Space and Science BS Thread

100 people sharing a Starship for months is just the beginning since they’ll be spending the rest of their lives cooped up in a small place with each other.

 

In other news:
https://x.com/ulalaunch/status/1742944230111170729?s=46

 

Not my imagination. He said it.
“100: The minimum number of passengers carried aboard each ITS ship, meaning it could take 10,000 flights to get 1 million people to Mars. But the ships may end up transporting about 200 people apiece, Musk said.”
From this article:
https://www.space.com/34234-spacex-mars-colony-plan-by-the-numbers.html
To be fair that same article earlier gives an estimate of 20,000-40,000 as the minimum for successful colonization and 1000 ships of 10 could reach that in ~30 years.
I’m just going on his statements regarding passenger numbers which isn’t my imagination.

 

life on Mars will be crowded, that’s a given but Starship vs Hab? It’s the difference between sharing a 2oz sardine can and a 1 gallon coffee tin. Plus, in space you can’t even suit up and go for a walk. As big as Starship is it doesn’t have nearly enough space for life support for that many people.

 

What I’m trying to get across is that the ships that gets people to orbit all strapped in to acceleration couches for an hour or so has a different mission profile than one that takes them across interplanetary space. A ship assembled in microgravity can be built for completely different stress levels without concern for aerodynamics and with engines made for long slow burns in space rather than maximum thrust over minimal distance. They could still use Starships at either end to Ferry passengers up from Earth and down to Mars in much tighter quarters than they need to have for the journey.

 

I agree this will probably be the case in about 25-50 years, but initially, it will be much smaller crews.

 

Yes. In a sense I’m trolling being a bit bored waiting for things to move along I wanted to hear other views on this but it isn’t a spur of the moment thing based solely on my own opinions. I could be very wrong if relatively small crews on many ships is indeed how it continues after the initial explorations and the advantages of lower thrust/higher ISP engines don’t pan out relative to the ever increasing efficiency of chemical engines. I just think both the ships and the engines used can be optimized for where and how they are used. Starship is an atmospheric launch and landing vehicle. Something like Hermes could never do either but it would never have to. Stripping out life support Starships could still be used to transport massive amounts of cargo continuing a role they already had. But the farther we have to go high thrust and max Q considerations become irrelevant, high ISP will be the deciding factor. We won’t need pointy anymore. Existing space stations are closer to the goal. As we transition to include economies in space the vessels used there will change, starting with modules built on Earth and assembled in space, then tested as a whole using lunar transits. It might be a better final use of the ISS or Hubble as test beds for ion engine modules.

 

In other news, anyone remember Andromeda Strain?
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/scienc...-has-found-something-weird-moon-s-ncna1048416

 

The first few trips to Mars will likely be 20-50 per ship, in 3-5 ships. With 20+ ships going in the convoy. 100 per ship maybe, but that's not for a long time. We don't have the infrastructure to handle 100 people there, we barely have the infrastructure to handle a handful of people in our own orbit.

As for lines to the head. These are trained astronauts. They'll figure it out. As for cramped accomodations. This isn't a luxury cruise, it's the trip before the hard work they have to do.

 

I don’t think the ISS is a luxury cruise as it is and we’re talking about 50-100, possibly 200 people in the same volume as has currently and only briefly during overlapping missions maxed out at 14. Figuring it out isn’t the job, surviving whatever situations they find themselves in is. Hopefully we avoid creating too many of those before they even leave.

 

Boeing 747 is only slightly smaller than starship, so let's use that. In it's tightest capacity it will hold 660 passengers. 416 in it's normal 3 class configuration. That's with all the cargo, food galleries, bathrooms, etc. Only starship has 4-6 times the space per passenger. In other words 75-85% of the volume of starship can be used for exercise, rec rooms, etc.

Though planes aren't the best comparison. I'd say submarines are. And those often have crews of 100 at sea in a small tin can for months at a time.

It's really not absurd to think those numbers aren't close to right. 100 trained and psychologically evaluated people could easily do a trip to Mars in a starship. Will there eventually be bigger, better options? Sure, but historically that's never been the case. We crammed people into tiny wooden sailing ships, and tiny covered wagons long before cruise ships, air lines, trains, cars, etc. it's always been the minimum possible before big investments were made to bring more stuff and more people. And that's where we're at now.

 

I think we’ll just have to wait and see how much room there actually is after packing it with everything that’s required for the transit.

 

You must not have seen the miniscule cabin on our last cruise...

 

Anyone else watching the launch?

 

I didn’t see it but
https://x.com/nasa/status/1744285355392598021?s=46

 

I lasted through the launch and fell asleep just after the Centaur stage cut it’s engines. Congratulations ULA, next up is Dream Chaser.

 

I watched it this morning. Cool to finally see it go after so many delays but I wish everyone else would step up to the SpaceX live launch quality. Having onboard footage and live telemetry is cool and we’re all spoiled by SpaceX doing it.

 

Too bad Peregrine is having propulsion issues...

 

https://x.com/astrobotic/status/1744367789953933641?s=46
https://x.com/astrobotic/status/1744389634568724791?s=46

 

I heard it suffered a propellant loss which means it can’t soft land and may not even reach the moon.