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NASA's Mars Science Laboratory |OT| 2,000 Pounds of Science!

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A

akira28

Member
You use a kilofuckton of repurposed nuclear grade explosives to propel a ship through space. You do it out there, because people are severely worried about detonating them in earth orbit, which is what I would do anyway. (Build it in orbit, tow it out to a far range and light it off.)

That's why you would detonate it. Kind of a switch on the old Orion playbook. Instead of a massive multimember crewed ship, you send a fast little probe with communication lasers.
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
akira28 said:
Why don't we send a Nuclear probe to Alpha Centauri anyway? Send it to detonate on the far side of the moon, 40 years time you have word, maybe it gets here in what. 10 years? Someone can probably do the math on that.

That would be the shit. Another fucking star.
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To expensive still.
The problem is putting all those tons on the moon/space in the first place.
 
G

gutshot

Member
akira28 said:
Why don't we send a Nuclear probe to Alpha Centauri anyway? Send it to detonate on the far side of the moon, 40 years time you have word, maybe it gets here in what. 10 years? Someone can probably do the math on that.

That would be the shit. Another fucking star.
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I think getting the rocket into orbit, with that large of a payload, is the problem.
 
G

GaimeGuy

Volunteer Deputy Campaign Director, Obama for America '16
DrForester said:
Mars actually is a huge problem. Whoever is sent to Mars is going to have to stay there, nearly a year becasue of the orbits of the planets. Add into that the travel time, and you're looking at a trip lasing almost twice as long as the longest space flight on record (437 days). It's not as "simple" as Apollo was, just sending three guys on a 4 day trip to spend at longest, 3 days on the moon and return.
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Right, the moon and the earth have the same orbit and rotational period with respect to the sun, so you can't just take off and come home from Mars just like that.

It is also 300x the distance from the earth compared to the moon. Like going down the block vs a 30 mile drive.
 
G

Grym

Member
Powdered Toastman said:
Posted yet?

http://www.360pano.eu/show/?id=731
Click to expand...


Is there a source on an official site because I am not seeing it at NASA/JPL? You sure this is real?

1. I don't see Mount Sharp
2. During the press conference today, they were asked why the panarama shot were off at like the second tier (not showing Mount Sharp and the sky). They answer they had plans for those shot in the next couple days and were as excited as the press to see them...

NPR is stepping back a bit from news on this panorama:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/08/14/158754314/interactive-360-degrees-of-mars

Earlier today, we published a panorama that purported to be stitched together from images taken by the NASA Mars rover Curiosity. Since that time, we have learned that the author of the panorama has said he used Adobe Photoshop to add a sun to the sky. According to Talking Points Memo, Andrew Bodrov used images from a 2005 Mars rover to approximate the size and appearance of the sun. Below is the interactive as it originally appeared.
Click to expand...

So at least the sun is faked. I'm gonna guess more as well.


For comparison, here is another external user's (The Wall Street Journal...so a little more trustworthy) panorama stitched together from released photos:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443991704577579652958963584.html?mod=e2tw

Looks like this guy faked a lot of the view to me.
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
gutshot said:
I think getting the rocket into orbit, with that large of a payload, is the problem.
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You can split it up into many different rockets, and then assemble the ship on the moon, but it would cost shit ton of money using conventional chemical reaction propelled rocket ships to lift everything to the moon/space.
 
A

akira28

Member
gutshot said:
I think getting the rocket into orbit, with that large of a payload, is the problem.
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That's why you build it in space. Over time. We need another functional station somewhere in orbit. Maybe a construction base. Create a shipyard for interplanetary travel and "space only" vessels build for different demands. Especially if they can make moderate rocketry cheaper, send building materials up at first, then once established, get what you need from surrounding bodies. Moons, asteroids, etc.
 
G

gutshot

Member
akira28 said:
That's why you build it in space. Over time. We need another functional station somewhere in orbit. Maybe a construction base. Create a shipyard for interplanetary travel and "space only" vessels build for different demands. Especially if they can make moderate rocketry cheaper, send building materials up at first, then once established, get what you need from surrounding bodies. Moons, asteroids, etc.
Click to expand...


Ok. So that's a couple years of assembling the ship in space, another 44 years to arrive there and then another 4 years before we start receiving data. In 50 years, we presumably will have much better technology for exploring the universe, so I think it would be a waste of money to attempt something like this now.
 
Insane Metal

Insane Metal

Member
G

GaimeGuy

Volunteer Deputy Campaign Director, Obama for America '16
akira28 said:
Why don't we send a Nuclear probe to Alpha Centauri anyway? Send it to detonate on the far side of the moon, 40 years time you have word, maybe it gets here in what. 10 years? Someone can probably do the math on that.

That would be the shit. Another fucking star.
Click to expand...

Current fastest vehicle: New Horizons probe: 36,373 km/h

Let's say we increased the top speed by 3 orders of magnitude to 36,373,000 km/hr.
Alpha Centauri is about 41,500,000,000,000 km away


41.5 trillion kilometers divided by (36,373,000 kilometers per hour times 24 hours per day times 365.25 days per year) = roughly 130.25 years to reach Alpha Centauri, even if we inrease our top speeds by a thousand times over the current fastest spacecraft.
 
G

GaimeGuy

Volunteer Deputy Campaign Director, Obama for America '16
so yeah, the New Horizons probe would take about 130,250 years to get to Alpha Centauri.

Modern humans first appeared approximately 190,000 years ago.
 
A

akira28

Member
Gaime: you missed the part where we were using spacecraft that were never built as the main basis for discussion. Namely, the nuclear bomb powered Project Orion craft. Which was hypothesized, apparently, to potentially take a shorter time to reach ACentauri.

edit: never mind...looked at the wiki..130 years more like. Where did that 40 year figure come from?
 
P

Parch

Member
A human to Alpha Centauri isn't going to happen with current tech. It's certainly a long time before colonization.

Assuming we can avoid extinction events, at some point our star is going to go red giant and we'll need to get the hell out of here. It's going to take some big time sci-fi leaps and bounds for the human race to survive.

Gotta start somewhere. Mars first.
 
J

jerry1594

Member
Parch said:
A human to Alpha Centauri isn't going to happen with current tech. It's certainly a long time before colonization.

Assuming we can avoid extinction events, at some point our star is going to go red giant and we'll need to get the hell out of here. It's going to take some big time sci-fi leaps and bounds for the human race to survive.

Gotta start somewhere. Mars first.
Click to expand...

There are huge hurdles to overcome here if we're looking that far into the future
 
R

robertsan21

Member
Parch said:
A human to Alpha Centauri isn't going to happen with current tech. It's certainly a long time before colonization.

Assuming we can avoid extinction events, at some point our star is going to go red giant and we'll need to get the hell out of here. It's going to take some big time sci-fi leaps and bounds for the human race to survive.

Gotta start somewhere. Mars first.
Click to expand...


Anyone care to explain why we want to go to Alpha c?
have we found a good earth like planet there or?
 
K

Kinitari

Black Canada Mafia
I really wish the science in the Commonwealth Saga sci-fi novels was legit.

Fuck that's my favourite sci-fi universe to date, and all this mars ish is reminding me of the first book.
 
G

GaimeGuy

Volunteer Deputy Campaign Director, Obama for America '16
akira28 said:
Gaime: you missed the part where we were using spacecraft that were never built as the main basis for discussion. Namely, the nuclear bomb powered Project Orion craft. Which was hypothesized, apparently, to potentially take a shorter time to reach ACentauri.

edit: never mind...looked at the wiki..130 years more like. Where did that 40 year figure come from?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I used the 1000x factor in my calculations because that's what I recall being the hypothesized speed gains of nuclear-powered space tech. a factor of roughly 1000.

It still requires 130.25 years to get to Alpha Centauri as my calculations showed.
 
L

Log4Girlz

Member
akira28 said:
Gaime: you missed the part where we were using spacecraft that were never built as the main basis for discussion. Namely, the nuclear bomb powered Project Orion craft. Which was hypothesized, apparently, to potentially take a shorter time to reach ACentauri.

edit: never mind...looked at the wiki..130 years more like. Where did that 40 year figure come from?
Click to expand...

Avatar?
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
It is the project orion ship that can reach Alpha Centauri in 44 years:

At 0.1c, Orion thermonuclear starships would require a flight time of at least 44 years to reach Alpha Centauri, not counting time needed to reach that speed (about 36 days at constant acceleration of 1g or 9.8 m/s2). At 0.1c, an Orion starship would require 100 years to travel 10 light years. The astronomer Carl Sagan suggested that this would be an excellent use for current stockpiles of nuclear weapons.[13]
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That's based on some old tech that we can actually build, unlike all the other theoretical spaceships that require technologies we have yet to invent.

I think it's totally worth sending a probe to Alpha Centauri, just to study a different star (and potential planetary system, though I don't think it got any habitable planets) up close.

It could also get a crew of 200 people to Mars in less than 4 weeks (good enough for a start-up colony):

The reference design was to be constructed of steel using submarine-style construction with a crew of more than 200 and a vehicle takeoff weight of several thousand tons. This low-tech single-stage reference design would reach Mars and back in four weeks from the Earth's surface
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The only problem with the project orion design is that if you launch it from earth, you risk nuclear fall-out (though it might be an acceptable risk), and sending it off from space is way to expensive.
 
L

Log4Girlz

Member
I wonder what the actually reasonable top speed of a craft is, before tiny dust motes tear your shit apart due to the energies involved.
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
Log4Girlz said:
I wonder what the actually reasonable top speed of a craft is, before tiny dust motes tear your shit apart due to the energies involved.
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We just put a big piece of the moon on the front.

They did put in a lot of thought into that old design back in the 1950s, and I'm sure that a modern design utilizing what we've learned the last 60 years would be even better.
 
L

Log4Girlz

Member
SquiddyBiscuit said:
We just put a big piece of the moon on the front.

They did put in a lot of thought into that old design back in the 1950s, and I'm sure that a modern design utilizing what we've learned the last 60 years would be even better.
Click to expand...

At certain speeds you can have miles of rock in front of you and still be in dangers of ripping everything in the craft to shreds on the atomic level (as you get close to c).
 
S

SquiddyCracker

Banned
Log4Girlz said:
At certain speeds you can have miles of rock in front of you and still be in dangers of ripping everything in the craft to shreds on the atomic level (as you get close to c).
Click to expand...

I would like to see calculations on that, but 0.1c doesn't seem to be a high enough speed to pose an insurmountable challenge.
 
G

gutshot

Member
SquiddyBiscuit said:
I would like to see calculations on that, but 0.1c doesn't seem to be a high enough speed to pose an insurmountable challenge.
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One thing I noticed about that theoretical rocket traveling at 0.1c: it doesn't take into account slowing down once you get to Alpha Centauri. Good luck getting any meaningful data as you blow by the star at 67 million miles per hour!
 
Karak

Karak

Gold Member
The math to figure out where a star is versus where we see it is, versus where it will BE when a spacecraft arrives hurts my fucking head. Man.
 
L

luxarific

Nork unification denier
Bowdz said:
Software boot is complete. Went without a hitch.

7723209870_c05a5ef7fd_o.gif
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Man, Jumping JPL Guy makes me crack up every time I see this gif. Not laughing at him really, it's just that his enthusiasm is so damn charming. You go, Jumping JPL Guy, you go.
 
B

Bowdz

Member
MrOogieBoogie said:
wat

Explain yourself. What do you mean fake?
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http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/14/13282693-panoramas-add-spin-to-mars?lite

NBC said:
The true-to-life all-around views from Curiosity aren't yet complete, but picture-builders can fill in the details. One popular panorama on the 360Cities website, created by photographer Andrew Bodrov, is great for giving you a sense that you're right there on Mars. But don't take it at face value. The picture is not just missing the mountain: The rover's 3.6-foot-tall (1.1-meter-tall) mast, on which Curiosity's best cameras are mounted, has been airbrushed out of the picture. A Photoshopped sun has been stuck into a fake sky. Gaps in the imagery have been smoothed over, and the whole picture has been colorized.

"Color photos of Mars look different, but NASA still has not published enough source materials to assemble a complete panorama," Talking Points Memo quoted Bodrov as saying. "I am just waiting for new photos."

So is the Curiosity team. They're waiting in particular for the pictures of the mountain, known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp. So far, the peak has been seen from the ground only in comparatively low-resolution, black-and-white pictures from the rover's hazard avoidance cameras. The rover hasn't yet pointed its color Mastcam or its black-and-white Navcam imager above the level of Mount Sharp's foothills.
Click to expand...
 
S

Sirius

Member
Parch said:
A human to Alpha Centauri isn't going to happen with current tech. It's certainly a long time before colonization.

Assuming we can avoid extinction events, at some point our star is going to go red giant and we'll need to get the hell out of here. It's going to take some big time sci-fi leaps and bounds for the human race to survive.

Gotta start somewhere. Mars first.
Click to expand...

Gotta go fast.
 
P

Partial Gamification

Banned
JoeTheBlow said:
Has this turned into a fucking sci-fi thread now?

Regarding actual reality: Been reading tech details on the instruments on that thing. Christ almighty, its complicated, i can't believe how feature packed that thing is, and how tuned it is for the search for past water/life.
Just a shame it might take so long, the schedule is.......relaxed, to put it mildly.
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I think it is natural to ask the "what if" questions when presented with such a curious thing as landing on Mars. There are a variety of issues surrounding this happening; and, like it or not, going to Mars was once science fiction -I'm saying it is built-into the topic and this is the internet. The informaiton from this rover will trickle in. Science just isn't all that fast-paced and the sci-fi and speculations are welcome filler, to me at least.

Thank's for the link. I didn't realize the "Quadruple Mass Spectrometer" took such a smal sample size (5-535 Dalton). Does the operational capability, of the spectrometer, to funciton in "static" or "dynamic" modes refer to the state of the sample or something else?
 
T

Trouble

Banned
Bowdz said:
I would highly recommend everyone watch Robert Zubrin's Case for Mars speech if you already haven't:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm34Muv6Lsg

This was devised back in 1992 and it is even more applicable now that the Falcon Heavy is within a year of being active. More than anything else, Zubrin's plan shows a sustainable and elegant plan for Martian missions that dismantles the notion that we need to return to the Moon before going on to Mars or that we need some form of advanced propulsion to get to Mars (like the VASMIR proposal). Finally, Zubrin's plan illustrates how a complete, long term mission could be designed on the cheap (relatively). It is important to keep the price of a mission in perspective. $50 billion dollars for a 10 year mission is only $5 billion per year of dedicated resources. NASA is spending roughly $3 billion per year on SLS/Orion when it only plans to fly the SLS once every year at a cost of $1.6 billion per flight (not to mention the lack of any real need for such a heavy lift vehicle). China plans to perform their lunar missions with rockets that would be less powerful than the Falcon Heavy and possible multiple launches for future Mars missions. The resources are definitely their for a manned Mars mission; the President, Congress, and NASA just need to have the joint vision and leadership to set an ambitious goal, fund the project, and let it happen.
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I really like some of the ideas there. Sending the return vehicles in advance and leaving reusable habs within rover distance of each other would let us basically build a presence that increases over time with each mission. It also provides an increasing safety margin for each successive mission. Also local fuel generation for return cuts down a ton on weight that needs to be shot to Mars, which simplifies things a lot.
 
B

Bowdz

Member
Trouble said:
I really like some of the ideas there. Sending the return vehicles in advance and leaving reusable habs within rover distance of each other would let us basically build a presence that increases over time with each mission. It also provides an increasing safety margin for each successive mission. Also local fuel generation for return cuts down a ton on weight that needs to be shot to Mars, which simplifies things a lot.
Click to expand...

I completely agree. While there are definitely parts of the plan that are somewhat shaky under scrutiny (radiation shielding on the surface of Mars, production of habitation environment), the overall mission architecture is very elegant and not only manages to put a sustained human presence on the surface of Mars for significantly less than some of the other standard mission plans, but it is a self propagating design. If everything goes well, there will always be an extra return vehicle, waiting to go which almost encourages continued exploration.
 
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