SpaceX Tests Its Raptor Engine For Future Mars Flights (techcrunch.com) 114
Thelasko writes: Elon Musk is preparing to unveil his plans to colonize Mars at the 67th annual International Astronautical Congress tomorrow. As a tease to his lecture, he has released some details about the Raptor engine on Twitter, including pictures. Mr. Musk states that, "Production Raptor coal is specific impulse of 382 seconds and thrust of 3 MN (~310 metric tons) at 300 bar." He goes on to note that the specific impulse spec is at Mars ambient pressure. The Raptor interplanetary engine is designed for use with Space X's Mars Colonial Transporter craft. Musk notes that the "chamber pressure runs three times what's present in the Merlin engine currently used to power Falcon 9," according to TechCrunch. "Merlin has specific impulse of 282 seconds (311 seconds in the vacuum of space), and a relatively paltry 654 kilonewton (0.6 MN) at sea level, or 716 kN (0.7 MN) in a vacuum. You can view a picture of the "Mach diamonds" here, which are visible in the engine's exhaust.
R&D versus production (Score:4, Insightful)
In before someone comments that they can't do R&D while simultaneously sorting out the recent problems with the Falcon 9.
People can multitask, companies even more so. If they were still blowing up every vehicle on the pad, then maybe they'd have a point, but their systems are certainly working better than other programs at their stage of evolution.
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What alternative do you suggest? ...
Using a few hundred thousand toy rockets, $10, each?
I guess from our persprctive it is best to leave rocket sciense to the rocket scientists
Suggest ... blowing money might be the right thing (Score:2)
> What alternative do you suggest?
Even if there is an 80% chance that the money is wasted, doing the development might be the smart choice in order to establish market share while the private space industry is in it's infancy. So I wouldn't *suggest* a change.
The other *option* they should consider finding and fixing the significant existing problems before investing so much in a new platform that will likely have the same problems again. Figure out how to build an pressure tank before you build an even
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The recent Falcon 9 accident has been traced to a Helium COPV tank in the oxygen tank. It runs at more like 5,500 PSI, not 300 PSI. Delamination of COPV in cryogenic applications is a longstanding problem which they must have thought they'd conquered, having used them successfully so many times.
And this article is about an engine, not a composite helium tank. The engine runs on cryogenic methane, which is a new fuel for Spacex, replacing kerosene. They are running scaled tests during the design phase o
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To be fair, we don't know that it was a COPV failure (although that would be most likely) - all we know at this point is that the failure was in the helium system and was unrelated to the strut failure in CRS-7.
While technically you can also produce other fuels off-world methane is indeed the highest throughput and efficiency, as sabatier synthesis yield by far the highest mass fraction as methane, so you don't have to do a lot of recycling of the methane to try to get your desired fraction as an output. Y
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That depends on which "other programs" you look at. Back in the 1950's and early 1960's when we were still learning rocketry and their were no textbooks? Sure. They're doing much better. Compared to more modern programs... they're doing worse. Much worse. The open question, the only real question, the one with no satisfactory answer... is whether the problems are inherent to a startup with no collective experi
Impressive spec (Score:1)
311 seconds of specific impulse in space vacuum is impressive. Combined with such a massive thrust of 3 Meganewtons, this certainly allows - on paper - for lifting heavy payloads onto a trajectory toward Mars. Another point to consider is the speed at which these developments are taking place. They're doing in a couple of years what took the Mercury and Jupiter programs, as preparations for the Saturn program, more than a decade. It remains to be seen, however, how much of this is just for the media and how
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Re: Impressive spec (Score:2)
The article made a ridiculous comparison between the non-vacuum optimuzed Merlin and the (near) vacuum optimized raptor. The merlin 1d vacuum is 348 sec, not 311.
300 bar is pretty extreme for an engine. But SpaceX has so far had a good record with engines, so here's to hoping they can carry that forward :)
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"Chances are" in no way that a sea-level version of a vacuum-optimized rocket with an Isp of 384 will have an Isp of 360-370. Merlin-1D vacuum has a vacuum ISP of 348, but the nearly identical Merlin-1D designed for atmospheric use (same thing, just without the nozzle extension) has a sea level Isp of 282 sec.
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The sea level version of the aforementioned Merlin 1D is 311. Not "~340". We're comparing different nozzle versions of an otherwise identical engine. You don't lose a mere 15-25 sec ISP when losing your nozzle extension and operating at sea level. Period. That's just not reality. If you think for some reason that the Merlin-1D is a bad comparison, pick another engine with otherwise identical vacuum and sea level versions, and cite the vacuum ISP for the vacuum version and the sea level ISP for the sea
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Look, I'm sorry but what sea-level Merlin does or doesn't achieve is totally irrelevant for Raptor - even for sea-level Raptor. The fact is that the 17 MPa LCH4/LOX sea-level RD-0162 is rated for 356 s of vacuum Isp, so the 30 MPa (+76%!) LCH4/LOX sea-level Raptor is definitely going to be in the 360+ s vacuum Isp territory. And that's including the assumption that the sea-level Raptor and vacuum Raptor are going to be identical units with different nozzles - the point is that the nozzles will be less dissi
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Because pointing out the typical difference between vacuum and sea level performance in hydrocarbon engines is "totally irrelevant" in a discussion about the difference in vacuum and sea level performance in hydrocarbon engines?
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I see your argument - all engines for a given propellant mixture are identical except for only one varying parameter (pressure). Why it's so simple, why didn't I think of that? ;) *snicker*
And that makes Merlin somehow more relevant?
Meanwhile, back in the real world, performance varies widely between different engine families, and there are many factors that affect them. What you're doing is equivalent to saying "Because my gasoline hybrid engine is super efficient, then your non-hybrid gasoline pickup truck engine should be too!" If you want to compare the performance of vacuum engines to sea level engines, you need to compare for the same engine.
The RD-0162 is the closest unit you can compare the Raptor with. It pushes all its propellant mass through
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Why show how much sea level and vacuum ISPs vary in other hydrocarbon engines? Because they vary that much in all engine, even non-hydrocarbons (same sort of difference in LOX/LH and solids). Methane is not some sort of magical exception to the rule.
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Why show how much sea level and vacuum ISPs vary in other hydrocarbon engines? Because they vary that much in all engine, even non-hydrocarbons (same sort of difference in LOX/LH and solids). Methane is not some sort of magical exception to the rule.
Of course it is the case that even a single propellant mixture's performance varies depending on how it's used, but that does not make your comparison of a methane engine to Merlin [slashdot.org] any more relevant - less relevant, if that's even possible.
Well, well, well...would you look at that? [imgur.com]? Sea-level Raptor at sea level has an Isp of 334 s, where the by-you-mentioned Merlin 1D has a sea-level performance of the sea-level version at 282 s, as you claim. And you still claim that the sea-level version of Raptor can' [slashdot.org]
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Well would you look at that indeed! I argued for a loss of 348-282=66 sec in Merlin, and said that Raptor would be somewhat less of a difference but not much, as "chamber pressure has a positive but fairly weak correlation with ISP". You said 384 - "360-370" = 14-24 sec difference.
And the reality is... drumroll... the envelope please...
384-334 = 50 sec
I hope this has been a learning experience for you.
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pick another engine with otherwise identical vacuum and sea level versions, and cite the vacuum ISP for the vacuum version and the sea level ISP for the sea level version. The sea level ISP will always be vastly lower, not a mere 15-25 sec.
You may have missed the part where I'm discussing the difference between vacuum Isps of the vacuum and the sea-level version of one engine (even in sea-level engines, the operation in diminished pressure is prolonged and therefore relevant), not between the sea-level Isp of the sea-level version and the vacuum Isp of the vacuum version. In case your comprehension is that bad, I'm spelling it out explicitly here. I've been trying to make it obvious by talking about vacuum Isp of sea-level engines explicitly
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Thank you. I stand corrected.
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3MN is pretty damned impressive. That's roughly half of what an F-1 engine produced.
Re: Powerful indeed! (Score:2)
F-1 wasn't vacuum optimized. You're making the same mistake that TFA made when comparing Raptor with Merlin.
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It didn't need to be since it never ran in true vacuum. The F-1 was actually optimised for reliability and not-killing-the-passengers hence its abysmal performance by today's standards. Even the SpaceX Merlin 1-D has a better Isp figure than the F-1.
F-1 - Isp (sea level) = 263 seconds.
Merlin 1-D Isp (sea level) = 282 seconds.
RD-180 Isp (sea level) = 311 seconds.
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A modernised version of the F-1 did exist, with much better Isp of 311 seconds at sea level and a greater thrust of 7.25MN at sea level. It could be throttled and pivoted, unlike the brute-force-and-ignorance of the fixed F-1. It's called the RD-171. It spawned a series of cut-down versions flying today such as the two-chamber Atlas RD-180 and the single-chamber Angara RD-191/Antares RD-151.
As for the Saturn V, the first stage spent 10% of its burn time and fuel just clearing the tower so vacuum performance
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I don't disagree with a word that you wrote. :)
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The F-1 was actually optimised for reliability and not-killing-the-passengers hence its abysmal performance by today's standards.
I believe GP was referring to aerostatic nozzle optimization, [wikipedia.org] which every rocket needs to have. This type of optimization applies only to the nozzle, and not the rest of the rocket engine. (pumps, combustion chamber, etc.) A rocket with a nozzle designed for space will not perform well compared to the same rocket with a nozzle optimized for earth at sea level. This is because Earth's atmosphere plays a role in how the gases expand from the engine.
This phenomenon can be observed particularly well on the
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There are a number of launchers that burn the same engines from ground to true vacuum, indeed the Shuttle's engines burned from launch to orbit insertion (aided by the SRBs in the early part of the flight). Other examples include the Vulcain-2 on the Ariane V and the RS-68A central core stage of the Delta 4 Heavy. Notably all these long-duration burn motors are LH2/LOX which have even better Isp numbers than kerosene/LOX motors.
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There are a number of launchers that burn the same engines from ground to true vacuum.
Trade offs were made. Those nozzles are only performing optimally at one altitude. I didn't say it can't be done, it's just not efficient.
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LOX/LH2 motors have a good enough Isp figure that they can take the hit in performance -- the Vulcain 2 runs between about 360 at sea level and 420-odd in vacuum, comfortably outperforming vacuum-specific kerosene/LOX designs at all altitudes. The SpaceX Merlins are actually quite poor performers for kerosene/LOX but there may be other trade-offs in terms of construction costs and reusability. They can certainly do the job of getting modest amounts of materiel into orbit.
As for the Raptor engine I'll be int
Re:Haha no. (Score:4, Informative)
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this would still be a major item on the list of things you need to do in order to hurl big stuff into Earth's orbit more affordably. There are long waiting lists of customers for such capability.
There isn't a large pent-up demand for "big stuff" in orbit, at least nothing that anyone's willing to pay even $5000/kg for. The demand for launches of up to fifteen tonnes a lump is handled by the current fleet of rockets. Very occasionally the US spy industry wants to put a unitary big-mirror observation satell
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So you're saying...what, that there's no interest in more capable scientific missions, or better remote sensing satellite with big (and heavy) optics, or GEO communication satellites with larger antennas and greater number of transponders (all requiring more power and propellants), or simply in slightly oversizing the LV so that hardware reuse could get easier?
Just because you don't need to lift 400 tonnes in one go doesn't mean that Shuttle's load of around twenty tonnes was anywhere close to optimal. A be
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Sure there's an interest in big launches, big-mirror observatories and the like. What there isn't are the bucks to pay for them and the need for multiple launches a year that would justify spending tens of billions to develop a 50-tonne class launcher which would only fly once a year, if that.
At the moment humanity is launching about ten to twelve vehicles a month -- December 2015 was a recent activity peak with eighteen launches, three of them within the same 24-hour period. The next large scientific paylo
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Re:Haha no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Part of the reason that satellites are so expensive is how light you have to make everything; there's a huge amount of engineering that has to be done in order to achieve mass goals, as well as make use of the most expensive materials on the planet. An example is the use of things like top-end Spectrolab multi-junction solar cells, which get the highest efficiencies, but since they're basically lab-scale production hardware they cost two orders of magnitude more than what slightly less efficient panels on Earth cost (about $400/W).
Beyond the simple cost effect on engineering, there's the size effect. Look at James Webb and the massive expense they had to try to make it "origami" itself to fit into smaller launch vehicles. Or how many parts ISS had to be built out of in space, dramatically escalating both ground engineering / production costs and in-space assembly costs (the latter costing nearly $10m per man-day). There are serious expenses to trying to compensate for a lack of space or payload capacity when you really need it.
Then there's the size of the market. As launch costs have been dropping, the number of companies looking to launch payloads has skyrocketed. The skyrocketing launch demand has been reducing average payload development costs, as designs get more reuse. Both of these trends will continue as costs continue to decline. Meanwhile, new markets will continue to open up. Space tourism has always been hindered by the absurdly high launch costs, limiting it to only the wealthiest individuals. While it will remain a "small" market for the forseeable future, it can expand by orders of magnitude with reduced launch costs. Which again makes more demand..
Lastly, there's economies of scale. It's generally recognized in the rocketry world that - at least up to a point - larger rockets get a better cost per kilogram than smaller rockets. So wherein you can launch a lot at once - multi-satellite launches, large geo launches, large interplanetary probes, fuel depots for tugs/boost stages, shielding mass for manned missions, etc - you tend to save a lot of money by going big rather than using multiple smaller launches. The caveat is that just simply going big is no guarantee of a price reduction. Just like you can make an absurdly-expensive smaller craft, you can also make an absurdly expensive large craft. And even a "moderately priced" large craft isn't generally a "win" - if you can sell payload space for $5k/kg on a 10 tonne payload rocket and for the same price per kilogram on a 100 tonne payload, the vast majority of customers will choose the former. But if you're a company like SpaceX that's been delivering cost reductions on the small scale, and you can carry it over to the large scale, it gives you the potential to take the cost reductions even further.
If you can pull it off.
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This is all true if nothing changes.
But what happens if they build a reusable booster that can lift this sort of weight? If Spacex could lift 200mT to LEO for costs that are comparable to today's heavy launches, would new uses arise?
NASA is also building a heavy lift rocket - the SLS. So Spacex is not alone in thinking a big rocket is a good idea. Of course, NASA is responsible to Congress, not the owners of a private company, so that part is different.
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If Spacex could lift 200mT to LEO for costs that are comparable to today's heavy launches, would new uses arise?
Such as? The only unitary large-lift mission I can think of is a single-mirror super-Hubble space observatory which has its own problems -- building a one-piece very large mirror, say five metres in diameter that could survive 3G-plus during launch, vibration etc. isn't going to be easy or light. The James Webb is using folding mirror segments and will have an effective diameter of 6.5 metres w
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What I'd like to see Musk doing is working on a robot fuel production system based on, say, Ceres or other water and carbon rich asteroids, bringing back tankers full of fuel to Earth orbit.
Well, this is one of the more obvious use cases, too.
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It's almost impossible to predict the "killer app" for a technology before it becomes available. The PC was around as a hobbiest contraption for quite a few years before it became a serious business tool, the internet was around for a while before Google and Facebook learned that targeted advertising and data collection were the real cash cows (and became some of the largest corporations in the world)... nobody predicted in the early days of the internet that collecting user data would be so lucrative. They
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Remember that the Hubble exists because US spy satellites existed. They looked suspiciously like a hubble telescope, except pointed in the other direction.
Why weren't they any bigger? Because they wouldn't fit on the launcher.
This launcher might be able to put a Keck-class scope in outer space. Think the CIA might find a use for something in that class? I know astronomers would.
If launch cost was a couple-hundred million, I'd say we could find the money to build the thing. The Hubble cost a lot more t
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But what happens if they build a reusable booster that can lift this sort of weight? If Spacex could lift 200mT to LEO for costs that are comparable to today's heavy launches, would new uses arise?
There is not so much demand for milli-tablespoon [wikipedia.org] launches.
Chicken or egg? (Score:2)
There isn't a large pent-up demand for "big stuff" in orbit, at least nothing that anyone's willing to pay even $5000/kg for.
What is your evidence that there is no demand for large objects in orbit? I'd imagine there is lots of demand if the price can be reduced to something that doesn't require the resources of a nation state. You have no idea what the actual demand for large satellites is because it's not presently economically feasible to get very large objects into space in a single piece. It's a chicken vs egg problem.
Very occasionally the US spy industry wants to put a unitary big-mirror observation satellite up and that can run to 20-25 tonnes. In those cases the Delta Heavy is used, the only time it is ever launched as far as I know.
That's a economic problem, not a technical one and certainly not an indicator of potential demand. It's
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What is your evidence that there is no demand for large objects in orbit?
My evidence is that there is actually, in reality, no demand for large objects in orbit. I qualify this statement by saying there's no money being fronted up to buy heavy lift launches of large objects in the 50-tonne region other than the SLS project (which is itself an assembly of small-objects-to-orbit). Wishful thinking, paper exercises and want-to's don't count as a "demand".
I understand SpaceX has some people interested in bu
Begging the question (Score:3)
My evidence is that there is actually, in reality, no demand for large objects in orbit
That my friend is the very definition of begging the question [logicallyfallacious.com]. Your premise assumes the conclusion.
SpaceX is a for profit business. If there were no demand or market for a heavy lift vehicle then why would they bother developing one? That's a huge expense if there is no expected ROI. I'm pretty sure they have a better feel for the market than either of us. Is it possible they are building a figurative bridge to nowhere? Maybe but that would be inconsistent with their prior behavior and economic sanit
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If there had been a market for very heavy lifters, Energia would still be built. I mean, there have been several finished units left, sitting unfueled in Baikonur waiting for a purpose until the hangar roof crashed and destroyed them. Nobody had any use for it.
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But Musk is disruptive. He's a unicorn.
Shun the non-believer! Shuuun! Shuuun!
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thinks he'll be able to wring out some amazingly fat government subsidies
Exactly.
“SpaceX no doubt has some brilliant ideas about Mars. But who will pay?”
From the Ars Technica article:
“He’s made a lot of money from NASA over the years, and now he may be about to effectively tell NASA that they’ve had their head up their ass for a long time about how to go to Mars, that this is how we’re going to do it, and you’re going to pay. I don’t know how well that is going to be received.”
http://arstechnica.com/science... [arstechnica.com]
My pers
Stupid Internet mème (Score:1)
"So they figured out how to get an engine to run on Mars, but they can't figure out how to <Uneconomical goal on Earth>. Will they find intelligence on Earth"?
Impressive (Score:1)
""Production Raptor coal is specific impulse of 382 seconds and thrust of 3 MN"
That's impressive, considering they are using coal as the fuel!
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>scale ion thrusters or solar sails or Moon based laser push-beams
OK, and how many ounces is that going to push?
Dude, manned missions are HEAVY. You have the people, their air systems, food, water redundant everything to keep people alive.
Slow pushers like what you listed make the travel time a LOT longer (say 10x, if you're optimistic), meaning you need that much more food, water, oxygen, etc - making the whole payload mind-bogglingly heavy... meaning then the engine then won't get the job done at all.
Presentation Link (Score:3)
Human missions = funding (Score:5, Insightful)
Before someone comments that we don't need humans on Mars if robots can do the same cheaper: that's beside the point. I mean, robots are no where near performing on the same level as humans when it comes to ingenuity and ability to come up with and implement ad hoc fixes to problems that no one could even imagine before launch of the mission. But putting that question aside, the problem with robotic missions is that they will never get the same sort of funding as human missions. A human mission automatically has to have a certain size, e.g. has to develop capabilities to land payloads in the ballpark of 10 tons or more on Mars. Once we have this capability, we can easily send lots of robotic and scientific payload along with humans -- it amounts to simply using the same payload delivery system that we are developing for humans anyway.
On the other side, if there is no ambition to fly humans to Mars, then no one will develop these capabilities. There is simply no funding for a system that delivers 10 tons of cargo onto the surface of Mars, unless it can also deliver humans, and bring them back safely. So we cannot send big robotic missions to Mars.
Human missions generate lots of excitement, lots of excitement leads to lots of funding. Robotic missions can never be on par with human missions in terms of how much excitement, and thus funding they can raise.
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A coal-LOX hybrid rocket would work, and the ISP wouldn't be too bad (though hydrogen-rich fuels would be better). It'd be an interesting challenge.. normally with hybrids you want the fuel to melt and whip up into droplets at the surface to increase their surface area, but I imagine with a coal hybrid you'd want it to break up into a dust. So maybe fine coal dust with a paraffin or polyethylene binder.... that'd actually probably have excellent thrust performance.
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As conventional fuels were in extremely short supply by late 1944, Lippisch proposed that the P.13a be powered by coal. Initially, it was proposed that a wire-mesh basket holding coal be mounted behind a nose air intake, protruding slightly into the airflow and ignited by a gas burner. Following wind-tunnel testing of the ramjet and the coal basket, modifications were incorporated to provide more efficient combustion..
The coal was to take the form of small granules instead of irregular lumps, to produce a controlled and even burn, and the basket was altered to a mesh drum revolving on a vertical axis at 60 rpm. A jet of flame from tanks of bottled gas would fire into the basket once the P.13a had reached operating speed (above 320 km/h), whether by using a rocket to assist takeoff or by being towed..
The air passing through the ramjet would take the fumes from the burning coal towards the rear where they would mix under high pressure with clean air taken from a separate intake. The resulting mixture of gas would then be directed out through a rear nozzle to provide thrust. A burner and drum were built and tested successfully in Vienna by the design team before the end of the war.
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Yes, coats are a lousy fuel, they constantly tangle up the turbopumps.
Re:Human missions = funding (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, nothing since to Mars since 2004! Excepting of course MRO, Curiosity, MAVEN, InSight, and the upcoming Mars 2020 Rover. Some of those being much more expensive than the MERs.
Nor is there any expectation nor plan of such. SpaceX and NASA have a no-cost arrangement, where NASA provides free consultancy, access to the DSN, and sterilization assistance, while SpaceX will provide any data they collect.
The opinions of experts interviewed on the subject are almost in universal disagreement with you on this, at least concerning Red Dragon. SpaceX already shoots things up to GEO; the energy required to get to a Mars Transfer Orbit is not much more. SpaceX already decelerates capsules with an aeroshell facing an entry load similar to that needed for aerocapture at Mars. And Dragon is already designed for automated vertical powered landing. Red Dragon is not some super-ambitious mission, it is quite doable without any radical advancements.
Actual colonization, boots on the ground, is of course a much bigger challenge. This will be many years in development. But SpaceX was specifically founded for this purpose. Just like how Tesla was founded when Musk found that he couldn't pay anyone to build him a clone of the tzero, SpaceX was founded when Musk found that nobody could launch him payloads to Mars for an affordable price. Ultimately getting humans to Mars is a founding principle of SpaceX. All of its investors are aware of this. SpaceX will continue to work towards this so long as they are an operating entity. And unlike NASA, they're not burdened with massive mandated costs and constantly changing mandated missions, both of which have utterly crippled it over the past decades.
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I mean, robots are no where near performing on the same level as humans when it comes to ingenuity and ability to come up with and implement ad hoc fixes to problems that no one could even imagine before launch of the mission.
Without humans, the mission is less complex so the risk of some problem occurring is much less.
But putting that question aside, the problem with robotic missions is that they will never get the same sort of funding as human missions.
But that just begs the question: why should we fund such a mission in the first place? The robotic mission is justified by science and our desire to explore new places. Arguable, of course, not everybody agrees that those goals are worth the spend, but let's say we agree that they are. Having the exploration craft carry a human along does nothing to further that cause, anymore than the cause is furthered by having
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There is, of course, one situation that would change this, and it's what SpaceX is working towards: radical reductions in launch costs. Just like it's a common oversimplification of manned space exploraiton advocates to pretend like humans can fix anything and do a million times more than robots, it's often a weakness on our side to dismiss how much it actually costs to engineer long-term reliable high-throughput autonomous vehicles (probes, rovers, etc). Right now, they pretty unquestionably provide a be
Probes AND Humans (Score:2)
You have stolen the words from my mouth. Exactly that. For the same money we could explore more and do more science than spending it to send a useless piece of meat with no embedded measurement capabilities to grab some knowledge from the worlds it explores.
First off, if we only send probes or only send humans that would be idiotic. There are things that each can do that the other cannot. For example it is basically impossible to study human or animal physiology away from Earth unless we send a human. Similarly there are some environments that are simply too hostile to life to send a human. Use the best tool for the job. Sometimes that a robot, occasionally it will be a human. It should never be a case of only one or only the other. We should be workin
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A geologist on the surface of Mars would be far more scientifically productive than 100 probes.
This is repeated often, but is there any evidence to support this? And if you could put 100 probes on Mars for the price of a single geologist, what then?
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A geologist on the surface of Mars would be far more scientifically productive than 100 probes.
This is repeated often, but is there any evidence to support this? And if you could put 100 probes on Mars for the price of a single geologist, what then?
It seems like an easily testable hypothesis. We can test it right here on earth! Just build some probes which are limited to Mars-like performance, drop them in one of our more Mars-like environments, and monitor them remotely through a comm delay to make communications Mars-like. We can reasonably deploy several geologists around the site for comparison.
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that's cheating. they brought the rocks back with them.
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Re: Probes AND Humans (Score:1)
Suppose Isabella told Christopher Columbus to piss off and instead just sent robots. Those robots would *NEVER* have found San Francisco, one of the most beautiful cities on the planet. Or jazz, or blues, or grunge, or KC bar-b-que or Tex-mex. Humans must go to find the things that will be there, not the things that are there now.
Get it?
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But again, why send a human? Why not a cow, or a peacock?
So you propose to make cows a multi-planetary species instead of humans?
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What's the viewership on any video NASA's put out in the past decade vs. on every single SpaceX launch?
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Who?
A British astronaut they wouldn't let us forget (in Britain) was on the ISS for a bit as if it was the best thing to ever happen. I mean kudos to the guy but by the way the went on you'd think he was alone up there doing it all for blighty.
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If that was the way the world worked, we'd have Saturn Vs to launch superheavy payloads into space right now. Or for that matter a Shuttle program. Using robots instead of people lets us be small and cost-effective instead of huge, expensive and risk-adverse and you say it like it's a bad thing. Those programs get axed, the staff reassigned and the capabilities lost because we can't even justify the operating/launch cost. To Mars with the SLS would be a one-time gig for human spaceflight, nothing more.
Also,
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The beauty of SpaceX engines is how adaptable they are. If you only want an extremely light payload to orbit, use one engine (Falcon 1). For typical payloads, use 9 engines (Falcon 9). For heavy lift, use 27 engines (Falcon Heavy). The raptor engine will likewise be applicable to a variety of situations, not just Mars colonization -- and the large number of engines they'll have to make for the Mars Colonial Transporter will just mean better economies of scale for the more typical small Earth satellite launc
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There is no need to bring them back. That is a nice thing if it can be afforded, but if we would stop concentrating on 100% safety the entire process would be less expensive and there would be no short of volunteers willing to take a reasonable risk instead of guaranteed safety.
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There is no need to bring them back. That is a nice thing if it can be afforded, but if we would stop concentrating on 100% safety the entire process would be less expensive and there would be no short of volunteers willing to take a reasonable risk instead of guaranteed safety.
No, you're high. The pipe dream is that sending people there without able to come back will make it cheaper. Any attempt to try and get people to Mars will make sure they get there ok, otherwise, it's just not worth going. Once we have all the problems of actually getting there, landing people, letting them do research, the option of coming back will pretty much be a small add on that will cost much less resources and money than attempting any sort of long stay environment for them (for more than the 3-6 mo
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No bucks, no Buck Rogers.
Or rather, no Buck Rogers, no bucks.
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