Citing increasing U.S. launch costs and the “fleeing” of commercial customers to foreign launch service providers, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is continuing to push a bold strategy tied to a new, reusable spaceplane that the Agency envisions flying 10 times in 10 days for a cost of less than $5 million USD per flight.
Translated this intriguing article for English readers about our soon to occur Mars-Colonisation, and prospective announcements at the upcoming SpaceX Event!
In our analysis of end 2015 (available on our website, and its summary in the English section) we tried to discern what might look like the project SpaceX Mars Colonization Transportation (MCT), Elon Musk has finally unveiled Sept. 27 at the next International Astronautical Congress. This year included the meagre clues gleaned from the various statements of the contractor, some alter the previous information (eg abandonment of multi-body launcher formula type Falcon Heavy) or, coercion, seemed to confirm the fundamental options such as refuelling earth parking orbit by a second launcher, the total reuse and descent of March of the entire interplanetary shuttle ( “landing the whole thing”). Since then, other indications of various origins have appeared on fans forums. Examine their possible significance.
The choice single-body launcher recoverable and we had driven to approach the performance target (100 T Payload deposited on Mars) to increase the diameter of the drive bay 15 m, although it seemed sufficient to limit that of upstairs itself to 12.5m (pm the first two stages of the Saturn 5 moon had a diameter of 10 m). This configuration allowed to stay a maximum of 31 engines of 300 T thrust and achieve take-off weight (GLOW) 7750 T. Unfortunately, the shape flared rear of the first floor, certainly favourable to the stability phase of ascent, is very unfavourable for the return (flight in opposite direction), especially since it has less then effective ways to stabilise the trajectory. Since it is difficult to imagine that we can reduce the GLOW and therefore the take-off thrust, the solution is to increase the diameter of the whole floor to 15 m. Now it is one of the rumours on forums “MCT-geeks”; SpaceX had solicited tooling suppliers for this diameter.
At the time, it evoked a Raptor 250 Tf thrust (optimal size for mass according SpaceX). Wishing nevertheless not to increase the number of engines (compared to what is allowed with the Falcon Heavy), we considered it necessary to increase the engine thrust to 300 Tf, that remained liveable in the 15 m the Bay. The problem is that even with this power, the desired performance is not achieved (unless we assume our assumptions about the structure of the masses too pessimistic shuttle); Indeed there were 90 T CU (referred to 100) and more in the most favourable conditions: Mars at perihelion and transfer long (Hohmann). But a noise is that SpaceX would work on a Raptor 700 Tf! This level of unit thrust would exceed the planned takeoff thrust, reached with 13 of these engines easily Lodgeable. Given the performance deficit, we can imagine that SpaceX, once the diameter of 15 m admitted, will seek to accommodate the maximum engine.
While there are several forms of ion propulsion, the version Brophy used on Dawn involves two grids, each about a foot wide and spaced half a millimeter apart. An electrical system powered by a solar array on the spacecraft passes a current through both grids, and the resulting voltage differential between the two is what accelerates the xenon particles as they pass through the grids. Each accelerating particle only provides a tiny amount of thrust — roughly equivalent to the pressure of a piece of paper lying in your hand — but in the airless and frictionless environment of space, a steady stream of that tiny thrust can build up to monumental speeds of about 24,000 miles-per-hour.
What Brophy and his coworkers aimed to do was build a grid and propulsion system that could pull this off, and demonstrate that the setup was durable enough to survive the whole mission. So before both Deep Space 1 and Dawn, they ran versions of the ion system here on Earth continuously for years to demonstrate their lifespan.
Finally, the Dawn mission became possible when Ceres and Vesta reached a once-every-17-years alignment, allowing the mission to visit them both. “That was really a great boon for space exploration to do the two largest asteroids in the asteroid belt with one mission,” Russell explains.
Assumption upon assumption upon assumption…
With a side order of totally flawed logic, hold the mayo.
This post originally appeared on Quora: Will humans achieve interstellar travel?
NO. Never. Not ever, even 100 quadrillion years from now. Never. Clearly, what follows is just my highly speculative opinion. It seems to bother people. Some call it pessimistic. Some call it overly optimistic. Whatever. Just my thought.
Should our species remain extant for the next thousand years —meaning we don’t kill ourselves with bio-engineered plagues, or Yellowstone doesn’t erupt and kill us all, or a KT-like impact doesn’t happen— we will eventually cease being “human” in a few centuries.
From Next Big Future: http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/spacex-will-use-falcon-heavy-for-2018.html
Posted in space, space travel
“Travel along with the Voyager spacecrafts as they traverse the solar system on their planetary expedition spanning over three decades.
A film by — Santiago Menghini”
Posted in engineering, environmental, space travel
Adam Crowl talking about the energy of the Sun and what we can do with it.
No one thinks big better than Adam Crowl, a Centauri Dreams regular and mainstay of the Icarus Interstellar attempt to reconfigure the Project Daedalus starship design of the 1970’s. If you’re looking for ideas for science fiction stories, you’ll find them in the essay below, where Adam considers the uses to which we might put the abundant energies of the Sun. Starships are a given, but what about terraforming not just one but many Solar System objects? Can we imagine a distant future when our own Moon is awash with seas, and snow is falling on a Venus in the process of transformation? To keep up with Adam, be sure to check his Crowlspace site regularly. It’s where I found an earlier version of this now updated and revised essay.
By Adam Crowl
GOLDEN, Colorado — A major American launch provider has outlined a plan that the company says will help enable a space economy based on refueling spacecraft in Earth orbit.
Dubbed the “Cislunar 1,000 Vision,” the initiative foresees a self-sustaining economy that supports 1,000 people living and working in Earth-moon space roughly 30 years from now. The concept stems from an analysis and ongoing technical work by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing Co. that provides launches aboard Atlas and Delta rockets.
A central element of the plan involves the use of a souped-up Centaur rocket stage called ACES (Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage). This liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen upper stage is designed to be reusable and can be refueled, perhaps by propellant made using water extracted from Earth’s moonor asteroids. [Moon Base Visions: How to Build a Lunar Colony (Photos)].
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos today put a spotlight on the construction of a giant rocket production facility in Florida for his Blue Origin space venture – but he also gave a shout-out to the engine production team back in Kent, Wash.
In an email to Blue Origin’s fans, Bezos noted that ground has been broken for an orbital vehicle manufacturing site at Exploration Park, just south of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Ground-clearing actually began last month.)
“The 750,000-square-foot rocket factory is custom-built from the ground up to accommodate manufacturing, processing, integration and testing,” Bezos wrote. In comparison, the production facility in Kent where Blue Origin is building rocket engines and its New Shepard suborbital spaceships takes in about 300,000 square feet.
