How to get to mars

How to get to Mars Here is more on the Mars business. Or rather on space things. It is not ‘flying saucers’ any of it. This is again near-reality and it is not science really. We are into the sphere of engineering. Hard hats to the rescue.

We looked at the Victory of Low-cost. The turning point in the space race when we see private companies competing and having to look at the normal business drivers: margin, profitability, cash-flow, balance sheets, etc. etc.

somewhere, and spooling it out to a space station beyond Geostationary Orbit (GEO) then we have an easy way of launching things into space. GEO is some 38,000 km into space.

Did you spot it? It is way beyond low-earth orbit as the ISS. We are not talking some 100-150 km into space here.

But will such a cable not just get pulled ‘down’ due to gravity? Yes, and that is why it will have a counter-weight and that is why it has to be beyond GEO.

“Gravity just spoils the fun”

We also looked at the Mars colony, which in all likelihood will be reality within the next 20 years.

Probably also funded, developed, manned and managed by ‘business’.

The problem with it all is to get it up into orbit.

Somehow, all things will have to conquer gravity.

Earth gravity is the big problem and the first 30 km up in the air are the worst of them all. That is where a lot of energy must be spent.

Let us now look at just two concepts which are both feasible and realistic in the nearest time frame. The space elevator and the Maglev StarTram.

The space elevator is a bit more science. StarTram is engineering. OK, let us go onboard the space elevator.

Space elevator

This sounds like science fiction and admittedly, it involves some new concepts. But alas, we are talking near-hard-hats now.

The theory goes somewhat like: If we now can have a long piece of wire, a cable, anchored to Earth

If something is sitting in GEO it means it looks as though it is stationary over a point on Earth. It obviously rotates with Earth but because of its position in space it looks stationary. That takes care of the anchoring. It is not going to move around. So far so good.

Because it is rotating with Earth, it has a centrifugal force. It wants to escape Earth. Like a slingshot.

You get it now?

The cable wants to collapse down because of gravity and the cable at the same time wants to escape Earth. If the two forces are equal, the cable will be taut at all times. Smart really. What can the counter-weight be? a small meteor will do just fine, really. And before we start laughing, there are plenty of those coming close enough to be ‘captured’. We are not talking millions of tons here anyway. Sounds a bit wack? It is not.

So we have the anchor on Earth and the end in

space. A space port as the other anchor. But what material will the cable be made out of? Steel?

Titanium? Or what?

Can we see where it is going? Space is not even a frontier anymore. It is just a stepping stone to the next ‘frontier’.

Nano-tubes. Ever heard of this? Carbon-nanotubes are spectacular because their atom weight is low and the need is for the electrons to interact.

That is efficient if those are the ‘inner-most’ one’s hence carbon is great. And carbon has one more thing going for it: it can conduct electricity.

Oh yes, when we get to Mars, we can build a Mars space elevator with the technology we have right now! Mars’ gravity is only 38% of Earth so the GEO is even closer to Mars. In essence: That is ‘old takkie’.

So if we now can grow a cable of nano-sheet (2-dimensional nano-tubes. Imagine a sheet one atom in thickness? Yes, that is it).

The last thing to look at is how to deploy it. By the way, if the cable is made of nano-sheets, it might not weigh more than one ton in total. Therefore the solution is just neat: fly a satellite out to half of the total length. Have a spool of the cable in the cargo bay. Roll it out towards both ends at the same time. One piece will be caught by gravity and sink to Earth, the other will be caught by centrifugal force and go towards the end-point in space: the new space station. Physics, my dear Watson, as Mr Holmes would have said if he were into space things.

But now what? We have the start and the end stations and the cable, but where is the elevator cart itself?

SpaceTram

This is easier than anything. Imagine a traditional steel ring with storage facilities. It is not even mounted on the cable. The ring is magnetic and the nano-tubes can conduct electricity so we shoot electricity into it and it will rise to the end station. That is like physics in the class room. Just on a bigger scale.

Maglev is the key word. Magnetic levitation. Imagine if we can build a railway that is powered by electricity only. Like the waggon has a magnet in the bottom and the sides of the ‘rail’ is a magnet as well. Then when we change the current, the train will move along the track. That is class-room physics. But is it possible?

The time frame for a workable concept is about 20 years. The problem is of course the cable but if the projections in nano-technology should match reality, it is a safe bet. After all, nano-tubes are there. It is engineering now.

This is my favourite. Absolutely. This is just so ‘down to Earth’ s’cuse the pun.

One of the first commercial one’s was a little piece of railway in Berlin. It started in 1989 and was running for some years until the unification of Berlin where it became redundant. Nothing spectacular. Just a solution to a little problem.

The ‘real’ one is the Shanghai one. There was a need to connect the Shanghai airport to the in-

How long time will it take to get to the space station then? About 5-6 days. Bring a book, but that is not a foreign concept in terms of transit times.

How much weight can it take in the first phases?

About some 20 tons is a good bet. The plan is to lift some 150,000 tons per year. That is a LOT! The cost is the factor in this. What is the cost per kg? With the shuttle it is about $25,000 per kg.

With this here it is projected to be about $200 per kg initially. It will go down of course.

ner-city metro system. It had to be high-speed and low-cost. So someone said “Maglev”.

The thing opened in 2004 and is running at some 450 km/h. The length of the railway is some 150 km. It is the fastest commercial train in operation world-wide, btw. It cost $1,2 billion to construct.

needs to be accelerated up to a speed where it will fly out into space. Escape Earth gravity. Many ways to calculate it, but in essence it is some 40,000 km/h at ground level, but only 25,000 km/h 9,000 meter up in the air (ever wondered why Branson is

Oh yes, and it is silent. There is no noise. There are no traditional engines, right?

using a ‘lifter’ to take his spaceship up to 9 km in the air? Don’t wonder anymore. You just read the reason).

The conclusion is that Maglev is working. To speed it up is a matter of energy being put into it. Magnets and electricity. Hard hats StarTram is using this concept. After all, the speed depends on how fast we can switch the current in a set of magnets. We can already now do it pretty fast. The collider, where particles are accelerated to near-speed of light is an example. Hard hats again.

The weight to be carried along depends on the amount of energy we put into the system. A separate power-plant takes care of that. Another example here is a mining elevator in the Free State.

When you start to pull the hoist from 2 km down, it was said that the light in Bloemfontein would flicker. Not sure if it was the truth, but it sounds plausible. Remember, a hoist can be 150 people in one go = 12-15 tons – vertically.

Escape velocity is the key word here. The ‘tram’

Here is an even more ‘hard hat’ solution. Build the ramp – the railway – up a mountain side. It will then have the elevation and the aiming out into space. This is just a great solution.

There is a slight problem. The start of such a trip will be a bit ‘rough’. About 20 G. That means only cargo can handle this. Not humans, not in the first phase at least.

The time frame is about 2030 for a passenger-capable StarTram. Probably closer to 2025 for a cargo-only solution. The cost will be some $40 per kg and the vehicle will be able to take some 30-40 tons per launch. Insofar as it is really all electricity and low-maintenance, the launch rate can be as much as 10 launches per day. That is some 110,000 tons per year if we work over Christmas.

The length of the railway can be as ‘little’ as 22 km build up a mountain side. If we want to have

a slower acceleration (less G force) for human usage, the length can be as much as 300 km. That is at the edge of hard hat, but not impossible. The cost will be a bit much though.

Off we go to Mars. What do we do first? Build a space elevator to the surface. That we can even do today.

Combining solutions?

Going from Earth space station to Mars space station is really easy. Building a transport vehicle in space is no big deal.

The bigger problem is always that humans are ‘fragile’. We need oxygen to go around our business in space, we need gravity and we need to be hurled into space with not more than some 3-4 G. A spare part is so easy to transport.

So we have the easy access to space from Earth.

We have inter-planetary transport and we have access to Mars surface.

300,000 tons per year is possible... and that is a big space station or space ship

Time to build the houses on Mars. And get the terraforming going.

Here is an idea:

Time to get a new passport? A Martian one?

We use StarTram to launch materials. All the heavy stuff to build space stations and especially to build the end point for the space elevator.

“”””””””””””””””””””””

We get the humans up there with the shuttle to begin with until we have the space elevator going.

The acceleration of the space elevator is nothing.

Anybody can handle that. So the humans will take 5-6 days to get up there. Big deal. Bring a book.

If both solutions are used, we can transport some 300,000 tons per year. That is a VERY big station.

Or a VERY big space ship.

Impossible? Really? Far-fetched? Really? … or is this what it will look like in 2035? Twenty years from now? When you are not even 40 years old yet?

Contributions: "Startram" by NASA - http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/ shuttle/nexgen/Misc_No_Link_to_Mains/Maglev/ Renderings/startram%20render2.jpg. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons -