There's a suggestions thread. I'm not sure how often that gets read by the mods. Or you could email them - they seem pretty receptive. Having some tag for PDF / Video / Audio would be good.
Yeah, you'd like to imagine that, but unfortunately it isn't the case. Here's a perfectly credible and very well-studied architecture for a Mars mission with 1/3rd the upmass and ~540 days on the surface. If your objective is time on the surface to inhabit and study Mars, then this would give a 64x better return on your investment:
So why propose something much more expensive with much less return? Because scientists have learned that the NASA projects which get funded and stay funded aren't the projects which are most cost-efficient; they're the projects which spread the money around to as many NASA centers (and, more importantly, states which correspond to the senior members of the Senate Appropriations committee) as possible. That's pretty obviously the guiding light for this architecture; its innovation is that it proposes to do so within existing budgets rather than radically expanded budgets. But that doesn't make it minimal or cheap by any measure.
Because nobody is building any of the components for Mars Direct. However many of the components for these missions either exist already or are currently in active development. To do Mars Direct now you'd have to factor in the cost of scrapping everything that's currently in the works and developing Mars Direct from scratch.
I appreciate your POV, Mars Direct is a compelling plan, but it's weakness is that none of its components except the launcher are any use for anything else except another Mars Direct mission. Anyway it's a bit unfair to thrash these guys for wanting to work within what is already actually happening.
I don't think you properly understand what the falacy is. The falacy is to factor in a sunk cost that has no future value in future decisions. For this proposal to be subject to that falacy, you'd have to show that the products of the current development programs have no future value.
I'm afraid I have to turn around and say that it is you who does not have a proper understanding of the sunk costs fallacy. The future value of the sunk costs is not important -- in fact, thinking that it is important is the very definition of the fallacy. Rather, the future value of all costs is what is important, whether those costs are sunk or not.
To illustrate, here's a simplified example. We can buy one of two Mars missions: Mars Mission A, which costs $100, of which we have already paid a $10 non-refundable deposit, and Mars Mission B, which costs $30, but we have not yet spent anything on it.
The $10 we have already spent absolutely does have future value -- $10 worth of future value, if we pursue Mars Mission A. Its future value is, however, irrelevant, because Mars Mission A has $90 worth of future costs, compared to $30 of future costs for Mars Mission B. The Sunk Costs Fallacy is to believe that the $10 continues to have any relevance in such a scenario. In truth, the future costs are the only costs which matter.
"Barring some compelling geopolitical phenomenon, there is
not likely to be another ‘Kennedy moment,’ and the NASA budget is unlikely to see a dramatic increase"
and
"Furthermore, although not considered here, international contributions could offset some of the cost"
oh Americans, there is a wider world out there across the border you know...
I think space exploration is a great chance for human solidarity.
Funding, control, bureaucracy and such can still be challenging, but I think the scientists and engineers themselves would generally be on board. The public also, I think/hope.
Planting an earth flag instead of a national one kinda makes simple sense that I think will appeal to people. You land in a new land, you claim it for your land. Land on a new planet, claim it for your planet.
Did you see all the little american flags come out when New Horizons reached Pluto. I found that a little disappointing. As deliberate as unnecessary. Almost looked tit-for-tat following the EU cheer at Rosetta.
No, but I'm not american so the media doesn't play that angle so much here. But, I'm not looking to berate anyone for flags. Nationalism/group thinking is part of how we work. If American flags are being used to explore the universe and take steps for mankind, I'm not mad at them. I also don't think americans are the worst at this, for all the flak they get.
On the other hand, I'm totally behind anyone who wants to internationalize it. Like I said, I'm pretty optimistic that if it starts people will dig it.
I would be proud to see an earth flag flying on new worlds, especially if they have wind. I think other people would be too.
yeah, from their comment I get the impression that the authors kind of hope for a space race with China, rather than being forced into doing a boring, tedious, joint program.
There is great sci-fi novel Voyage from Stephen Baxter which describes such minimal mission. It is alternative history where NASA landed on Mars in 1980-ties.
I will accept halving of my salary if we can start making an effort towards Mars colonisation. But we all know that any extra money would be spent on building vanity structures here or earth and other forms of culture I don't appreciate.
We can send a robot mission to Mars or build another Olympic(tm)(r) stadium. I wish I was joking.
On that note, how come no government has entertained the idea of opening up tax money budget allocation, e.g. by letting citizens vote on where they want their money used? I understand that the average citizen has little or no idea of how to run a country, but still, surely decisions like whether to build a stadium or send people to Mars could be debated.
I recall at least one short story with that. (Eugene by Greg Egan) The main character previously worked in Social Security, who had to lay off everyone due to no one giving them money.
Anyway, you can directly donate to NASA. They just aren't allowed to promote it or somesuch.
> how come no government has entertained the idea of opening up tax money budget allocation, e.g. by letting citizens vote on where they want their money used?
I'd wager that most people would vote to allocate the money to themselves, one way or another. Fixing potholes, hiring more police and firemen.
How many people would choose to fund researching things that might not pay off in their lifetime?
You would only need to accept a 0.25% salary decrease. NASA's budget is tiny for all the impact it has.
To fund the great achievements of the 1960's space race, NASA's budget was only twice as much as it is today. Bringing it back up would take a whopping... 0.5% more of the federal government budget.
That 0.5% also accounts for one third of the total spending on academic scientific research in the United States.
Also considering that federal government spending is about half of the total government spending in the US, your total taxes would only need to be raised by about 0.25%.
The crazy thing about all the Mars missions I have read about is they optimising for the cheapest component - the humans. Until we have a problems finding volunteers then this is very suboptimal.
There might be a long queue of people willing to volunteer but 99.9999% of them would be incapable of doing the job so the mission would fail. Most would give up before they leave Earth. A lot would break down and make errors during the travel. Of the remaining few, most wouldn't be able to do useful science at the other end. If you want the mission to be more successful than "Yay, we got a human corpse to crash on Mars!" then you need to optimise for attracting people who can actually successfully execute the mission operations. That isn't so cheap.
Sure 99.9% of all humans might not make the grade, but out of 7 billion people I think we can find more than a handful who would.
In the end it does not matter as you optimise to the level you need to attract the candidates required to do the job. Anything else is just over engineering.
Edit. I don't think we would have a major problem attracting Apollo-level candidates even if the chance of success was less than 50%.
Or once we have real AI it could run the mission and the humans would be more like passengers who could spend most of the trip in some kind of suspended animation.
You don’t even need real AI to do this. Years ago I worked out a way to get humans to mars for under 1 billion per person by using off the shelf components and existing infrastructure by not optimising for humans. I should write it up as it is at least entertaining (most people I told were equal part horrified/impressed).
To me it makes a lot more sense to start with a few decades of robotic mining and construction (and release publicly funded technology to the public domain so it can also benefit the 99.99999% of Earthlings who will never step foot on Mars). Get some infrastructure and fail-safes in place instead of sending people to almost certain death in a minimally viable mission, which would be a PR disaster.
Well then let's hope Elon Musk is the one that gets the technology going through SpaceX or something similar since he has a history of releasing his tech into the public domain.
He released advancements with Tesla into the public domain (which could have been observed/reverse engineered by examining products).
Advancements by SpaceX have not been released. They haven't even been patented because SpaceX is competing against governments, so Musk does not want to disclose information to them. And since the product (rockets/spacecraft) can't be examined by the public, there's really no incentive to public domain the tech and give it to competitors.
I keep saying it... There are billionaires alive today, who might actually chose to die on Mars. They could do it.
If James Cameron, Richard Branson, or Elon Musk decided they wanted to die on Mars, I think they could make it happen. And I don't think it would be a big departure from their personalities.
And I don't think it would be a PR disaster.
I think it would be inspiring as hell.
"All men die. Not all men truly live. Follow me to Mars. Colonize it. Make it a second home for humanity. Life is too precious to keep all of it in one basket."
"Millionaire crackpot Elon Musk and his crew asphyxiated on Mars today, after the Banks Dome suffered a catastrophic failure. Musk spent over six billion of his personal wealth to get himself and his crew of seven to the red planet. He is survived by his wife and five children, all of whom have launched lawsuits against SpaceX, arguing that he was clearly not of sound mind."
"James Cameron becomes first solo explorer to reach the deepest point on Earth. This was his 73rd trip into the ocean in a submersible, including 33 dives to the Titanic."
He also worked as a truck driver for a while...
...and he'd probably bring VR along, and have multiple crews back on earth filming anything he wanted to see...
And I'm talking about them near the end of their lives... I could envision it happening.
These sound very similar to Kerbal Space Program mission plans (which I guess speaks highly of it as a simulator). I'm tempted to try to fly it all ingame.
Has docking with (unpiloted) prepositioned stages been demonstrated in real life? Is it reliable enough to use when crew lives depend on it?
There are a few examples, the first that comes to mind being the ISS's unmanned supply missions. From my own KSP experience though, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't want to be the one trying to do the docking.
I'd like to see more on how it's proposed to protect the travellers and the long-stay Mars migrants from radiation. The dosage numbers I've seen do not seem encouraging. Isn't this a major, possibly fatal stumbling block to extensive space exploration?
10.3 m of water + a strong magnetic field gives you approximately the same protection as the earth's atmosphere. Sadly, that getting that much mass in orbit would be extremely expensive, but a shield provides a long shadow of safe area. Though, in the long term such a shield could be reused indefinably.
On Mars the easy option is to live in a cave.
And, considering the other risks involved I think many would trade a significant increased risk of cancer in their lifetimes for the journey.
The crew would be risking something like an additional 1% chance of cancer in the next 30 years. While the radiation dose is significant, it's an acceptable risk.
You could launch most of this stuff with reusable Falcon 9 rockets or equivalents. You just have to divide the building blocks to about ten tons a piece. A large portion of mass is just propellants which is very easy to divide. Space assembly, docking, arm capture, berthing and in space refueling are all quite routine concepts nowadays.
When you don't need the SLS, a lot of missions become a lot cheaper and also flexible.
Example: you have a reusable 10 ton vehicle and you need to send a 150 ton mass to orbit. You fly once per week for four months and it's there. After that the vehicle/capability can be used for something else.
Think of it as renting a standard truck. It's cheap since there's a large supply because of a large market. Their utilization rate is relatively high, meaning when you use them, you only need yo pay a small portion of the investment and upkeep. You can rent many for long periods of time if you need to.
On the other hand large custom moving equipment is expensive and not always even available. And they can stand idle for long periods of time.
A possibly irrelevant nostalgic detour, but I'm reminded of a thought experiment I contributed to once [1].. Called Mars 9 Tons at a Time. Basically use Zubrin's Mars Direct as the baseline plan, but do it without the Ares 5 he described or another HLV. Which has the effect that we would launch everything direct to Mars, no rendezvous or docking prior to the Martian surface. Primarily on the hypothesis that docking the parts together would add the cost of an assembly facility, and complicating the components enough to be dock-able together or heavily suboptimal to support simple assembly.
But to avoid the costs of the Ares V, we wanted to do the entire thing using nothing but existing off-the-shelf available LVs to do the entire thing. If we'd gone the route of even a small custom LV, we would have the constant overhead of maintaining multiple launch pads that sat idle for 2 years at a time, just to launch something each launch window to Mars. Instead, our plan began with the Delta IV-H lobbing payloads trans-Mars. It has a payload of just over ~9T doing that. It could also fly three or four payloads per launch window, Vandenburg and the Cape, both at the start and the end of the window for a two week turnaround on each launch pad. Of course, suboptimal timing and suboptimal inclinations will cut into that 9T slightly. Further, we could make use of things like the Mitsubishi H-IIA [2], Atlas V 551 or Heavy (would need modest new development, or the 551 which is a bit weaker), Ariane V and maybe Proton (tho Proton is quite weak on high energy flights). Falcon 9 Heavy could eventually be added to that list (I think we were already talking about F9H in 2007...). That gets you maybe 6-9 payloads per launch window to Mars, of 6-9 tons depending on the launcher. That was our working budget for each payload.
We managed to account for just about everything to do with the surface base using nothing but those small payloads... Planned out a standard design for a small descent vehicle in I think 1500kg to 2500kg which could land most of the rest of the mass as payload. We could do Earthworks (or Marsworks... dirtmoving / digging) using using some small remote-controlled construction equipment of 2-3T each. [3] Food, water and other supplies could pretty easily fit in smallish pieces like that. Used solar panels in place of Mars Direct's nuke for political feasibility / scalability to small payload deliveries. Also talked a bit about assembling a shelter using either the landed capsules for rooms, or assembling rooms from parts (I don't remember which). A part I was a bit uneasy about that some others thought was trivial enough, was building a new launch vehicle from parts on the surface... We'd be using small modular segments to build stages, scaffolding to assemble everything together and connect the stages, and all of this would be done outdoors. I was kinda worried about getting sand between the staging components or in the engines.
The part we didn't manage to fit into the initial constraints of 9 ton payloads, all direct-to-Mars, was the actual crew transport there (we were fine-ish for the return). We stretched kinda far, pulled compromises nobody would really take, and got a 1-crew capsule to weigh in at 11T-12T. And that's with basically no redundancy! The entire thing would be a small can with a solar wing for power, life support for 6 months, and no way for the pilot to survive a launch failure from Earth. The capsule would fly straight to Mars, pilot would don a suit, depressurize the capsule and get in a MOOSE-alike [4] module and travel to the Martian surface in that. They would also be dependent on the entry trajectory for their life, as they'd have to walk to base on landing.
From there our plans started to look a bit more "traditional" with either an HLV snuck in there just for the crew (and not the base) or orbital assembly of an orbital ship. Say, something with plenty of life support of its own, just does Earth-...
If you want to avoid space assembly, you can always just refuel. Even that gets you far since in many cases propellants are a large proportion of spacecraft mass.
But why would you avoid docking?
Even Apollo had it as a critical part of the mission. Twice! (The CSM turned around and docked to the lunar module after translunar injection.)
Well, the avoidance of docking was primarily because this was a thought experiment, not quite optimizing for a global optima. We wanted to see if a Mars mission could be mounted within those tight constraints, and set about with those constraints as unwavering. Why avoiding docking was one of them, was a requirement from Mars Direct. (Flipping through A Case For Mars for a minute wasn't enough to find the reasoning...) If you wanted to do a mission with minimal assembly but with docking... I'm not sure you could get a ship with a dry mass of <25T to launch to LEO. Say, with a sizeable upper stage for orbit insertion, habitat module and life support storage space (even with the food / water / fuel all brought up later). Even a fairly large Bigelow module, electrical equipment and pressurized space for food is going to be more than a Delta IV-H can take to LEO... And then an empty upper stage big enough needs a lot of volume. Maybe two flights for assembly, and then launch supplies up?
62 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct
So why propose something much more expensive with much less return? Because scientists have learned that the NASA projects which get funded and stay funded aren't the projects which are most cost-efficient; they're the projects which spread the money around to as many NASA centers (and, more importantly, states which correspond to the senior members of the Senate Appropriations committee) as possible. That's pretty obviously the guiding light for this architecture; its innovation is that it proposes to do so within existing budgets rather than radically expanded budgets. But that doesn't make it minimal or cheap by any measure.
I appreciate your POV, Mars Direct is a compelling plan, but it's weakness is that none of its components except the launcher are any use for anything else except another Mars Direct mission. Anyway it's a bit unfair to thrash these guys for wanting to work within what is already actually happening.
To illustrate, here's a simplified example. We can buy one of two Mars missions: Mars Mission A, which costs $100, of which we have already paid a $10 non-refundable deposit, and Mars Mission B, which costs $30, but we have not yet spent anything on it.
The $10 we have already spent absolutely does have future value -- $10 worth of future value, if we pursue Mars Mission A. Its future value is, however, irrelevant, because Mars Mission A has $90 worth of future costs, compared to $30 of future costs for Mars Mission B. The Sunk Costs Fallacy is to believe that the $10 continues to have any relevance in such a scenario. In truth, the future costs are the only costs which matter.
and
"Furthermore, although not considered here, international contributions could offset some of the cost"
oh Americans, there is a wider world out there across the border you know...
I think space exploration is a great chance for human solidarity.
Funding, control, bureaucracy and such can still be challenging, but I think the scientists and engineers themselves would generally be on board. The public also, I think/hope.
Planting an earth flag instead of a national one kinda makes simple sense that I think will appeal to people. You land in a new land, you claim it for your land. Land on a new planet, claim it for your planet.
On the other hand, I'm totally behind anyone who wants to internationalize it. Like I said, I'm pretty optimistic that if it starts people will dig it.
I would be proud to see an earth flag flying on new worlds, especially if they have wind. I think other people would be too.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bA-pR_9s6Ng/VVeBWoDKeHI/AAAAAAAAAc...
We can send a robot mission to Mars or build another Olympic(tm)(r) stadium. I wish I was joking.
Anyway, you can directly donate to NASA. They just aren't allowed to promote it or somesuch.
http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/displayDir.cfm?Internal_ID=N_PD_...
I'd wager that most people would vote to allocate the money to themselves, one way or another. Fixing potholes, hiring more police and firemen.
How many people would choose to fund researching things that might not pay off in their lifetime?
edit: thinking about it now, basically populist politics.
To fund the great achievements of the 1960's space race, NASA's budget was only twice as much as it is today. Bringing it back up would take a whopping... 0.5% more of the federal government budget.
That 0.5% also accounts for one third of the total spending on academic scientific research in the United States.
Also considering that federal government spending is about half of the total government spending in the US, your total taxes would only need to be raised by about 0.25%.
Pretty sad when you think about it.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
In the end it does not matter as you optimise to the level you need to attract the candidates required to do the job. Anything else is just over engineering.
Edit. I don't think we would have a major problem attracting Apollo-level candidates even if the chance of success was less than 50%.
I was being a bit playful with 2001: A Space Odyssey
Advancements by SpaceX have not been released. They haven't even been patented because SpaceX is competing against governments, so Musk does not want to disclose information to them. And since the product (rockets/spacecraft) can't be examined by the public, there's really no incentive to public domain the tech and give it to competitors.
I keep saying it... There are billionaires alive today, who might actually chose to die on Mars. They could do it.
If James Cameron, Richard Branson, or Elon Musk decided they wanted to die on Mars, I think they could make it happen. And I don't think it would be a big departure from their personalities.
And I don't think it would be a PR disaster.
I think it would be inspiring as hell.
"All men die. Not all men truly live. Follow me to Mars. Colonize it. Make it a second home for humanity. Life is too precious to keep all of it in one basket."
It might be, depending on how you write it.
"Millionaire crackpot Elon Musk and his crew asphyxiated on Mars today, after the Banks Dome suffered a catastrophic failure. Musk spent over six billion of his personal wealth to get himself and his crew of seven to the red planet. He is survived by his wife and five children, all of whom have launched lawsuits against SpaceX, arguing that he was clearly not of sound mind."
Billions do not buy you much in terms of comfort on the way to Mars.
Yes, it Will be hard for non-billionaires, too, but they will give up less, and have more to gain; they aren't famous yet.
He also worked as a truck driver for a while...
...and he'd probably bring VR along, and have multiple crews back on earth filming anything he wanted to see...
And I'm talking about them near the end of their lives... I could envision it happening.
Has docking with (unpiloted) prepositioned stages been demonstrated in real life? Is it reliable enough to use when crew lives depend on it?
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFFF0.pdf
The weird thing is that this is the second time I've seen it today, and I don't think I've ever seen it before...
On Mars the easy option is to live in a cave.
And, considering the other risks involved I think many would trade a significant increased risk of cancer in their lifetimes for the journey.
Example: you have a reusable 10 ton vehicle and you need to send a 150 ton mass to orbit. You fly once per week for four months and it's there. After that the vehicle/capability can be used for something else. Think of it as renting a standard truck. It's cheap since there's a large supply because of a large market. Their utilization rate is relatively high, meaning when you use them, you only need yo pay a small portion of the investment and upkeep. You can rent many for long periods of time if you need to. On the other hand large custom moving equipment is expensive and not always even available. And they can stand idle for long periods of time.
But to avoid the costs of the Ares V, we wanted to do the entire thing using nothing but existing off-the-shelf available LVs to do the entire thing. If we'd gone the route of even a small custom LV, we would have the constant overhead of maintaining multiple launch pads that sat idle for 2 years at a time, just to launch something each launch window to Mars. Instead, our plan began with the Delta IV-H lobbing payloads trans-Mars. It has a payload of just over ~9T doing that. It could also fly three or four payloads per launch window, Vandenburg and the Cape, both at the start and the end of the window for a two week turnaround on each launch pad. Of course, suboptimal timing and suboptimal inclinations will cut into that 9T slightly. Further, we could make use of things like the Mitsubishi H-IIA [2], Atlas V 551 or Heavy (would need modest new development, or the 551 which is a bit weaker), Ariane V and maybe Proton (tho Proton is quite weak on high energy flights). Falcon 9 Heavy could eventually be added to that list (I think we were already talking about F9H in 2007...). That gets you maybe 6-9 payloads per launch window to Mars, of 6-9 tons depending on the launcher. That was our working budget for each payload.
We managed to account for just about everything to do with the surface base using nothing but those small payloads... Planned out a standard design for a small descent vehicle in I think 1500kg to 2500kg which could land most of the rest of the mass as payload. We could do Earthworks (or Marsworks... dirtmoving / digging) using using some small remote-controlled construction equipment of 2-3T each. [3] Food, water and other supplies could pretty easily fit in smallish pieces like that. Used solar panels in place of Mars Direct's nuke for political feasibility / scalability to small payload deliveries. Also talked a bit about assembling a shelter using either the landed capsules for rooms, or assembling rooms from parts (I don't remember which). A part I was a bit uneasy about that some others thought was trivial enough, was building a new launch vehicle from parts on the surface... We'd be using small modular segments to build stages, scaffolding to assemble everything together and connect the stages, and all of this would be done outdoors. I was kinda worried about getting sand between the staging components or in the engines.
The part we didn't manage to fit into the initial constraints of 9 ton payloads, all direct-to-Mars, was the actual crew transport there (we were fine-ish for the return). We stretched kinda far, pulled compromises nobody would really take, and got a 1-crew capsule to weigh in at 11T-12T. And that's with basically no redundancy! The entire thing would be a small can with a solar wing for power, life support for 6 months, and no way for the pilot to survive a launch failure from Earth. The capsule would fly straight to Mars, pilot would don a suit, depressurize the capsule and get in a MOOSE-alike [4] module and travel to the Martian surface in that. They would also be dependent on the entry trajectory for their life, as they'd have to walk to base on landing.
From there our plans started to look a bit more "traditional" with either an HLV snuck in there just for the crew (and not the base) or orbital assembly of an orbital ship. Say, something with plenty of life support of its own, just does Earth-...
If you want to avoid space assembly, you can always just refuel. Even that gets you far since in many cases propellants are a large proportion of spacecraft mass.
But why would you avoid docking?
Even Apollo had it as a critical part of the mission. Twice! (The CSM turned around and docked to the lunar module after translunar injection.)