The Economist has a lengthy story on what’s going on in the space industry up there.
2 thoughts on “Mojave”
So yeah, other than the usual “New Space, what does that even mean?” gripes, I recently discovered that this bit at the end is wrong:
Whether there is money to be made on Mars is not clear. A round-trip would take years, so only the most dedicated tourist would be interested.
As it turns out, Elon spoke about this recently:
Mars is, if you have a low energy trajectory, like a minimum energy trajectory is about 6 months. I think that can be compressed down to about 3 months, and it gets exponentially harder as you go lower than that – 3 to 4. It’s important to actually be at that level because then you can send your spaceship to Mars and then bring it back on the same orbital synchronization. Earth and Mars synch up every two years and then they’re only kinda in synch for about 6 months. Then, ya know, they’re really too far apart. So you’ve got to be able to go there and back in one go. That’s important for making the cost of traveling to Mars an affordable amount.full transcript.
This is brand new information, I think. Musk thinks he can send people to Mars and get them back, all within 6 months. This makes it a very different proposition. We’re still waiting to hear how he thinks he’s going to do that…
“This is brand new information, I think. Musk thinks he can send people to Mars and get them back, all within 6 months. This makes it a very different proposition. We’re still waiting to hear how he thinks he’s going to do that…”
6 month round trip seems ambitious.
I was thinking about round trip in regard how to reduce 500 day to a about year.
And that requires fair amount delta-v leaving earth, then for return via Venus, with gravity assist to back to Earth. Something like that for say less than 10 month total would return at quite velocity difference at the Earth.
So say take Juno flyby Earth, recently when got as close as 500 km from Earth, and gravity assist to Jupiter, if Juno were instead a dragon capsule from such trajectory could it do a survivable earth re-entry? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Juno%27s_interplanetary_trajectory.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_%28spacecraft%29
It wouldn’t be same or anywhere close to it [it seems it would be worse] but if from Juno trajectory crossing earth is not possible for re-entry, then don’t see how you get close to 6 month round trip.
So yeah, other than the usual “New Space, what does that even mean?” gripes, I recently discovered that this bit at the end is wrong:
Whether there is money to be made on Mars is not clear. A round-trip would take years, so only the most dedicated tourist would be interested.
As it turns out, Elon spoke about this recently:
Mars is, if you have a low energy trajectory, like a minimum energy trajectory is about 6 months. I think that can be compressed down to about 3 months, and it gets exponentially harder as you go lower than that – 3 to 4. It’s important to actually be at that level because then you can send your spaceship to Mars and then bring it back on the same orbital synchronization. Earth and Mars synch up every two years and then they’re only kinda in synch for about 6 months. Then, ya know, they’re really too far apart. So you’ve got to be able to go there and back in one go. That’s important for making the cost of traveling to Mars an affordable amount. full transcript.
This is brand new information, I think. Musk thinks he can send people to Mars and get them back, all within 6 months. This makes it a very different proposition. We’re still waiting to hear how he thinks he’s going to do that…
“This is brand new information, I think. Musk thinks he can send people to Mars and get them back, all within 6 months. This makes it a very different proposition. We’re still waiting to hear how he thinks he’s going to do that…”
6 month round trip seems ambitious.
I was thinking about round trip in regard how to reduce 500 day to a about year.
And that requires fair amount delta-v leaving earth, then for return via Venus, with gravity assist to back to Earth. Something like that for say less than 10 month total would return at quite velocity difference at the Earth.
So say take Juno flyby Earth, recently when got as close as 500 km from Earth, and gravity assist to Jupiter, if Juno were instead a dragon capsule from such trajectory could it do a survivable earth re-entry?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Juno%27s_interplanetary_trajectory.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_%28spacecraft%29
It wouldn’t be same or anywhere close to it [it seems it would be worse] but if from Juno trajectory crossing earth is not possible for re-entry, then don’t see how you get close to 6 month round trip.