SpaceX Tuesday...
Discussion
Beati Dogu said:
Basically, Mars has more resources, is bigger, has an atmosphere, a similar length of day to the Earth and is overall better suited to scale up to a self sustaining civilisation.
https://youtu.be/H7Uyfqi_TE8
From about 4 minutes in.
Thanks ... ha you more or less quoted the start of his speech :-)https://youtu.be/H7Uyfqi_TE8
From about 4 minutes in.
Talksteer said:
You won't do a burn before hitting the atmosphere because there is no way you could carry enough propellant to make much of a difference.
It will be interesting to see how orbital refuelling alters the calculations. Currently, if you want to land on Mars, every drop of fuel you need has to be lifted from Earth in a single rocket, schlepped over to Mars, decelerated and landed. It’s even worse if you want to take off from Mars again. Edited by Talksteer on Tuesday 2nd March 15:24
Once you can refuel in Earth orbit, you can take a load more fuel with you. In fact you could accelerate very large quantities of fuel very slowly and send them on a long journey to Mars - the humans could be accelerated faster (you’ve got full tanks) and get there in a shorter time. A refuel from the tanker in Mars orbit, and you’ve got enough fuel to really slow yourself onto the surface of Mars.
The acceleration doesn't actually matter that much (once you're above a certain point), it's the speed you need. If you want to get there quicker you have to accelerate to higher speed to intercept Mars earlier in it's orbit, and you then have to decelerate more for capture, so you need a lot more fuel to shave a relatively small amount of time off the trip.
The fastest and cheapest way is apparently to get a gravity assist from Venus but I'm not sure how often that window occours.
The fastest and cheapest way is apparently to get a gravity assist from Venus but I'm not sure how often that window occours.
RizzoTheRat said:
The fastest and cheapest way is apparently to get a gravity assist from Venus but I'm not sure how often that window occurs.
More often than waiting for Earth and Mars to align. Earth - Mars is every 26 months.
Earth - Venus is every 19 months.
Longer flight time though I expect.
Yeah I think I'd misinterpreted it on a first glance. Looks like the flight time's longer but the total duration of a return mission would be shorter because you can go closer to the return window. So not much point for one way cargo or test missions, unless you want to take a look at Venus, but worthwhile for a crewed mission if you don't want to spend the best part of a year on the surface of Mars.
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2006/2006.04900...
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2006/2006.04900...
garyhun said:
MiniMan64 said:
So it looks like we’re getting SN10 tonight then?
That’s the plan.NASA Spaceflight stream here.
Possibility of launch within next 30-60 minutes.
C n C said:
garyhun said:
MiniMan64 said:
So it looks like we’re getting SN10 tonight then?
That’s the plan.NASA Spaceflight stream here.
Possibility of launch within next 30-60 minutes.
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