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SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

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Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#191

Post by greglindahl »

bobl wrote: post #94
leesec wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making rockets re-usable is a massive step forward and not about 'not regressing'.

I doesn't seem clear at this point whether re-usable will be significant for activities beyond earth orbit. Partly the excitement comes from being a workaround for humanities reluctance to spend money on space exploration. Believe what you want, but from what I can find this doesn't seem to be a significant part of what would e.g. make humanity interplanetary. At least not yet.

Did you notice NASA's RFP for a reusable lunar lander?

Did you notice ULA's reusable/refuelable ACES is aimed squarely at BEO?

And if SpaceX and Blue Origin bid for the 2 LOP-G resupply flights, they'll bid reusable launchers and claim significant cost savings.

Sounds like everyone has reusable stuff in their plans. Believe what you want!

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#192

Post by kbutler »

pishpash wrote: post #167
spookyuser wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched Free Solo not long ago, yesterday I watched Falcon 9 launch then land flawlessly and today I watched Dragon 2 dock with the ISS. It's mind boggling how apt humans are to what should be impossible.

Imagine the energy and money spent on bickering and wars and ultimately useless junk were not.

I'm not a fan of war, but many technologies and sciences were developed for military use, everything from mathematics for ballistics, food preservation, thermodynamics, antibiotics, nuclear energy, the lunar program, and GPS.

So yes, war is a horrendous waste and terrible detriment to humanity, but even war has had some beneficial side effects.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#193

Post by Something1234 »

stcredzero wrote: post #183
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But our "redundancy site" is awful for human life. Imagine if we just worked on fixing up the place we live on already that has air we can breathe, abundant liquid water, and isn't inundated with deadly radiation. We will need to leave Earth in 5 billion years when the sun goes red giant. 5 billion years is an INCREDIBLE amount of time. Things we do in 2019 will have zero influence on those times. It is much more lik…

Imagine if we just worked on fixing up the place we live on already that has air we can breathe, abundant liquid water, and isn't inundated with deadly radiation. Funny, but extremely high altitudes of the atmosphere of Venus could fit the bill in the context of places in the Solar System. Temperatures and pressures are around room temperature and pressure there. The thick atmosphere of Venus provides some radiation…

There's this real cool concept about a manned blimp that was produced by NASA a few years ago. It has a really cool video to go with it too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0az7DEwG68A

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#194

Post by kbutler »

mrtnmcc wrote: post #189
bobl wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doesn't seem clear at this point whether re-usable will be significant for activities beyond earth orbit. Partly the excitement comes from being a workaround for humanities reluctance to spend money on space exploration. Believe what you want, but from what I can find this doesn't seem to be a significant part of what would e.g. make humanity interplanetary. At least not yet.

If you want to get back from Mars you need a reusable rocket.

By that definition, the Apollo program had reusable rockets. (Able to climb back out of a gravity well, leave orbit of a large mass, and return to earth).

Escape velocity of Mars is less than half Earth's or about double the moon's.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#195

Post by gpm »

raducu wrote: post #45
zargath wrote: post #6

Fantastic, very impressive. But somewhere inside (my little star-wars/trek spirit), I wish that it was not so tricky. That we all could just travel and explore the universe. Everybody always talk about how difficult it is in space and how much better earth is. Wish the debate would be more about all the possibilities in space or on other planets. What can we do with zero gravity? For all the bad things with living on…

But all the industrial scale processes we use require gravity, plenty of liquid water or solvents and a LOT of other infrastructure in place. Sure, you could pack up some tools in 10 ships 500 years ago and could start a colony in a hospitable part of Earth. I'm convinced you cannot bootstrap a colony in an unhospitable place in the Solar System without ships 3-4 orders of magnitude above what we have today.

To address the things you raise directly: Mars has gravity, and if you have plenty of energy to melt it, it has plenty of water. Nuclear power can supply plenty of energy.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#196

Post by blhack »

ravenstine wrote: post #37
jordz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you notice how they slightly jazzed it up after a couple of seasons?

The last 2 seasons are pretty great. It's too bad the show got sacked. Enterprise is my second favorite behind TNG.

There are at least several of us!

Also have found myself really enjoying enterprise. It is by far my favorite premise of any of the Star Treks.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#197

Post by ncallaway »

isostatic wrote: post #169
ncallaway wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a step, but not a first step - it's the second step along the nations/large/medium/small/people road Cool! I agree, but did anyone claim it was the first step? Magellan or Captain Cook weren't the first steps of their day, either. Nor were the Apollo missions first steps. The Mercury missions had come first! Why can't we be exciting, and have that feeling of exploration for each step? Why should only the first…

> Cool! I agree, but did anyone claim it was the first step? Yes, the person I responded to said "This is a huge first step on the ladder." This is a tiny step. Come summer when there's actual people on board then yes, it's a significant step towards forward movement, having being going pretty much nowhere since the 70s. I think the biggest step recently, beyond landings or space flight or even a lunar return mission…

> Yes, the person I responded to said

> "This is a huge first step on the ladder."

Ha! Fair enough! The person you responded to was me, and I did write that.

I guess "first step" was not actually an important part of my claim, so I didn't think about it as I was writing it.

I'd agree that I should have written "this is a huge next step on the ladder", and not claimed it as the first step.

> This is a tiny step. Come summer when there's actual people on board then yes, it's a significant step towards forward movement, having being going pretty much nowhere since the 70s.

Eh, I think of the launch today, the in-flight abort, and DM-2 as all part of the same step. Fair enough if you don't consider it "done" until DM-2. I probably won't consider the step "done" for a couple of years (when commercial crew is as routinized as commercial cargo and booster re-use), but I would definitely consider today a major milestone.

It's the first operational flight of the hardware!

> The dawn of the space age was October 4th 1957.

Sure, that's true. I mean, it's pretty semantic at this point, but areoform had originally written: "We're at the dawn of a new space age."

I was using that as my reference for being at dawn. I think it's pretty reasonable to say we're right at the cusp of an exciting decade of development in space, in a way that we haven't been for half a century.

I'm not going to stop being excited about that!

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#198

Post by greedo »

nine_k wrote: post #154
shkkmo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A successful mars colony would need to have a plan to reach self-sufficiency through Martian plus asteroid resources. Not at all. While there will be an economic and logistical incentive to reduce the dependence on imports from earth, it is not reasonable to expect the colony to fully duplicate the manufacturing capabilities of earth. There will be drugs, electronic components and human experts that will imported f…

I don't think any imports from Mars could be profitable. Except scientific data, of course. The colony will depend on Earth tech for a long time. The only case for a self-sustained colony I see is some local political extremism. To prefer to live on Mars by one's own means would take some very strong Earth-incompatible views.

The chance of a colony on Mars NOT seeking independence when it reaches a modicum of self-sufficiency is nil. Look at the US; separated by 6-12 weeks of sailing. It's human nature to seek to govern your own affairs, and with travel time to Mars being around 300 days, as soon as they can, they'll become independent.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#199

Post by blhack »

jononor wrote: post #61
raducu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be a time when a single person mastered X% of humanity's technology anf knowledge. Packing up 100 people on some boats meant you could start a viable colony across some seas. Can you still do that today?

Now we can keep X% of the knowledge of humanity on a portable device. That should help.

A lot of human knowledge cannot be written down and has to be passed on person to person. There isn't enough bandwidth in a book to actually convey a lot of it.

Machining is one instance of this. You basically have to have somebody show you how to do some of it. Same thing with forging.

(At least in my experience)

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#200

Post by maccam94 »

raducu wrote: post #45
zargath wrote: post #6

Fantastic, very impressive. But somewhere inside (my little star-wars/trek spirit), I wish that it was not so tricky. That we all could just travel and explore the universe. Everybody always talk about how difficult it is in space and how much better earth is. Wish the debate would be more about all the possibilities in space or on other planets. What can we do with zero gravity? For all the bad things with living on…

But all the industrial scale processes we use require gravity, plenty of liquid water or solvents and a LOT of other infrastructure in place. Sure, you could pack up some tools in 10 ships 500 years ago and could start a colony in a hospitable part of Earth. I'm convinced you cannot bootstrap a colony in an unhospitable place in the Solar System without ships 3-4 orders of magnitude above what we have today.

This is why I like the idea of building a spinning station in orbit and wrangling asteroids into orbit for mining and refining. Simulating a full Earth gravity in space would allow using existing industrial processes and allow humans to work there indefinitely without physical deterioration.
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