Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship' • Hacker News Board

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#211

Post by qayxc » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 11:18 PM UTC

pharke wrote: post #205

qayxc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. But in any case, it's not just the fuel. Have you seen the proposed Moon-Starship? They'd require some quite impressive crane to even get cargo into the ship. Additionally, there's the problem of the landing site. It's considerably more difficult to land a rocket on unprepared, rocky terrain than on a carefully prepared landing pad. Plus a suitable area has to be found first, too. There's simply no guar…

Two things to consider: 1) They plan on working out orbital refuelling before sending a Starship to Mars, this might not be enough to return it to orbit from Mars surface depending on how much fuel needs to be used for Earth orbit departure but I wonder if it would be enough to decelerate into Mars orbit and have enough left over to return to Earth, this could open up some other possibilities which leads to #2 2) If…

Interesting idea. The only issue I see with that is that you now have two orthogonal problems: a Starship to get into Mars orbit and back to Earth orbit and a lander capable of landing on Mars and returning to Mars orbit.

Had SpaceX not cancelled their Red Dragon project, they wouldn't even have needed Starship for Mars sample return. NASA should have funded that back in 2014 - there would have been a sample return vehicle today and ready for launch two years from now...

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#212

Post by Robotbeat » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 4:20 AM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #183

Robotbeat wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2031 is when the Sample Return Mission is supposed to return the samples back to Earth. Keep in mind slips happen in ALL sorts of space projects, not just SpaceX. I’ll take your bet. I want 2:1 odds: SpaceX returns a vehicle from Mars by the end of 2035 (UTC), and before the NASA-ESA sample return mission has returned its samples. I’ll buy you a beer/beverage (value not to exceed $10) if you win, and you’ll buy me 2…

Well, I'm not sure 15 years qualifies as "a few years", but the price is right, so you're on I guess!

Okay! Let’s put it in here, with a bunch of other SpaceX-related beer bets. If you make an account there, I’ll be able to message you. The site is pretty old and more active than ever, so it’ll probably still be around by the time this has been decided: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35196.0

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#213

Post by snakeboy » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 11:29 AM UTC

throw1234651234 wrote: post #147

snakeboy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't see any problems with that since he isn't using public funds or selling anything: "By July 2019, it had received $158 million in funding (of which $100 million was from Musk)" (from Wikipedia)

I was responding to the enormity of his claims, not the question of ethics.

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#214

Post by Aeolun » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 12:26 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #35

Aeolun wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is trying to build a glorified cargo box. SpaceX is trying to build a starship. I’d be more enthusiastic if we had 2 attempts at a spaceship.

I am tired of spacex fanboys that cant tell the difference between a scientific mission for research and a commercial operation

> "And this satellite that Airbus will build - I like to call it 'the first interplanetary cargo ship', because that's what it will be doing. It's designed to carry cargo between Mars and Earth,"

It has nothing to do with fanboy or not. I’m sure there are tons of challenges involved in making this happen, but I just don’t think a cargo satellite is fundamentally very exciting.

Having a human in orbit of mars would make the whole process of retrieving rock samples orders of magnitude easier.

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#215

Post by Aeolun » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 12:28 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #49

Aeolun wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is trying to build a glorified cargo box. SpaceX is trying to build a starship. I’d be more enthusiastic if we had 2 attempts at a spaceship.

> SpaceX is trying to build a starship No.

No? I agree that so far it has been mostly exploding cylinders, but that doesn’t really change what they’re attempting no?

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#216

Post by Aeolun » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 12:30 PM UTC

lrnStats wrote: post #66

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats in Elon time, I would not bet my house on starship being in orbit by 2030. Secondly, there is need to independant access to space free of US technology export rules and foreign policy and sanctions. US administration has forbidden NASA collaboration with China, and as a result they built a separate space station, and are having a separate moon-capable rocket. And i would bet my house that they will get to the m…

Orbit isn't hard. The hard part is landing something that can later return to space. That said, you can't trust anything Elon says.

While his track record is bad at getting there on time, it’s pretty good at getting there in general.

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#217

Post by jerf » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:32 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #185

jerf wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So instead of sending a rover with 4x or 10x energy" The rocket equation is a real jerk. You're likely thinking "that sounds linearly harder" when you should be thinking it's exponentially harder.

At that point, adding weight to the rover or to the return system is an equivalent cost.

No, rover is easier; return system has to fly all of its mass back to Earth, rover never leaves Mars.

In which case you might be asking what the advantage of a return system is in the first place, the answer being for much the same reason that we have "stages" of rockets. The return system gets a fresh exponential curve to work with. If you tried to ship both at once it would be a nightmare. Plus there are all the advantages of shipping things back, regardless of what the rocket equation says. Science via a rover is great but it just can't match numerous full laboratories with humans in them.

The part that disappoints me a bit is that I still don't see us launching fuel into space for space refueling very often. Rocket equation bites no matter what you do, but launching a Falcon fuel of nothing but fuel (to the extent possible) shrinks the solar system a lot. It's still pretty big after that, but it's a different place, even with conventional chemical rockets. I hope we'll see it soon. I'm not sure it'll be quite as simple as "SpaceX will have a Mars Starship there before the mission can get there", but there is a real prospect of making it so space missions takes weeks instead of years if we can get space refueling figured out. A lot of other things come into reach as well, like satellite reclamation.

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#218

Post by thinkcontext » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #197

thinkcontext wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I would very much like to see Starship succeed, it must be understood just how risky a project it is. Just having the rocket be able to work in Earth orbit is a risky proposition, given its novel design and materials challenges. Add to that the many novel challenges returning Starship would entail, refueling in space, landing and taking off from Mars, setting up multi megawatts of solar, mining, methane produc…

FH was done on a shoestring budget for a small market and nearly canceled when it became clear Starship was the better path. But I agree with you that Starship has some challenges, specifically proving it can handle re-entry, be easily refurbed between launches, and be easily refueled in low earth orbit. But Super Heavy is just a bigger Falcon 9, using the same landing technology. Even if a Starship Reusability falls…

I agree they should look at putting Super Heavy into service before Starship. They could use a conventionally designed expendable upper stage, imagine how immense its payload capacity would be without having to lug the enormous Starship. It would allow them to fill out Starlink quickly and would open up the market for larger satellites sooner rather than later.

Re: Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship'

#219

Post by thinkcontext » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #204

thinkcontext wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I would very much like to see Starship succeed, it must be understood just how risky a project it is. Just having the rocket be able to work in Earth orbit is a risky proposition, given its novel design and materials challenges. Add to that the many novel challenges returning Starship would entail, refueling in space, landing and taking off from Mars, setting up multi megawatts of solar, mining, methane produc…

> That was doing something that had been done before, strapping rockets together to make a Heavy version. That’s a common misconception - in fact, even SpaceX itself made this mistake! Musk said that making Heavy was almost as complex as designing a whole new rocket; which is also why they went with new next time (Starship) instead of incremental (Super Extra Heavy).

> in fact, even SpaceX itself made this mistake

That was part of my point. They could be (re)making the mistake of making a promise of timelines before they understand the real difficulty of what they are trying to accomplish.