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Design? Sure. Launch? Maybe. Launch while also having to launch everything the people we send there need for the rest of their lives, and also launch everythi

Design? Sure. Launch? Maybe. Launch while also having to launch everything the people we send there need for the rest of their lives, and also launch everything needed to power and maintain that robot for as long as it's required? Hmmmmm... But okay, let's say we do all that. We can now dig up Mars-dirt. How do we make that into airtight shelter that is also proof against cosmic radiation?

notfish 3y ago
Probably, you dig a hole then put an inflatable hab inside and bury it? This feels like a supremely solvable problem
- usrbinbash 3y ago
  > dig a hole then put an inflatable hab inside and bury it An inflatable hab...that somehow remains stable and sealed after getting "buried" under a pile of rock?
mr_toad 3y ago
You keep raising these logistical issues like you’re the only person who ever thought of them. And you seem to be underestimating the resources that can be committed. It’s not like people are planning to send one or two rockets and calling it a day. Serious plans involve sending hundreds of rockets every year, and tens of thousands of tons of cargo.
- usrbinbash 3y ago
  > You keep raising these logistical issues like you’re the only person who ever thought of them. Better than to hand-wave them wouldn't you agree? Because these issues are real, hard and very limiting factors, and they don't go away by throwing money at them. And I'm pretty sure I am not the only person who keeps raising these issues. > Serious plans involve sending hundreds of rockets every year That would be a really neat trick. Mars's synodic period with Earth is 780 days (about 26 months) and the resulting transfer window lasts a few weeks at most. So if you want to send even 100 rockets per year, you have to start +200 rockets within that launch window. To put that into perspective, since 1960 there were a grand total of 50 Mars missions, that includes unsuccessful ones, which were more than half: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars Most of these missions didn't land anything on Mars, and not a single one involved landing the spaceship itself, or had even remotely the kind of payload capacity that a colonisation effort requires. So unless someone has a workable idea for a completely new propulsion system, I'm afraid there won't be "hundreds of rockets every year". Edit: Oh, I almost forgot, small question: How do these "hundreds of rockets per year" get back to Earth? Because, if they don't, well, that's gonna up the launch costs somewhat, wouldn't it?
  - mr_toad 3y ago
    It’s more complicated than that. Cargo rockets don’t all need to be launched at once, they just need to be ready to burn in the launch window. In fact because they’ll need to be refuelled in orbit they have to be launched before the launch window anyway. The passenger rockets will be the last to launch. Optimal transfer orbits have short windows, but there are other orbits available if you’re prepared to wait longer, including ballistic capture orbits, elliptic transfer orbits, and making use of aero braking (skimming through the high atmosphere) for orbital capture. As for the return journey, it’s unlikely that many of the initial rockets will be coming back. Return journeys will likely be limited to passenger rockets. There won’t be much else to bring back until there is sufficient infrastructure on Mars.
    - usrbinbash 3y ago
      > Cargo rockets don’t all need to be launched at once, they just need to be ready to burn in the launch window. So what's the plan, launch all those rockets into LEO, and then have them sit there for up to 2 years before sending them on their merry way? Whos doing maintenance? Who repairs these rockets when they get hit by space debris? Who'd even know one was damaged? What's the backup plan when almost inevitably some of them will fail come travel-day? More rockets? Whos doing maintenance on them, and who pays for them? Where are all these rockets coming from btw.? Spaceships aint cheap, they have to earn their keep by doing things like ferrying commercial cargo into LEO. Who can afford to have a fleet of them sitting around doing nothing? Look, I'm not saying that any of this is impossible. I'm just saying that a VERY hard task, that we have never done before, just got an order of magnitude harder. At what point in this hardship am I allowed to wave a little cost-benefit-analysis and ask what exactly we gain from sending people to Mars (aka. nothing that can't be done better with robotic probes)? > Return journeys will likely be limited to passenger rockets. Let's start with: return journeys will be limited to rockets that are still operational after landing in a rock-desert, with zero support structures, on a sheet of powdery regolith-dust, and after having been blasted for months with Martian dust-storms, and subjected to extreme temperature differentials.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    You could launch 200 rockets the same day if you wanted to. These things are exactly what throwing money at works for. If you have a really deep pipeline of several, the rockets could also be coming home - but cheap transfers take a really long time.

notfish 3y ago

Probably, you dig a hole then put an inflatable hab inside and bury it? This feels like a supremely solvable problem

usrbinbash 3y ago
> dig a hole then put an inflatable hab inside and bury it An inflatable hab...that somehow remains stable and sealed after getting "buried" under a pile of rock?

mr_toad 3y ago

You keep raising these logistical issues like you’re the only person who ever thought of them. And you seem to be underestimating the resources that can be committed. It’s not like people are planning to send one or two rockets and calling it a day. Serious plans involve sending hundreds of rockets every year, and tens of thousands of tons of cargo.

usrbinbash 3y ago
> You keep raising these logistical issues like you’re the only person who ever thought of them. Better than to hand-wave them wouldn't you agree? Because these issues are real, hard and very limiting factors, and they don't go away by throwing money at them. And I'm pretty sure I am not the only person who keeps raising these issues. > Serious plans involve sending hundreds of rockets every year That would be a really neat trick. Mars's synodic period with Earth is 780 days (about 26 months) and the resulting transfer window lasts a few weeks at most. So if you want to send even 100 rockets per year, you have to start +200 rockets within that launch window. To put that into perspective, since 1960 there were a grand total of 50 Mars missions, that includes unsuccessful ones, which were more than half: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars Most of these missions didn't land anything on Mars, and not a single one involved landing the spaceship itself, or had even remotely the kind of payload capacity that a colonisation effort requires. So unless someone has a workable idea for a completely new propulsion system, I'm afraid there won't be "hundreds of rockets every year". Edit: Oh, I almost forgot, small question: How do these "hundreds of rockets per year" get back to Earth? Because, if they don't, well, that's gonna up the launch costs somewhat, wouldn't it?
- mr_toad 3y ago
  It’s more complicated than that. Cargo rockets don’t all need to be launched at once, they just need to be ready to burn in the launch window. In fact because they’ll need to be refuelled in orbit they have to be launched before the launch window anyway. The passenger rockets will be the last to launch. Optimal transfer orbits have short windows, but there are other orbits available if you’re prepared to wait longer, including ballistic capture orbits, elliptic transfer orbits, and making use of aero braking (skimming through the high atmosphere) for orbital capture. As for the return journey, it’s unlikely that many of the initial rockets will be coming back. Return journeys will likely be limited to passenger rockets. There won’t be much else to bring back until there is sufficient infrastructure on Mars.
  - usrbinbash 3y ago
    > Cargo rockets don’t all need to be launched at once, they just need to be ready to burn in the launch window. So what's the plan, launch all those rockets into LEO, and then have them sit there for up to 2 years before sending them on their merry way? Whos doing maintenance? Who repairs these rockets when they get hit by space debris? Who'd even know one was damaged? What's the backup plan when almost inevitably some of them will fail come travel-day? More rockets? Whos doing maintenance on them, and who pays for them? Where are all these rockets coming from btw.? Spaceships aint cheap, they have to earn their keep by doing things like ferrying commercial cargo into LEO. Who can afford to have a fleet of them sitting around doing nothing? Look, I'm not saying that any of this is impossible. I'm just saying that a VERY hard task, that we have never done before, just got an order of magnitude harder. At what point in this hardship am I allowed to wave a little cost-benefit-analysis and ask what exactly we gain from sending people to Mars (aka. nothing that can't be done better with robotic probes)? > Return journeys will likely be limited to passenger rockets. Let's start with: return journeys will be limited to rockets that are still operational after landing in a rock-desert, with zero support structures, on a sheet of powdery regolith-dust, and after having been blasted for months with Martian dust-storms, and subjected to extreme temperature differentials.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  You could launch 200 rockets the same day if you wanted to. These things are exactly what throwing money at works for. If you have a really deep pipeline of several, the rockets could also be coming home - but cheap transfers take a really long time.