Looking at faraway stuff
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A manned Mars isn't happening for at least a couple of decades. There's just no way."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
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How much fuel would it take to leave Mars in comparison to Earth?
Not asking for exact numbers obviously but that seems like a potentially huge obstacle for a return flight.
Edit: found this link that suggests 33 tons of fuel that would need to be farmed on Mars.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151002-mars-mission-nasa-return-space/ -
SpaceGazelle wrote:A manned Mars isn't happening for at least a couple of decades. There's just no way.
Stop destroying my dream. Damn you
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LivDiv wrote:Edit: found this link that suggests 33 tons of fuel that would need to be farmed on Mars. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151002-mars-mission-nasa-return-space/
That's the problem, it's basically a one way trip. Also, getting there takes about 7 months, which is a doable amount of time in the ISS but in a smaller and far cheaper rocket? And then there's the Mars landing, which is notoriously difficult for single bots nevermind an entire colony. Then you've got the survivng part, the odds of which are now bordering on the fantastical.
Even if you did manage to survive and mine the fuel (ha!) you've still got to get back without the aid of a local Cape Canaveral to aid you."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob -
Dinostar77 wrote:
Stop destroying my dream. Damn youSpaceGazelle wrote:A manned Mars isn't happening for at least a couple of decades. There's just no way.
I wish it too but hey ho."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob -
SpaceGazelle wrote:LivDiv wrote:Edit: found this link that suggests 33 tons of fuel that would need to be farmed on Mars. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151002-mars-mission-nasa-return-space/
That's the problem, it's basically a one way trip. Also, getting there takes about 7 months, which is a doable amount of time in the ISS but in a smaller and far cheaper rocket? And then there's the Mars landing, which is notoriously difficult for single bots nevermind an entire colony. Then you've got the survivng part, the odds of which are now bordering on the fantastical.
Even if you did manage to survive and mine the fuel (ha!) you've still got to get back without the aid of a local Cape Canaveral to aid you.
I dont think its unrealistic in the next 100 or 200 years depending on how science progresses that we could have one way colonisation trips out to moons and planets capable of supporting human life. Alpha Centuri has a earth size and type planet in its goldilocks zone. Say we got to travel at half the speed of light and a one way trip to this planet took 8 years. I'm sure you'd get people willing to go colonize on a one way trip. -
You realise half the speed of light is 335 million mph?
That would be like flying to the sun in 20 minutes. -
Canny quick that like -
Just put the wipers on innit? Top up on screen wash before every long journey.
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LivDiv wrote:You realise half the speed of light is 335 million mph?
That would be like flying to the sun in 20 minutes.
Yeah im being optimistic that in 200 years time we will have a breakthrough. -
4 minutes no?? I always thought might from sin takes 8 minutes to reach earth, which I always thought was a coincidence that Bristol and Greenwich are also around 8 minutes time difference, one of those weird coincidences, that the two locations that caused us to invent time zones where as far as away in time as the light that created the problem was"I spent years thinking Yorke was legit Downs-ish disabled and could only achieve lucidity through song" - Mr B -
https://www.space.com/nasa-lunar-gateway-habitat-module-contract.html
Northrop Grumman snags $187 million to design NASA's lunar Gateway habitat for astronauts
NASA has awarded Northrop Grumman $187 million to design the habitat module for the space agency's lunar Gateway, a planned moon-orbiting space station for astronauts.
We learned last year that NASA had tapped Virginia-based Northrop Grumman to build Gateway's pressurized crew cabin, called the habitation and logistics outpost (HALO). The company will base HALO on its Cygnus spacecraft, which has been flying contracted robotic cargo missions to the International Space Station for NASA since 2014.
On Friday (June 5), the space agency announced some terms of the deal: Northrop Grumman will receive $187 million to fund HALO's design through a key milestone called preliminary design review, which is expected to be complete by the end of this year.
"This contract award is another significant milestone in our plan to build robust and sustainable lunar operations," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. "The Gateway is a key component of NASA’s long-term Artemis architecture, and the HALO capability furthers our plans for human exploration at the moon in preparation for future human missions to Mars."
Artemis is NASA's program of crewed lunar exploration, which aims to land two astronauts near the moon's south pole in 2024 and establish a sustainable human presence on and around the cosmic body by 2028. As Bridenstine noted, the agency envisions such work paving the way for the next giant leap: getting astronauts to Mars, which NASA aims to do in the 2030s.
Gateway likely won't be involved in the 2024 landing, but NASA sees the mini space station as crucial to its longer-term lunar plans. The outpost will serve as a jumping-off point for sorties, both crewed and uncrewed, to the lunar surface.
The current plan calls for launching Gateway's first two elements — HALO and the power and propulsion element (PPE), which will be built by Maxar Technologies — together in 2023. NASA expects to award Northrop Grumman a second contract by the end of the year, to build HALO and integrate it with the PPE, agency officials said.
Orion has one flight under its belt, an uncrewed test mission to Earth orbit that took place in December 2014. SLS has not launched yet; it's scheduled to debut late next year on the Artemis 1 mission, which will send an uncrewed Orion on a test flight around the moon.
Orion will provide life support for astronauts aboard the Gateway, along with HALO, which will provide about as much living space as a small studio apartment.
Gateway, and the Artemis program overall, will leverage considerable cooperation from partners in the international community and the private sector. For example, the European Space Agency will provide Orion's service module, and the landers that ferry NASA astronauts from the outpost to the lunar surface will be privately built.
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SpaceGazelle wrote:Yeah the software thing makes a huge difference. Burns and docking are AI controlled which means you don't need ridiculous amounts of other mechanical mechanisms to make it doable by humans.
Plus they don't try and over-engineer things that don't work and are quick to abandon and just try something else instead. For the future Mars rocket they ditched all the carbon stuff for the body and are going with stainless steel, like the very early days in the 50's. Admittedly the manufacture of stainless has improved only recently in a way to make it ideal for space rockets, but to realise that and then just throw away the carbon thing you've been working on for years without looking back is the exact reverse of what Nasa did with flogging the horse that was the Space Shuttle.
That's the great advantage of a private company over a government institution. When people in any government organisation spends money on something substantial, that thing has to work. The though of just abandoning something that has had millions of pounds of investment is inconceivable to management. -
LivDiv wrote:How much fuel would it take to leave Mars in comparison to Earth?
Not asking for exact numbers obviously but that seems like a potentially huge obstacle for a return flight.
Edit: found this link that suggests 33 tons of fuel that would need to be farmed on Mars.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151002-mars-mission-nasa-return-space/
Couldn't you send the return fuel there in advance on a couple of unmanned missions? -
GooberTheHat wrote:That's the great advantage of a private company over a government institution. When people in any government organisation spends money on something substantial, that thing has to work. The though of just abandoning something that has had millions of pounds of investment is inconceivable to management.
I never thought a private company outside a giant like Boeing would ever attempt it, with the initial costs being so mind-bogglingly huge and the risk of failure so stupidly high. But then I guess the billionaire nonsense started and here we are.
It's clear SpaceX is miles ahead of the other two and that's down to Musk. It still nearly went under anyway and when he was deciding which company to save, Tesla or SpaceX, he managed to launch two rockets in a row and at the last minute Nasa offered them a $2B contract to supply the ISS.
He's actually the chief engineer and although some of that is just because he's the boss he bothered to learn a shitload about aerospace engineering with some highly technical books. He understands what he's doing and although I'm not saying he's making all the big design decisions himself, he knows engineering enough to make the big financial decisions and has enough clout to not worry about panicky investors, and that is a dream company."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob -
Although he's hopelessly deluded about a Mars colony."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
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GooberTheHat wrote:Couldn't you send the return fuel there in advance on a couple of unmanned missions?
The way SpaceX seems to be going you could probably deliver weekly shopping, but there is a price attatched to make all this feasable in the first place. I think it's meant to be passenger funded to an extent, and Musk claims it's $500,000 per person. Maybe Space Force might shell out but that cash isn't going to last much longer imo."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob -
That link talks about delivering a device that farms and processes the atmosphere to create fuel. It says it would take about 2 years to farm enough fuel for a launch. One of the difficulties being storing the fuel cold enough so it remains useful as well as the unit surviving an environment with high UV and dust storms.
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Artemis. It's extremely ambitious.
"Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob -
SpaceGazelle wrote:Artemis. It's extremely ambitious.
Absolutely incredible video. Excellent. Hopefully Artemis will inspire a new generation and kickoff a new era of exploration. From that video it looks like gateway has to be in orbit around the moon befire Artemis. Is gateway station planned to be manned all the time?
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As the moon is tidally locked with earth, i guess we will loose contact with gateway station everyday for x period of time when it goes around the dark side of the moon unless they put a relay system on the moon to bounce the signal back across the moon to the side we see and back to earth?
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Send messageI haven't watched the video, so apologies if it's in there but I imagine that they will probably try to position the gateway in lunar orbit at an orbital speed that means it rotates the opposite direction around the moon as fast as the moon revolves around the earth, so that the gateway is always facing earth?"Let me tell you, when yung Rouj had his Senna and Mansell Scalextric, Frank was the goddamn Professor X of F1." -
It can move about to orbit all areas of the Moon, and it's in a highly elliptical orbit anyways so it spends most of it's time relatively far from the Moon, so they can practice the more complicated docking methods they plan to use on Mars."Plus he wore shorts like a total cunt" - Bob
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So lets say we have a moon base and a colony on mars. Where would you put bases in the rest of the solar system? I'd say a staging post on Ceres for mining the asteroid belt. A base on titan and if we wanted to go further out possibly one on triton. Speaking of which it would be cool if there was a probe to go visit neptune and Uranus (depending if they were close to each other when it arrived). Seeing how many suprises Pluto yielded im sure the outer most gas giants and their moon will hold a few of their own.
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Given that orbits mean that distances between "destinations" could vary massively I'd be inclined to pick some heliostationary (if that's a thing, or helio/geo stationary if not) orbits at five locations along the inner edge of the asteroid belt, and if we are looking outwards as well, maybe similar on the outside"I spent years thinking Yorke was legit Downs-ish disabled and could only achieve lucidity through song" - Mr B
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Venus is actually the far better option than Mars and the rest but because you can't plant a flag, no one bothers.
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Nope, we learnt our lesson last time
"I spent years thinking Yorke was legit Downs-ish disabled and could only achieve lucidity through song" - Mr B -
cockbeard wrote:Given that orbits mean that distances between "destinations" could vary massively I'd be inclined to pick some heliostationary (if that's a thing, or helio/geo stationary if not) orbits at five locations along the inner edge of the asteroid belt, and if we are looking outwards as well, maybe similar on the outside
The asteroid belt isn't dense with asteroids. I don't think you'd necessarily need "inside" and "outside".
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