Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 06:24:39 PM

Login with username, password and session length

"Apollo on steroids" - NASA

Started by Alberon, September 20, 2005, 09:36:29 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

terminallyrelaxed


the hum

Quote from: "Alberon"
Does a Mars mission have a reasonable chance of sucess though? Sure, you could make it safe if you threw enough money at it, but for the money the world is prepared to spend could it be done? Even if you spin the spaceship there is going to be muscle and bone wastage on the voyage there and back. Then there is the threat from radiation which will be a huge problem even if they have a shelter for the storms the sun will throw their way. Then they have to land on Mars stay there for months and then lift off again. That has never been attempted on a body that big even by an unmanned probe (though NASA has plans for a soil return mission).

Maybe they'll be ready by the time any Mars mission takes off in thirty years, but it is still going to be a huge risk.

More advanced propulsion systems are really needed here, as a 4 year mission, or however long it would take, would be very risky, particularly with regards to the crew's health.  It's estimated a working antimatter drive could get a spacecraft to Mars in about a week, possibly as little as 24 hours.  There's just the slight problem of being able to manufacture it in sufficient quantities and storing it safely.

Blumf

Quote from: "the hum"More advanced propulsion systems are really needed here, as a 4 year mission, or however long it would take, would be very risky, particularly with regards to the crew's health.  It's estimated a working antimatter drive could get a spacecraft to Mars in about a week, possibly as little as 24 hours.  There's just the slight problem of being able to manufacture it in sufficient quantities and storing it safely.

And dealing with the immense acceleration and deceleration involved in such a fast journey.

MojoJojo

I thought that, and decided to look up what the acceleration needed would be. And found Project Orion.
Interstellar travel, planned in the 50s and 60s. Actually somewhat feasible, if hugely expensive. 50 years to Alpha centauri. Powered by lots of nuclear bombs.

That would be a proper "Apollo on Steroids". Damn the modern lack of ambition.

Blumf

Everything you could possibly want to know about building and flying a rocket (inc. equations and mention of exotic systems like Project Orion):
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html

I would have worked out the acceleration profile needed for a 24 hour trip to Mars, but I suck at calculus.

MojoJojo

Hmmm, assuming mars is at it's closest distance of 57.9E9 m away, and from a standing start to standing stop at Mars, you would need an average speed of 670138.89m/s. Since you need to start decelerating once halfway through the journey, you'd need to reach this speed in 6 hours. (It's the average over the whole journey, will peak at twice that).
To reach that speed in 6 hours would require an acceration of 31m/s/s... a bit over 3g, and close enough that I suspect thats what was used to come up with the 24hour figure. While 3g is survivable, I imagine spending 24hours like that might be a bit unpleasant.

Alberon

If you could manage constant acceleration (rather than the quick short bursts rockets give) it would make things a lot easier. Just did a quick search on the net and Robert A Heinlein apparently said that at 1g constant acceleration you could get to Mars in 88 days (presumably that involves decelerating at 1g after the mid-way point).

The great advantage of that of course is that inside the spacecraft it would feel 1g just like we do here on Earth, so no problems with muscle and bone wastage. Of course at the moment we have nothing that can give that amount of constant acceleration.

All Surrogate

Quote from: "MojoJojo"I thought that, and decided to look up what the acceleration needed would be. And found Project Orion.
Interstellar travel, planned in the 50s and 60s. Actually somewhat feasible, if hugely expensive. 50 years to Alpha centauri. Powered by lots of nuclear bombs.

That would be a proper "Apollo on Steroids". Damn the modern lack of ambition.
I went to a lecture by George Dyson, son of Freeman Dyson who worked on that.  George was an interesting guy himself - went of the rails a bit and spent a while canoeing in Canada, before writing a book about Project Orion.  It was very interesting, and seemed fairly realisable and practical, but it just didn't get backing; who'd've thought that of a technology that required thousands of nuclear detonations smashing a spacecraft into the sky?

Alberon

BBC 4 did a good programme on Project Orion called To Mars by A-Bomb

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/mars-a-bomb.shtml

Probably will be repeated again at some point on BBC 4 or 2. If I remember rightly at one point they were talking about a ship the size of an ocean liner using a hundred bombs or so to reach orbit.

Alberon

Russia is planning to develop a successor to the Soyuz spacecraft (easily the most successful manned spacecraft ever built). It's called the Clipper and ESA is considering joining forces with the Russians on this so giving them at least two seats on every launch of the six seat craft.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4286086.stm



This is a mock-up of what the craft will look like. In concept it's very similar, if not identical, to the Americans CEV concepts. It's planned to make the first unmmanned flight in 2011, the first manned flight somewhere between 2014-2020. Apparently the design will also be capable of achieving lunar orbit, just like the CEV, but there's no mention of any plans for a lunar lander.

QuoteThe Clipper would allow Russia and Europe to collaborate with the Americans on lunar exploration, allowing six astronauts to orbit the Moon and to act as a back-up rescue craft, if needed.

Which suggests that if and when the return to the moon happens, it'll be an international effort.

Alberon

Two teams are currently competing to build the new American Crew Exploration Vehicles - Lockheed Martin is one and the other is Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Co. A decision is expected in September over who gets the contract.

The names of the rockets has been decided apparently. The smaller one that launches the astronauts will be called the Ares I and the cargo only lifter will be called the Ares V. The name Ares was chosen because it's the Roman word for Mars, the eventually goal of this programme. The numerals are nods back to the Saturn programme. Saturn 1B being the American's first specifically designed rocket to take men to space and Saturn V being the rocket that took men to the moon.

The name for the whole programme is also close to being announced. The apparent front runner is Project Orion. Just as in the Apollo programme it will be the name of the whole programme and of the main crew module.

Project Orion was also the name of the study back in the fifties of the potential of launching and flying spaceships by A-bombs, but there's no connection to the new Project Orion.

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: "Santa's Boyfriend"I once watched a really whacked out lecture on video by a guy who was convinced that aliens were amongst us and had been for 50 years, and that the cold war was one big show to hide the fact that Russians and Americans were really negotiating with 2 or 3 alien races, and that we had a joint US-Soviet space base already on the moon when Kennedy made his famous moon speech.
Well that's all true apart from the last bit.

Alberon

Lockheed Martin has got the contract to build the Orion.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5304086.stm

QuoteIts first manned flight - to the International Space Station - will take place no later than 2014 and its first flight to the Moon no later than 2020.

It will be 5m (16.5ft) in diameter and have a mass of about 25 tonnes. Inside, it will have more than 2.5 times the volume of an Apollo capsule.

Assuming the whole programme isn't cancelled by the next president, of course.

Alberon


hencole

As a space and cosmology buff I despair everytime manned missions to anywhere are announced (other than ones to fix the hubble). Little to no science gets done compared to cost, it's horribly dangerous, and it just becomes political tool and not a very sharp one at that.

Alberon

True. The US probably feels it has to go to the moon again if only to stop being upstaged by the Chinese whose own space programme is really only to announce its arrival as a superpower.

Orion should be cheaper and safer than the Space Shuttle to run so it will help NASA achieve more. In the short term there is no point to people being in space. In the long term we do need to get out there to exploit the solar system's resources and take the strain off the Earth. Personally I also think it's better for mankind's long term survival to get all of its eggs out of one basket and spread across the solar system and, ultimately, the galaxy.

fanny splendid

I dunno, I might be able to get fit enough by 2020.

hencole

Quote from: "Alberon"Personally I also think it's better for mankind's long term survival to get all of its eggs out of one basket and spread across the solar system and, ultimately, the galaxy.

I hear this argument quite a lot, Hawkins talked about it recently, but I think it might be irrelevant. The technology level required to reach other stars and set up stable colonies in the surrounding star systems is huge. You need a way of travelling fast, probably close to the speed of light to be able to seriously contemplate leaving our system. Or you opt for the slower, but cryogenic way of doing things, which brings huge problems of its own. The amount of computers and machines that need to be sent in advance would be large, and creating autonomous robots  to carry out the work would be tricky. Nano bots might be the answer, they might not.
Given these problems, by the time you reach such a technology level there may not even be a need to travel the galaxy. With the kinds of computing that would likely be available, we could do a bloody good job of actually creating the universe within one. It isn't too far fetched that human organic bodies will cease to exist and our consciousness is stored in another format, perhaps within computers. Also our form of consciousness will likely exceed what is imaginable us now. The sentient mind is immeasurably more important and larger than the universe could ever be. The universe only exists to the viewer, without which it isn't there. Why travel the universe when the universe can come to you?

Santa's Boyfriend

Quote from: "hencole"As a space and cosmology buff I despair everytime manned missions to anywhere are announced (other than ones to fix the hubble). Little to no science gets done compared to cost, it's horribly dangerous, and it just becomes political tool and not a very sharp one at that.

It makes great telly though - I think there's a lot to be said in that.  In fact, turning it into a reality show could substantially subsidise the cost.

Alberon

Spreading out to the other planets makes sense. If something takes out life on Earth these other colonies may survive. Bigger, if very very rare, catastrophes could wipe out all life in a star system (or an entire section of space), so expanding beyond the solar system will make sense eventually no matter how humanity developes. Whatever happens at least a small proportion of humanity will want to travel the universe, and that's all that is needed.

My personal thinking is that the first humans to travel between the stars will be like programs running on sophisticated computers (like in Greg Egan's books) or grown at the destination by seed ships.

The universe is just too dangerous to risk staying in just one star system.

Frinky

I do wonder why this isn't drilled into kids at school with more fear and anger. Never mind the fear of God, fear of science will keep people in line.

"And, just like that, for no reason at all, everything you know and everything you don't know could be wiped out just like that and your mobile phones and your Vauxhall Novas and Charneice being pregnant won't mean shit-all then, will it, you stupid fucks?"

It might even teach kids to have some sodding respect. In my day...

hencole

I'm thinking prison ships for pre-born criminals.

Alberon

NASA has put forward its proposal for an eventually permanently manned lunar base.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120400837.html

QuoteThe long-awaited proposal envisions initial stays of a week by four-person crews, followed by gradually longer visits until power and other supplies are in place to make a permanent presence possible by 2024.

The search for a place for the moonbase will focus at the poles as there are areas there in permanent sunlight, an obvious advantage to power generation.

The US will be looking for other countries and private companies to invest in the project and isn't going to say how much it will cost.

QuoteBut they said that with help from international partners and perhaps space businesses, the agency would have sufficient funds to undertake the plan without any dramatic infusion of new money.

If we're going back to the moon, a permanent base is the best way to go.

Santa's Boyfriend

As long as they put a big death ray up there too.

surreal

Quote from: "Santa's Boyfriend"As long as they put a big death ray up there too.

don't worry, plans for that are afoot too apparently:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Conservative_media_site_claims_Bush_will_1202.html

hencole

Nothing has been learnt from the ISS debacle it would seem. There's a very good reason we have been to the moon in 30 years, there's no point. It's a big rock floating around the earth. To proclaim it as a stepping stone to Mars and beyond is a joke. It only takes a one failed mission resulting in the deaths of astronaughts to loose all public confindence in this project, and any future projects including unmanned missions.

We know we have the bare technology to get people to mars. It's a one way mission at best and a colosal waste of resources that potentially puts back the rest of the space science programme by years.

Alberon

NASA has lost fourteen astronauts in two shuttle disasters. It hasn't stopped them flying. Further deaths, as long as every reasonable precaution was taken, shouldn't damage manned flight too much, and it won't affect unmanned flights.

As the argument has gone earlier in this thread, moving off world is not economically viable at the moment and probably won't be in our lifetimes. However, I think in time it will be and it is a necessary step for the long term survival of the human race.

A Mars mission is very risky. I'd personally like to see the attempt, but a permanent base on the moon is enough for me for now. It'll be at least the late 2030s before an attempt on the Red Planet is made, I think. So there is plenty of time to test and improve the technology before any attempt.

hencole

As I've stated before, if you have the technolgy to escape our planet and solar sytem, you're unlikely to still be a homo-sapien. You are likely to be a super human or have computer enhanced conciousness. We may not even have a body that dies. You aren't going to need to colonise planets in some star trek type way. The long term survival of the human race dictates that we get away from our present flimsy organic bodies. With all that in mind setting up moon bases designed for our current bodies is a dead end to space exploration.

Alberon

That may be a possible future, but there no telling what these post-humans will want to do. They might still want to live on planets in an Earth like enviroment. Whatever form or forms humanity ends up in, getting up into space now is not going to be a waste.

We need to get out into the Solar System and start exploiting it's resources. A lot of that can and indeed will be done by unmanned vehicles, but we will still need people up there.

We really need to move some of the burden off the Earth, I'm not talking about population, but things like energy generation, gathering and refining raw materials. In the end I don't think even that will save the Earth, even if we had emisionless power generation the world would suffer an increasing problem with Heat Pollution.

It's not economically viable just yet, but it is time to start moving beyond the Earth.