It is certainly good to see a private promoter pitching these ideas. It conditions the public to the possibilities years in advance.
It is clear to me that landing beside a lava tube is an excellent wayto start. The mouth can be covered with a base bubble and the tubeitself can be exploited on a step by step basis. The main reason forthis approach, wherever it can be used is to place a wall of rockbetween the crew and the external flux of radiation and theenvironment.
It also sets up nicely for actual tunneling into the crust itself toproduce a well protected habitat.
As far as setting up grow bubbles, we are dealing with scant sunlightand the heat used may exceed the value of what is produced ifanything.
Again an underground chamber complex made huge due to the low gravitywill have rooms a kilometer perhaps in diameter or a reasonablefraction thereof. An artificial light source in the ceiling solvesthe need for light and after that it is a matter of sourcing andmanaging water.
Anything else is temporary and outright trouble. What we really needto figure out is a way to produce something like concrete usingmartian material. I would really like to line the surface with shotcrete.
Huge Mars ColonyEyed by SpaceX Founder Elon Musk
Rob Coppinger 23 November 2012 Time:07:00 AM ET
http://www.space.com/18596-mars-colony-spacex-elon-musk.html
Elon Musk, thebillionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight companySpaceX, wants to help establish a Mars colony of up to 80,000 peopleby ferrying explorers to the Red Planet for perhaps $500,000 a trip.
In Musk's vision, the ambitious Mars settlement programwould start with a pioneering group of fewer than 10 people, whowould journey to the Red Planet aboard a huge reusablerocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane.
"At Mars,you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it intosomething really big," Musk told an audience at the RoyalAeronautical Society in London on Friday (Nov. 16). Musk was there totalk about his business plans, and to receive the Society’s goldmedal for his contribution to the commercialization of space.
Mars pioneers
Accompanying thefounders of the new Mars colony would be large amounts ofequipment, including machines to produce fertilizer, methane andoxygen from Mars’ atmospheric nitrogen and carbon dioxide and theplanet's subsurface water ice.
The Red Planetpioneers would also take construction materials to build transparentdomes, which when pressurized with Mars’ atmospheric CO2 could growEarth crops in Martian soil. As the Mars colony became more selfsufficient, the big rocket would start to transport more people andfewer supplies and equipment. [Future Visions of Human Spaceflight]
Musk’s architecture for this human Mars exploration effortdoes not employ cyclers, reusable spacecraft that would travel
back and forth constantly between the Red Planet and Earth —at least not at first"Probably not aMars cycler; the thing with the cyclers is, you need a lot of them,"Musk told SPACE.com. "You have to have propellant to keep thingsaligned as [Mars and Earth’s] orbits aren’t [always] in the sameplane. In the beginning you won’t have cyclers."
Musk also ruled outSpaceX's Dragon capsule, which the company is developing toferry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit, as the spacecraft thatwould land colonists on the Red Planet. When asked by SPACE.com whatvehicle would be used, he said, "I think you just land theentire thing."
Asked if the "entirething" is the huge new reusable rocket — which isrumored to bear the acronymic name MCT, short for Mass CargoTransport or Mars Colony Transport — Musk said, "Maybe."
Musk has been thinkingabout what his colonist-carrying spacecraft would need, whatever itends up being. He reckons the oxygen concentration inside should be30 to 40 percent, and he envisions using the spacecraft’s liquidwater store as a barrier between the Mars pioneers and the sun.
A $500,000 ticket
Musk’s $500,000ticket price for a Mars trip was derived from what he thinks isaffordable.
"The ticket priceneeds to be low enough that most people in advanced countries, intheir mid-forties or something like that, could put together enoughmoney to make the trip," he said, comparing the purchase tobuying a house in California. [Photos: The First Space Tourists]
He also estimated thatof the eight billion humans that will be living on Earth by the timethe colony is possible, perhaps one in 100,000 would be prepared togo. That equates to potentially 80,000 migrants.
Musk figures thecolony program — which he wants to be a collaboration betweengovernment and private enterprise — would end up costing about $36billion. He arrived at that number by estimating that a colony thatcosts 0.25 percent or 0.5 percent of a nation’s gross domesticproduct (GDP) would be considered acceptable.
The United States' GDPin 2010 was $14.5 trillion; 0.25 percent of $14.5 trillion is $36billion. If all 80,000 colonists paid $500,000 per seat for theirMars trip, $40 billion would be raised.
"Some money hasto be spent on establishing a base on Mars. It’s about getting thebasic fundamentals in place," Musk said. "That was true ofthe English colonies [in the Americas]; it took a significant expenseto get things started. But once there are regular Mars flights, youcan get the cost down to half a million dollars for someone to moveto Mars. Then I think there are enough people who would buy that tohave it be a reasonable business case."
The big reusablerocket
The fully reusablerocket that Musk wants to take colonists to Mars is an evolution ofSpaceX's Falcon 9 booster, which launches Dragon.
"It’s going tobe much bigger [than Falcon 9], but I don’t think we’re quiteready to state the payload. We’ll speak about that next year,"Musk said, emphasizing that only fully reusable rockets andspacecraft would keep the ticket price for Mars migration as low as$500,000.
SpaceX is alreadytesting what Musk calls a next-generation, reusable Falcon 9 rocketthat can take off vertically and land vertically. Theprototype, called Grasshopper, is a Falcon 9 first stage withlanding legs.
Grasshoper has madetwo short flights. The first was on Sept. 21 and reached a height of6 feet (2 meters); the second test, on Nov. 1, was to a height of17.7 feet (5.4 m). A planned milestone for the Grasshopper project isto reach an altitude of 100 feet (30 m). [Grasshopper Rocket's2-Story Test Flight (Video)]
"Over the nextfew months, we’ll gradually increase the altitude and speed,"Musk said. "I do think there probably will be some craters alongthe way; we’ll be very lucky if there are no craters. Verticallanding is an extremely important breakthrough — extreme, rapidreusability. It’s as close to aircraft-like dispatch capability asone can achieve."
Musk wants to have areusable Falcon 9 first stage, which uses Grasshopper technology,come back from orbit in "the next year or two." He thenwants to use this vertical-landing technology for Falcon 9’s upperstage.
Musk hopes to have afully reusable version of Falcon 9 in five or six years, but heacknowledged that those could be "famous last words."
A rocket steppingstone
Another steppingstone toward the planned reusable Mars rocket is SpaceX’s FalconHeavy launcher. With a first flight planned for next year fromVandenberg Air Force Base in California, the Heavy is a Falcon 9 thathas two Falcon 9 first stages bolted on either side.
Musk expects theFalcon Heavy to launch from Florida's Cape Canaveral eventually. Thistriple-first-stage rocket will be able to put 116,600 pounds (53,000kilograms) into a 124-mile (200 kilometers) low-Earth orbit. But theFalcon Heavy is still much smaller than Musk’s fully reusable Marsrocket, which will also employ a new engine.
While Musk declines tostate what the Mars rocket’s payload capability will be, he doessay it will use a new staged combustion cycle engine called Raptor.The cycle involves two steps. Propellant — the fuel and oxidizer —is ignited in pre-burners to produce hot high-pressure gases thathelp pump propellant into the engine’s combustion chamber. The hotgases are then directed into the same chamber to aid in thecombustion of the propellants.
Because Raptor is a staged combustion engine — like the mainengines of NASA's now-retired space shuttle fleet — it isexpected to be far more efficient
than the open-cycle Merlin engines used by the Falcon 9.While the Falcon 9’sengines use liquid oxygen (LOX) and kerosene, Raptor will use LOX andmethane. Musk explained that "the energy cost of methane is thelowest, and it has a slight ISP [specific impulse] advantage overkerosene and doesn’t have any of the bad aspects of hydrogen."(Hydrogen is difficult to store at cryogenic temperatures, makesmetal brittle and is very flammable.)
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder