Poll of the Day > Elon Musk wants to be "the first person to die on Mars"

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm sure NASA can arrange something

Bitch bye

He'd make a fortune on the live stream.

go now

It'd be way easier without needing to survive the landing.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It'd be way easier without needing to survive the landing.

i lold

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It'd be way easier without needing to survive the landing.

If there's a ship in the way, he might die in the ship before actually contacting the surface of Mars. His best bet would probably be to just get the appropriate life support to remain conscious, then skydive.

what's stopping him?

adjl posted...

If there's a ship in the way, he might die in the ship before actually contacting the surface of Mars. His best bet would probably be to just get the appropriate life support to remain conscious, then skydive.

I have two words for you:


Ejector.

Seat.

The surface gravity of Mars is about 1/3 that of Earth, but the atmosphere is only 0.6%, so having him impact the surface would be an interesting and useful science experiment.

A good experiment needs a control. Maybe we can drop Mark Zuckerberg from low Earth orbit and see what happens.

C0RNISHACID posted...

what's stopping him?

Because the technology to reach Mars alive to be able to die there doesn't currently exist.

ForteEXE3850 posted...

Because the technology to reach Mars alive to be able to die there doesn't currently exist.

I think it does but you'd have to have people willing to die to go there on a way trip and a good reason to devote a significant amount of money to it

OhhhJa posted...

I think it does but you'd have to have people willing to die to go there on a way trip and a good reason to devote a significant amount of money to it

The problem is that you'd need a ship with about a years worth of food and water on it (per person), and some means of disposing of your waste after eating all the food and drinking all the water. Then you'd presumably need some form of entertainment media or work to keep yourself occupied so you don't go insane from the loneliness.

Then all of that extra weight will require a ton of fuel. The weight of which will require even more fuel. And so on.

Some of that can be offset if we built a ship in orbit and then launched it from there so you wouldn't need to bring the entire mass of the ship to escape velocity in atmosphere all at once (you'd basically need to ferry all the supplies up to space and launch from there, which would require much less fuel for the outward trip).

Then the ideal launch window only comes around like once every 15 years (and the next one is somewhere around 2040).

Other problems would involve whether or not we could build a ship sturdy enough to even survive the trip, whether we could shield it effectively enough to keep cosmic radiation from killing anyone inside, health problems caused by prolonged weightlessness (unless we can develop some sort of rotational centrifugal force that can simulate gravity), and how to respond along the way if/when something goes wrong and it winds up being impossible to fix.

We might be able to overcome some of those issues over the next century or so, but we're definitely not at that point now, and even throwing tons of money at the problem isn't likely going to be enough to make it happen.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It'd be way easier without needing to survive the landing.

This was my immediate thought.

Dying on Mars is actually pretty easy - certainly a lot easier than surviving on Mars.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Some of that can be offset if we built a ship in orbit and then launched it from there so you wouldn't need to bring the entire mass of the ship to escape velocity in atmosphere all at once (you'd basically need to ferry all the supplies up to space and launch from there, which would require much less fuel for the outward trip).

Debatable - you still need to ferry all the supplies up to orbit, but now you also need to ferry up the tools and equipment needed to construct the thing as well. Additionally, all construction produces waste - if we build the ship on Earth, the waste stays here, but if we build it in space, we're sending it up to space as well, which requires more energy.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Other problems would involve whether or not we could build a ship sturdy enough to even survive the trip

I don't think that's a pertinent issue. We've built plenty of (unmanned) ships that have not only made it to Mars, but have left our solar system still functional. Putting humans onboard does introduce additional demands on the ship, but it also introduces someone who can conduct repairs, if the damage is straightforward enough to address. In terms of landing on Mars, we built shuttles decades ago that could exit and re-enter Earth's atmosphere, so once again not something unprecedented.

Your biggest challenge would probably be designing a lander that can handle re-entry and landing on a surface that is neither water nor asphalt, while not producing forces that would injure or kill the people onboard. We've landed rovers on Mars before, so it's possible to land *stuff* there, I'm just unclear on whether that could be scaled up to a lander of sufficient size to support human habitation and colonization (if I had to design it, I'd probably make it two different landers: one whose sole job is to transport the humans, and a second to land supplies and materials, as the demands on that lander will be substantially lower than one for living beings).

darkknight109 posted...

Debatable - you still need to ferry all the supplies up to orbit, but now you also need to ferry up the tools and equipment needed to construct the thing as well.

Yeah, but fuel consumption is exponential. Which means it's far more efficient to shuttle everything up into orbit in multiple smaller trips than it would be to load everything into a single ship that has to both reach orbit and then begin a longer trip outbound. The vast majority of its fuel would be consumed on launch. You'd use less fuel with smaller shuttles or rockets launching supplies into orbit.

It's the same reason why the shuttles used to have booster rockets and external fuel tanks. It takes a major effort to get up there. Once you're up there, though, it takes much less effort to head outward.

It's why most proposed scenarios for long-term space programs usually involve some sort of space-based drydock or other shipyard to build and maintain ships in space without having to constantly bring them through atmosphere. It's horrifically inefficient both in terms of resources and design.

Doing it that way also means you don't have to build a ship that can withstand the forces of launch and escape velocity through atmosphere - you just need a ship designed for the unique rigors of interplanetary flight. That way you can use much simpler rocket boosters to launch gear and supplies into orbit using less fuel (or even some form of rail launcher system if we can perfect it), then work from there.

As for tools and waste, that's why you'd want to set up a system/platform to do the work, where you can centralize materials and work on more than just a single ship. It would become the hub for multiple trips, and it could help streamline the entire process.

In theory, a moonbase would potentially be ideal for this sort of thing - you'd have a fixed location on a stable base that could store materials and tools but which lacks significant gravity and atmosphere to pose a problem for transport. But failing that a more significant space station/space platform could be used for the same purpose. This is also the sort of scenario where AI-controlled robot construction assembly line machines (preferably with at least some human oversight) would be ideal for the bulk of the work, because a computer-controlled EVA pod with a welding arm attached is going to have a much easier time putting stuff together than a human in a bulky suit who can only spacewalk for so long each day and who is constantly at risk of potential death.

ALL of this would involve a ridiculous investment of resources, though - and no matter how excited people on Earth pretend to be about space flight and space exploration, we always tend to balk once we realize just what the bill is going to look like. One of the many reasons why we're probably going to be more or less stuck on this mudball until we die - space is hard.



darkknight109 posted...

I don't think that's a pertinent issue. We've built plenty of (unmanned) ships that have not only made it to Mars, but have left our solar system still functional.

It very much is. Scaling up complexity increases the likelihood of failures. Larger structures will have more significant stress points and material fatigue risk. Far more complex systems lead to far more potential faults.

It's like the difference between flying (and crashing) a radio-controlled plane compared to an actual 747. The basic principles are the same for both, but one costs a LOT more than the other, is going to require a lot more maintenance, and will be far more catastrophic if something major goes wrong at the wrong time.

Most of our long-distance explorer satellites are like kit-bashed home computers attached to a lot of relatively simple mechanical tech (you don't want anything too complicated because that dramatically increases the odds of failure), and we kind of just fling them into space (after doing a lot of really complicated trajectory calculations). An actual manned ship capable of (at least) a year-long flight would be qualitatively more complex and advanced (and thus at a greater risk of failure).

We'd probably try to include multiple redundant systems, but even that's not a sure-fire precaution, and every redundant system is going to add to the weight (and thus the fuel issues), and take up more space (which in turn might make the ship bigger, hence more weight, hence more fuel...).

We barely managed to get people to the moon without killing them on the way. Getting to Mars would require a LOT more effort in terms of design and construction of any vessel.



darkknight109 posted...

Putting humans onboard does introduce additional demands on the ship, but it also introduces someone who can conduct repairs

Not necessarily.

Imagine driving your car down the freeway. Now imagine your check engine light comes on. Even with the most robust built-in diagnostic system to tell you exactly what the fault is, it would be somewhat difficult for you to crawl out of the sunroof, crawl down to the hood, then open the hood and change your alternator while the car is still driving.

Once a ship is in flight, it'll be pretty much impossible to ever stop the ship (or even slow down) without essentially committing suicide. You need to maintain the momentum and trajectory to get where you're going without completely missing the target or stopping dead in the middle of nowhere with no way to accelerate yourself again. So every repair would need to be done on the fly, and that makes any external repair a huge risk, and even internal repairs a danger if they involve critical systems (see also Apollo 13).

You could try to put every vital system inside the ship with easy accessibility for potential repair, but you'd never be able to do it for every system, and that level of access is a very inefficient use of space (so we're back to the size/mass/fuel problem).

It's possible the ship can make the entire trip without a single major problem. It's also incredibly likely that something major could go wrong that redundant systems can't compensate for and which cannot be repaired on the fly by the occupants of the ship. It would depend entirely on what the fault was.

And that's not even getting into external damage - a few micrometeors start punching holes through vital parts and you're screwed. You can potentially try to patch things, but you're only going to be able to take along so much scrap metal to repair with (and structural integrity would never be 100% after), and then we're right back to the "just how much weight are you taking with you?" problem.

No need to lay out provisions. See if he can convince Putin that Russia should own Mars too and they both have to go stake their claim.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yeah, but fuel consumption is exponential. Which means it's far more efficient to shuttle everything up into orbit in multiple smaller trips than it would be to load everything into a single ship that has to both reach orbit and then begin a longer trip outbound. The vast majority of its fuel would be consumed on launch. You'd use less fuel with smaller shuttles or rockets launching supplies into orbit.

Well... no, you wouldn't.

I'm not sure what you're referring to with "exponential", because that could be referring to multiple different things. I'm assuming you're referring to the fact that rocket efficiency decreases with mass (since each unit of fuel needs to propel not just the rocket, but all remaining fuel as well)... except, that doesn't really apply here, because your "mass" is static. If our hypothetical Mars ship is going to weigh, say, 10,000 tonnes, then all of that mass has to get up into space; whether you do it in one trip or several, the amount of mass you have to move is going to be the same.

Now, that doesn't guarantee that doing it all in a single trip is the most effective solution either. If you do it that way, you avoid having to ferry up tools and eventual waste materiel, but you deal with less efficient tools. If you ferry up the parts piecemeal, you get more efficient fuel, but you introduce additional inefficiencies (whatever vehicle you used to get up there has to either have the capacity to land and be re-used or be disposable, both of which introduce additional costs and materiel demands). Ultimately, a lot depends on the design of the Mars ship in question - it's not a simple statement to say, "It would make more sense to build it in space," since that's not guaranteed.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's the same reason why the shuttles used to have booster rockets and external fuel tanks. It takes a major effort to get up there. Once you're up there, though, it takes much less effort to head outward.

As a counterpoint, though, if you're launching from Earth you already have significant velocity which, depending on your escape vector, you can then simply redirect into heading for Mars. If you're building the ship in a dock in orbit, you'll need to burn some considerable fuel to get yourself out of orbit and headed towards Mars. Not as much as a launch from Earth, granted, but it is more fuel (that will need to be carried up to space).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's why most proposed scenarios for long-term space programs usually involve some sort of space-based drydock or other shipyard to build and maintain ships in space without having to constantly bring them through atmosphere.

Sure, for long-term design. I was assuming we were talking about a one-off ship. If you're planning on making a full program out of this and doing it more then once, then absolutely, a stardock of some sort quickly becomes much more sensible.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Larger structures will have more significant stress points and material fatigue risk.

So, I'm a materials engineer and I deal with fatigue on a daily basis. I can tell you quite confidently, fatigue is not going to be a dominant risk factor on these ships - not unless you're planning on using them for multiple trips (and even then, you'd presumably do maintenance on them in-between, which is what we've been doing for years with other reusable spaceships).

First off, fatigue is primarily associated with metals, as well as some ceramics. I can't claim extensive knowledge of the sorts of materials NASA is building their stuff out of, but given its material properties (lightweight, ductile, very high strength-to-weight ratio), I would not anticipate them being at elevated susceptibility to fatigue damage (many of the historical composites that NASA has helped pioneer are known for their excellent fatigue resistance, far above and beyond what we see out of metals). Now, anything can fatigue if subjected to cyclic load long enough, but then we get to our next issue: spaceflight generally doesn't induce cyclic loading; that's something we more typically see in aircraft. Helicopter rotors and airplane wings are constantly in motion, constantly being subjected to loading and unloading as they flex during flight. But in space, you're not dealing with air or gravity, so stress-cycling tends to be minimal and restricted mostly to when you're near/in a planetary atmosphere. Once you're actually out in space and moving, your stresses are relatively static and you don't have the stressors that tend to cause fatigue damage in aerial vehicles (flexing wings/rotors, gusts of air, etc.).

Not to mention, there's all sorts of things you can do from an engineering standpoint to mitigate fatigue risk, from design (e.g. avoid hard edges) to construction (molecularly bonding material components generally reduces fatigue risk).

Honestly, the biggest materials concerns I would have with space shuttle components are fretting (which has historically been an issue - the Galileo spacecraft's issue with the high-gain antenna was a result of fretting bonding part of the antenna to an abutting component), erosion (because of the sheer temperature involved, ceramics are really the only thing you can build a lot of the external portions of a spaceship out of, and they tend to have poor tribological properties; at the speeds spacecraft are travelling, the air itself can act as an erosive media, which has been a longstanding challenge for spacecraft), and delamination of composites.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Imagine driving your car down the freeway. Now imagine your check engine light comes on. Even with the most robust built-in diagnostic system to tell you exactly what the fault is, it would be somewhat difficult for you to crawl out of the sunroof, crawl down to the hood, then open the hood and change your alternator while the car is still driving.

This isn't really an accurate comparison.

In-situ repairs of spacecraft are quite viable and we know this because we do it constantly with the International Space Station. Unlike with a car, where you have to deal with gravity, wind, and the fact that you'd presumably want someone driving the car for you, with a spacecraft - even one moving to Mars at considerable speed - you can quite happily go strolling out the airlock onto the exterior of the ship (as long as you're tethered to something), because you're moving at the same speed the ship is and there's no air resistance to slow you down. Fixing the ship mid-flight isn't generally going to be any more difficult than fixing it (or building it) in orbit around Earth, so long as you have supplies on hand. On that note:

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And that's not even getting into external damage - a few micrometeors start punching holes through vital parts and you're screwed.

Micrometeors in the space between planets are rare (they tend to cluster around things with mass, like planets). More to the point, planning for repairs is, once again, a standard part of spacecraft design and has been for a long time. To pick one example, the final flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia was supposed to last two weeks (January 16 - February 1, 2003), but it was equipped with four months of additional supplies, in case something went wrong that rendered the ship unsafe to land.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I have two words for you:

Ejector.

Seat.

the proper phrase is

ejecto seato, cuz

darkknight109 posted...

This isn't really an accurate comparison.

In-situ repairs of spacecraft are quite viable and we know this because we do it constantly with the International Space Station. Unlike with a car, where you have to deal with gravity, wind, and the fact that you'd presumably want someone driving the car for you, with a spacecraft - even one moving to Mars at considerable speed - you can quite happily go strolling out the airlock onto the exterior of the ship (as long as you're tethered to something), because you're moving at the same speed the ship is and there's no air resistance to slow you down. Fixing the ship mid-flight isn't generally going to be any more difficult than fixing it (or building it) in orbit around Earth, so long as you have supplies on hand.

Indeed. Remember that once you actually get out into space, flight basically consists of "point ship in right direction, fire thrusters to reach desired speed, then coast until you reach your destination." The occasional course correction will be needed because on that scale being off by a millionth of a degree can cause you to miss the planet entirely, and the trip's not entirely without resistance that will slow the ship down, but flying a spaceship is extremely hands-off and for the most part it doesn't matter if you're inside the ship or outside. You can't fix a car in motion because it needs constant input to remain stable and keep moving and because the air resistance would make it extremely difficult to hold on (not to mention popping the hood mid-drive would probably just result in it being ripped off because we don't design cars for that to be an option). None of those issues apply to space flight, which is in no small part why any game that tries to realistically simulate space flight is insufferably boring.

The bigger problem with in situ repairs is that crew members need to know enough about how the ship works and have the mechanical skills to repair it. Real astronauts get that as part of their training and certification, but I'm not sure Mr. "Inheriting an emerald mine doesn't count as a trust fund" would be willing to put in that kind of effort. But then I guess it's not like he has anything else he needs to do with his time, so maybe he could.

Never too early to start training, Elon.

I'm for it, but only if he takes some of the world's other dumb shit bags along with him. Goodbye, sayonora, auf weiderschoen, hasta la vista!