Issue Nª 1 May 4th, 2018
FUTURE IN THIS ISSUE: • Who is Elon Musk?What is the Mars research • Is the Red Planet actually within our reach? • Inside SpaceX’s new rocket: The “BFG” • Living on other worlds, The Survivor’s starter kit • A timeline to the planet’s colonisation • BONUS: Experience a real martian sunrise and sunset
A New Dawn
THE PATH
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pace’s billionaire founder and CEO just published the plan, which he unveiled at a conference in Mexico in September 2016, titled “Making Humanity a Multi-Planetary Species.” KILLER ATMOSPHERE The atmosphere of the planet Mars is composed mostly of carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure on the Martian surface at about 0.6% of Earth’s mean sea level pressure of 101.3 kilopascals. It ranges from a low of 30 pascals on Olympus Mons’s peak to over 1,155 pascals in the depths of Hellas Planitia. This pressure is well below the Armstrong limit for the unprotected human body. THE ARMSTRONG LEVEL The Armstrong Limit is an altitude beyond which nobody can survive. It is the altitude that produces an atmospheric pressure so low (6.3 kPa) that water boils at the normal temperature of the human body. UNSUITABLE FOR LIFE Mars is a planet that shows climate change on a large scale. Although its atmosphere used to be thick enough for water to run on the surface, today that water is either scarce or non-existent. The atmosphere today is also too thin to easily support life as we know it, although life may have existed in the ancient past.
The billionaire entrepreneur has long stressed that he founded SpaceX in 2002 primarily to help make humanity a multiplanet species — a giant leap that would render us much less vulnerable to extinction. Human civilization faces many grave threats over the long haul, from asteroid strikes and climate change to artificial intelligence run amok, Musk has said over the years. He emphasized that he’s not predicting an imminent global conflict, only that one is likely to occur at some point in the future, given humanity’s track record. If and when that next big war occurs, Musk added, it could usher in a planet-wide “dark ages.”
TO MARS
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STEEP LEARNING CURVE The Falcon 9 and Cargo Dragon have experienced such a tiny number of failures over their short but active existences.
usk isn’t all talk on this topic; SpaceX is developing a huge, reusable rocket-spaceship combo called the BFR, with the chief aim of making Mars colonization economically feasible. Musk unveiled the latest plans for this transportation system at a conference in Australia last September, and he gave a brief progress update at SXSW.
Out of a total of 46 Falcon 9 laun-
ches, approximately 94% have been
complete successes. For perspective SpaceX’s first orbital rocket, Falcon 1, experienced total failures during
its first three launch attempts, for a success rate of 40%.
The BFR BFR is a design by SpaceX for a privately funded next-generation reusable launch vehicle and spacecraft announced by Elon Musk in September 2017. Musk has said the first spacecraft prototype will begin testing in early 2019. A ‘BIG FREAKING ROCKET’ The Big Freaking Rocket is freaking big. At 400 feet tall, it’s the height of a 40-story skyscraper. At 40 feet in diameter, a school bus could fit entirely underneath its footprint. It’s more than three times the mass and generates over three times the thrust of the gargantuan Saturn V—the rocket used in the Apollo mission—which currently stands as by far the biggest rocket humanity has made.
FAST TRAVELS
With BFR for Earth to Earth transport, we are traveling at 27,000 kilometers an hour, or roughly 18,000 miles an hour. During the final descent is where propulsive landing becomes very important. Most of what people consider to be long-distance trips would be completed in less than half an hour. The great thing about going to space is there is no friction, so once you are out of the atmosphere, it will be smooth as silk.
Reality or Fantasy?
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ending humans to Mars by the 2030s is affordable, a group of experts finds, but some key changes are needed if it is going to happen. A workshop group of more than 60 individuals representing more than 30 government, industry, academic and other organizations has found that a NASA-led manned mission to Mars is feasible if the space agency’s budget is restored to pre-sequestration levels. Putting the first humans on the Red Planet would also require international cooperation and private industry support. There is a growing consensus among the space community that a manned mission to Mars should be a priority worth working toward in the coming years, according to Chris Carberry the executive director of Explore Mars Inc., the organization that hosted the workshop with the American Astronautical Society. “To be able to make it feasible and affordable, you need a sustainable budget,” Carberry told SPACE.com. “You need a budget that is consistent, that you can predict from year to year and that doesn’t get canceled in the next administration.”Mars should be the priority for human spaceflight over the next two to three decades. As a model of international collaboration and a huge undertaking in space, the International Space Station (ISS) could provide vital lessons about getting humans to Mars. The space station mission has been newly extended through 2024.
BUDGET ISSUES While Carberry said that it is possible to launch a manned mission to Mars by the 2030s under pre-sequestration budget levels, a NASA-led human mission to Mars will probably never launch under current budgetary constraints, Carberry said “We’re not far off from what we need,” Carberry said. “We just need to get back into a reasonable budget, which we’re not in right now.”President Barack Obama requested about $17.7 billion for NASA during his 2013 budget proposal, $59 million less than what the space agency received in 2012. “[NASA] funds are divided between various missions, directorates and centers,” Carberry said via email. “Unless there was a MAJOR restructuring, it would be hard to accomplish a NASA-led Mars mission [under the current budget]. That said, major disruptive technology gains could always occur that could make it viable — we just can’t count on that happening.” SLS and Orion are both in development now, with Orion’s first unmanned test flight slated for later this year. In December 2013, attendees affiliated with NASA, Boeing, Orbital Sciences Corp. and many others at the Affording Mars Workshop arrived at six agreements that could frame the way that space agencies work toward a manned mission to Mars. Carberry said that the experts are still not sure whether a long or short mission to the Red Planet would be best when launching the first manned mission to Mars.
GETTING TO MARS “The only reason the ISS has survived the years is because it’s an international mission,” Carberry said. “It is held together by international treaties and strong agreements … If we were to follow that model and maybe even move on with the partnership to the next step, that perhaps could be the greatest legacy of ISS because that’s a proven model of sustainability, because you have more holding it together than just that annual cycle.” The $100 billion orbiting outpost could also be used to mimic parts of a mission to the Red Planet. Engineers could use the orbiting laboratory to demonstrate telerobotics and new spacesuits, and to work out possible problems that could arise on a trip to Mars. BRIDGE MISSION The workshop group also explored the idea of a mission that would bridge the space station and a manned mission to Mars. Agencies should consider such a bridge mission when moving forward toward a launch date in the 2030s, the workshop found. The bridge mission could be anything from NASA’s ambitious plan to capture an asteroid and bring it into lunar orbit where astronauts could explore it, to a small and temporary station where astronauts can learn a little more about fending for themselves while in space. Private companies are planning their own trips to the Red Planet. Mars One is planning on sending a group of people to colonize the planet on a one-way mission in 2022 and send a lander to Mars in 2018.
THE ‘BFR’
BFR CARGO/CABIN AREA
The cargo area has a pressurized volume of 825 cubic meters—greater than the pressurized area of an A380. BFR is capable of carrying a tremendous amount of payload. In a Mars transit configuration, since you would be taking three months in a really good scenario but maybe as much as six months, you probably want a cabin, not just a seat. The Mars transit configuration consists of 40 cabins. You could conceivably have five or six people per cabin if you really wanted to crowd people in, but I think mostly we would expect to see two to three people per cabin, or about a hundred people per flight to Mars. And then there is a central storage area and galley and a solar storm shelter, entertainment area, and I think probably a good situation for at least BFR version one.
BFR MAIN BODY
In the center body of the vehicle, this is where the propellant is located—sub-cooled methane and oxygen. As you chill the methane and oxygen below its liquid point you get a fairly meaningful density increase. You get on the order of 10 to 12 percent density increase, which makes quite a big difference for the propellant
load. We expect to carry 240 tons of methane (CH4) and 860 tons of oxygen. In the fuel tank are header tanks; when you come in for landing, your orientation may change quite significantly, but you cannot have the propellant just sloshing around all over in the main tanks, you have to have the header tanks that can feed the main engines with precision.
BFR ENGINES
The ship engine section consists of four vacuum Raptor engines and two sea-level engines. All six engines are capable of gimbaling. The engines with the high expansion ratio have a relatively smaller gimbal range and slower gimbal rate. The two center engines have a very high gimbal range and can gimbal very quickly. You can land the ship with either one of the two center engines. When you come in for a landing, it will light both engines but if one of the center engines fails at any point, it will be able to land successfully with the other engine. Within each engine there is a great deal of redundancy as we want the landing risk to be as close to zero as possible. The sea-level engines are about 330 ISP at sea level. The upper stage engine is 375 ISP.
BFR REFILLINg
For refilling, the two ships would actually mate at the rear section. They would use the same mating interface that they used to connect to the booster on liftoff. We would reuse that mating interface and reuse the propellant fill lines that are used when the ship is on the booster. To transfer propellant, it becomes very simple—use control thrusters to accelerate in the direction that you want to empty. If you accelerate in this direction, propellant goes that way, and you transfer the propellant very easily from the tanker to the ship.
BFR Reusability
It is really crazy that we build these sophisticated rockets and then crash them every time we fly. This is mad. I cannot emphasize how profound this is and how important reusability is. Often I will be told, “but you could get more payload if you made it expendable.” I say “yes, you could also get more payload from an aircraft if you got rid of the landing gear and the flaps and just parachute out when you got to your destination. But that would be crazy and you would sell zero aircraft.” So reusability is absolutely fundamental.