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Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

bbc.com

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Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#101

Post by ceejayoz »

sandworm101 wrote: post #74
ceejayoz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better question: What will we learn that we cannot learn from all the Martian rocks we already have on earth. These particular samples will be from the present-day surface, with known geographic (aerographic?) origin, not affected by potentially millions of years of interplanetary travel, and not contaminated by sitting around on Earth for who knows how long.

That would be true if we were looking for life currently alive on mars, but this is a search for fossil life, life that once existed but died off perhaps a billion years ago. Fossils would survive a million-year trip just fine. There has only been one serious attempt to detect current life, the labeled release experiment on the Viking lander. It came back positive. If we are seriously interested in detecting current…

> That would be true if we were looking for life currently alive on mars

I mean, why not?

> Fossils would survive a million-year trip just fine.

Sure, but getting to pick where we take the rocks from helps us maximize the possibility of fossils in the sample. The rovers have found rocks with evidence of water - being able to pick those instead of a random chunk (which might've been blasted from deep bedrock) found in Antarctica has its appeal.

> There has only been one serious attempt to detect current life, the labeled release experiment on the Viking lander. It came back positive.

This seems like a good argument for sample return.

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#102

Post by sputr »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #84
sobellian wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't get that logic. So what if they have liabilities?

They also had experiance, proprietary knowledge, tested supply chains, tooling etc. etc.

I think the problem is that everyone is buying into the Musk==SpaceX story, which I think is wrong. He is a marketing gimmick that secures funding and cheap labor (through hype) and maybe some clients.

If you ask me, from what I've seen the actual person responsible for SpaceX is it's president/COO: Gwynne Shotwell.

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#103

Post by kerkeslager »

jiofih wrote: post #99
kerkeslager wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

They only got large funding from NASA after building fully production-ready rockets and demonstrating they could deliver. It took around $100m of private investment to get the first Falcon generation flying.

Yes, that's the "and investment" part of what I said.

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#104

Post by whatshisface »

sandworm101 wrote: post #100
jmkerr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just linearize squaring?

"not just twice ...; it's twice squared" So "twice"(2) and "twice squared" (x^2^2) = 2^2^2 = 16

Where are you getting the third two to put in for x? Your number would be phrased as "twice squared twice."

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#105

Post by throw1234651234 »

rsynnott wrote: post #48
bufferoverflow wrote: post #41

> The joint American-European project is expected to cost billions and take just over a decade to implement. I'm 99% sure that if SpaceX's starship takes off, it will fly to Mars and back within a few years. But still, competition is good.

I don't think even Musk, master of the dubious marketing promise, has claimed that; the first ones would be one-way jobs AIUI.

I don't think you can call him Musk "master of the dubious marketing promise" anymore now that Tesla is meeting production goals, SpaceX is landing boosters, re-supplying the ISS, and has brought astronauts to the ISS.

His promises are far more reliable than most at this point.

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#106

Post by snakeboy »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #105
rsynnott wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think even Musk, master of the dubious marketing promise, has claimed that; the first ones would be one-way jobs AIUI.

I don't think you can call him Musk "master of the dubious marketing promise" anymore now that Tesla is meeting production goals, SpaceX is landing boosters, re-supplying the ISS, and has brought astronauts to the ISS. His promises are far more reliable than most at this point.

As long as you don't ask him about Neuralink (-:

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#107

Post by whatshisface »

sputr wrote: post #102
heavenlyblue wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing has liabilities which a new company doesn't.

I don't get that logic. So what if they have liabilities? They also had experiance, proprietary knowledge, tested supply chains, tooling etc. etc. I think the problem is that everyone is buying into the Musk==SpaceX story, which I think is wrong. He is a marketing gimmick that secures funding and cheap labor (through hype) and maybe some clients. If you ask me, from what I've seen the actual person responsible for Sp…

"Idiot boss/genius lieutenant" pairs don't work in real life. The idiot boss will always get fooled by politickers and before long the genius lieutenant will be replaced by an upwardly charismatic lieutenant. There's no way to conquer the principal agent problem without enough domain knowledge to understand what the agent is doing, even if the domain knowledge is never used to do anything but understand what the agent is doing.

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#108

Post by ben_w »

rsynnott wrote: post #73
ben_w wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you go into more depth with this? Because I don’t understand why you consider the experience with satellite station keeping to be unimportant. What’s importantly different about the more recent ion drives?

Since the 1970s, some satellites (particularly Soviet satellites) have had some form of electric thruster for stationkeeping; these fire as needed, but spend most of their time off. This has become more common since the 90s. A small number of probes have used ion thrusters for propulsion. These fire continuously for long periods (months). This is fairly new (late 90s on), and no-one has much experience with it, but N…

Thanks; I would never have guessed that distinction was important. :)

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#109

Post by dr-detroit »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #94
kingkawn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The European Space Agency agrees "It would be impossible to meet acceptable dose limits,”

Next I would like to direct your attention now to the Mercury spacewalk footage available on Youtube that is clearly claymation....

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