/sci/ - Science & Math

Candidate Landing Site for SpaceX Starship in Arcadia Region ESP_060429_2200

Candidate Landing Site for SpaceX Starship in Arcadia Region ESP_060429_2200

Candidate Landing Site for SpaceX Starship in Arcadia Region
ESP_060376_2195

>>10930014
Where are you getting the idea that these are candidate landing sites?

last one;
Candidate Landing Site for SpaceX Starship in Arcadia Region
ESP_060323_2205

>>10930020
https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_060416_2195

It is stated on the hirise site

>>10930007
lmao i thought mars was red

>>10930039
Color was only invented in the fifties, Mars hasn't been colorized yet.

>around 40 deg north
Enough sunlight that far up, especially during the long winters?

>>10930007
Relevant article from 2 years ago

https://spacenews.com/spacex-studying-landing-sites-for-mars-missions/

> One is access to large quantities of ice near the surface that could, ultimately, support human settlements.
>Another is to be close to the Equator and at a low elevation for solar power and better thermal conditions.
>Wooster said the study identified four regions in the northern hemisphere of Mars that met those basic criteria. Three of the regions — Deuteronilus Mensae, Phlegra Montes and Utopia Planitia — looked attractive in images from a medium resolution camera
>while the areas look very flat and smooth at CTX resolution, with HiRISE images, they’re quite rocky,” Wooster said. “That’s been unfortunate in terms of the opportunities for those sites.”
>A fourth region, Arcadia Planitia, looks more promising in those high-resolution images

Arcadia Planitia it is.

https://www.google.com/mars/#lat=38.086044&lon=197.753614&zoom=4

RED MARS
THE CZARS
LIVE LARGE
RED MARS FOR THE RICH

>>10930088
Electro Space Glam Metal music movement when

>>10929980
Where did you get that confirmation? He only mentioned 18m for the width, but has not mentioned the height. Not mentioning != denial.

>>10930007
Turns out there are 12 pics on HiRISE site if you search for "spacex"

https://www.uahirise.org/results.php?keyword=spacex&order=release_date&submit=Search

All in Arcadia Planitia or adjacent areas, acquired in June and July 2019

someone please plot these pics on a map of Mars, coordinates are all there

>>10930122

>>10930099
the future is now old man
https://youtu.be/AZm1_jtY1SQ
https://kinggizzard.bandcamp.com/album/infest-the-rats-nest-2

Let's be very honest again," Elon said in a 2019 interview. "We don't have a government super heavy lift vehicle. SLS may someday come about. It's on the drawing board right now. Starship is real. You've seen it down at Boca Chica. We're building the core stage. We have all the engines done, ready to be put on the test stand at McGregor... I don't see any hardware for a SLS, except that he's going to take some shuttle bits and put them together and that becomes the SLS. It's not that easy in rocketry."

Raptor engine diagram

>>10930149
Nice diagram

>>10930149
This is fucking cool is the source accurate/reliable?

>>10930113
Not him but remember that you are limited to the total thrust of your engines. I can spend 20 min of looking for the info needed to calculate the rocket but I suspect people already did that.

Any updates on what went wrong with 150m hop?

>>10930176
nothing went wrong, except jeff bezos crying

>>10930149

>>10930157
>>10930149
This seems to show only one combustion chamber ignition source, whereas Musk just said that Raptor has dual redundant ignitors.
Or I could be misunderstanding the diagram completely.

>>10930136
Bastard. I was going to post something like that.

>>10930176
Shoe got flattened, something pressurized can flew off, plus weird exhaust color.

>shoe/exhaust color
Might be related as exhaust flame color change might be due to changing fuel mixture to lower the thrust and hard landing might have been the possible unintentional result due to not getting the mixture "just right".

>flying pressurized canister
Uncertain what it was. It could be related to hard landing as well.

>>10930202
Turns out that the Starhopper failed miserably. It went up, and then the engine died. The whole thing coming down in a loud bang. Since the media would use this to eat SpaceX alive, Elon Musk called upon a favor from the Bogdanoff twins to use their Quantum Shifting technology to change reality so that Starhopper succeed. They agreed, but only if Elon offed something most valuable to him.

We don't know what it was that Elon gave to them, but what we do see is that Starhopper landed (mostly) successfully with that flying COPV coming from the Starhopper that failed leaking into our reality. An error in the tech? Or a small hint by the twins? We cannot say for certain.

>>10930149
>nitrogen
>helium

I thought Raptor has none of that shit? How do you replenish this on Mars?

>>10930149
>>10930191
>>10930262
From what I've heard this could be for the Dev raptor rather than the actual production version.

Stuff happening in Boca Chica, drilling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8CSgRpPT0o

>>10930370
Is Boca Chica still supposed to be a launch site for full scale Starship launches? Maybe they're doing foundation work for the big boy pad.

>>10930370
They're mining for ore to refine into fuel and oxidizer.

>>10930113
Nobody is going to make a Raptor sized engine that gets 600 bar chamber pressure, anon. Not for a long time. If you're gonna double the height of the vehicle as well as the width, you need to double the rocket engine chamber pressure. Just doubling the width means you can use the exact same engine design and just pack more onto the bigger bottom.

>>10930149
It takes a special kind of madness to take an engineering marvel like this and stick it on a goddamn water tower.

I tried asking this in the previous thread but 4chan was having a stroke so here we go again:

I know that everything about Starship is theoretical, but roughly speaking, how much heat would it have to deal with on reentry compared to Dragon that returned with the new heat tiles recently?
Also would it be feasible to reuse the same tiles multiple times?

>>10930057
Just bring more solar panels, easy access to water is a higher priority.

>>10930007
>>10930014
>>10930018
>>10930023
Holy hype batman, potential landing sites. Expect your boy Paul to go into some good detail on this at the Mars society. Usually it's boring but this one should be great, they are also hosting a habitat design competition and not the gay "design us a pretty building" one like NASA runs. All the entries are judged based on their technical merit and the man Zubrin himself has said the top 10 designs they are presenting are "outstanding" so you just know it's gonna be good shit if the man himself has signed off on them. It's in October I think.

Starship-kun drawing when

>>10930568
>heavy breathing

>>10930149
Looks like it was designed by Dr Seuss.
The propellants go which ways and up ways and sideways and downways
No way that spaghetti diagram would ever represent anything meaningful

>>10930568
You mean starship chan

>>10930533
Zubrin hasn't been a big fan of SH/SS. Too big. Too indirect. Wonder what he'd think about the 18m dia version.

>>10930589
Ahem wrong image

>>10930477
If they can't be reused or refurbished quickly AND cheaply then the entire reusable refuelable architecture is as DOA as it would be if each launch ended in a fireball.

Luckily there's plenty of tonnage lift capacity to trade. In fact it can be directly traded for fuel used on reentry burn to tame the reentry velocity a bit...

Fascinating things big rockets and big margins are. Totally unlike conventional highly optimized designs that go bust if some component underperforms a % or two.

>>10930590
I don't know much about him, but does he just disagree with the design of SH/SS but likes that there's work being done towards Mars, or is he one of those types who thinks an entire mission should be scrapped because it doesn't fit his vision?

>>10930608
Nah he likes it, he's just super salty after getting his plan for Mars cockblocked by NASA for like 30 years.

>>10930622
I think anyone that's not in oldspace is at least a little bit salty at NASA for what they did for the last 30 years.

>>10930608
He thinks Starship should be split into two vehicles, the propulsive section turned into a 2nd stage and the upper payload/crew section be changed into a third stage vehicle. His justification is 'it's smaller and lighter and therefore better' but IO he doesn't really get the economics of Starship.

>>10930646
So something like a cargo SS with an entire spacecraft in it's cargo bay(or at least parts of it)? I mean, that could work. Having a vehicle specialized for Mars-Earth transfers would result in a better vehicle for that rather than try to make the SS both be capable of that and being an upper stage too.

>>10930608
He's been trying to convince nasa and the us gov to use the direct plan which is entirely reasonable way to do things, probably why they didn't like it. For decades (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD3U0QcEYXs)), and with little success as should be obvious by the current state of things.
His criticism of SS/SH is something along this according to memory and a quick look at https://youtu.be/9xN1rqhRSTE
>too big, smaller is easier
>wasted on route to mars, better use it as LEO ferry for cargo
>too hard to refuel on Mars, smaller dedicated lander is easier
In essence he says Mars Direct is the best way even if you have Starship available which personally I find it hard to believe considering Starship is the whole-architecture-in-a-box including lander, transfer vehicle, habitat and return vehicle. Expensive things which would need to be separately developed otherwise. I suspect he too, like the rest of the industry, doesn't quite believe the spacex' claims. I follow his articles and the Mars Society's work since frankly it's a lot more interesting and *doable* than the usual nasa pr powerpoints, and I hope as the ss system hopefully proves itself he sees its true value and what a game changer it can be. Otherwise he'd be just another aerospace guy who wants it his way even if it leads nowhere.

thanks trump, very cool

Will 18m rocket have to be sea-launched? How can they mitigate acoustic damage from what will be fuck-off loudness?

>>10930676
I think that a Martian specialized vehicle would probably be better than the "all in one" package that SS is trying to be, but I would like to see how it plays out for SpaceX. Hopefully it goes well.

>Otherwise he'd be just another aerospace guy who wants it his way even if it leads nowhere.
I hate those types. Spaceflight needs every chance it can get to push beyond LEO.

>>10930701
>Will 18m rocket have to be sea-launched?
Seems likely. The amount of power and heat coming off the first stage engines potentially obliterating the launch pad would also be an issue.

>How can they mitigate acoustic damage from what will be fuck-off loudness?
By launching it as far away from civilization as possible.

I do wonder though if a modular Starship design could be done. Build a common hull (the cargo hull), then fill the bay with whatever the mission needs.

>>10930703
>I think that a Martian specialized vehicle would probably be better than the "all in one" package that SS is trying to be
Unlikely because economies of scale will almost certainly dick down any advantage a specialized vessel would bring. If you have 20 versatile starships compared to a single specialized vessel you have way more capability to perform mars missions. You could probably even start doing silly things like disregarding launch windows and just brute forcing high energy trajectories.

>>10930718
Notice how Starhopper was basically just a propulsion section without the front bits?

I almost guarantee all Starships will share the same "propulsion module" about the size of Starhopper and containing all the actual rocket bits of the rocket.

>>10930733
I guess you have a point. Let's see how it plays out for SpaceX. I'm just happy that there seems to be some serious momentum towards spaceflight that's more substantial than simple probes.

>>10930743
Yeah, im aware of that and had considered being able to swap payload segments entirely, but my issue from that is that it adds a structural weakness to the entire thing due to the attachment point between payload and propulsion hulls.
My idea was that things like pressurized cargo, fuel tankage, and passenger space could all be designed as a common module layout, then inserted into the bay as needed (an empty bay would simply do unpressurized cargo. Take what you need, slot it in. But, heres where my concept has an additional strength over splitting the ship:
If it is so desired, the payload module can be left up in space, and the now empty starship hull can return for the next mission.

Imagine:
First mission sends up the unpressurized stuff like power and structural elements. The next mission launched can launch with, say, an expandable module or two just for basic hab space and life support. The third through sixth missions could add 4 crew modules to the station. Next mission or two could add the pressurized cargo modules. They would not have life support of their own, but could add things like additional power and/or heat rejection capacity to the station on their ventral (the part inside Starship) hulls that unfurl after it's been docked and left behind.
After that, another structural flight in a UP-Cargo starship for hardpoint expansion. Finally, a series of flights to add fuel tankage capacity for future missions, say, out to the moon or out to mars.

Boom, 12 flights and you have a space station that makes the ISS it's bitch. And you could do it with the same 3-4 starship hulls as they would be able to return after dropping off their module/payload.

>>10930122
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/spacex-working-on-details-of-how-to-get-people-to-mars-and-safely-back/

https://twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1167547801837940736

>#SpaceX has filed for the FCC permits required for the launch and droneship recoveries of #Falcon9 for the next four #Starlink missions. The earliest start date on a permit is Oct. 10th, 2019 (actual launch date expected to be later that month).

>>10930845
>two in oct
>nov
>dec
Neat. What's the chance I'll be able to ditch comcast next year?

>>10930817
Will you be able to see Olympus Mons from there?

>>10930874
no, you can hardly see Olympus Mons even while standing on the mountain itself, the slope is too gentle.

>>10930595
falcon 9 was a girl, starship has to be a boy

>>10931091

>>10931096
because I want a boy, that's why

>>10931097
Can't wait to see the StarshipxFalcon9 hentai then.

>>10931097
can we compromise and have a futa starship

>imagine having to design a turbopump assembly for a rocket long before CAD was a thing using a sliderule as your primary math device

>>10931281
I probably couldn't design that with CAD desu fampai

>>10930718
Not fully modular but there are different versions of starship planned based on a common hull with minor modifications. Cargo, crew, tanker, etc.

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIAPWSAT5+shtml/302049.shtml
[loud worrying noises]

>>10931327
jazz music stops

>>10931327
Damage-wise, what's the worst case scenario for the Cape?

Cocoa Mk1 is safe

>>10931438
Looks like a scene from some 90s alien movie.

>>10931435
Worst case? Direct eyewall hit from a Cat 5. At least one model shows it.

>>10931485
Bring it

>>10930191
There's another one right above it in the oxidizer turbine.

>>10931438
Is that Mk1 or Mk2? I was sure Mk1 was in Texas

>>10930817
Dunno why they don't want to land in Hellas, its got twice the air pressure as anywhere else, to the point where water doesn't evap for shit, and there are massive subsurface glaciers churning large areas of it.

>>10931438

>>10931674
>Water doesn't evaporate for shit

Looks like waterlock is back on the menu boys

>>10931745
>inb4 pisslock

>>10931745
You mean pisslock

>>10931674
Maybe it has rocky and rough terrain?

>>10931098
There are already several examples of this genre

>tfw nasa never sent the shuttle to the moon despite the SSMEs being good enough to send it to the moon
>tfw nasa never let tourists fly on spacehab
>tfw nasa crushed mir commercialization because it was competition for the iss
the nasa of the 80s and 90s was a bane to spaceflight and killed the spaceflight dreams of an entire generation. it reminds me of those astronauts who think that space should be reserved for the privileged few.

>>10931279
Patrician choice

>>10931674
>>10931859
According to this one image it's a little hilly there

https://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_025700_1390

>>10931941
Doesn't look like a good landing site

>>10930654
The requirements for Earth upper stage, Earth reentry, Mars depart stage and Mars reentry are basically the same. In all of those, you need a payload section, propellant tanks and an aeroshell. It makes complete sense to utilize the same vehicle for all of these. Otherwise you need to duplicate a lot of hardware.

This is what many people stuck in OldSpace thinking dont realize. Specialized orbital ships only make sense if BOTH your origin and destination have no atmosphere. And we are not going from an asteroid to another asteroid anytime soon.

>>10931674
Valles Marineris also may have ice and is on the equator.. would provide the best views imho.

>>10931950
1 or 2 Starships could land close to each other. But If they want the colony to grow and/or land 10 Starships close to each other, it's not possible in the pic

>>10931970
If you're landing 10 starships I'm pretty sure you would be building pads. Only the first two synods would have unprepared sites. The first one for gear and the second for people. Building pads will be a priority task for the next synod once people are there.

It's easy to see why SpaceX has chosen Arcadia region. It's completely flat. Image too big to post (15400x6940)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Mars_topography_%28MOLA_dataset%29_with_poles_HiRes.jpg

>>10932002
Arcadia is sort of the top right of that map right?

>>10932053
Yes, see pic >>10930817

>>10932057
Oops, it's top left

>>10932002
It's probably a good choice, flat planes for building, driving around scouting for resources and landing rockets on, high latitude for abundant water ice. I guess you lose a decent amount of solar energy compared to the equator but you have to bring a retard amount of solar film anyway. The equator would be pretty sparse in water ice I would imagine too and you just can't do without that.

>>10932072
Yes, easy access to water ice is number one priority

>>10932072
1° of latitude is 59 km on Mars. Maybe it is possible to have a solar power plant a few degrees south of the colony. You would need the power line and vehicles to bring the solar arrays there. But you need vehicles anyways.

>SLS will never fly
>Orion will never fly
>JWST will never fly

>>10932086
This is good tho

>>10932072
>>10932085
Wait a second. The reason why northern latitudes have less solar energy compared to the equator is just the different angle between the planet surface and the sun rays, because less rays reach a given surface area. You could counteract that with the solar arrays having an angle from the ground rather than laying flat on the ground. On Earth, this doesn't 100% counteract everything, because the sun rays travel a farther way through the thick atmosphere, but Mars has barely any. Additionally, it is good to have the solar arrays always at an angle so dust particles don't amass on them and fall down on their own, requiring less cleaning. Only downside is the Mars axis tilt which is even a little stronger than that of Earth, meaning a high fluctuation of sunshine hours per day over the seasons.

Other than the seasonal fluctuations of sunshine hours (which average out if you can store energy well), is there any reason to favor a particular latitude for solar energy on a planet with (almost) no atmosphere?

>>10932123
I don't think it's as simple as that. I might be wrong though.

>>10931438
Cute

>>10931438
/Comfy/

>>10932123
The fluctuations are reason enough, since you need to be able to run everything off of the energy you can produce on the darkest nights, or at least the bare minimum to survive. It would get you an overabundance of energy in the summer, which could be used to run more experiments, industry and other non-critical energy-hungry processes.

>>10932215
Fluctuations in energy production is something you can deal with, having no water is not something you can deal with.

>>10930689
>You now remember that someone got 16 years in federal prison for leaking similar images to Jane's in the 80s

>>10931438
You have angered the Earth Mother have no hopes you will survive Her righteous wrath.

>>10931279
that's a yes from me, dog

>>10931595
Yeah but that just ignites the oxidizer turbopump assembly, no? The supercritical gasses (having expanded across the turbine section of the pump and thus losing significant thermal energy) would probably be too cold to auto-ignite on contact with the supercritical fuel-rich gasses coming from the methane turbopump, which makes sense given that we've actually witnessed a Raptor fail to ignite. Either the turbopumps themselves failed to both ignite properly, which seems doubtful, or the main combustion chamber has two torch igniters and only one is shown in this diagram (which is obviously simplified to begin with).

>>10931775
>>10931773
>>10931745
imagine the smell

>>10931892
>>tfw nasa never sent the shuttle to the moon despite the SSMEs being good enough to send it to the moon
They weren't good enough though. Specific impulse alone doesn't mean shit, you need a wet-dry mass ratio in order to get any delta V, and since Shuttle's main engines ran on a propellant that was only stored in the external tanks, it couldn't use them to get anywhere once actually in space. All it can were a couple of AJ-10 pressure fed hypergolic brappers in the OMS, and with zero payload and full tanks those things still only afforded something like 500 m's of delta V, not even enough to leave LEO. Also the thermal protection system would not hold up to a reentry coming from a Moon flyby even if Shuttle could get itself out there.
>tfw nasa never let tourists fly on spacehab
Imagine we live in a world anon where not one but half a dozen non-astronaut civilians were killed by Shuttle having an oopsie. Space Tourism would be murdered in the crib.

>>10931951
>Specialized orbital ships only make sense if BOTH your origin and destination have no atmosphere.
This. The delta V budget advantage you get from aerobraking is extreme, it makes chemical rocket stages with additional dry mass out-compete nuclear thermal orbital tugs with minimal dry mass, even if the chemical propulsion in question isn't high-Isp hydrolox. Considering that there's really no reason why a nuclear thermal engine with a half-decent thrust to weight ratio couldn't also be used on a vehicle capable of aerocapture, I agree that there won't be any reason to do orbit-to-orbit transfer vehicles until such time that we are doing asteroid shit (even for getting to the Moon from anywhere else it makes sense for aerocapture capability to be built in, because if you're coming in from interplanetary you can use Earth's atmosphere to capture into the system and reduce your required delta V, and even if you're going to the Moon from Earth you can obviously use aerocapture to get back to Earth after your mission.

Requesting the expanding brain image of rocket building. Anyone got that?

>>10932364
the one that goes shuttle, ULA, Russia, China, in-a-field shitbox? I don't have it but I know what you mean.

>>10932364
Ask and you shall receive.

>>10932371

Yes! Thats the one, many thanks anon!

>>10932256
>You are now aware the president has near unlimited declassification authority.

I realize that some still have not come to accept that he won legitimately.

https://www.space.com/china-far-side-moon-rover-strange-substance.html

>So far, mission scientists haven't offered any indication as to the nature of the colored substance and have said only that it is "gel-like" and has an "unusual color." One possible explanation, outside researchers suggested, is that the substance is melt glass created from meteorites striking the surface of the moon.

>>10932280
>implying Earth would not want a pan-solar empire to reduce population burdens on the enviroment and resources

Read more books.

>>10932123
Good point that an almost nonexistent atmosphere doesn't reduce solar panel efficiency.
Higher latitudes do however mean shorter days during winter, and we don't have good long term electricity storage systems.

>>10932702
>don't have good long term electricity storage systems.

Come on now, moon is babby difficulty for truly massive fly wheel storage. Much less gravity, near perfect vacuum. The dust in the bearings can be overcome by leaking several cc/min of a gas, this can also levitate the bearing at the same time for nearly friction less operation.

>>10932617
When I think gel, I don't typically think of something hard like glass, but that's evidently what they think it is?

>>10932740
>moon
We are talking about Mars

>>10932649
fuck off, space is full

>>10932750
Mars has similar characteristics, so it still applies

>>10930007
>>10930014
>>10930018
>>10930023
>All these craters
>D-don't worry, guys. It-it's safe.

>>10932760
Just don't land in one.

>>10932760
if there were any danger there'd be nothing but craters, the fact that that surface is 4 billion years old and only has that many craters means the chances of being hit by anything are negligible.

>>10932758
>truly massive fly wheel
>first astronauts to land on Mars

>>10932772
>things come in only one single size like in a video game

What went wrong with 150m hop? Any confirmation?

>>10932802
Land south enough latitude, like they plan, 30-40, where passive solar panels will give them sufficient power even during winter;
OR land further north where you would need your active flywheel tech to work or you die!
Can I have ticket n°1

>>10932702
>and we don't have good long term electricity storage systems.

Natural gas generators. Remember, methalox will be greatly abundant in the colony, as you need to manufacture thousands of tons of it for return flights.

>>10932858
God bless sabotier

>>10932858
>mfw solution to power storage on Mars is this fucking simple

Elon will probably throw in some Tesla Powerpacks anyway.

>>10932858
True, but that would require that methalox be stored somewhere in space for later usage. You know what that makes? Propellant d-word.

So your idea is not only simply unfeasible, but anti-american. I have reported you to the proper authorities. Hopefully you, a monster, will be captured and put to good use filing safety paperwork for the SLS (god bless it), the most american rocket in history which is being built in the proud state of Alabama.

>>10932858
Yes, IF they can get ice mining working AND methane production working.

>>10932858
Exactly. You might even produce methanol from the methane, which is even more storable than methane and fluid or even frozen at typical Mars temperatures and you can use a fuel cell to get electricity from it (at higher efficiency than a generator). Although the overall efficiency of converting CO2 and H2O to O2 and CH4O through Sabatier + some other process and back to CO2 and H2O over a fuel cell is probably around or below 30%. Should still be more energy efficient than a Methalox generator and better storability of methanol.

http://environmentportal.in/files/file/methanol.pdf

>>10932901
now, how long before you're making ethanol

>>10932887
IF they don't get it then its a one way trip.

>>10932919
How soon can we start growing lots of space potatoes?

>>10932922
They can send cargo Starship(s) to fuel their return ship

The blue line is a power line from the Arcadia region to a latitude of 10° at the opposite side of the ball (longitude shift of 180°). It is about 4000 km long. If they would have solar panels there, they would have energy around the day (maybe minus a few hours during winter). I wonder if it is possible to throw down a power line from a satellite with a polar orbit. This would also be the maximal diversification of power plant locations as a protection against meteorite showers.

>>10930223
its a shitpost, but i know like 3 people who would trust this explanation more than whatever becomes official

>>10932823
nothin yet, other than strong vibrations made some paneling go owie and some unsubstatiated claims by an anon who said he was on the inside that the hopper's avionics got fried while it was still a few meters up and that's why it had a harder landing than last time, when the computer died the engine computer triggered a shutdown so instead of coming down smoothly at 1 m/s the hopper started accelerating downwards at a few tenths of a G and landed at more like 4 m/s

>>10932933
no way. You'd be looking at ~10 cargoless Starships (backed up by about 80 refueling from Earth flights total) effectively expended to get the required 1100 tons of methalox delivered to refill a single crewed Starship. Even with advanced steel shitbox construction that's too tall an order.
Besides, the issue is that there will be people depending on not only getting methalox production up and running on Mars, but depending on getting it up and running for several weeks or months minimum before any kind of weather or logistics issue hits and massively cuts into their power supply. Depending on methalox generation in order to back up enough power to keep life support running in a disaster scenario means you are probably gonna die. The actual solution is to bring a single kilopower reactor, begged from NASA, to run base load, since the biggest energy hog is going to be the hydrolysis modules that supply hydrogen gas to the Sabatier reactors, and the second biggest draw will be the equipment that harvests natural resources (eg water and CO2). With those two things shut off the only thing they need running is minimal life support shit, and some emergency lights. it may not seem like it but 10 kW is actually enough to keep up with life support for several dozen people, so to keep a crew of 100 alive indefinitely you'd only need like 2 or 3 kilopower reactors on the other side of a hill (or buried in a shallow pit).
Human metabolism is equivalent to only 80 watts of power, and under heavy exercise never gets higher than 1000 watts. A kilopower reactor 10 kW module can therefore keep up to ten humans at maximum output or 125 people at normal resting metabolism. Since people won't only be resting, they'll be doing at least some physical labor, we can assume something like 160 watts per person normally while awake, and 200 watts for few people over short periods of time, so lets go with 180 watts 24/7 average. That's only 18 kW for 100 people.

>>10932979
>If they would have solar panels there, they would have energy around the day (maybe minus a few hours during winter)
also minus huge as fuck transmission losses.
> I wonder if it is possible to throw down a power line from a satellite with a polar orbit
lol, no, for a shitload of reasons, including cable breaking length and orbital velocity and so forth, are you a dummy?

>>10933048
Supraconductors. Even well known copper oxide supra conductors might work in latitudes between 80° - 90°. LaH10 should be supra conductive all the time between maybe 50 °- 90° latitude.

>>10932933
Not affordable.

>>10932002
>that relative altitude difference
God, just imagine tenting the Hellas basin to trap enough warmth for plants to survive and start converting CO_2 to O_2

>>10932933
No, making a propellant plant on Mars must inevitably be among the first things to do. The only question is whether they will first establish the plant robotically, or send a crew over with the risk that plant will fail and they will be stranded. Probably the latter, as Musk recognizes that you cannot colonize Mars while being too risk averse.

>>10932371
just lol if elon is busted for using illegal bracero welders for starship

>>10933118
Latter but with a costly rescue plan. That alone means nasa won't even look at it = must be privately funded in its entirety.

It's so exciting how REAL this is! Since the hopper test it feels like Mars is in our grasp, and all the internet forums are shifting from 'is starship more than just a meme' to 'where are we landing, how will we set up the fuel production facilities, etc'. Must have been what it felt like in the late 60's

>>10933155
>Must have been what it felt like in the late 60's
Then I hope the next president doesn't completely gut spaceflight like what happened in the late 60s.

>>10933155
The real revolution will happen once Mk1 goes 20 KM in oct/nov.

The agencies will be forced to face reality of the situation.

>>10933162
SpaceX may not need external funding once they get their satellite to functioning properly. Then its up to people of earth to see how they want their future to be.

>>10933166
>"SpaceX's independence represent a real threat to our national security. We must rein in this company before it's too late."

>>10933189
So began the first interplanetary war.

>>10933189
there has to be some way of splicing Shelby and Peaky Blinders?

>>10933086
Yeah because manufacturing thousands of kilometers of superconducting YBCO tape on Mars OR shipping it there from Earth is totally feasible, you fucking retard. It'd be less effort to just bring more solar panels, by orders of magnitude.

>>10933164
the real revolution will happen when the chinese rise against the communist party

>>10933164
FUD will always happen
>"starship will never make it to orbit"
>"ok it made it to orbit but starship will never be economical"
>"starship will never make it to mars"
>"spacex's mars landing was a fluke"
>"ok spacex has a colony but it wont last long cuz of X"
>"the mars colony is doomed! anyone going there is a fool!"

>>10933345
>Mars colony of >1million people has a cancer rate 50% higher than united states average
SPACEX BTFO ELON IS A FRAUD I TOLD YOU IT WOULD NEVER WORK

>>10933356
I'm actually mildly curious what the cancer rate will be. Early martian colonists will be vegetarian by necessity, meat simply being impractically expensive to import or raise. No smoking either when your entire existence is indoors. No carcinogenic car exhausts without cars. On the flip side, radiation and the complete wildcard of partial gravity.

If dubs, then hurricane Dorian will dab on the starship prototypes in Florida next week.

If dubs then SpaceX will launch the Starship prototype through the hurricane.

>>10933207
You will never have to fight an interplanetary war if you keep sabotaging anyone who tries to leave Earth.

>>10933365
You can probably ignore radiation as well because living on the surface without a ten meter thick regolith barrier to block cosmic rays will only be a thing for a few years maximum, it's really not hard to get to a point where you're actually experiencing less background radiation than a normal person on Earth. Partial gravity is an unknown but i don't think it'd have any bearing on cancer rates, maybe bone and muscle atrophy problems but considering that we've basically solved those issues when it comes to zero g living i don't think 0.38 g will be a problem for adults. Fetuses and kids may not develop correctly in reduced G but the solution there is to have pregnant women live in gravitron habitats on the ground or big nicely shielded spin habitats hanging off the side of Phobos and Deimos. SSTO to either of those moons and back from Mars' surface is actually viable and really not that hard, so it's not like population growth would be prohibitively expensive, in fact it'd probably cost about as much as a first-class airliner ticket for the round trip, and nothing if you're the actual pregnant woman since the Mars government would definitely want to encourage martian fucking and would therefore sponsor it.

>>10933365
>grow bunch of rabbits on mars
>eat rabbit meat
Or pressurized jerky meat or cultured meat. Still it would be wise to go off of meat diet and go for a sustainable diet.

>>10933439
talipa fillets and bug burgers, actually scratch bugs off the list and replace them with crustaceans, I'd rather eat shrimp plus you can feed them the same thing (scrap vegetable matter and algae)

>>10933439
>>10933445
Invitro meat is becoming cheaper by the years.
Americans will eat invitro hamburgers in the near future.
we will move to a future where you can get cheap invitro meat or expensive real meat.
all of you onions insect eaters can fuck off.

>>10933439
It's not that you can't, it's that it's somewhat less efficient. Also "muh sustainability" is a fucking meme. Animals are a machine that turns a large amount of food into a small amount of much tastier food. There's nothing "unsustainable" about that, it's not like cows are a limited resource. Meat is a luxury item and we consume luxuries hand over fist in the west. That's what's unsustainable, not specifically meat.

>>10933454
>implying invitro is somehow less onions than bugs

>>10933429
good post

>>10933365
Just go back to the early colonial days and send salted/freeze-dried meat and fish by the Starship-load.

>>10933131
>Rescue plan

Lmao once they land the next opportunity to rescue is two years away. If something goes badly wrong, they die.

>>10932858
CO2 will be a renewable resource on Mars and one of the first things that SpaceX should send there are methalox-burning gas turbine power plants.

>>10933365
>Vegetarian

Nope, hydroponics systems will absolutely be designed around fish tanks, far superior method of recycling nutrients and you get free fish.

>>10933595
fish are vegetarian, so are beavers
t. Pope

What are the chances that Mars actually has fossil fuels? I know it's suspected that Mars was capable of supporting life, would we see any oil from that period?

>>10933600
too much infastructure to be used as base energy. There are just better alternatives. Mars will be one the cleanest soceities. Because of it's limitations bar the nuclear waste

>>10933612
>mars will be clean
>need massive greenhouse gas emissions for terraforming to the point that actually generating CFCs for the sole purpose of releasing them is openly considered
delightfully counterintuitive

>>10933633
Mars is going to be IRL Geidi Prime within a century.

>>10933600
Possibility of life x possibility of fuel = 1/4 chance as having life on mars.

>>10933633
How so? Greenhouse gasses are “clean” when we’re talking about Mars.

>>10933633
>delightfully counterintuitive
is that what will be written on his tombstone?

>>10933439
>>10933454

>>10933600
Irrelevant because Mars has no free oxygen; fuel is just one half of the equation, you're like those idiots who think that Titan would explode if you lit a match.

18 meter Starship next to other Mars landers.

>>10931451
70's actually

>>10933727
>idiots who think that Titan would explode if you lit a match
At least they're not as stupid as the people who thought that Saturn would turn into a second sun when Cassini was dropped into it because they thought that Cassini's RTG would detonate like a nuke due to the immense pressures deep in Saturn's atmosphere thus making the hydrogen in Saturn start fusing.

>>10933730
>The Probes that were Mogged to Death

>>10933740
That was a thing people thought?

>>10933744
Yes, but I remembered it wrong. It was Galileo and Jupiter, not Cassini and Saturn. Although, some people probably thought the same with Cassini and Saturn.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/jupiter_galileo.html

>>10933727
You're right but at the same time solving half the equation is stil pretty useful. Oil also usually coexists with natural gas, and pulling methane from the ground is a lot more economical than sabatier process refineries.

>>10933725
>The virgin processed&packaged space food eater VS the chad space farmer.

>>10933730
Jesus christ.
Not that they would ever land so close, but the force of that monster landing would blow away the other landers like dust.

>https://pca.st/ILeAPb#t=1771
>SpaceX is forced to pay $13 million each time they land F9 on earth to Airforce

Imagine how much they'd have to pay Airforce to land Superheavy/Starship back on earth. $60/$100 million dollar each time they land.

K E K. That's American "innovation"

>>10933768
Is that $13M for everytime SpaceX lands a booster that was for an USAF mission, or is that for every booster irregardless of the mission?

If it's just for USAF missions, then I can kinda understand it. But if it's for every mission, then that's questionable. I really hope that this "insurance" payment doesn't miraculously spike up when SS/SH starts flying.

>>10933779
Regardless of whether its USAF mission or not. Its just to cover potential landing issues. And its not refunded back if nothing happens.

>>10933730
OMEGA CHONK

>>10933780
the US is definitely up there on the list of corrupt shitholes
fucking hell

>>10933768
>>10933780
Is there more confirmation on this other than that podcast? Because that feels like the USAF is overstepping it's boundaries.

>>10933762
Except sabatier is basically free because it runs itself once you get hydrogen, the power requirements for propellant production come almost completely from the need to electrolyse water to get hydrogen (and oxygen). The biggest (and only significant) efficiency improvement would be that instead of running the sabatier process and making two water molecules per methane (and thus 'wasting' half of the hydrogen you electrolysed earlier) you can run the electrolysis machine and store all that hydrogen to use for something else instead. You don't actually save on energy costs because you need to electrolyse the same amount of water anyway, it's just that with sabatier you only need to dig up about half of the water, because the rest gets made from the oxygen in the CO2 molecules you're turning into methane. In that sense, even if we found hydrocarbons we could use, it'd in fact be MORE efficient to do sabatier production anyway, because rather than having to dig up X mass of hydrocarbons and Y mass of water, you dig up ZERO mass of hydrocarbons and only Y*1/2 mass of water.

>>10933788
>USAF Lt. General Steven Kwast
You probably need someone higher up like him for confirmation or someone higher up on SpaceX. Ask Elon, maybe he'll say something. But I don't think he wants to do that and create a worse relations with airforce than it already is.

>>10933768
>>10933779
>>10933785
>booster recovery and reuse is STILL economical in spite of literally being scammed by tacking on a $13 million fee for nothing
ESA btfo yet again

>>10933810
>ESA btfo yet again
Huh?
ESA has its own program for booster recovery too.
Pretty much a falcon9 copy too if we can believe the leaks.

>>10933810
I'm just worried that the fee would spike up to the point that recovery and reuse would no longer be economically viable over expendable rockets just so that SpaceX and Blue Origin (and related companies) would be prevented from competing against government rockets like the SLS.

Things might change once the space force takes over Vandy.

>>10933813
This. It was only Ariane (which does work closely with ESA) that claimed that reusability isn't viable. I think Roscosmos was the only big national space agency that claimed that reusability wasn't feasible.

>>10933768
>>10933779
>>10933780
>>10933788
>>10933809

A thirteen million dollar extortion to land a rocket? Is this for fucking real? That's like a quarter the cost of a whole fucking Falcon 9 and yet reuse is STILL economically viable?

Is this why they’re closing up shop at vandy?

>>10933826
If that's the case then SpaceX has no choice but to declare war on the United States.

>>10933829
>Is this why they’re closing up shop at vandy?

It would explain a few things.

>>10933829
That would be a nice explanation/one of the reasons why they choose to move to Boca Chica/Florida for launch.

>>10933826
We don't really know how economically viable the Falcon 9 is since SpaceX is a private company and hasn't really released any detailed break downs of the cost of reusing a booster (unless I missed it). And the fee hasn't been confirmed yet, we've only had one guy saying anything about it.

>>10933768
Timestamp for that? I don't want to have to listen to an hour of boomers talking about enforcing "American values" in space

>>10933854
Its already time stamped dumb phoneposter.

>>10933857
I'm out and about senpai, come on hook us up.

>>10933866
t=1771
29 minute 301 seconds

>>10933600
Mars will be the final piece of irrefutable evidence of abiotic "fossil" fuels.

>>10933866
1771 seconds

>>10933913
>but anon's hopes were dashed later when, upon further investigation, Mars was proven to have no life and simultaneously no hydrocarbon fuels of any kind were discovered anywhere in the entire crust to a depth of at least 50 km

>>10933127

>>10933768
>"$13M? That's a pretty good deal for SpaceX. It should've been $50M. American safety isn't cheap. Now that you mention it, I'll discuss with the USAF to raise that fee to something more appropriate, the SLS is running abit short on funding due to terrible budget cuts from lawmakers who would rather see China set foot on the moon instead of America. SpaceX should be proud that they're funding the most orange and patriotic rocket!"

Saw these at my local burger provider today.

>>10933768
Definitely don't kill all politicians.

>>10934156
I wonder how popular those toys are.

>>10934160
I sorta want the little capsule/parachute one.

>>10934163
You can probably make one from a coffee cup and a grocery bag (along with stuff to connect them together). Literal off the shelf materials.

>>10934174
>Literal off the shelf materials.
Bullshit, you need to procure those materials from all across the country and assemble them slowly in a meticulously clean room over the course of a decade. You can't just stick some shit together in a field and have it fly, c'mon now.

>>10934186
lol try me, imma make a trashcan fly.

https://6abc.com/traffic/video-trash-can-flies-into-car-on-texas-highway/4836953/

at what point does the jank reach critical mass

>>10934197
Are they going to make Starship out of wood instead of steel?

>>10934199
>Spruce Goose: Orbital variant

>>10934199
>>10934202
Bob Shaw would like to have a word with you.

>>10934197
It just keeps getter crazier, love this shit man.

>>10934199
C O U N T E R I N T U I T I V E

>>10934156
It sounds cynical but we literally need to beat space as the next frontier into children from a young age

>>10934244
Naaaaaaaah, let's show them how cool it is to be a YouTube celebrity!

>>10934199
What if.. I substituted stainless steel for wood?

Ho ho ho, delightfully unintuitive elon!

>>10934244
It worked in the 90s, at least a little. I remember thinking the Sojourner rover was the coolest thing ever because I had a hotwheels of it.

>>10934246
we can work with that, just need #DearMoonTube and to pay Logan Paul or whatever to talk about how GONZO AND EPIC WIN space is

>>10934267
Logan Paul: We Found A Body In The Sea Of Suicide On The Moon

>>10934276
>soviet lunar conspiracies proven true by logan fucking paul as he wears the stolen suit a dead cosmonaut and speaks bad fake russian

>>10934260
I remember getting a documentary about the history of spaceflight (in very broad strokes) by the TLC. I would watch that over and over and over as a kid. I recall rewinding the tape before watching it being the most painful part. It covered the basics of Sputnik, Apollo, the Shuttle (the good part of it), the X-33, the DC-X, Daedalus, Ariane 5, and more that I'm probably forgetting.

I can't find a name, but I'm pretty sure that this was a clip from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzXcTFfV3Ls

Who's next to go to the moon?

>>10934322
SpaceX probably, they're the only commercial carrier with a paying customer for a moon mission afaik and NASA ain't keeping schedule

>>10934322
niggers probably

>>10934341
Blue Origin may sneak in a "first to return to the moon" if New Glenn and their lander works out. Then again, it's hard to tell considering that they're secretive about everything they do.

Come on Blue! Let us nerdgasm over your cool shit!

>>10934350
are you from reddit or something

>>10934350
Go back

>>10934346
Probably true if it's Artemis, if it's starship then nah, will probably be some rich Jews and white cunts, maybe some Asians. Depends how many they send.

>>10934156
>The “default” generic rocket design is SLS

>>10934389
To be fair, the SLS has been heavily pushed by NASA's PR department.

>>10934389
That's what I noticed first too. It's okay I suppose, kids that age also believe in Santa Clause.

>>10934393
>Santa Clause
Is that the law that allows him to watch us while we're sleeping?

>>10934397
And unlawfully enter homes to pilfer our milk and cookies.

>>10934401
Florida §404.1
Break and enter without property damage is permitted in the lawful exchange of milk and cookies for gifts

>>10934408
As of 1975, Vietnamese children can be legally classified as elves, in order to skirt an older law pertaining to Santa that required all delivered gifts to be "hand-made by Santa's elves".

>>10934415
Do you think the Santa Clauses would apply to Mars too? Either way, Saint Nick better move to the Martian north pole fast before Elon nukes it.

>>10934199
Hardwood makes a decent ablative heat shield.

>>10933957
>Mars was proven to have no life
>no life
/ourworld/

>>10930007
Earth is flat

>>10934486
MARS IS OURS
HIPPITY HOPPITY
MARS IS OUR PROPERTY

>>10934494
>MARS IS OURS
>HIPPITY HOPPITY
>MARS IS OUR PROPERTY

>>10934497
I wonder who will be that damned soul who brings the first gun to Mars

>>10934508
I consider it my sworn duty to one day stand atop Olympus Mons wearing a cowboy hat, empty a six-shooter into the air, and loose a hearty "yee-haw," for the good of all mankind

>>10934488

>>10934523
It is a right of passage that must be undertaken by some brave soul before the world can be truly colonized. We need to show Mars who's boss, then we can have our way with her.

>>10934523
Cringe

I want to blow up at least one hill on Mars with tannerite triggered by a 20mm

>>10934508
I wonder who will be the first to make the first gun from martian iron

>>10934523
Back to rebbit

>>10934548
It better be an old-west style six-shooter.
That'd be the kind of thing to see in a museum a few centuries out, the first firearm on Mars/

>>10934552
nah fuck that make a Luty

>>10934557
>not a frontier weapon
Boring. Are there even gonna be enough Martians to necessitate a full-auto firearm? I'd think you'd run out of ammo quicker than targets.

>>10934523
And then you get sued by planetary protection because you potentially disturbed some undiscovered alien microbes.

>>10934562
>I'd think you'd run out of ammo quicker than targets.
Or rather, run out of targets faster than running through ammo. I am drink heavy tonight.

>>10934552
It should also have engravings on the cylinder about the history of spaceflight. From Goddard, to Sputnik, to Apollo, to the new space race.

>>10934562
luty is easier to make with nothing but a lathe, a file, and free time
it really comes down to the ability to acquire lead and manufacture smokeless powder

>>10934562
>necessitate
SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED

>>10934578
>tfw the first article of the Martian Papers of Independence is the right to bear arms

>>10934578
>SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED

>>10934578
>Shall not be infringed
>100+ years of our government infringing the fuck out of it and consolidating retard amount of unconstitutional power

What's the point in 2A if no one uses it, it's becoming kind of lame at this point. For all the big talk, none of the guys that have been red flagged resist and just meekly hand over their guns.

>>10934616
Next time just say "I'd like a bunch of cheap (yous) please" and dispense with the nonsense.

>>10934622
Please point out what is not true. I'm a supporter of 2A and own a cabinet of firearms but how long have people been saying

>Oh next time they infringe my rights were going to fuck the government up

Literally decades. I thought maybe Waco/RR was going to be the tipping point but nope, same with NDAA/Patriot act but again nope and when the red flag laws started happening I knew exactly what was going to happen, fucking nothing. The American public is pacified beyond belief.

>>10934624
This is /sfg/, and this is your (you)

>>10934632
I didn't bring this shit up retard.

>>10934635
Nobody's awake enough to bite, anon. Maybe in a few hours someone might respond genuinely.

>>10934636
Cringe

>>10934652
Go to hell shitposter
bump

>>10934707
You are shitposting too
bump

>>10934714
Go to hell

S P I N L A U N C H

>>10934716
Cringe

>>10933779
>>10933768
FUUUUUCK OOOLD SPAACEEEE

>>10933768
>13m dollars to land your shit
>62m dollars to build and launch a brand new Falcon 9
>Get taxed over a quarter of the cost of a brand new rocket to land your booster stage

What the actual fuck, like the boomer host dude said, this is just straight up extortion. I guess it proves the economics of reusability since it must save them at least 13m dollars for them to break even.

>>10934754
Sorry not quite a quarter but pretty fucking close to it.

>>10934141 I got blood presure reading this

>>10933768
straight-up shakedown.

18m rocket will be sea-launched, and the reusables will be sea-recovered.

spacex will go offshore, with this kind of bullshit going on there is no way they will stick to the US.

Are they seriously charging SpaceX thirteen million fucking dollars just for the privilege of bringing their shit back to the pad? And then they claim it's insurance in case something goes wrong but they don't even give it back to them when it goes fine.

Holy shit people need to be roped for this kind of shit.

Musk entertaining the idea of an 18 m 600+ tonne second generation Starship suggests that Musky is reconsidering the idea of a space economy based on resource extraction of near earth asteroids, where a super cargo space ship will be required to transport refined valuable metals to Earth. The First Gen SS 9 metres 150 tones to LEO is more than enough to go to mars or complete Starlink, especially with refueling being a possibility . Musk isnt going let Bezos dominate the industrialization of Space, especially when he has a first mover advantage with rockets.

>>10930007
Musk entertaining the idea of an 18 m 600+ tonne second generation Starship suggests that he is reconsidering the idea of a space economy based on resource extraction of near earth asteroids, where a super cargo space ship will be required to transport refined valuable metals to Earth. The First Gen SS 9 metres 150 tones to LEO is more than enough to go to mars or complete Starlink, especially with refueling being a possibility . Musk isnt going let Bezos dominate the industrialization of Space, especially when he has a first mover advantage with rockets. Mars is just a cover for Musks true intentions. The infrastructure and economic of scale that an exhibition to mars will necessitate will have duel uses for a space economy driven by the extraction of valuable metals dound near earth asteroids, that is worth trillions of dollars. Musk is an evil genius.

>>10934875
I'm not in the mood to speculate on what ol' musky is going to do next when we haven't seen him to these next two things first
hype for Crew Dragon and hype for Starship

>>10934875
No, asteroid mining is a meme. Starship has applications for the moon and Mars yes, even large scale colonisation absolutely, but without a sci fi fusion drive, asteroid mining is just not economical until mining X material on earth becomes more expensive than sending massively expensive rockets, crew, habitats, 0g mining equipment, refining equipment, magnetic railguns, power systems, setting up an earth orbit capture system etc...

Forget about this shit meme and focus on what is realistically achievable with chemical rockets.

>>10934578
guns belong to degenerate societies

>>10935078

Cringe. Have sex.

>>10935157
t. lives in a degenerate society

speaking of which I'm still debating getting the white aug for maximum space force capabilities. Seems that it truly does get dirty as heck tho

>>10934581
>tfw the 'right to bear arms' section specifies that 'arms' includes any and all weapons of every kind with no restriction, from knives to nuclear bombs and beyond
>tfw a normal pub on Mars has a shoulder-mounted nuclear rocket launcher instead of a shotgun mounted above the bar
>tfw people are putting fine engravings and gold inlays on their nerve gas grenades
>tfw Earth governments can't invade because every Martian colonist and their grandma has a nuclear interplanetary ballistic missile mounted to the roof of their habitat module that they can legally fire off if Earth shows hostility

LAND
OF
THE
FREE

>>10935158
t. gets raped by muhammad

>>10934717
oh yeah, it's big brain time

>>10935352
>tfw Earth governments can't invade because every Martian colonist and their grandma has a nuclear interplanetary ballistic missile mounted to the roof of their habitat module that they can legally fire off if Earth shows hostility
based as fuck

>>10933800
As a rule of thumb, the less steps there are, the higher the efficiency. As another rule of thumb, thermally powered processes have higher efficiency than electrically powered ones.

So the ultimate methane production plant on Mars would be a high temperature reactor (either fission or fusion) used for direct thermal decomposition of water and direct methane synthesis.

>>10934883
this.
Asteroid mining is 100% meme territory until we've got hundreds of thousands of people living on the Moon and Mars, and the facilities on those bodies are advanced enough to have very significant industrial capability of their own. We simply cannot do asteroid mining economically from the bottom of our planet's gravity well, we NEED to be able to base our operations directly form low gravity worlds like Moon and Mars in order to have any chance of economic resource utilization from asteroids. Mas is actually better despite its atmosphere and higher gravity than the Moon because that atmosphere lets you recapture at Mars from the asteroids orbiting the Sun for free, without the influence of the NIMBY race on Earth to deal with.
The only solutions to asteroid mining economics are 1000x better propulsion, or working from low gravity base-of-operations. A 1000x increase in propulsion effectiveness is not coming any time soon, even if we develop fusion tomorrow. Therefore, colonizing Mars and the Moon needs to be our plan.
As an aside, fuck the Venus people because they completely miss the point of what our efforts in space should be. Living on Mars or the Moon is not the end goal, living in space in general is the end goal. Living on Mars and the Moon simple makes that possible. Living in the clouds above Venus is not going to get us any advancement in our ability to live in space. We'd be clawing our way out of one deep gravity well just to dive down to the bottom of another one almost as deep.

>>10935355
go back to pol

https://www.humanmars.net/2019/09/candidate-sites-for-spacex-starship.html

Candidate sites for SpaceX Starship Mars landings revealed

>>10930122
someone did, pic related

>>10935393
roughly 1600 kilometers from Olympus Mons

>>10935384
>muh pol boogeyman
dillate

>>10935371
Okay, but we're not interested in the best possible propellant plant, we're interested in the minimum viable propellant plant, because we have a very limited mass budget even with ~150 tons per Starship and an even more limited industrial base to work with (maybe a couple CNC machines and a few tons of stock material if they're lucky). Propellant manufacturing is priority 1, no question, everything else including science is not important unless it directly serves the purpose of accessing and using resources for making propellant. Once Starships are being refueled and the two-way transport network is operating, at THAT point we can start worrying about more trivial shit, and once there are thousands of people on Mars constantly we can start worrying about sending thermal-decomposition based propellant manufacturing technology to Mars.

>>10935406
cope

>>10934156
buy em' all. NASA lore requires that they have peanuts for major space missions.

>>10935384
you mean like in ksp

>>10935393
looks comfy

LOVIUR (next big telescope after JWST) report released.

https://twitter.com/luvoirtelescope/status/1166095545544450048

Includes the following:

10.2 Alternate launch vehicles

LUVOIR has been designed to the SLS vehicle to demonstrate an observatory and spacecraft design that closes. However, the future landscape for launch vehicles should provide more options with the advent of commercial launch vehicles.

10.2.1 SpaceX Starship

The SpaceX Starship is a launch vehicle in the preliminary design phase. As such, there are not yet many details publicly available. However, the LUVOIR Team has communicated with representatives from SpaceX and performed a preliminary assessment of the compati-bility of LUVOIR with Starship.
SpaceX has indicated that the Starship will be able to lift as much as 150,000 kgs to SEL2. This incredible capacity is enabled by launching that mass first into low earth orbit and then refueling a booster for transfer to other orbits. The final fairing dimensions are still being determined but SpaceX did conduct a preliminary analysis of a fairing whose shape was altered to fit LUVOIR-A (based on this study’s final concept models) and they reported that it was a viable option. Without modification, LUVOIR-B can fit into the currently plannedStarship fairing with room to spare as shown in Figure 10-9.

>>10935416

>>10935416
THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING! I'M IN CHARGE HERE!!! SENATOR SHELBY DO SOMETHING!!!

>>10935416
JWST isn't even launched and they are already thinkng about it

>>10935393
another article

https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/spacex-begins-hunt-for-starship-landing-sites-on-mars/

>>10935434
that is always how these big projects work, they are planned a decade in advance

>>10935434
>JWST isn't even launched and they are already thinkng about it

JWST is super late. LUVOIR's great observatory planning committee is on schedule.

>>10935393
Such a shame that the historic landing site will be buried beneath the ocean later

>MEV-1 is the industry’s first life extension vehicle to launch.
>The MEV utilizes a simple mechanical docking system that attaches to existing features on the client satellite.
>Once docked, the MEV will take over the attitude and orbit maintenance of the combined vehicle stack to meet the pointing and station keeping needs of the customer.
>Under terms of the five-year contract, MEV-1 will provide life extension services to the Intelsat 901 satellite with the ability to service multiple satellites using the same MEV vehicle

launching on a Soyuz soon

>>10935431
Dont worry my child, looks like mother nature shall take care of our little problem in Cocoa..

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/dorian-reaches-175-mph-bringing-devastating-conditions-to-the-bahamas/

>>10934883
Hypothetically, if 100 metric tons of platinum were brought back to earth, what would be the change in its market value?
>mfw shorting precious metal commodities at just the right time could be very... lucrative

>>10935512
entering 100 metric tons of platinum to the market right way would crash global markets

>>10935513
SHORTS IT IS, BOYS

Whatever happened to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA
Hubble was based on an NRO design, why is it so hard to do a double repeat?

>>10935612
>It's interesting how well the Hubble and its spooky spy sisters fit in the shuttle...almost like that's what it was intended for

>>10935453
gonna have to build a dome over it

>>10935393
I like 1, 4, and 5 the best. 5 is probably the safest since it's the flattest looking. 1 looks like it could be the most valuable location since it's flat, and within a crater + near another crater (both potentially providing valuable scientific information, and access to useful meteorites). 4 is similar to 5 in being mostly flat looking, but potentially more interesting since it's next to some higher elevation (though not as interesting as 1). 2 and 3 look kind of risky to land at, however they may be as valuable as site 1. So my preference of landing sites would be 1 = 5 > 4 > 2 = 3.

>>10935618
NASA should have a couple of dedicated Starships to use for repairing and recovering satellites like they did with the Shuttle. Orion might get NASA to the Moon, but it ain't got the utility that the Shuttle had. Starship can remedy that. The Air Force/Space Force/NRO could probably use a couple of Starships too to do the same thing with their satellites.

>>10935633
How would starship incorporate a payload bay and an ejection-compatible crew compartment?

>>10934199
Ahem, that's a polycellular cellulose/lignin composite.

>>10934290
Extreme Machines series I believe.

>https://medium.com/raf-caps/a-familiar-frontier-british-defence-strategy-and-spacepower-77afbe09df31
A pretty good read about British space. UK space doesn't get talked about much because it's not that big of a spacepower, but it's undergone a ton of changes this decade and now it's looking better than ever.

>>10935640
It should be big enough for both.

>>10934754
>Booster costs $20m to build
>Booster 'costs' $13m plus BARGE fees to recover
>Still ahead by $5m+

>>10935449
>Shelby manages to keep JWST pinned to SLS, and if finally launches in 2030
>Meanwhile, LUVOIR managed to catch a ride on Startship in 2025

>>10935510
Looks fucking identical to Andrew

>>10935661
JWST is pinned to Ariane 5, which is troublesome because Arianespace is on the verge of phasing it out.

>>10934775
Good, it means that you're still human.

>>10935078
This is bait

>>10935447
the term is "long lead procurement"

think battleships, battleship guns took longer to build than a battleship did so you would set up the gun factory and have guns produced before the keel was even laid

this lead to a few interesting examples of how guns from canceled ships could be used

>>10935714
why reply to it

>>10935633
The Space Force should have a dedicated fleet of Starships (owned and operated by Space Force, not SpaceX) armed for orbital combat

>>10935416
> 2030
> Starship heavy is there, same height, 18m diameter
> Still can't transport LUVOIR-A because the fairing still misses a few meters in height and LUVOIR is not designed to be launched while laying.

Why are SpaceX fairings always so small and impractical?

>>10935733
Starship's payload bay will be like 30 m long, what are you talking about

>>10935728
Considering that there are treaties against that sort of thing that are pushed by the US, I doubt that this will happen.

I can totally see China doing that though.

>>10935714
that is not bait
t. poster

>>10935755
There aren't any treaties against military spacecraft.

I figured that Arcadia Planitia was the most likely choice for SpaceX to land, but it could be that it's just the first place that they posted images for. The other locations might have images that will be released at later dates.

>>10935769
The Outer Space Treaty?

>>10935403
i hope they will se the vulcano becouse the view would be kino

>>10935777
totally kosher

>>10935777
It covers things like WMDs and military bases. Spacecraft aren't covered.

here's a 17.5m tunnel. Wonder what the timeline is for the 18m starship?

>>10935809

>>10935809
>>10935818
36 meter diameter Starship announcement when?

>>10935825
>9 meter diameter? What are you, crazy? What could anyone possibly need an 18 meter diameter rocket for? Honestly, the fact that someone would seriously say they wanted to build a 36 meter diameter rocket makes me laugh. 72 meters in diameter, pull the other one.

>>10935809
You guys know musk made jokes before right?

>hey musk your only in the testfase of SS and all but when are you going to build bigger lol
>*sigh* sure, next is 18m diameter *sarcasm*

>>10935841
if you read the original tweets they aren't frame as him joking whatsoever.

in reality an 18 meter launch vehicle would be great because it'd be able to refuel 9m Starship in LEO with just two flights, it'd almost certainly be cheaper. 18 meter superstarship maybe be tanker-only.

>>10935818
>>10935809
>brain: aluminum rockets
>nirvanabrain: steel rockets
>galaxybrain: CONCRETE ROCKETS

>>10935777
Not all weapons are "weapons of mass destruction". The Soviets armed the Salyut stations with a 23mm cannon.

>>10936003
I guess you have a point. But I recall that the US is a huge driving force in most of the "no military in space" agreements, so going for their own space military will open space up to more space militarization by other nations ("why should we agree to your idea to not have war equipment in space if you're not going to follow it?") which is supposedly something the US doesn't want.

>>10936002
>literally a flying building

Would be glorious

>>10936043
we nier now

A replacement for the ISS where NASA, tue Space Force, commercial, and international partners each pay a portion of the costs. So, split four ways. That way we get a new station, NASA gets to reduce it's costs to 30% of the ISS like it wants, and commercial partners get a new station that they need.

>>10936049
>A replacement for the ISS
Not to test microgravity for the third time again i hope?
Next gen space station should have some sort of way to create gravity from 0.1g up to 0.9g
We need to find a sweat spot where humans can grow up in space without side effect and can still go back to earth with minimal medicine&training.

>>10935644
Well if they buy rocketlabs from NZ, they can do it

>>10936077
Yes for microgravity because that's where the research and economic value is at. Would be nice to have artificial gravity hab though. I thought the ISS was supposed to have one but it never happened.

>>10936077
>Not to test microgravity for the third time again i hope?
There's untapped potential in microgravity though. In the decades of intense study in this field we have only learned that roses grown in space smelt the same as rose grown on Earth, but what about other flowers? Tulips? Daisies? Sunflowers? There are endless possibilities.

Artificial gravity is just a meme that was made popular by childish shows like Star Trek, Star Wars, and Babylon 5.

>>10936049
commercial partners will never play well with government, military and international partners due to differing requirements, if everybody is paying an equal share
mostly due to everybody but commercial sectors not giving a rat's ass about money and commercial only caring about money

>>10936095
>Artificial gravity is just a meme
JELLY BABIES

>>10936096
The ISS works fine with all of those groups involved.

>>10935769
>>10935777
>>10935755
there's literally rocket engines attached to most spacecraft, and a simple collision is enough to do irreperable damage.

Like it or not, every single spacecraft is potentially a weapon.
Besides, most of the actual military use for spacecraft is cameras that are pointed at earth.

>>10936113
>commercial
it's all baby commercial investment, the proposal for any real commercial investment on the ISS was met with an enormous number
many zeroes

>>10936118
>the proposal for any real commercial investment on the ISS was met with an enormous number
Do you mean that companies wanting to go commercial on the ISS were required to pay a large sum of money, or they were asking for a large sum?

>>10936126
the government says the rent is millions of dollars a day or something

>>10936135
I remember that, was there a break down for why it's that high?

new >>10936200