Can someone with expertise to compare Musk's plan vs. Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan proposed in the early 90s?
Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
141–150 of 1001 posts
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>The earth isn't the problem It is. If you are yet not convinced, you might want to take a look at how many species go extinct every day. There are a many threats to human existence beyond human behavior and preparing for them is a good move forward.
Or you know...discovered [1] Also, show me the species on other planets. Far as we know there aren't any and none of the planets seem to be habitable. Stop living in fantasy land. [1] http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/new-animal-species
i lol'd
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they would stick to pure ION drive or pure chemical rocks. Mixing them seems like a great option depending on how cheap they can get fuel to orbit. The could also refuel in mars orbit. A pure ion drive for all the equipment even if this means it takes 4x as long to get there, then a 'small' capsule back and forth for people.
The amount of power is a few orders of magnitude too low to propel these kind of masses electrically. Basically you need at least 10 kW per Newton.
If it only saves 2 weeks that's still useful. Don't forget if your using solar power you have much less power the closer you get to mars. So, you effectively get a free surplus at the start of your journey.
The other option, is to have a pure transit vehicle from earth orbit to mars orbit and then a 3rd vehicle to land with. This, would work really well if we wanted to really colonize mars. But, if your only sending say 10 people the R&D is not worth the fuel savings.
PS: Let's say it's a 20,000 lbs craft or ~1/10th of the shuttle and your getting ~8.8 N or 1 lbs of thrust for 120 days. That's 9.8 m/s / 20,000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 120 = 5k m/s. If you already need the panels while in mars orbit, that seems like a no brainier. Finally, If that's 200kw in mars orbit then the numbers seem even more reasonable as that's 460 kw near earth and the extra 260kw ~= 26 newtons which could add ~5km/s to a 60,000 lb spacecraft.
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#144I'd really like to see us taking space seriously. While I'm still here. One of my earliest strong memories was the last moon landing. This was followed by years of "Tomorrow's World" and "Horizon" telling us about the Moon bases, Mars bases and orbital platforms that would soon follow. We got Skylab and some very interesting probes. I'm a tiny bit disappointed in that. We were meant to be en route to Starfleet Comman…
This brings up a good point. Why mars first? Why not a moon colony first?
To me the moon would be the obvious place to start, especially as the NASA plans I've seen for Mars have been based on using a space station at a Earth-Lunar Lagrange point, and associated moonbase, as ideal staging post. That and I might one day afford a ticket.
I guess direct to Mars is sexier. :)
(I'm behind live too.)
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not the oceans? Much easier to populate than Mars.
Does that protect people from the event of a major nuclear war? Would it be immune to accelerated climate change on Earth? availability of land isnt the only factor here. (i dont actually know the answer to these questions, and obviously it would likely depend on the details of this water habitat)
If you're trying to escape climate change making a place uninhabitable for humans, you probably don't want to aim for Mars.
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they would stick to pure ION drive or pure chemical rocks. Mixing them seems like a great option depending on how cheap they can get fuel to orbit. The could also refuel in mars orbit. A pure ion drive for all the equipment even if this means it takes 4x as long to get there, then a 'small' capsule back and forth for people.
The amount of power is a few orders of magnitude too low to propel these kind of masses electrically. Basically you need at least 10 kW per Newton.
The other problem is that you need to slow down, with ION drives you'll have to start you slow down burn about mid way increasing the travel time considerably.
With traditional rockets you can accelerate, get a gravity assist boost and save enough fuel to slow down quickly when you are at the orbital insertion point.
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
> CST sigh Central standard time I'm guessing, so mid-US I guess "central" and "standard" mean here, so I'm guesstimating GMT-7. That would put it around 8:30 GMT.
While I know what you meant in the parent, "numeric timezone" isn't a thing. When it's in a numeric format the correct term is "offset". It cannot be referred to as a timezone as it's timezone will remain constant, but offset may change depending on the time of year (and the impact daylight savings has on the correct offset). For what it's worth, i too hate when people say things like "EST","CST" etc. Not only are th…
It is a thing. UTC-5:00, or Z-5, or the specific times 1830Z / 18:30UTC, for some examples.
Also, for the rest of the thread, central time zone is currently observing daylight saving time, so the correct abbreviation is CDT.
Sorry to jump in with such pedantry. Datetime math is hard! :)
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#148Some of the comments here make me think of crabs in a pot pulling down the ones who try to climb out.
Nobody's making you participate in this venture. If you don't like it, then you're free to go do whatever it is you do like.
You might think Musk could better direct his efforts and resources elsewhere, but most other billionaires don't do anything all that interesting, they just invest their money in mundane stuff, outsource jobs, build hotels, run for President, etc. So why are you upset with this one and not all those others?
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#149I'm surprised Elon has not improved his public speaking abilities.
Re: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
#150What are we going to do on Mars? Live in a plastic box? Send in a bunch of slaves to mine minerals in insufferable conditions? I don't get it.
Nobody's making you go, so it's not really "we." Lots of people do want to go, so you could ask them what they'd like to do there, but you'd get better answers if you ditched the condescending language.
Well, the title of the post is "making humans a multiplanetary species". Not "asking humans if they want to be multiplanetary species". I was speaking of "we" in that sense, "we as humans". But I get your point.