91–100 of 219 posts
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You don't need to wonder. Boeing has received much more funding for Starliner than SpaceX has for crewed Dragon.
Boeing has liabilities which a new company doesn't.
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It's not beyond the realms of possibility that around the same time as the sample returns to Earth, the US could have geologists' boots on the ground on Mars doing actual geology in situ, courtesy of SpaceX/Starship. Kind of puts this effort in perspective. They should be going all out for reusability, but instead they chose the oldspace pork approach. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
> It's not beyond the realms of possibility that around the same time as the sample returns to Earth, the US could have geologists' boots on the ground on Mars doing actual geology in situ, courtesy of SpaceX/Starship. I mean... maybe? What's your suggestion here? NASA and ESA should put all interplanetary work on hold, in case Musk delivers on time and on budget for once?
No. I'd prefer ESA to be building reusable rockets of their own, which offer the prospect of orders of magnitudes greater potential for exploration.
I just find it amusing to imagine the Earth-based geologists poring over their few crumbs whilst actual geologists stomp about on Mars with hammers chipping away to their hearts' content, likely also deploying fleets of rovers etc. and thereby gathering terabytes of data, and it could be the case that these two things are happening very close together in time. Surely you'd agree that's a poignant juxtaposition.
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Correct, only the crew mission would return, the rest would be several one-way cargo missions
Pretty sure Musk said the crew mission would not return
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Correct, only the crew mission would return, the rest would be several one-way cargo missions
Pretty sure Musk said the crew mission would not return
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Is that something returning from Mars _orbit_, or returning samples from the surface?
Exactly. Returning from orbit is "easy", you just go into a free-return trajectory and don't even do much of a burn at Mars, if any at all. Getting a sample from the surface basically means you need to do a deceleration burn to get into orbit, and then the reverse after grabbing the sample (which itself must be accelerated to orbital speed). No small thing.
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> It's not beyond the realms of possibility that around the same time as the sample returns to Earth, the US could have geologists' boots on the ground on Mars doing actual geology in situ, courtesy of SpaceX/Starship. I mean... maybe? What's your suggestion here? NASA and ESA should put all interplanetary work on hold, in case Musk delivers on time and on budget for once?
> I mean... maybe? What's your suggestion here? NASA and ESA should put all interplanetary work on hold, in case Musk delivers on time and on budget for once? No. I'd prefer ESA to be building reusable rockets of their own, which offer the prospect of orders of magnitudes greater potential for exploration. I just find it amusing to imagine the Earth-based geologists poring over their few crumbs whilst actual geologis…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adeline_(rocket_stage)
The numbers didn't work particularly well on this one, but it's not like they're ignoring it.
And, frankly, commercial space is doing fine on launchers right now. It's doing very little on future interplanetary concepts, so if anything it would make MORE sense for ESA to focus on them now than previously.
> I just find it amusing to imagine the Earth-based geologists poring over their few crumbs whilst actual geologists stomp about on Mars with hammers chipping away to their hearts' content
I mean, it's _possible_, maybe. But it's not likely. And you can't suspend all work due to dubious claims by someone else. In the 1950s, British fusion researchers claimed that cheap fusion energy would be a thing within a decade. If we had believed them absolutely, the world would still be powered by low efficiency coal and oil power plants; why bother spending all that money developing high efficiency steam and gas turbines, wind and solar power, and fission power, when cheap fusion was about to sweep it away?
And of course, even in the Musk dream scenario where this actually happens, solar electric drive cargo tugs would still be very useful, and this is a decent first step towards those. No-one envisages a long-term purely chemical exploration of space.
SpaceX Starship is planned for 2024, and with a cargo capacity in the hundreds of tons. Even if it gets delayed by four or five years it will be able to bring back samples before this is is even launched. NASA’s plans seem very slow in comparison.
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Pretty sure Musk said the crew mission would not return
I believe those people would have accumulated enormous radiation dosages over the duration of the flight, they might not have a long life left and a return voyage would shorten that even more. Might as well stay put for the remaining time on Earth, err, Mars, stay in deep lava tubes and help build that colony.
What is this based on? One of the chief contributors to the mass of a Mars voyage is shielding.
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No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins . Generally with more money behind them, too.
> No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins. Given the sin in question is "lying", I'm pretty sure that's just not true. Can you give another example of a space corporation with such a consistent strategy of very publicly overpromising to win contracts and investment? > Generally with more money behind them, too. I'm not sure who you're referring to. NASA might have more funding, but if you subtrac…
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>> So, four times as difficult? Or, by "twice squared" they mean to say "It has been squared ... twice". That would be 16x, which is probably more in line with the total deltaV requirements.
Did you just linearize squaring?
So "twice"(2) and "twice squared" (x^2^2) = 2^2^2 = 16