> We know astronauts to Mars will be in space for nearly 2 years. We should have had him stay 2 years.

However they will likely be in microgravity for 4-5 months per leg of the trip. During the time at Mars they will experience gravity (albeit less). Plus the radiation flux on the Martian surface is only slightly higher than on the ISS. The thin Martian atmosphere alone blocks radiation surprisingly well.

New classes of rockets like Starship from SpaceX pack enough delta_v to lower the old numbers (6-9 months) significantly.

Theoretically Starship could reach Mars in about 80 days with 100 tons of payload and fully refilled in LEO. But then the arrival velocity at the Martian atmosphere would be too high for the heat shield. So the trip duration has a lower limit of roughly 4 months in a good synod.

Docking at the spin axis will definitely not work. Or you accept that you will only ever have a maximum of two ships docked simultaneously.

But this is obviously impractical for anything larger than the ISS.

Look up my older posts how to solve this.

>Which should be our first order of business with these new nuclear propulsion systems they want to use to explore mars.

The main problem here is that those nuclear engines are far less effective than the mass media wants you to believe.

The technology is extremely expensive and requires large volumes of hydrogen which is incredibly difficult to store in space because of the permanent sunlight. It will just evaporate.

In essence its far cheaper and faster to go to Mars via chemical engines.

To send stuff to the sun however requires far larger quantities of energy.

It would take millennia to reduce the atmosphere again.

So thickening the atmosphere would definitely work. It wouldn't be stripped immediately.

We could deploy a big electromagnetic dipole at the Sun-Mars L1 point.

This would solve the solar wind problem and even reverse the atmosphere loss on its own.

NASA has already done a study on this and it looks promising (ie. Could work)

>While we dream of making Mars look like Earth, we are busy making Earth look like Mars. Terraform Earth. It's easier, cheaper, faster, with benefits to every human.

Why tf is this the standard post every time anything about Mars gets posted?

What we do on earth is completely irrelevant to what we (can) do on Mars.

It's so sad to see that people can't hold two thoughts in their heads simultaneously.

It's always either. Either do something on Mars OR save earth? Why? Do you actually think humanity is unable to do more than one thing at a time? Or do you also advocate for stopping child cancer research until climate change is fixed?

Maybe some intern has something on a flash drive. But I have not seen any official stuff yet.

However with the flexible architecture of Starship any space tug will be far down the line.

>but do we really think the model for people launching under 10t payloads is the starships payload being a bunch of different contracts with tugs?

Imagine yourself being a customer. Do you really care about the maximum payload mass of a rocket as long as it can carry your payload to your desired orbit and is the cheapest option?

People often seem to be caught up with the giant payload mass of Starship and extrapolate current practice into the future. All while they forget that customers pay per launch, not per kg.

The propellant load for a full Starship launch costs well below $2M. This makes clear why SpaceX is so certain that they can hit their desired launch cost.

Sure.

But when they even only get the booster coming back at the beginning, they are already saving massively on hardware for the next launch.

So it's even less likely they have to sell their launches above $50M to break even.

>They did cost a lot more.

Falcon9 did cost more? Well, the price hasn't changed.

>A hundred million dollar per launch starship would be great,

I absolutely doubt that even a completely non-reusable launch would cost SpaceX more than $50M. The hull construction of Starship is extremely cheap. Material wise and manufacturing wise. The most expensive parts are the engines.... and the recovering hardware.

The engines are like 250-500k a piece. Without recovery hardware and return propellant and a 50to payload I guess SpaceX could get away with 25 engines for the booster and 5 sea-level optimised Raptors for the ship (the giant nozzle for the vacuum optimised engines is likely quite expensive)

So that's like $7.5‐15M for the engines. Lets say $10M for each hull, $10M for propellant and launch operation and there is still a $5M profit margin in the worst case if they offer the flight for $50M.

>If you can send 20T to LEO but they only have 12T of cargo... You're going to go for the cheaper launcher.

Really depends on how much cheaper the smaller launcher is.

In a market where a 70% bigger launcher costs only a few millions more, it will make sense to increase the mass of your satellite/payload so you can massively save on development and manufacturing cost.

Because if your requirements stay the same but you can double the mass, your costs go down fourfold. (Roughly speaking)

You pay per launch, not per kg.

This is not your local farmers market.

To fly a 777 always costs the same, regardless of the number of passengers in the back.

>There is a long road ahead before starship has rapid and reliable reuse

This was also the case for Falcon9. But that didn't stop SpaceX from flying commercial payloads, did it?

>I want SpaceX to succeed I wouldn't call Falcon 9 last generation until

It's their current operational rocket. It's not their new or next rocket.

Basically RocketLab has to hope that they get Neutron up and running well before Starship is eating up even the small sat market.

>SpaceX has invested at least 10 billions in Starship, including Raptor,

This was about Falcon9, tho.

And combined with the ISS contracts I would be VERY surprised if SpaceX hasn't recouped their development cost yet.

As a European aerospace engineer I hate this so much.

Thanks for sharing.

What orbital service is Bezos currently providing?

Not only is he years late on his orbital rocket. His inability to deliver functioning engines on time is also grounding rockets of other companies!

I'm saying the whole story is not true.

It's completely made up!

You will realise this once you try to look up the name or the location of this supposed mine.

To make my point very clear. I'll send you 50€ if your next comment contains the name and the location (together with verifiable sources) of the mine you think made Elon Musk "the son of a slave owner".

>If you can’t do the basics that owning majority share in a slave mine

That's exactly the part which isn't true.

Your particular social media bubble might tell you otherwise and will even link you dubious third hand info articles. But do yourself a favour and try to look up the name and location of that mine.

You will be very surprised.

>But the fact we have a slave owner raised man child

Why would you gobble up and repeat such obvious wrong statements?

Musk has undoubtedly questionable views on many topics, but that doesn't mean we have to abandoned truth all together.

>The success of the Falcon 9 launches is on the personnel actually doing the work, not musk.

That would mean SpaceX is the only company in the world with competent engineers.

Do you really want to argue that?

Intelligence and talent is more or less equally distributed among the engineers in the grand scheme of thing.

What sets SpaceX apart from all other space companies is the single-minded leadership with actual technical knowledge and understanding. And the personal freedom to make bold decisions.

Look at Blue Origin. That's what you get with good engineers but leadership without engineering knowledge.

Relevant part from the article:

>The Normans began construction more than 900 years ago on the building that would become Leicester Cathedral, but legend has long had it that the site has been one of worship as far back as the Roman occupation of Britain. Now, an archaeological discovery has experts suggesting the legend may well be true.

>Excavations have uncovered what is believed to be an altar stone, found within the cellar of a Roman building they say is probably the remains of a private shrine or cult room. Mathew Morris, who led the dig, said the discovery of the Roman altar – the first to be found in Leicester – was “amazing”. He added: “For centuries, there has been a tradition that a Roman temple once stood on the site of the present cathedral. This folktale gained wide acceptance in the late 19th century when a Roman building was discovered during the rebuilding of the church

That churches were build in or on top of roman temples is not exactly braking news...

However this seems to be a church build on top of a roman house, containing a room dedicated to worship. Interesting.

>Because it makes more money, or rather means Ariane needs less subsidies.

Your entire first argument was that Ariane6 is not an economic choice but a strategic one.

Now you argume that Ariane6 was designed to keep up with the market.

>primarily, Arianespace is there to provide independent European capability to space.

If that is the case then why even develop Ariane6 as an expressed rival to the Falcon9 of 2017 instead of just subsidising Ariane5 indefinitely?

Also why create a singe provider with basically no incentive for low prices instead of investing in the launch market as a whole to ensure "independent European capabilities to space"? With those €4B for Ariane6 Europ could have created TWO SpaceX!

Europe could have a much bigger space economy if it didn't hurdle itself with high, self inflicted, launch costs.

>My country will help the local steel mill in my town to switch from coal ovens to hydrogen ones to reduce the pollution they create.

Research and development money. Let the industry handle the rest, supported by sensible laws.

>Energy infrastructures too with the investments in new nuclear reactors.

Let the industry handle it by creating necessary laws.

>France declared that it will put 100 billions on the table for the train sector to reduce the car dependency.

Cut tax brakes for the industry you don't want and use that money one to on in sectors you want to support. Sensible laws are required.

>Investing in social housing, public services,... Is also a really great way to reduce poverty and the problems it create.

Germany is the best example here. Would they have implemented sensible tax rates incorporating the total m² of houses/apartments they wouldn't have this problem now. They could still implemented such laws, But no, that would hurt big companies.

.

>And no, sometimes you need to put money on the table rather than to write some laws that will just have bad impacts because of a lack of money.

Sensible laws don't have "bad impact". There already is so much tax money thrown at problems and this has a bad impact on the overall situation.

Good laws fixing all those problems you just listed would definitely hurt the profit margins of some big companies. But they wouldn't hurt 90+% of the population.