Tag Archives: habitats in space

SpaceX and Mars: The Illogical Strategy

23 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in Business, Government, Health, History, Management Practices, Public Image, Public Relations, Science, Space, Technology, Travel, US History

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Parlor Trick:  Relanding a piece of junk and wasting payload fuel to do it

 

Fallacy:  It takes eight to nine months to get to Mars when the planets are in the correct position.

Fact:  Mars can be reached in a matter of weeks if the ship has the propulsion and fuel to increase speed beyond what is required for the Hohmann Transfer, and to reduce speed to insert into orbit around Mars. Also, a more powerful propulsion and fuel method can allow for trips to Mars even when the two planets are not in the ideal position.

Fallacy:  We don’t have the technology to protect humans from cosmic radiation for extended space journeys beyond Earth orbit.

Fact:  Again, we do have methods to protect astronauts from cosmic radiation, but the concepts add weight to the ship, and that means a better propulsion system is needed.

Getting to Mars is about ship and propulsion design. Period. Speed and weight will have to be increased to get astronauts safely there and back again. It costs money to achieve the goal.

This is the problem with SpaceX plan to go to Mars. Their approach has been to  ‘save money’ by developing a reusable booster system. That sounds great. That’s what the space shuttle was designed to provide, and now, thirty years later, SpaceX is trying to re-do what we’ve already done. Not only are they reinventing technology we already have, they are doing it wrong.

Returning a booster as a landing craft defeats the mission objective of going to Mars. It requires wasting time, money, and fuel to:

  1. design a booster landing system
  2. building and testing a booster landing system
  3. committing fuel that should be dedicated to the payload, to the booster landing system
  4. using personnel and resources to monitor and land the booster
  5. using personnel and resources to recover and rebuild the booster that is basically a piece of junk.

In addition, their approach to a reusable booster is contradictory to the goal of getting to Mars. It is absurd to think that one vehicle will liftoff from Earth, orbit Earth, go to Mars, orbit Mars, and land on Mars. Mars is not a pack-your-overnight-bag trip. To get to Mars will require boosting several payloads to be assembled in Earth orbit. Wasting fuel to put a payload into orbit in order to land the booster makes no sense.

Landing the booster stage on Earth is a parlor trick. It lets SpaceX look cool, and lets them claim they are saving money by reusing the booster. It makes people excited and cheer, but it is a waste of valuable resources. Landing on Mars will not be achieved by expending resources to re-land the booster on Earth.

Send Our Trash Into Space

13 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in Government, Green, Health, Science, Space, Technology, Travel

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A.  Plastic grocery bags and water bottles are a BIG problem on Earth.

B.  Cosmic rays are a BIG problem in human space travel.

The solution to both problems is simple. Send our recycled plastic trash into space and use it to shield ships from cosmic rays.

This is not a joke.

Cosmic rays are highly energetic particles that pass through most atoms until they hit a nucleus dead on. They are a form of radiation that is the single largest health threat to astronauts traveling beyond Earth’s natural magnetic shield. 

Plastic: China doesn’t want it, and we need it in space

A Problem With A Solution

Hydrogen, which can be found in polyethylene structure of plastic grocery bags and water bottles, is effective against cosmic rays because the hydrogen atom has less space for a cosmic ray to pass through without hitting the nucleus. If spaceships were built incorporating polyethylene shielding, astronauts would be better protected from cosmic rays without adding tons of dense metal-based shielding to the spacecraft.

Recycling polymer materials and sending it into space would relatively expensive; however, if we had a major Moon and Mars exploration program the cost could be justified. Ships could use the materials once they had an inventory in space. By starting an inventory recycled plastic in orbit around Earth, the future cost of space exploration could be reduced. In addition, the amount of wasted plastic in our environment would be reduced. 

At a time when China is now refusing to accept our raw recycled materials, we need to become creative on new uses for the stuff that won’t ever go away.