

sophie, were you beaten by a toy rocket as a child? Did Asimov's whiskers traumatize you?

J/K

This sounds a lot like projection - to whom exactly do you refer that suffer this tenuous grasp of reality?

Sorry, I'm on a roll at this point.

You know, psychohistory is not that far beyond current marketing strategies.

Anyway, I'll do all the serious sums you want. What exactly would you like to see addressed?

 

[sophiecentaur]

Hi spacester.

The posts are coming thick and fast!

A few rather 'judgemental' adjectives there, I think.
"Defeatist" implies that I'd go for it if only it weren't too much trouble. My main objection is to the priority which has been given to this idea. A fully thought out project, aimed at fruition in, yes, several hundred years' time would get my serious interest, as a theoretical exercise.
I have read a lot of stuff since Space Travel (Unmanned) was achieved and much of what Arthur Clark and others published before and after it was an actual fact. I can't imagine that anyone would seriously quote from practical information from so far back when talking about Electronics, Medicine or Computing in order to justify future plans in those fields and I am determined no to go overboard when shown pictures of '50s designs for spacecraft , either. Film clips from Kubrick's 2001 fall equally flat; they made my heart flutter in 1980, or whenever it came out. I really question whether some of the people posting on this particular thread are aware that Star Trek etc. is, actually, fiction. There are soooo many issues involved with the notion of space colonisation and what it would mean for the Human Race. It really would have to be the very last ditch solution to life becoming unsustainable on Earth - basically, a lifeboat exercise - not a Christopher Columbus style mission.
If I appear not to be constructive in this thread it's because I can see so many more exciting (in a real sense) things that we can do with our intellect and energy than to plan zapping about the Solar System as tourists or establishing what would be a penal colony on Mars. The fact that there have been no serious responses about funding this stuff, sort of makes my point for me.
My heart still flutters when I see a guy mending the Hubble Space Telescope - live on TV and when I hear of plans for yet another long term mission to observe the heliopause or
to find gravity waves. That is the true exploration and it's here and now.
"Virgin Galactic" is a lovely piece of Hyperbole and aimed at a just-achievable investment. Sir Richard, as usual, has a keen eye for the mid-term return on his investments. But what he offers to the punters is not really much more than a fairground ride - I'd love to be able to afford that but I have a bit of a conscience about my carbon footprint for such a jaunt.

"Energy will always be the issue. Are you saying mankind is too darn stupid to even try to solve the conundrum? Answers are in fact abundant."
Answers in both directions, I think? There is a certain amount of stupidity revealing itself in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment.

 

[spacester]

I have thought a lot about this and I have now realized why I 'took against' the idea.
It was nothing to do with the engineering aspect at all. I don't think I have made any serious adverse comments about that, although there are several 50 year old ideas in the proposal. Von Braun and Clarke were giants in their time but the politics, economics and technologies are not the same now. The date in "2001 a space odyssey" shows how wrong one can be!
My problem was, essentially, with the social aspect of the ideas in the original model. The word "tourism" strongly suggests a privileged elite enjoying the benefits of their wealth. Yes, there is a certain amount of 'spreading around' of that wealth in the tourist locations and there are spin-offs but, in what would be a very high-tech project, who would benefit? Tourism is not an altruistic affair. How many space trips would the average / underprivileged citizen expect and who would be prepared to subsidise some rich guy's holiday?
Also, there may be a good reason for space exploitation - getting materials from the Moon and Mars. That would be a very laudable idea and could make economic sense. But that wouldn't involve 'colonisation'. To be economically viable a space mining project would be more like a deep water Oil rig which, even though only a few miles offshore, is very spartan and not, by any stretch, a 'colony'.

So my objections are basically against the two words "tourism" and "colony" and have not been against the Physics or Engineering aspects at all - which is, surely, what the forum is about. More power to your elbow when you want to discuss practical solutions.

"who would benefit? Tourism is not an altruistic affair. How many space trips would the average / underprivileged citizen expect and who would be prepared to subsidise some rich guy's holiday?"

Subsidize? What are you talking about? It works the other way around: the rich bastards pay thru the nose so we-all go go cheaper later.

Ah, but you got us on "Colony".

It is my well considered observation that any plan that talks about Mars "Colonization" is fatally flawed from the start. Don't get me wrong, I want Man on Mars and I want it bad. But we cannot Colonize until we've Settled. I am adamant on this point. First we have to go, with the intention of staying, but with the purpose of finding out if and how we can colonize.

Settlers go and stay for life, or bug out and go home. They do not make babies if they know the babies will likely die. Colonists by definition make babies.

We are a long ways from making babies in a gravity field other than our home. We have to settle for Settlement as the initial master goal.

 

[sophiecentaur]

spacester
I think we may well be arguing in quadrature about a lot of this. My early posts were really a reaction to what appears to be a very dated view of space travel. The Universe is not actually 'shrinking' fast, like the Earth is. You can't just extrapolate from same day meetings anywhere in the World and project same-year jaunts to anywhere much outside the Earth. Neither can you extrapolate Cost Reduction ad infinitum.
I am presuming that Warp Drive etc. are not on the menu so where do we go? There's Mars, The Moon and a few other Moons around some other planets. Beyond that, we're talking human generations worth of travel time - almost whatever engines we develop. That certainly couldn't be called "tourism".

"beaten around the head with a space rocket" HaHa.
I did read about one Sci Fi book per week for several years and I enjoyed the fiction but even Azimov was a bit over glib about the Galactic Empire thing. Fair enough, in his day, but don't we know better now?

My Son is in marketing and tells me they can predict what people are going to do - but only to some degree. He hasn't got his Aston Martin yet!
Keep em coming.