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54 Humans in One 8-meter Gravitics Module
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoI thought the Gravitics site was pretty cool. Question from someone with no knowledge of this industry. How are aerospace startups like Gravitics generally funded? Is it a billionaire or two funding in the short term until it delivers products? Funding from other big aerospace companies like Lockheed Martin as a sort of "skunkworks" project company? VCs? Government DARPA-like funding? I'm just curious how these big, super expensive hardware efforts get funded for years before they deliver any functional products.
- dr_orpheus 2y agoA lot of the time the path looks like this: 1. Initial VC funding for your cool idea to carry you to something (analysis, initial demo) you can feasibly sell to get to a more formal demonstration 2. Science and Technology government org funding for a demonstration (DARPA, SBIRS, SpaceWerx, NASA ventures, FFRDC lab, etc.) 3. Large government funding (NASA, Space Force, etc.) for full product delivery or buying enough data to keep funding further build-out
- dr_orpheus 2y agoYou can see some of that path on their website 2022: Announced $20m in VC funding, April 2024: SpaceWERX contract for $1.7M, June 2024: Starting to work agreements with NASA So they are currently on step 2
- bell-cot 2y agoFrom the photo, "stand roughly within the cut-away mockup, and smile at the camera" is that all they're doing. (On Earth. It's supposedly a mockup of a proposed space station module.) If I recall, the record for stuffing adults into a standard-sized phone booth is about 1/4 that number.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoI think it's just meant to be a more easy-to-grok illustration of how big this thing is. Nobody's truly planning on cramming 54 people into one of these in orbit, barring an extreme Seven Eves-style emergency.
- bell-cot 2y agoBig-picture...yes, likely. Though it also has a strong "of course we'll use it for our group photo backdrop" vibe. Small-picture...I don't think whoever did the article is really aware of the big picture.
- dmd 2y agoOn the other hand, the situation kind of reminds me of the Boeing/Airbus promotional materials for new planes where they nearly always show it in the "hyperrich Saudi prince" configuration - piano, lounge, bar, maybe a dozen people in a 787-sized cabin. So, pessimistically, one of these is gonna end up crammed with 200 people not 54.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoI think if space travel were as common as air travel, sure - but right now, nobody with a net worth of under a million is going into orbit except as part of a national space agency.
- davedx 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspiration4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspiration4
- evilduck 2y agoOn the plus side, with 200 people if you just rotate people around regularly you can significantly reduce the radiation exposure of those on the inside of the cluster and their total exposure while in space. Their body and water mass surely make for a decent shield. Or again, realistically with humanity being humanity, whatever disadvantaged group emerges in space will end up as the shield layer.
- ukoki 2y agoBet you could fit even more in if you blend them first
- Workaccount2 2y agoGiven the name I was under the impression that this would be a rotating module to create artificial gravity, but it seems instead it is just a large capsule.
- gary_0 2y agoI was wondering that too, and if there actually were any projects working towards rotating space habitats. > However, there are no current practical outer space applications of artificial gravity for humans due to concerns about the size and cost of a spacecraft necessary to produce a useful centripetal force ... Scientists are concerned about the effect of such a system on the inner ear of the occupants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity Looks like visitors to space will have to keep dealing with zero-gee for the foreseeable future.
- jandrese 2y agoIMHO the concerns that people won't be able to handle the rotation are under tested. While I'm sure there are people who won't be able to handle it just like there are people who can't put on VR goggles without barfing, I suspect the average human could tolerate it just fine. I would love to see a pair of Starships hooked together with a sturdy cable a couple of dozen meters long and then spun around each other to simulate gravity.
- Asraelite 2y agoA pair of Starships isn't even necessary. You could do it with a counterweight. Honestly the counterweight approach seems like a pretty easy experiment to try, I don't know why it hasn't been done yet.
- resolutebat 2y agoWhere are you going to find a counterweight in space? Launching two Starships is much easier than trying to capture an asteroid or something.
- imglorp 2y agoUnless they're going to build 8m diameter module in orbit, the various inflatable projects make much more sense from a launch standpoint.
- mechhacker 2y agoProbably depends greatly on the expanded configuration and what equipment is inside.
- strongpigeon 2y agoStarship’s cargo bay is 9m in diameter.
- agar 2y agoInteresting that they chose an 8 meter diameter, probably assuming a launch on the 9-meter Starship as Blue Origin's New Glenn is only 7m diameter. It would be interesting to see a weight projection for a completed module to see how well it fits within Starship's planned capacity of between 100 to 200 tons to orbit. A 50cm (max) gap between the module's outer edge and Starship's inner edge does not seem like much room for support or deployment infrastructure in the launch vehicle, and would also require bay doors that fully open - and maybe a robot arm to safely deploy. I haven't seen any reference to explicit collaboration between Gravitics and SpaceX. Maybe it's still too early, but I would hope the two have open lines of communication to avoid expensive redesigns later on.
- hughes 2y agoThe starship users guide[1] indicates that an 8 meter diameter payload is the maximum that can be accommodated. [1] https://www.spacex.com/media/starship_users_guide_v1.pdf https://www.spacex.com/media/starship_users_guide_v1.pdf
- dr_orpheus 2y agoYeah, that makes sense and they are likely communicating. The dimension is often used approximately to know what class of launch vehicle it is fitting in. For the standard existing rockets we will say things like "this spacecraft fits in a 5m fairing", but the actual static payload envelope is 4.82m or something. So don't take it as a precise measurement.
- hadlock 2y agoChina is developing a 10m diameter rocket that looks heavily inspired by Starship; methalox engines, stainless steel construction, possibly partly/fully reusable But yeah I can't imagine this going on any other rocket. At some point in the future there will be a market for habitable volume. Right now habitable volume is built like an RV, a mostly self-contained singular unit, but in the future modular construction might look like big rigid bubbles of air with windows, and every couple of units you have a "mechanical" area for hvac, power, water etc, similar to how high-rise buildings are designed.
- floating-io 2y agoIs it just me, or is that just a wood mock-up? That was kinda disappointing to realize. I look at the image of all those people and wonder: will they have additional "floors" in the real thing? Because all I see is the possibility of someone getting stranded in the middle in zero G, unable to reach a surface to push off of...
- klyrs 2y agoIf you're wearing clothes, you can remove them and throw them to produce some delta v.
- _nalply 2y agoAlways keep a tungsten cube in your pocket! https://thume.ca/2019/03/03/my-tungsten-cube/ https://thume.ca/2019/03/03/my-tungsten-cube/
- resolutebat 2y agoFilming what happens next has often been proposed as a great revenue driver.
- itishappy 2y agoYou can "swim" in space by pushing against the air. Not very well, but you won't get stuck. Please enjoy these very confused birds flying around in a vomit comet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4sZ3qe6PiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4sZ3qe6PiI
- peeters 2y agoI was imagining a standard 3D lattice of struts that could be configured however you want - as equipment mounts, wall studs, etc. They don't need to take too much load so the lattice itself could even be modular in my mind.
- jp57 2y agoI'm not sure what the point of cramming 54 people into the cross-sectional area is as a demonstration. After all, if you give each person one square meter, you could fit the entire population of the earth into the state of Connecticut. (with some room left over) 54 people in the module volume even seems like it would be quite cramped and unpleasant for anything more than a short trip. Also, is enclosed volume really the thing that needs to be optimized? Presumably the ISS has so much less enclosed volume for its size because its mission demands more external surface area and/or other things like modularity that are at odds with maximizing enclosed volume.
- itishappy 2y agoI think the driving force for the shape of the ISS is actually the available launch vehicles. Skylab was a lot closer to the size of this thing than the ISS is because it went up on the last Saturn V. I walked through the Skylab replica at Space Center Houston just last week and was blown away by the scale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1sr6aVzW9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1sr6aVzW9M
- ben_w 2y agoSure; they say it's "roughly half" the "usable volume" of the ISS. The latter being 388 or 900 or 1005 m^3 because habitable != pressurised, and for the latter NASA publishes two values[0][1], so that's about 194/450/502 m^3 total or 54 people 3.5/8.3/18.6 m^3 per person. For comparison, the Apollo CSM and lander were 6.2 m^3 and 6.7 m^3 total for 3/2 crew, so even at that (I agree unpleasant) density, it's a plausible size for the pressurised volume of an emergency-return-to-earth lifeboat. [0] "Habitable Volume: 13,696 cubic feet (388 cubic meters) not including visiting vehicles" "Pressurized Volume: 35,491 cubic feet (1,005 cubic meters)" - https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/space-station-facts-and-figures/#:~:text=1,005 https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/space-stati... cubic meters [1] https://www.nasa.gov/reference/international-space-station/#:~:text=The%20ISS%20is%20the%20largest,400%2C000%20kg%20(900%2C000%20lbs) https://www.nasa.gov/reference/international-space-station/#...
- BonoboIO 2y agoI don’t know this should demonstrate. You can stuff them in their but only for a short time before the all start to go crazy. Would I step into if my life depends on it, yes but for anything else this is just worthless.
- maxerickson 2y agoThe person for scale +53 more is obviously tongue in cheek. I expect most of the team working on the module is in the picture.
- maxerickson 2y agoHow's the air quality on the ISS? I think I remember seeing something about it smelling pretty bad, and I know I've seen terrible reports about the waste containment systems that were used on the shuttle. Stuff like that isn't quite as sexy as a big volume, but I would think it is at least as important to solve, if not quite a lot more important.
- m3kw9 2y agoI’m not understanding the bragging about packing 50 people in a box like sardines
- zizee 2y agoIt's simply a demonstration of scale. The number of people helps those amongst us that find it challenging to visualize the size of these things.