In his valadictory address on his retirement from AIAA, Bob Dickman is proposing a $2B prize for one.
I think for that amount of money, if it were done privately, you could send a guy (or gal) to go get it.
[Update after lunch]
Clark Lindsey took notes of all of Bob Dickman’s space heresies.
I don’t think $2b would give you a round trip. $3b would give you a one way trip for 42. Quite a difference a round trip makes.
Send a sample return mission, and you get back ~1 kg of specimens, from one or two locations.
Send geologists on a one-way mission, and they’ll have access to an unlimited supply of specimens, from unlimited locations.
This is a case where humans would clearly be more cost-effective than automated missions.
Send chemical engineers, botanists, and machinists instead, and grow your own geologists.
I’d walk there for $2 billion.
Surely there are better things to do than Mars sample return? Like mapping asteroid belt resources with spectrometers or whatever.
Mars One proposes a one-way trip, and the first four Martians to cost $6 billion. I know that Mars One has a more ambitious goal than just geology, but I don’t see how you can get a person there and back for $2 billion when they think a one-way trip costs three times that.
If you send less people you need less consumables. Not to mention a permanent mission needs to send loads of life support equipment. I think it is too early to attempt Mars settlement. It is so far away that if anything goes wrong a rescue mission or supply drop would take like a year or more to arrive. IMO lunar settlement makes more sense at the moment. The Moon is only a couple of days away. Once you have colonies in the Moon, Phobos, and/or Deimos you have increased chances for a Mars colony to survive.
That’s a false economy. The more people you send per trip the less cost per person. Also, the more people you send the more they can support each other in the work required. You don’t need loads of life support equipment, you need the right life support equipment. More important is people with the skills to produce life support ISRU without needing specialized equipment.
You plan things so a rescue mission or emergency resupply is never an issue. You can do this because all the resources they need are already there. What they need are the right mix of knowledgeable, skilled people. Every 2 yrs. you send an affordable $150m mission with non essentials to improve the quality of life. We need a new frontier with clean sheet politics. That will not happen on the moon, but could happen on mars precisely because it’s not 3 days away from nanny.
Now is precisely the time for a mars mission and Mars One has a good starting point (relying on products from existing companies, although too few people being sent, reliance on earth tech. that can break and not be repaired ISRU, no mention of liberty or property ownership for all colonists risking their lives) but still a good start. Even a precise landing date.
No big public support for
a return to the Moonany space program.Put pioneers on mars and you will see a groundswell of public support. Hell, just grab everybody from a star trek convention. Peoples imaginations soared with a freefall from a balloon. If Mars One is successful in putting people on mars their reality show will be watched almost like the first moon landing. Perhaps I’m wrong and it will be even more so?
Boh. That linked blog post doesn’t say much new and a lot of it is pointless basically. Just because something is XIXth century technology does not mean it is easier to manufacture than current tech in such an environment. The Sabatier process requires hydrogen and energy to work. If you have abundant hydrogen why not use that as fuel in the first place?
The technologies developed to live in the Moon would work in most rocky planetoids without an atmosphere and there are a lot of them. Mars requires unique technologies.
Things you could manufacture more or less easily in the Moon include LOX, solar furnaces, solar PV panels, shelters. LOX/Al hybrid rockets. Heck there is even frozen ice in the south pole so you have water. It’s also only a couple of days away.
Along as everybody does it on their own dime, do both.
Mars requires unique technologies.
Because it provides things most rocks do not.
As long as… gotta stop letting my fingers do the typing.
does not mean it is easier to manufacture
Or even the best. Absolutely right. The point is to choose something appropriate for the capabilities of the martians even if it’s not currently in fashion. If that’s something we just discovered and they can manage it. Why not? The point is to be pragmatic without prejudice. Mars will not have the manufacturing capability of the earth for quite some time, but as the 1881 household encyclopedia demonstrates, they do not need to have such to survive and thrive until they do.
Oh, and regarding the Sabatier process…
The original assumption was that hydrogen (which is recycled from the Sabatier process) would be brought from earth. The reason for using methane for fuel rather than hydrogen is because it is easier to handle. Why do we not use hydrogen for fuel right here on earth? Because it’s an energy store and not an energy source along with the other issues.
If water can be heated out of the soil, I do not think they will need to carry hydrogen from earth other than in the supply of water they have before they get to ISRU water.
Regardless of any of that, the martians will have a choice of resources and can make the economically sensible ones (as free people do when a govt. isn’t around to push them around.)
Just because something is XIXth century technology does not mean it is easier to manufacture than current tech in such an environment.
Not -just- because. And not across the board. But complexity and prerequisites does sort of scale with level-of-technology.
Stone Age Hammer: Pick up a rock. Check.
Bronze & Iron Ages require more mining and metallurgy. A key for one route is hydrochloric acid – which is recoverable.
Steel – more purification is needed than is needed for bronze/iron. True modern steels require an -array- of mining and purification chains.
“Aluminum Age”: Sodium hydroxide and a boatload of power. Hand-cast aluminum can manage an amazing array of parts that are ‘good enough’.
But just because your lathe and mill is made from impure handcast Martian materials, you can still cheat and get 99% of the way to a top-notch computer controlled automill with -just- the controller chips and the tool bits imported. Maybe 1% of the weight – and decreasing with size.
Ken, you are engaging in wishful thinking. Most — practically all — Americans are not interested in sending humans to Mars. Mars probes — think Curiosity — get some support. So do, rather interestingly, Virgin Galactic’s proposals for a few minutes in space – even if they are for the very rich at present.
You are absolutely right, Americans are not interested in SENDING humans to mars. What I’m pointing out (and you just did as well) is that they would be very interested once colonists (or rovers, but much more colonists) ARE THERE. The landing would be a bigger world wide event than the lunar landing. Colonists with their daily activities 100 times more than a rover would be a much bigger, huge American interest.
Bigger than Honey Boo Boo I’d wager.
If you mean in terms of liberty Chuck? You betcha. It is with profound wishful thinking that I hope colonist will realize that their future is not tied to any earth government. They will the chance at self determination. I hope they use it well.
I seem to recall that Bob Dickman was quite a NewSpace skeptic a few years back. Am I correct?
Yes, though he wasn’t as bad as some.
I’ve known General Dickman for a number of years, yet I am really (pleasantly) surprised at some of his positions. He has served for quite some time on the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee. But he was always very quiet. I guess he was forming new opinions, because as Charles and Rand note, he seemed to be a skeptic for a long time.
Skepticism doesn’t necessarily mean antagonist or opponent, though. Bob’s a very analytical and fair minded individual. I’m glad to have him on the side of commercial space. Whenever he speaks, people listen…
You can’t just wish for things and offer a prize for supplying it.
Prizes don’t work that way.
You have to find out what people are already doing and provide an incentive for them to do it faster or for more people to do the same.
Mars One would like 1/3rd of their plan covered…
Mars One isn’t “already doing” anything… except going on crappy daytime talk shows and no-one needs a prize to encourage that.
The Carmack Prize just got won, how about tripling the prize money for a 100 km shot? At least there’s credible people on the record saying they’re actually aiming for that goal (including the team that won Carmack’s prize).
Mars One isn’t “already doing” anything
Put aside funding for a moment. What they are doing is exactly what needs to be done by talking to existing companies about existing or near existing products and putting it together in a workable plan (yes, we agree the plan needs a bit more work, but at least you have a framework to tweak.)
Ok, so saying we’ll get Spanky and the gang to put a show in the barn to raise $6b is not credible. They are giving themselves ten years to do it and do have people with some knowledge of how to make it work. Yes, I’m skeptical. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t getting a good percentage of things right.
Planners are as important as engineers and bending metal regarding a project like this. Funding of course is the essential ingredient.
I misspoke. Planners are more important.
Like the Google Lunar X-PRIZE? I was disappointed at that when it was first announced, but am amazed at the response. It has validated the model used by the XPF, even if no one ever attempts an actual flight.
People were building private robotic missions to the Moon before the GLXP. One of them is the front runner, and an old time pal of Peter Diamandis. Where do you think he got the idea?
You can’t just wish for things and offer a prize for supplying it.
Why not, Trent? Is there a law against that? Is it physically impossible? Of course not. And in fact, I’d say that prizes in general are of this form, even if it’s of the “faster please” variety.
You can, it just doesn’t work.
Simple proof: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Space_Prize
No-one was (or is) trying to do orbital human spaceflight without government funding. Simply wishing for it and offering a prize doesn’t work.
Trent, that’s a poor example since people are actually working on that sort of activity, bringing people to some sort of habitat in orbit. The problem was that the prize was for a ridiculously short period of time. I think a prize like sample return from Mars would work with an indefinite deadline. Here’s two billion dollars and it’s not going away. Create a host of such prizes, then that’s serious money for any private space exploration efforts to achieve.
It might not encourage existing efforts to hurry which is often a purpose of such research, but it does change the long term viewpoint and make such efforts more credible.
The FINDS prizes went for ages and attracted zero interest. People don’t start projects to win prizes. It’s always a case of “oh, there’s a prize for what we’re doing? Cool. We better hurry up or someone might beat us to it.” That’s how prizes work. If you have examples of any prizes that worked differently to that, let me know.
The FINDS prize (otherwise known as the CATS prize) expired in 2000.
Have you folks heard of the exoplanet they discovered orbiting Alpha Centauri B? I wonder if NASA will be able to keep underfunding exoplanet search with news like this popping up.
Yep, and I hear that the Jupiter II is being readied for launch…
I heard that they were going to call it the “Constitution”. And that they got CSI Vegas to make some great enhancements of pictures of the Alpha Centauri system to show this awesome Earthlike planet.
Yeah, but they drove through the sun and messed up their navigation system.
I agree, btw, that for $2 billion one could send one person to do the sample return mission. Whether that person came back or not is debatable, but in any event, it could be done.
Seems that the SpaceX Dragon+SuperDraco could get you half way there for about $500 million or so. What’s involved with getting the Dragon back into Mars orbit and then out of the Martian gravity well? Doubtful that a Dragon+SuperDraco could do that.
Perhaps dual Dragons with in-orbit transfer of payload from the Dragon that drops down to Mars and returns to orbit and the other Dragon for the return trip to Earth. Costs could be saved by accomplishing the second half of the mission two years later after the first half (samples in Martian orbit) has proven successful.
Part of the problem though would be collecting geologically interesting samples and that would seem to require some sort of rover to scurry about and collect samples — driving up mission cost and complexity.
BTW, given the fears of Moon bugs on the early manned Lunar missions, I wonder what fears might be raised about a capsule returning from Mars loaded is possible Mars bugs.
Fun stuff to think about.
A Red Dragon to mars surface would be $150m from a ref Thomas gave me.
That’s too small a space to be stuck in for six to nine months. Even with a balloon porch I just do not see it. We need a general purpose ship amortized over many missions.
I wish I knew the Red Dragon Delta V.
Something that needs to be considered for any manned Mars mission: Is it survivable? There’s an awful lot of radiation and cosmic rays and various nastiness out there that we don’t have to deal with here on Dirt, but once we leave the cocoon of our magnetic field, we are literally toast.
We’ve dealt with the radiation issue many times before.
Not to mention that long a time without gravity. Six months on ISS has major effects on astronauts. It takes them three years to recover on Earth. We don’t know what will happen with trips to Mars that are much longer than six months — at least with present technology.
Obviously exercise alone is not enough to mitigate the problem. That’s why you send two ship. It provides redundancy and tethered together artificial gravity.
Too bad that Bob waited until now for getting all of this off his chest. I remember when he was still a general that he would not even take the risk of working with an American small sat company when he could get product from Surrey Satellite Technologies.
Better late than never. It looks like the cold winds of the Great Recession are causing lots of folks to ponder new ideas.
The other day I did an interesting first pass calculation based on an Apollo mission using lithium aluminum hexahydride/H2O2 (Li3AlH6)instead of Aerozene-50/N2O4.
hypergolic link
With a 500 psi chamber pressure it has a vacuum ISP of 469, whereas everything above the S-IVB on Apollo had an ISP of 311 to 314.
Holding the dry mass of the lunar ascent module, descent module, command module, and service module consant would still result in a required LEO mass of 57 tonnes, instead of 130 tonnes. Using it the 3rd stage would reduce that stage’s dry weight, too, meaning you’d probably only need one launch on a Falcon 9H to fly the same lunar mission as a Saturn V.
Aside from being a storable hypergolic that’s ideal for fuel depots, what would the higher ISP and density (1.0 S.G.) do for a Mars mission?
I don’t know if anyone is seriously pursuing the development of an engine to run on it (as the fuel would probably cost $100 to $150 per gallon because of the lithium content), but it would seem to be a very attractive alternative to LH2/LOX for deep space missions.
Lithium aluminum hexahydride? Sounds like one of those wonder fuels which ignite in contact with water. I would rather fly in a nuclear rocket I kid you not.
BTW the SSME has an ISP of 452 s. RL-10 has an ISP of 462 s. You don’t need to go all exotic to get similar performances.
You get similar performance from LH2/LOX, but with a huge tank volume penalty, and for something like a lander you also pay a huge insulation penalty. So for some applications that alternative isn’t really LH2, it’s hydrazine and N2O4, especially if the mission duration would require active cooling of the LH2.
So if it can knock the LEO weight of a manned lunar mission from 130T to 57T (even without extra optimization and mass reductions possible since the mid 1960’s), you’re getting the performance benefits of using LH2/LOX throughout the entire system while actually shrinking the size of the tankage and eliminating cryogenic storability issues.
For lunar mining you get the side benefit of getting the same performance from half the mass-fraction of hydrogen, as long as you can come up with enough insitu lithium reserves (I recall that lithium is in the lunar micas at up to 150 ppm). If such a fuel would allow the Falcon-9H to execute the same missions as the block II SLS at a small fraction of the cost, I’d think it would at least be worth investigating, as the return on investment might be enormous.
Once we get serious about space all chemical engines are going to take a back seat to nuclear engines. The storage and tankage issues with hydrogen are so bad that general purpose ships are probably going to go with methane (but first kerosene) until nuclear engines take over.
You have to wonder how nations will react when private companies are using torch ships (I like Zubrin’s) to get around and essentially have a planet killing weapon as a byproduct.
essentially have a planet killing weapon as a byproduct.
It’d have to be a really big ship or a really small planet. The old Orion rocket would have directed more energy (as nuclear explosions no less) and the original designers weren’t particularly concerned about it being fired in atmosphere.
It’s not the drive itself Karl, it’s the potential velocity buildup.
Even without a torch ship, private companies will still be able to nudge a planet killing rock.
I just read someone suggesting a thorium nuclear salt water engine. Not sure how that would work since thorium, while radioactive, needs help to go nuclear.
One impact of a Mars Sample Return Prize, it would basically eliminate NASA’s Mars program which has been focused on preparing for a sample return mission. After all, you wouldn’t want NASA to be in competition with the private sector. The money saved would then enable NASA to focus on other science targets besides Mars.