SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station • Hacker News Board

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#201

Post by greedo » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 11:02 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #180

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don’t see any benefits to living on Mars until every inch of space on Earth is used up. Everything about living on Mars is hostile to life. Doing anything there like mining and manufacturing will be orders of magnitude more difficult and for what? To say we are somewhere else that looks like the Atacama but infinitely more difficult to get to? It seems silly to be trying to rush to a place that wants to ki…

Everything about living on Mars is hostile to life. Doing anything there like mining and manufacturing will be orders of magnitude more difficult and for what? Wasn't there a fair bit of difficulty involved in building fleets of sailing ships and exploring the Earth? As it so happens, the reward for doing so was to become dominant in the new global geopolitical context. There's an incentive to keep up in the new expa…

It's been claimed that the high demand for timber is partially responsible for much of the deforestation of the British Isles. In fact, the demand was so high that the Colonies also provided a significant quantity.

http://www.wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Melby-Patrick.pdf

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#202

Post by bobl » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #191

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.

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!

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Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#203

Post by FeepingCreature » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 11:09 PM UTC

rapind wrote: post #105

simonh wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bioterrorism, rogue Nono-tech, rogue AI, hyper-stable authoritarian government.

Pretty sure we would bring all of this baggage with us to Mars.

Bioterrorism strongly depends on the incubation period. Probably safe on Mars. Rogue nanotech - not unless it has AI. (Though gray goo is not considered very realistic nowadays, as we've realized just how hard even regular nanotech is, and how hostile the natural environment is to nano-scale mechanisms.)

Nuclear war is the big one. Mars colonization would be less about preserving human life, per se, and more about preserving an operational duplicate of the peak state of human civilization.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#204

Post by tigershark » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 11:13 PM UTC

whatislovecraft wrote: post #182

tigershark wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, Falcon 9 costs 62M$ just to bring something on earth orbit. Why you would ever think that 40M$ worth of tickets to bring a BFR on Mars would be profitable?

> Ok, Falcon 9 costs 62M$ just to bring something on earth orbit. That is false. Where are you getting your info? Falcon 9 costs a lot less than that to deliver cargo to LEO! And the price is dropping every day. > Why you would ever think that 40M$ worth of tickets to bring a BFR on Mars would be profitable? There's no need to be condescending. First, I did not state at any point that $40M per launch would be profita…

Ok it’s 50m now, still speaking about earth orbit

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#205

Post by whatislovecraft » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 11:21 PM UTC

tigershark wrote: post #204

whatislovecraft wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok, Falcon 9 costs 62M$ just to bring something on earth orbit. That is false. Where are you getting your info? Falcon 9 costs a lot less than that to deliver cargo to LEO! And the price is dropping every day. > Why you would ever think that 40M$ worth of tickets to bring a BFR on Mars would be profitable? There's no need to be condescending. First, I did not state at any point that $40M per launch would be profita…

Ok it’s 50m now, still speaking about earth orbit

Source!? Falcon 9 cost is not even public is it? Your number is wayyyy too high to match with current SpaceX economics I think.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#206

Post by tigershark » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 11:25 PM UTC

whatislovecraft wrote: post #205

tigershark wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok it’s 50m now, still speaking about earth orbit

Source!? Falcon 9 cost is not even public is it? Your number is wayyyy too high to match with current SpaceX economics I think.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9 If you have a better source feel free to update the page. However I think that it will be much more costly a travel of more than 50M km rather than less that 50K.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#207

Post by anoncake » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 11:28 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #96

simplicio wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I think a good demonstration is Antarctica. Antarctica is both much more accessible and much more hospitable than Mars. But there's very little human activity there. It's hard to imagine there's an economic case for Mars or the Moon while Antarctica remains undeveloped.

Antartica is not a stepping stone to further and greater endeavors out into the cosmos It's more of a "dead end", cosmically speaking. This is why it doesn't have same interest or appeal. There are also other reasons. You can't learn about the possibility of life on other planets in Antartica, and seek to answer one of the greatest questions of all time: "are we alone?". You can't closely study another planet in Anta…

> There are also other reasons. You can't learn about the possibility of life on other planets in Antartica, and seek to answer one of the greatest questions of all time: "are we alone?". You can't closely study another planet in Antartica. You can't be a brave new explorer seeing incredible places for the very first time in Antartica. There are far less new scientific and engineering challenges in Antartica whose solutions will greatly benefit everyone here on Earth. And so on.

That's an argument against research on Antarctica, but that's the one thing humans do there.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#208

Post by rictic » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 11:28 PM UTC

goshx wrote: post #58

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don’t see any benefits to living on Mars until every inch of space on Earth is used up. Everything about living on Mars is hostile to life. Doing anything there like mining and manufacturing will be orders of magnitude more difficult and for what? To say we are somewhere else that looks like the Atacama but infinitely more difficult to get to? It seems silly to be trying to rush to a place that wants to ki…

If we all wait to start anything in Mars when it is too late for our planet, well... humans won’t be around anymore. Think about Mars as redundancy site for the human race.

It only counts as a redundancy site if the colony could survive without Earth. What's the minimum Martian colony size that's self sufficient? Self sufficient doesn't just mean the ability to create sufficient food, water, air, shelter, sewage, etc but the ability to recreate all of the necessary machinery starting only from your initial supplies and undeveloped Martian natural resources.

So many of the industrial processes that we've developed assume a huge interconnected network of supplies. To make Mars self sufficient you'd have to reinvent a huge chunk of the modern industrial system while also trying to keep your small population of colonists from dying. It's a monumental challenge with today's technology.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#209

Post by whatislovecraft » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 11:33 PM UTC

tigershark wrote: post #206

whatislovecraft wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source!? Falcon 9 cost is not even public is it? Your number is wayyyy too high to match with current SpaceX economics I think.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9 If you have a better source feel free to update the page. However I think that it will be much more costly a travel of more than 50M km rather than less that 50K.

Those are external costs to customers, not internal SpaceX costs I believe. Super different because the profit margin is hidden there.

Re: SpaceX Crew Dragon Docks with International Space Station

#210

Post by stcredzero » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 11:34 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #186

stcredzero wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 from earth for a very long time. Aren't there former colonies of western empires that now produce their own drugs, electronic components, and human experts? Granted, it's a bit more difficult because it requires first building the life su…

I don't think any country on earth is currently wholey self sufficient due to the nature of globalism. Nobody can cut off all exports without losing access to some necessary components or materials. A colony on Mars would have higher and more advanced needs to support and protect human life.

A colony on Mars would have higher and more advanced needs to support and protect human life.

This is mostly false and slightly true. The level of technology needed to imperfectly supply the bulk of life support needs isn't that high. Pressurized, radiation shielded homes could be built by making bricks, building structures out of masonry arches, sealing them with an airtight liner, then burying them. The chemistry for extracting breathing gasses and plastics feed-stocks out of the atmosphere dates from the industrial revolution and 20th century. Mars is much more likely to be dependent on Earth for products like microprocessors for far longer than environmental needs.

Completely balancing and stabilizing artificial ecosystems to be 100% self sustaining and recycling might take many decades. However, the elements and materials needed are all available as inputs from sources outside of the Earth.