3 ms·
I wrote a brief blog post on some of the major challenges to get this going. Musk's hesitancy to a deadline is great. :) It makes sense, hard to predict the fut
by kumarski 10y ago
I wrote a brief blog post on some of the major challenges to get this going. Musk's hesitancy to a deadline is great. :) It makes sense, hard to predict the future.
http://engineersf.com/12-reasons-spacex-wont-fly-a-manned-mission-to-mars-by-2030-2/ http://engineersf.com/12-reasons-spacex-wont-fly-a-manned-mi...
There's a ton of cool problems lurking around the corner. I hope humanity backs the public part of this public-private partnership.
1. Cargo Capacity — Scaling is Hard.
2. Proper Maintenance — Accessibility is Important
3. MTBF Expectations are too high.
4. Jet Fuel is Corrosive and Methalox engines are a tough
design proposition.
5. Cosmic Radiation — Impedes human interoperability.
6. Solar Panels —Mars Dust Storms impede sunlight.
7. Living Module — 7 month duration for a living module.
8. Microbial Realities — We rely on microbes to live.
9. Parachute Design — Size vs. Thrust vs. Jettisoning Fuel
10. Electronic Protection — Shielding is Resource/Weight
Intensive.
11. Eye Sight — Your ability to see diminishes in space and we don’t quite know how this works fully. (This one is huge)
12. Muscle Loss- you lose muscle mass as you stay longer in space.
To give some context around how difficult it is to build mega engineering projects in the hey day of innovation, just think about Steel. There's over 3K different types of steel and 70%+ were invented in the last 20 years.
Timing, sequence, funding, and focus are going to be such a huge part of this.
5,8,11,12 are really tough. I think the other ones are solvable in some way right now, but will take some configuration/tinkering/experimentation for sure. Plenty of engineers are motivated to work on this kind of thing though, so that's a good signal.
- oxymoron 10y agoSeems like SpaceX agrees with you on the difficulties with the fuel tank, with Musk calling that the single hardest part. Rather cool that they've already made progress on that though!
- Symmetry 10y agoIt looks like SpaceX is choosing a high delta-v trajectory specifically to reduce the danger of 5, 11, and 12. Particularly muscle, bone, and eyesight loss would be a big problem on a Hohmann tranfer orbit to Mars but not on the trajectory SpaceX is proposing. 8 is silly since nowhere people live is going to be microbe free but the long term health effects of Mars gravity are still utterly unknown and that's something we need to get a hold on.
- djokkataja 10y agoI agree about the long term health effects of Mars gravity. I think with adults you'll probably see some bone density loss, similar to what happens to astronauts on long space missions. But arguably that will be offset by gravity at 39% of Earth's. The bigger concern I have is for children that are born on Mars -- if you want to have a self-sustaining population there, you're going to be raising children there, and physical growth in a low-g environment isn't something we can test in the timeframe Musk has in mind.
- djokkataja 10y agoAll of these problems can be worked on in parallel, so I'm not sure why you think it would be "impossible" to do before 2030. Unlikely, sure. Also, Musk specifically mentioned that they weren't planning to use parachutes with this architecture, so you can scratch #9.