back to article Elon Musk plans new Mars rockets bigger than Saturn Vs

SpaceX, the rocket company founded and bankrolled by famous PayPal nerdwealth icon Elon Musk, has revealed radical plans for a colossal launcher as big as the Saturn Vs which sent men to the Moon - and has also proposed nuclear-powered spaceships to carry astronauts to Mars. SpaceX plans for future launcher development. Credit …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. bitmap animal

    There's progress.....

    Over 40 years on from Apollo and they are planning a rocket that can lift the same weight. Woooo.

    Also noticed that the X Heavy seems to use quite a few rocket engines. The Russians worked on that and failed because of trying to run the engines in sync - I'm sure technology has moved on a lot since then though.

    1. Vulch

      Multiple engines

      It's the 9-Heavy uses lots of engines, the standard Falcon 9 has (surprisingly) 9 engines and the Heavy is 3 strapped together for 27 total. The basic X has only 3 of the bigger engines so the X-Heavy has a total of 9 across the 3 cores.

      The Soviet N-1 had problems because all 30 engines were fed from a single pair of tanks which made plumbing and wiring a nightmare, in flight working engines got shut down instead of faulty ones and rapid disassembly took out neighbouring engines as well.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Russians solved that problem

      The N1's real problems were down to quality control (one rocket exploded when either welding slag or a loose bolt was sucked into a turbine) - so they fitted filters, and to the computer software controlling the engines - which they gradually debugged.

      The N1 was killed by Brezhnev before its fifth test launch which the engineers were confident would work. But America had got to the Moon, the Soviet economy was beginning to stagnate and they needed to find the money to design a rival to the Space Shuttle.

      I'd be more worried that they're talking about a new rocket design that can't survive a single engine failure. Saturn could (and did) complete its mission with one engine out. The Shuttle can get to orbit on two main engines (one in the last few minutes of flight). Let's hope they don't think of putting people on top of that one.

      Besides, why are we buggering around with rockets at all? Project Orion now please - 6000 tonnes to orbit on the back of 800 nuclear explosions - what's not to like?

    3. Gene Cash Silver badge

      The Russians did solve it

      Take a look at the bottom end of the Soyuz booster. It uses 24 rockets firing simultaneously, and "by the year 2000 over 1,628 had been launched with an unmatched success rate of 97.5%" so it seems to work.

      1. Nick Gibbins

        Not quite

        The first stage of the Soyuz-U (and most other rockets derived from the R-7) consists of four strap-on boosters (each with a single RD-107 engine) around the second stage core (with a single RD-108 engine). The RD-107 and RD-108 engines have four fixed combustion chambers apiece, but are considered to be single engines because they each have a single pair of turbopumps feeding RP-1 and liquid oxygen to the combustion chambers. In addition, the RD-107 has two gimballed verniers, while the RD-108 has four.

        So, depending on how you count it, a Soyuz-U either has five engines firing at launch, or thirty-two thrust chambers.

    4. Tom Paine
      Boffin

      Number of engines

      Russia's failed N1 launcher, intended to beat Saturn V / Apollo to the moon, used 30 engines in it's first stage. The Saturn V used five. Energia (the utterly awesome Soviet-era designed heavy-lift booster that sadly only flew once before the collapse of the USSR doomed it to history) had four. The Falcon 9, the biggest of SpaceX's two launchers so far, has a nine engine first stage.

      The vibration problems on the N1 were solved; it was the tendency of engines to explode when they failed that turned out to make the odds of a total loss accident too high.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_%28rocket%29

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V_%28rocket%29#S-IC_first_stage

      http://www.buran-energia.com/energia/energia-desc.php

      http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php

    5. Captain Thyratron

      Quite a few? Quite a few less!

      I suspect you're thinking of the Soviet N1 rocket, whose first stage, with 30 NK-15 motors, has got more than three times as many motors as the Falcon X Heavy's is supposed to get--noting, of course, that the XX and X Heavy are supposed to use the Merlin 2 motor, which is a pretty huge motor compared to the NK-15. That was, however, HARDLY the N1's only problem. No, there were plenty:

      * Soviet inability to make bigger engines due to insufficient industrial capability, as well as any other problems with building a huge moon rocket, whose first stage has thirty freaking engines, which might follow from inadequate industrial capabilities. Dangerous engineering compromises to account for such shortcomings were pretty commonplace in Soviet engineering. Hell, just look at their RBMK power plants.

      * Problems with the kind of plumbing you need to make the motors work on a rocket whose first stage alone has thirty motors; furthermore, the motors were of the closed cycle/staged combustion cycle variety, which are more efficient than earlier designs but require more complex plumbing--which is a problem when getting /any/ rocket with that many engines would be a pretty amazing feat of pipework.

      * The Soviet tendency to test things as little as feasible, because testing is expensive and the Soviet Union was kind of poor. In addition to lack of funding, the rocket could not be assembled completely until it was at Baikonur Cosmodrome, which further restricted testing.

      What do you get when you have a largely untested, underfunded, and spectacularly complicated design with a relatively new kind of engine, all made in a country that, by fiscal necessity, had to do everything pretty much everything as cheap and dirty as they thought they could get away with? In this case, some pretty spectacular explosions. There were so many things that could go wrong, and so few of them had been tested and corrected before launch. That's a recipe for fiery failure with /any/ rocket, let alone one over a hundred meters tall with several dozen motors and a maze of plumbing that'd make even the Mario Brothers run screaming.

      SpaceX, by comparison, has good manufacturing capabilities, good metallurgy, extremely rigorous testing practices, and a simpler and more reliable design--both for the motors and the rockets as a whole. In general, SpaceX's stuff is simpler, less fragile, and better made, and SpaceX is a lot better about testing their rockets than the Soviet space program.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        It's all about money, eventually

        "The Soviet tendency to test things as little as feasible, because testing is expensive and the Soviet Union was kind of poor."

        At most, a half-truth. Reliability wasn't even a design goal. Why would it be? There were more volunteers they ever could use, who cares? Failures weren't published so what's the problem?

        If you haven't noticed, SU was very fond of heroes and those usually end up dead.

        Also they were in hurry, just like Nasa which caused a shuttle to blow up, nothing new in here either. "Not enought resources" might be true but poor? No.

        There are many problems who can't be solved by throwing money to them, even if some people think so. You need a lot of brilliant people and those are always a limited resource, in any country.

        Judging Soviet Union designs by US-standars is also a big mistake and frankly, I can't ever understand what is the constant fuss of some astronauts ending dead: Everyone knew it was very dangerous and there is a lot more of astronauts available, any time.

        "Best effort" (in allotted time and money) is enough.

        You also use "Cheap and dirty" as derogative, which tells about your attitude more than anything in reality. Example: Kalashnikov. T34 (tank).

        US has a very long tration of making hugely over-engineered anything which ends up being as unreliable than cheap solution just because of enormous complexity which exceedes the capabilities of the designers. KISS is something they haven't even heard of. (Any modern fighter jet in US needs 5 service hours for one flight hour and have operational capability of minutes, not hours.)

        But of course: The company building these designs make a huge profit, they _have to_ use complicated (and extremely expensive) solution.

        1. Captain Thyratron

          You got the wrong idea.

          Oh, hey, don't get me wrong. Cheap and dirty can be just fine a lot of the time; the benefit of it is that a lot of Soviet designs ended up being simple and rock-solid. I love my Mosin-Nagants, for example--one of 'em is over seventy years old and it still shoots great. The action is still smooth as butter, and the thing is so easy to take apart and clean; furthermore, the accuracy is pretty impressive. I've had Lego sets that were harder to service.

          But to claim it's a "half-truth" that the country was strapped for cash and cut corners on account of it is just a baldfaced lie. Where were their supermarkets? Where were their department stores? Those were pretty hard to find, but the graves of peasants who starved to death by the tens of millions were quite plentiful. Don't tell me that country wasn't poor.

          You assert that the country wasn't poor and that all this business about safety was just a matter of priorities, but it's a pretty hard argument to make when just about every aspect of Soviet industry has had every corner cut that could be. They couldn't make engines like the Saturn V because manufacturing them was too expensive. They stuck with light-water cooled, graphite-moderated power plants because manufacturing something safer with a negative void coefficient was too expensive, and more western-style designs seldom appeared outside of naval reactors. They never managed to build a big nuclear-powered aircraft carrier like the Nimitz class because the navy thought they were too expensive--despite remarks like "Why are you splitting hairs? Make an aircraft carrier like the Americans have, with that kind of aircraft fleet." (One ship fitting the bill was finally under construction in 1991 and never finished because the country collapsed.) For that matter, look at how long it took the USSR to come up with four-engine bombers. Sure, they got 'em eventually, but it took longer. Likewise, sure, they worked out most, if not all, of the problems that doomed the N1 rocket project (though not before the project was cancelled outright), but it took longer.

          They played catch-up with nuclear weapons technology, they played catch-up with nuclear submarine technology, they played catch-up with naval architecture, they played catch-up in aerospace engineering, they played catch-up with manufacturing, they played catch-up with just about everything. Why? Because it takes a long time to turn a country of agrarian peasants into something that can make moon rockets. You need the mining, you need the steel production, you need the tooling, and you need all the infrastructure that stands behind those, and it takes more than a few five-year plans to get that. They had some brilliant engineers and scientists, and they made a fine effort of it and managed to more or less keep up with western military capabilities, but it came at a price, and when you're in a position like that, obviously safety, testing, and things like that are going to be lower priorities--especially when everybody's pretty sure that military parity with the west must be maintained at /all costs/ by /whatever means necessary/. Think for a moment about what "all costs" and "whatever means necessary" might entail. The west thought the same way, but had the economy to back it up--so our nerve gas plant workers at least got good protective suits that didn't expose you to some funny isomer of VX when you bent over too far. We could spare the extra few bucks. They couldn't.

      2. annodomini2
        WTF?

        Clarification required

        1. Yes 30 Motors and their plumbing are very complex, but what you fail to cover is that 30 small motors without the need for gimbles makes for a much shorter and much lighter configuration, this actually helps with balancing the rocket, which is a much more complicated task than the plumbing system. In addition, the simplification of the attitude control system compensates for this somewhat.

        2. True this programme suffered from problems, but if you read up on it, most of the plumbing problems were due to the way the rocket was transported to the launch site.

        3. The programme was notorious for being underfunded, the main reason being to keep it as secret as possible so large funds could not be transferred to prevent arousing too much suspicion.

        The rocket was assembled at the factory, but it needed to be dismantled to be transported to make it to Baikonur, due to the transport links and the shear size of the thing.

        This assembly/disassembly/assembly is noted as one of the key points in the potential issues with the plumbing system.

        Using multiple smaller engines cuts development costs as you can scale up the number used and people wonder why the Space shuttle costs $1bn to launch and Soyuz costs $30m!

        Change of management mid programme didn't help the situation.

        Space X have done very well and I wish them all the best, however the Soyuz has had more launches than any other, 898 according to wikipedia with 24 failed launches, none of which were manned and is considered by many to be the safest launch system in the world.

        The Soviets also had the wisdom to evolve what they already had rather than to start with a clean sheet of paper everytime.

        I'm not saying the Soviets were perfect, neither was any other nation, but at the same time you are trying to compare something that was done 40years ago to something thats been done in the last 8 years.

    6. Steven Jones

      Chemical energy...

      It's hardly surprising we haven't moved on much. The theoretical abilities of chemical-powered reaction motors are basically fixed by the physics. You can tweak the efficiency through slight improvements to the rocket motors, better control of the burn, better engineering materials and so on, but the gains become ever more marginal. Ultimately to lift more you need a rocket that gets linearly heavier with the payload (and, obviously more complex). There is nothing that is going to change that short of a wholly different approach.

      We only need to look at jet aircraft. Passenger jets, in pursuit of fuel efficiency, actually travel slower than those designed in the 1960s, and the Concorde experiment demonstrated that to go a lot faster involved disproportionate expense which the market couldn't fund. The fastest military aircraft are still no swifter than those designed in the 1960s (the really big gains are in control, electronics and weaponry).

      So it will be with chemically powered rockets - these huge lifters required for inter-planetary travel can only be funded when something other than economics is the issue. In the 1960s there was the cold war and a wealthy US government to fund it. That's no longer the case - maybe the Chinese could find the funds and will to do it. But be under no misunderstanding. The problem is fundamentally that limited by the physics of chemical rockets.

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      Progress anyway

      "Over 40 years on from Apollo and they are planning a rocket that can lift the same weight. Woooo"

      Yes, but that's not the whole truth: The cost of lifting that has dropped to less than a tenth from what it was from 40 years ago. That's progress as well.

      Much like TV: It still shows a picture to you, just like it did 40 years ago and you might as well ask that where is the progess in that case?

  2. Hud Dunlap
    Coat

    always in the future

    Ever notice how Obama always talks about what will happen in the future?

    "The president has said that a new, unspecified heavy lifter will be selected in 2015 for use by American astronauts as they head out first to nearby asteroids and then onward to the red planet."

    Mines the one with the layoff notice in the pocket.

    1. jason 7
      Unhappy

      Yeah seems like......

      ...he's kinda expecting to get a second term.

      Way things are going I wouldnt bet on it.

      And yes I was pleased he got the job. Just he hasnt seemed to have done much with it.

      Going back to the point about not much progress in 40 years. I think the issue is that rocket science had reached a pretty mature level some time ago. Its limited by the products available for the combustion (which arent that efficient for lift really).

      In effect the payloads mentioned are probably the limit on whats physically/financially feasable.

      To get more up there will take some new form of propulsion.

      Personally I say just do one mega Orion launch to get 10000 tons of materials up into orbit and be done with it.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29

      1. Anonymous John

        Pretty mature level though.

        What you can do though is to make cheaper launch vehicles. Which the Falcon series seem to be. And Musk has the goal of making the Falcon 9 fully reusable.

        I'm optimistic up to and including the Falcon 9 Heavy. All its hardware has already made orbit. And two strap on boosters is a tried and tested system. And cautiously hopeful of the Falcon X and X Heavy. But doubtful about the need for the Falcon XX. Possibly dearer than two Falcon X Heavies with a combined payload of 250 tonnes.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Grenade

      Yeah it's weird...

      It's weird to have a President with a plan and a schedule. Makes me feel uneasy. Hopefully we bomb someone for no reason suddenly. Then things will feel normal again.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Grenade

      Future

      By 2015 the USA won't be on Mars. By that time they would have gone the way of the Soviet Union.

    4. David Stever
      Boffin

      Always in the Future?

      Yeah, we have to do this stuff in the future, because starting with Bush I, NASA has proposed a series of programs that have never been funded. Because of this, we have no follow on to the shuttle. Even Bush II proposed a program, but didn't bother to do the whole funding thing, that might have put us on the way to that future. The Obama Administration has rightfully dropped that NASA employment package known as Orion (you didn't really think they would ever build that rocket, did you?), and left us with a company that knows they'll make a boat load of money if they actually follow through. Major difference between SpaceX and NASA in that last sentence. Following through. With NASA, you pour in a bushel of money, and you get compost and some jobs. Pour a bushel of money in to SpaceX, you get far fewer jobs, and more actual products. Wow.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    why are all the designs based on sex toys?

    at least Saturn looked like a series of proper rockets stacked one atop another.

    On a more serious note, I thought we were supposed to be into Spaceplanes to orbit by now. Where's my HOTOL to get me to my Space Hotel?

    1. F111F
      Coat

      Because

      Max Q applies to all types of penetration?

      .

      .

      Mine's the one covered in strawberry jel...

    2. Captain TickTock
      Pirate

      Re:why are all the designs based on sex toys?

      Merchandising, baby!

      (Bumper sticker on my flying car - "my other car is a HOTOL")

  4. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Hmmm??

    Will Falcon XXX be ribbed .... for guaranteed controller launch into orbit satisfaction.

    1. Piers
      Alert

      amanfromMars 1 ?!?

      ONE?!? Oh nooos - they're breeding.

      And prolly takin ova the wurld b4 we can leaves!!111!!!

    2. Mike Moyle
      Coat

      Not quite...

      You're thinking of the Falcon Fourex.

    3. Abremms

      XXX?

      the Falcon XXX will also have two spherical fuel tanks at the base.

      1. Harvey Trowell
        Coat

        And what's in the tanks?

        Vin Diesel.

        Sorry.

  5. TeeCee Gold badge
    Coat

    Dead Sea scrolls.

    "....nor shalt thou burn rocks."

    Looks like God not only recommended Kerosene as a fuel but warned us off solid-fuel boosters too. Smartarse.

    Just how much is a kikkar and a shekkel? Have SpaceX got their Kerosene / LOX mixture in a ratio approved by God or do we need to get the stakes, faggots and torches out?

    1. kevin mulholland
      Flame

      ....nor shalt thou burn rocks.

      Surely this means no nuclear fusion?

      1. Graham Dawson Silver badge
        Coat

        Wrong!

        Fusion doesn't burn rocks. Burning is a chemical reaction, not a nuclear reaction. And plutonium isn't a rock.

        ...

        I know, I know...

        1. Mephistro
          Joke

          @Graham Dawson

          God: "This is God talking here!. From now on you won't build spaceships that use atomic energy!"

          Shepherds: (blank looks)

          God: "Aw, forget about it! YE SHAN'T FUCK GOATS!"

      2. hplasm
        Flame

        shurely shome mistake-

        you mean fission? Or steam engines.

        1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

          I do indeed mean fission.

          I blame global warming.

      3. Javc
        Flame

        ...nor shalt thou burn rocks.

        No, it means coal.

    2. David Stever
      Joke

      God's Words

      I think that God was warning us to not go forth with the North Korean coal fired booster. The cost in colliers and stokers was just too steep.

  6. Mage Silver badge
    Happy

    Exchange rate?

    About 3 Shekel to the Dollar?

  7. heyrick Silver badge
    Joke

    Boom bang-a-bang!

    (that's all)

  8. Tim Bergel
    Thumb Down

    Kikkar? Shekels?

    No idea where Elon found that quote, but as far as I can tell the Kikkar and Shekel are both units of currency, with 360 Kikkars to a Shekel (maybe), so I don't think this will help much in sorting out fuel/oxidiser ratios ... looks like a pretty dodgy translation to me.

    1. Graham Dawson Silver badge
      Boffin

      Nope

      Shekels were also a measure of weight. One shekel is 11.3 grams or 0.4 ounces. The kikar was 60 mannehs, or 3600 shekels. The reason shekels are associated with money is because they were convenient amounts of gold to make coins from.

      1. AndrueC Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Not only but also

        ..there's also that Life of Brian sketch :)

  9. Dave 32
    WTF?

    Everything Old is New Again

    Hmm, so we're basically back to where we were 50 years ago with the Nova rocket:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_rocket

    Oh, well, at least no one has proposed nuclear rockets again...err, no, wait....

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA

    Ok, lunch time on this side of the pond. Let me grab my club and go out into the forest...

    Dave

    1. Annihilator
      Stop

      Old / new

      Sorry, but every bloody rocket looks by and large the same. The reason? The shape of it is quite aerodynamically suited for the job. For the foreseeable future, all rockets will look the same (or it'll be very easy to spot similarities anyway).

  10. Anonymous John
    Unhappy

    Great! Bloody great!

    If they hadn't hidden the instructions in a cave two thousand years ago, we could have explored half the Galaxy by now.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    dead scrolls a joke

    that dead scrolls quote is made up. any stupid person can see that that's a joke.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    SpaceX: bringing the old adage about not running before you can walk

    right into the space age

  13. Joe User

    Nuclear propulsion

    One question: Does a "nuclear thermal" rocket produce radioactive exhaust?

    1. Dani Eder
      Flame

      Re: Nuclear Propulsion

      All rockets produce thrust by throwing stuff out the back end. The faster the stuff is moving, the more push you get for a given amount of fuel. Chemical rockets throw the combustion products (mostly water in liquid fueled engines) out the back end. Nuclear rockets heat up hydrogen by running them through the hot part of a nuclear reactor. The reactor itself stays put. Since hydrogen has a molecular weight of 2, and water has a molecular weight of 18, and gas velocity goes as 1/sqrt(mol weight), hydrogen gets tossed out the back end 3x faster at the same temperature. So roughly it is that much more efficient.

      Now, the hydrogen doesn't care how it gets hot. You can get the same performance by focussing sunlight on a heat exchanger, and running the H2 through that instead of making a space nuclear reactor. It would be much safer, less scary for the nucleo-phobes, and sunlight is abundant in space.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        It's...

        only abundant if you're near a sun.....

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rocks, weight, and coinage

    In ancient times, coinage served as both a monetary value and as a weight --- in the case of the Shekel and Kikkars -- both related to the Talent (weight) the value of which was based on gold, silver or some other semi-precious metal.

    I think.

    Maybe the 'burning rocks' bit is referring to coal.

  15. E 2

    Falcon XXX

    When the Falcon XXX hits production will it have a longer thicker shaft and a more capacious head?

  16. Carl W

    one kikkar to 20 shekels?

    So that 3600 shekels to 20, or 180:1 fuel:oxidizer? Doesn't sound like stochiometric to me.

  17. Gene Cash Silver badge
    FAIL

    Sigh... same old, same old, since 1963...

    I've seen the same thing promised literally 50 years ago. I even still have the wall posters. Not holding my breath any more.

    Bending metal of that size is very difficult and expensive, it'll be a long time before a private company can afford that, and Congress sure as hell isn't footing the bill anymore.

    America couldn't arrange a piss-up in a brewery, much less go back to the Moon.

  18. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Boffin

    Proprietary? Ever tried second sourcing an RD 180?

    Or perhaps an RL10. It's only been in production for roughly the last 50 years.

    Shock news. Damm near *everything*in the space business of any size is "proprietary". Musk is just playing the game. So far he has played it pretty well.

    Now where Lewis got the idea that a nuclear thermal rocket has a better thrust to weight ratio than conventional engines is harder to fathom.

    By the end of the NERVA nuke rocket programme NASA IIRC was hoping for a flight design T/W of about 1.1:1. However once in *orbit* this will move stuff at a fair clip. Nukes score on chemical rockets on Specific impulse (c900-1000s Vs 450s+ for the best performing *safe* combo of H2/O2 and or 550s for the insanely dangerous Li/H2/F2 mix). Not very impressive with ion drives possible up to 30000, but with thrust levels giving decent acceleration IE a decent fraction of a g or more.

    If he's going with a nuke in orbit it would make sense to do it as a "space tug" ferrying packages to and from Mars. Once this thing fires up it's going to be hot for the foreseeable future. It would make sense to keep using it as long as possible.

    I think these plans are a bit premature but it does demonstrate a road map for future growth.

    The article is right about one thing. The bleatings from the North Alabama Space Administration about job losses will be well coordinated and *very* loud.

    It's been known for *decades* the real problem with lowering launch costs is the *huge* standing army of who don't actually *touch* the rocket but supervise and measure what, where and when something *has* been touched and fill in the (mostly) paper forms to confirm that it has indeed *been* touched, by a certified and properly supervised knob twiddler who was at all times properly supervised.

  19. Jemma
    Go

    @ tim

    @ Tim - given that whoever wrote those scrolls would know how much of a given item could be obtained at the time for a given monetary value - similar value translations have been found in other situations ... although its a given that translations are always imperfect..

    On the multiengined thing - I should imagine since it was a fuel flow problem that caused the russians so much issue, and they were working on systems based on the mechanical fuel injection found in DB603 engines and the V-2, that modern systems will have no problems with a multi-motor array..

    Good luck to them..

  20. Arb2

    Definition of Kikkar

    From the German Wikipedia (last updated 2008) translated by Google:

    Kikkar is a biblical (Hebrew) weight:

    1 Kikkar = 34.26 kg

    1 Manäh = 571 grams

    1 Schäkäl = 11.42 grams

    1 Kikkar = 60 Manäh = 3000 Schäkäl

    It is first mentioned in the Bible (2 Kings 18:14) and is often translated as a Talent.

  21. Tom Paine
    Boffin

    Hmmmm

    Useful amounts of cargo to Mars with an ion drive in a year?! That's going to need a pretty gigantic area of PV cells.

    Landing a human on Mars is going to be ferociously difficult, which translates into "very very expensive". Going to the moon first makes little sense, as the vehicles and technologies needed for Mars are very different from an Apollo-like lunar trip (or even ambitious long-surface stay visions with a semi-permanent base, which are basically doable with Apollo-like boosters and vehicles; you just need to land half a dozen Apollo-sized unmanned cargo packages in very close proximity to do that.) Mars is difficult because:

    1. it's a two-and-a-half year round trip, at a very minimum. Although Salyut 7, MIR and the ISS have all been in operation a lot longer than that, only one human's stayed in space longer than a year.

    2. The majority of that time will be spent outside the terrestrial magnetosphere, with consequent need for large amounts of mass to shield the crew from cosmic and solar radiation.

    3. EDL - Entry, Descent and Landing. The problem is that unlike the moon, Mars has an atmosphere, which means the lander has to be aerodynamic, unlike Apollo. However the atmosphere's too thin to be much cop for earth-style aerobraking as used by the returning Apollo capsules, Soyuz, the Shuttle and so on. This is why landing sites for the MERs which landed in 2004 and the Mars Science Lab rover (Curi), scheduled to launch next year, were restricted to the lowest points on the surface - they had to use maximise aerodynamic drag by descending through the deepest atmosphere available. Now, factor in that a manned lander has severe restrictions on the amount of g-forces it can subject it's payload to, that it must also carry enough shielding to protect the crew, consumables (air food and water) for a prolonged surface stay (probably "only" six months -- ~30 times longer than the longest Apollo surface mission -- /and/ must be able to either relaunch itself and fly into orbit, or carry a secondary ascent module to do so. The obvious solution is to land three or four cargo-carriers in close proximity before risking a manned landing - to test the technology as well as to establish a beachhead, perhaps including the ascent vehicle as one complete payload. Consider that they'll all have to work perfectly before the manned landing could be attempted; and that if any one should fail, you have /at least/ four years to wait before you can try again. (Spacecraft like that aren't built on a production line, and the orbital mechanics restrict you to a few weeks of launch window at two year intervals.)

    And that is why my money's on no manned landing in my lifetime. In fact I don't even think there'll be an unmanned sample-return mission in my lifetime, either.

    Sorry, Star Trek fans. Physics doesn't follow Hollywood rules.

  22. Dani Eder
    Flame

    Re; Nuclear Propulsion

    All rockets produce thrust by throwing stuff out the back end. The faster the stuff is moving, the more push you get for a given amount of fuel. Chemical rockets throw the combustion products (mostly water in liquid fueled engines) out the back end. Nuclear rockets heat up hydrogen by running them through the hot part of a nuclear reactor. The reactor itself stays put. Since hydrogen has a molecular weight of 2, and water has a molecular weight of 18, and gas velocity goes as 1/sqrt(mol weight), hydrogen gets tossed out the back end 3x faster at the same temperature. So roughly it is that much more efficient.

    Now, the hydrogen doesn't care how it gets hot. You can get the same performance by focussing sunlight on a heat exchanger, and running the H2 through that instead of making a space nuclear reactor. It would be much safer, less scary for the nucleo-phobes, and sunlight is abundant in space.

    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Happy

      @Dani Eder

      "Now, the hydrogen doesn't care how it gets hot. You can get the same performance by focussing sunlight on a heat exchanger, and running the H2 through that instead of making a space nuclear reactor. "

      Good point and IIRC Lockheed proposed it for one of the various NASA space tug programmes over the years.

      I was never quite sure if the thrust levels they were expecting from solar thermal were ion drive levels or chemical rocket levels.

      Obviously at chemical engine or nuclear levels things could move at quite a lick but you have the problem of a *very* large reflector to gather that sunlight while under acceleration.

      While nuclear has no flight experience hardware did get built which was at (or near) flight weight which makes it more in line with SpaceX's preference for system with substantial development and near deployment history. While SpaceX seems to have investigated historical systems quite closely for future projects they have not slavishly copied them (EG the shift from solid escape rocket to liquid pusher for the dragon capsule) so what they come up might not be quite what people expect.

  23. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Happy

    @Gene Cash

    "I've seen the same thing promised literally 50 years ago. I even still have the wall posters. Not holding my breath any more."

    A reasonable PoV. However back then it was mostly a flags and footprints PR.

    What has changed are the number of possible destinations (ISS and the Biglow hotel project for starters) and the demonstration (by Virgin Galactic) of substantial public demand to do *something* in space backed by actual dollars on the table. ------

    "Bending metal of that size is very difficult and expensive, it'll be a long time before a private company can afford that,"

    Depends what you *mean* by private.

    AFAIK most of the facilities to mfg Saturn and Apollo were either in private (corporate) hands or built with public funds with ownership retained by the contracting company.

    There has been something of a revolution in mfg of large structures since Apollo. Waffle (square) machining into flat plates followed by break forming would probably be done by machining complete rings (as is done with the casings for large gas turbine nacelles) into isogrid (used on Delta IV and Falcon). Tank ends of 8 separate parts explosively formed and welded would now likely to spun formed in 1 part (Atlas and Falcon. Ariane uses shot peen forming). Lastly friction stir welding retains near parent metal strength and in principle eliminates the need for thickened plate edges. On the Shuttle ET this eliminated about 100 instances of re-welding. Fewer pieces also mean much fewer xray and dye testing.

    Coupling CAD systems to CNC machines directly lowers both the manufacturing and design cycles of newer launchers. You might like to compare the staff size of SpaceX (which also produces its own engines) to produce a 2 stage launcher with that of the relevant divisions of Boeing or North American when they built the Saturn S1 and SIV stages

    The US government may well not be able to build another human rated launcher. But after 5 decades why should they have to?

  24. Zolkó Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    plain stupid

    it's plain stupid to want to go to Mars with 1 (one) rocket fired from Earth. It would be so much easier to launch several rockets and assemble them in space. Jeeeeze, why did they build the ISS if no-one uses it ?

    Or even better: when you do long-range submarine diving in caves, 1 team goes and leaves spare bottles half-way. That could be easily done to go to Mars, or the Moon: launch several automated vehicles with ion-engines, slow but efficient, containing some raw materials (water, oxygen, petrol, whatever) that will take years to reach target, and *then* launch a high-speed rocket with only the astronauts who can then use those spare materials.

    But building 20-store high rockets.... nah. Why not try to build imperial cruisers ? Or a Falcon Millenium ?

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    OooOooOooOhh Dead Sea Scrolls in Space?

    Someone alert the Skientology Spaced-Out Administration! The promise land is on Mars!

    Anonymous, because I"m actually joking, there - in case *anyone* would mistake that.

    Beer, because I'd have to be drunk to think it was "okiedokie" for a supposed business leader on a space-aiming aerospace firm to be quoting Dead Sea Scrolls in a press conference.

    As long as they put their test-launch pads *far* away from *my* home, I guess I'm alright with it, though.

  26. Adrian Esdaile
    Flame

    We call this progress?

    Quoting ancient badly-translated fairy-tales and calling it rocket science?

    Claiming a mandate because some stoner bargearse wrote down his blithered rantings 2,000 years ago and it had the misfortune to survive while the wisdom of Alexandria was lost when his tuckfard bretheren burned all the books?

    Here in Stupidsville(TM) (formerly Australia) a bunch of westie bogans released helium balloons that would take messages "up to heaven" - looks like the priests, god-botherers, snake-oil charlatans, spivs and con-men have won after all. Science is dying, the Earth is flat and you can fly in your sundew-moonbeam-and-blessed-magic-rocks Sky-chariot to Heaven on Mars.

    On second thoughts... do carry on, please! Load all your religions nutcake friends aboard your Star-Ark, even take animals two-by-two (you don't need plants! They didn't need them the first time, did they?) and fuck off to Mars.

    Just be sure you keep the cameras rolling as you all slowly choke in your poorly-planned religiously-correct habitats. Maybe the Tooth Fairy will join with Santa and Super-Jesus to save you from carbon dioxide poisoning, if you pray hard enough.

    If there was ever a solution to the Fermi Paradox, this is it: either aliens are avoiding us like the plague, or any civilization eventually succumbs to the Ignorance of Fools.

  27. AndrewG

    why hurry to Mars?

    "Spending such a long time far from a planet is a bad idea for astronauts"

    Well yeah, unless the planet is Mars...Mars dosn't have a magnetosphere to deflect radiation and a thin thin atmosphere that also dosn't help much (although on the bright side there isn't much secondary radiation to worry about)

    I can see trying to reduce total exposure time...but it won't be a case of "wow..we're in martian orbit, someone get the umpire to yell SAFE"

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Go short on shares in Morton Thiokol?

    I mean, once CERN discovered anti-grativy particles and the technology to apply them to motorcars (Back to the Future 2) then cost to orbit drops to pennies per pound (assuming a resonably efficient energy storage mechanism).

    Mines the coat with the TCP/IP specification from Roswell in it (Independence Day - "Negotiating with host", my arse!)

  29. Mikel

    Land on Mars?

    That's crazy talk. You land on Phobos or Deimos. No gravity well, more interesting survey spot for a permanent settlement and spaceport.

    And when you get to the Asteroids with your tunnelling equipment, 1 Ceres is a likely spot with plenty of water.

  30. This post has been deleted by its author

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    @Adrian Esdaile : Indeed.

    Friend, you deserve a Nobel Prize for that comment - I'd say, the Peace Prize, because there's nothing like some earnest comedy to blow the steam off.

    Despite all the scary censorship news, I guess Australia can't be all that bad off, when she can still support such implicit wisdom.

  32. AndrueC Silver badge

    What about launch loops?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop

    Seems reasonable to me. Some risk from a catastrophic failure but as long as it's a reasonable distance from anywhere important that doesn't sound too bad.

  33. leppa87

    Lewis Page, you sir, are an idiot

    I was at the conference and at the talk where Mr. Markusic presented the powerpoint which has since leaked and been taken hopelessly out of context. Regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls...

    IT WAS A JOKE!!

    Just like Lewis Page's either lack of intelligence or integrity.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lest we forget

    Zubrin did a grand job at looking how to get us to Mars safely assuming we had nothing better than Saturn V's to do the job. I'd reccomend everyone to go read his book 'The Case For Mars'.

    Regarding going to the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, whilst the delta V considerations make that attractive, the lack of raw materials there to sustain a permanent base make them less so. On the other hand, it's easier to get between the martian surface and the Martian moons than it is between Earth and Luna.

    Now, where's me hotel on the edge of the Hellas Sea so I can holiday there? Still being built? Sigh...

  35. Willy Messerschmitt
    Flame

    Elon "PORKBARREL" Musk

    Mr Musk styles himself as an entrepreneur "taking spacelift into the private sector", when in reality he is just the next generation of US government contractor.

    Here is a real Commercial Space Lift Service Provider:

    http://www.arianespace.com/

    Compare this

    http://www.arianespace.com/news-launch-logs/2000-2010.asp

    to that:

    http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php

    You are going to see that spacex is a receiver of USGOV PORKBARREL, mainly. All the non-USGOV launches are from chummies of USGOV and probably subsidised by a USGOV backdoor. Arianespace is actually doing commercial launches besides some minor Eurogov launches like ComSatBw.

    Can you say "Beltway Soap Opera" ?

    1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Happy

      @Willy Messerschmitt

      Let's consider the Ariane development process.

      The European Space Agency decides it needs a new launcher.

      It gets cash from each of its member *governments*.

      They hand it to CNES (the French *national* space agency) to run the development programme, who hand most of it to EADS Astrium, who divide up the work according to who contributed it (whose contribution to the budget got them first dibs on the exhaust pipes to the gas generator on the Vulcaine 2 engine)

      They can the completed design back to ESA.

      Who hand it over to Arianspace.

      I too could *probably* run a successful business if I could the next generation of my product (costing several *billions* of dollars/euros/roubles handed to me) handed to me *virtually* for

      free.

      The *real* equivalent to Ariane (or the Vega solid it it's still on the cards) are the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (AKA Atlas V and Delta IV). Only despite their improved launch costs (by US standards) they are *still* too expensive for *anyone* else to use (ITAR does a pretty good job of hobbling them even further. Strom Thormold's legislation could not have done a better job if Arianspace had paid him off themselves).

      There is *no* equivalent to SpaceX's work in Europe. Most of the *proposals* for a privately *developed* (as opposed to launching a taxpayer funded) design come from the UK. The rest are along the lines of "We'd *love* to do this but we'd need x Billion Euros from ESA first."

      Price elasticity (the level you have to drop prices before the demands increase a *lot*) requires a 10x drop to get decent growth. The *classic* solution is build a *bigger* launcher* rather than look at building a *better* IE better launch mode.

      While launchers cost the same as a low end wide body and get thrown away after 1 use that's not likely to change.

  36. This post has been deleted by its author

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like