Best products from r/spacex

> Is there something in the documented historical record that would refute the points I made?

But that's the point, it was so long and involved it read like a blur, anything of value you said was lost in a cloud of words. As I recommend to my creative writing class: if you have something important to say the less words you use the more powerful they become - rare things are inherently more valuable. Less is more and more is less.

With regards downvotes I couldn't agree with you more, completely unwarranted, in fact I managed to upvote you to 2 before the downvoters descended. I've sworn never to downvote, it does nothing to encourage participation, just bad for the soul.

To your points, which were relatively accessible by the way: -

> No feasible export of raw materials nor valuable minerals to create an economic incentive to invest in a colony

Initially the prime export of Mars will be information about the planet, gathered by scientists, investigators and explorers. Space agencies will pay through the nose to place such personnel on Mars, then this 'wealth on Mars' will cause service businesses to spring up, who develop their own organizational approaches and technologies. These approaches and designs are exported to Earth along with many other IP products eventually leading to a self sustaining economy. Plenty of incentive to commerce with Mars considering their unique technological perspective.

> No rush to claim nationally sovereign territory

Correct but Mars colony will rush to become self sustaining as soon as possible and make their own decisions from day 1. While this may fall short of independence, they will effectively have sovereignty due to the 50-250 mile separation from Earth, which among other things causes communication delay and dropout.

> No inhabitants to barter or cooperate with, nor enslave and exploit

Agree, however, Elon wants to operate General Intelligence robots on Mars, so no shortage of labour. If GI is outlawed on Earth, for security or political reasons, this would give Mars a unique advantage.

> A completely unlivable environment by default

People who have it easy tend to take it easy. People who are hard pressed tend to work harder by default. Expect to see lots of technologies come out of Mars related to how they adapt to this new environment.

> Must bring most or all supplies needed, completely dependent on Earth for survival

Agree, first people sent to Mars will use a closed loop ecosystem. They need to practice self sustainment from the outset until they only rely on in situ resources.

> Vastly higher risk tolerance

The risk culture on Mars will be markedly different to Earth. Generally we have become too risk intolerant which is the enemy of any kind of advancement.

> The massive influx and exploitation of natural, mineral and human (forced labor) resources

Whole planet-full of resources on Mars and plenty of robots to work it, to service local economy. In the future goods will be manufactured where they are needed via advanced additive manufacture. Material resources will be fully recycled, most valuable resource will be designs for the goods you wish to produce wherever needed.

> Vast tracks of land available for settlement, cultivation and development

Same on Mars, although their main development will be technical. Para-terraforming is a good example with large above/below ground settlements established with good living conditions and mini-magnetospheres to protect from solar/cosmic radiation. Then progress to full planetary terraforming techniques.

> Elimination of all native competition (i.e. genocide) for these resources

No need to compete for anything when SpaceX land on Mars, effectively they will own the planet, if no other company can reach it!

> Elon may have his faults, but I think we can all agree that he is a far more intelligent, rational, stable and visionary individual than Columbus.

But he certainly exhibits the same fixed purpose with Mars as Columbus did with the Far East. In addition the ships he intends to use will be discarded as inadequate, soon after first landings, same as Columbus. Also he tends to oversimplify the problems, same as... Their main similarity though is not giving up despite odds and naysayers and technical difficulties. only have to look at what he's gone through with Tesla - which is a hobby compared to SpaceX.

Hope that helps explain my perspective, though still recommend my fifth edition book when it comes out soon.

Two years ago, I applied for and was selected to attend the SpaceX CRS-3 NASA Social event, due to my activity on social networks. At the time, I didn't use Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, so my selection was largely due to the fact that my social network of choice was Reddit.

Over the course of three launch delays, I met a number of amazing people, including fellow redditor /u/mseeley1 (the guy capturing all those great shots of the Falcon 9 returning to Port Canaveral) as well as Bill Jelen, the brains behind the Mr. Excel empire. At separate times, we each found ourselves recruited by SpaceFlight Insider to act as photographers, videographers and writers following our time at the SpaceX CRS-3 launch, which enabled us to continue coming out to cover launches & other special events at Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center. But we were finding that our pictures would get just a burst of attention right around a launch, then the news cycle would take over and people would lose interest. So we put our heads together on how we could share more of the photos we were capturing.

It turns out that Mr. Excel is a book publisher, and loved the idea of doing a full-color launch photo book, and from that, We Report Space was born. Our involvement with the media pool at KSC and CCAFS meant that we were on hand to witness & photograph the launch failure of CRS-7, as well as the triumphant return to flight (and return to launch site landing) of SpaceX during Orbcomm OG2-M2. We've shared a number of those pictures here, through /r/spacex, and now they've all been collected into a full color book documenting Florida rocket launches from April 2014-December 2015.

What really makes this book awesome, though, is that it's not just pictures of rockets lifting off. We've also collected essays from other NASA Social participants on their experiences, both in attending the event, as well as the impact it has had on their lives afterwards. If you've followed my account here for any length of time, you know I'm a pretty serious cheerleader for the NASA Social program, because it really is the best answer to "how can I get as close as possible to a rocket launch?"

The book is available through our website, and we're offering some specials right now that bundle the book with 8x10 prints of rocket launches (including three very nice SpaceX Falcon 9 photos) and free shipping in the US. If you buy direct from our website, we'll fulfill your order right away. If you're outside the US, you can order the book through Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, and it'll ship June 1st.

Of course, We Report Space will continue to cover launches out of Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center, and we'll continue to share those pictures here as we take them. The support of the /r/spacex community & moderation team has been invaluable in helping us to get the word out that human spaceflight didn't end with the Space Shuttle program.

You can also follow us on Instagram and Facebook to stay up to date with all the launches & other spaceflight-related events we're covering.

Came here to say the most in depth and likely realistic protrayal of how a planet would be settled and likely how it's politics would evolve has been done by the "Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars" trilogy by kim stanley robinson.

It goes from early settlement military vs scientific type government to democratic evolutions to control issues between earth and mars (self determination) to building huge space infrastruture to suppor tthe planet like a space elevator etc to fights with terrorists about the degree of environmental distruction vs preserservation that should be allowed.

read those books.

One of the best book series I have ever read - sci fi or not. Great for political study as well as planetary engineeering and space settlement and more.

It's like having the experience of having actually done it once and then considering doing it better the second time around.
If you have any interest at all in this subject matter you simple have to read those books (and you'll love them).

It gets you your Ph.D. in "Mars settlement".

Then you'll be ready to talk without repeating what has already been extensively thought about ( not that there is anything wrong with that)


Red Mars ( book 1 of 3 link)

"In his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research and cutting-edge science in the first of three novels that will chronicle the colonization of Mars.

For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission whose ultimate goal is the terraforming of Mars. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness; for others it offers and opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. And for the genetic "alchemists, " Mars presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life...and death.

The colonists place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light to the planets surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels, kilometers in depth, will be drilled into the Martian mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves, and friendships will form and fall to pieces--for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.

Brilliantly imagined, breathtaking in scope and ingenuity, Red Mars is an epic scientific saga, chronicling the next step in human evolution and creating a world in its entirety. Red Mars shows us a future, with both glory and tarnish, that awes with complexity and inspires with vision."


Green Mars (book 2 link)

"In the Nebula Award winning Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson began his critically acclaimed epic saga of the colonization of Mars, Now the Hugo Award winning Green Mars continues the thrilling and timeless tale of humanity's struggle to survive at its farthest frontier.

Nearly a generation has passed since the first pioneers landed, but the transformation of Mars to an Earthlike planet has just begun The plan is opposed by those determined to preserve the planets hostile, barren beauty. Led by rebels like Peter Clayborne, these young people are the first generation of children born on Mars. They will be joined by original settlers Maya Toitovna, Simon Frasier, and Sax Russell. Against this cosmic backdrop, passions, rivalries, and friendships explode in a story as spectacular as the planet itself."

Blue Mars (book 3 link)


"The red planet is red no longer, as Mars has become a perfectly inhabitable world. But while Mars flourishes, Earth is threatened by overpopulation and ecological disaster. Soon people look to Mars as a refuge, initiating a possible interplanetary conflict, as well as political strife between the Reds, who wish to preserve the planet in its desert state, and the Green "terraformers". The ultimate fate of Earth, as well as the possibility of new explorations into the solar system, stand in the balance."

Elon Musk's [biography] (http://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/0062301233) if you don't own the book look [here] (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37839.0):

"I mean, if you do a densified liquid methalox rocket with on-orbit refueling, so like you load the spacecraft into orbit and then you send a whole bunch of refueling missions to fill up the tanks and you have the Mars colonial fleet - essentially - that gets built up during the time between Earth-Mars synchronizations, which occur every 26 months, then the fleet all departs at the optimal transfer point."

“And then one of the key questions is can you get to the surface of Mars and back to Earth on a single stage. The answer is yes, if you reduce the return payload to approximately one-quarter of the outbound payload, which I thought made sense because you are going to want to transport a lot more to Mars than you’d want to transfer from Mars to Earth. For the spacecraft, the heat shield, the life support system, and the legs will have to be very, very light."

I think MCT is going to be really really big and feature a lot of Raptor engines so that it can cut the travel times to Mars. It is probably going to have the highest propellant to mass ratio ever. Every drop of performance is required, but SpaceX isn't a fan of having multiple fuels, Merhane/Lox is going to be the only fuel type to reduce complexity and cost (Methane is the cheapest hydrocarbon.)

Earlier posts by me:

"The performance gain for a fuel tank using densified propellants vs a non densified one isn't so great but it certainly gives a small boost to the rocket. You aren't doing a densified rocket because you want more thrust from the engine, you want slightly more fuel to fit in the tanks so that it has increased performance. As I (amateur rocket scientist) understand it, the reason why Merlin 1D+ has more thust is because the LOX and RP-1 molecules have a higher density so that the mass flow increases. By consuming slightly more mass with the same volume as well as driving the turbopump harder the engine has more thust with no physical changes. By using Methane the same applies, only that here the slightly higher performance of using densified propellants is essential to be able to transfer really heavy cargo to Mars in a fully reusable configuration. Here every single drop of performance is needed and example the heatshield, and landing legs need to be very light."

"Yes, currently boil off is a great deal but long term storage of cryogenic liquids are possible as long as the fuel tanks have good insulation properties which would also increase mass. Supercooled Liquid Oxygen would boil of at a higher rate than a supercooled liquid Methane tank. A Methane rocket can have a common bulkhead and requires no pressuration system which would decrease the mass of the vehicle. This 'lost' mass can be used elsewhere, example to insulate the tanks or make a cooling cycle."

Summary:

If the MCT has an efficient fuel cooling cycle the vehicle doesn't need to be fueled with densified propellants because it will cool them down by itself when the time comes to depart or the final refueling ship arrives. When coasting between Mars and Earth the tanks will be mostly empty and the contents will float inside the tank only needing a little insulation in the tanks and a cooling system that maintains the temperature. When it arrives at Mars the fuel is cooled down and the MCT lands propulsively.

It's very important that the rocket engines uses densified propellants to not encounter combustion problems! Otherwise it would be like trying to run a petrol car with diesel. The Raptors are made to combust densified methane and lox, not wormer methalox

Some resources may be easier to harvest on Mars then Earth (either due to political or ecological reasons or are just physically easier to access) and martian resources should be easier to use for exploration beyond the inner planets. But short of platinum group metals its hard to imagine trade with Earth on minerals would be very strong unless there is a dramatic innovation​ in cost of transit to and from Mars.

But Mars doesn't have to only generate income via trade of resources with Earth. Technology and information trade will have value as well. The pressures of suriving on Mars will force a technologic boom in sustainable living and non fossile fuel based energy. Such technologies will obviously have value on Earth as it would the rest of the solar system. And these ideas csn be transmitted at the speed of light. Also spaceship technology will improve as they have a drive to invent better then just workable for faster and more enjoyable transit to and from Mars.

And probably a dozen other things I can't​ think of at the moment. I read a short ebook on this once, its worth a scan if you are interested in these kinds of things.

We're delighted to announce that r/SpaceX will be hosting an AMA with Dr. Robert Zubrin! The event will take place in its own dedicated thread this Saturday, November 23rd at 12:00 Pacific Time, which is 20:00UTC. As you may already know, Dr. Z's book The Case for Mars was a significant early influence on SpaceX's Mars colonization plans. His recent IAC2019 Mars Direct 2.0 presentation generated some good discussion here.

This is happening for real! We've been in contact with representatives of the Mars Society and Dr. Zubrin himself. We are very thankful to everyone involved for giving us their time and attention.

We'll collect the top few questions from this thread and repost them in the dedicated AMA thread on Saturday. Everyone will of course be welcome to ask their own questions in the AMA thread as well. Dr. Z will probably stick around answering questions for a few days.

Just to reiterate, this is NOT the actual AMA thread! That will be created a few hours before the AMA begins on Saturday.

Hey! I apologize for the late response, but there are two books that come to mind instantly.

One is https://www.amazon.com/Space-Probes-Years-Exploration-Horizons/dp/1554079446.
This one does an awesome job of depicting mission objectives, science results, orbits, etc. It also has some of the highest quality color photographs that I've ever seen in a book of this sort. This is probably what I'd recommend to start with.

Additionally, there's the Robotic Exploration of the Solar System series, of which Part I can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Robotic-Exploration-Solar-System-1957-1982/dp/0387493263/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0387493263&pd_rd_r=9Y0W094FQTJJ4P8NWP55&pd_rd_w=LJxbc&pd_rd_wg=OTw7i&psc=1&refRID=9Y0W094FQTJJ4P8NWP55

I'd say this series is quite a bit more engineering-focused as opposed to the first one I mentioned, but this carries the benefit of talking about every single minute detail, down to what kind of radiation hardening was used on the electronics.

Hope you find them useful!

"Ignition" is a popular one that can get technical in the physics and chemical sections, but has a lot of great historical and technical information.

If you are interested in a structural and comprehensive book on flight vehicles, look into what we engineers call "The Bruhn" or more accurately "Analysis and Design of Flight Vehicle Structures". I could not do my job without this nearly every day!

A good free NASA e-biography, PDF warning, of a vehicle in flight now is "Taming Liquid Hydrogen" which is the history and a lot of technical information about the Centaur upper stage (used on Atlas V even today)

EDIT: A 5-part comprehensive video history of the Atlas ICBM up to the Atlas V can be found here. I uploaded a DVD from a friend that worked on the program for 35 years.

This AMA is now over.

The mod team would like to thank Dr. Zubrin for his insights and inspiring words. And thank the Mars Society team for making this exchange possible along with everyone who participated asking well thought out stimulating questions.

To those showing up too late to ask questions, hopefully you'll find some of the many questions Dr. Zubrin has answered (for over 3 hours!) to be relevant. If not, there is a good chance he has already answered your question in The Case for Mars or The Case for Space. So if you haven't read them yet, check them out.

If you're interested in the Mars Society, be sure to check them out on Youtube, here on reddit or their site. Special shoutout to /u/EdwardHeisler and /u/Marsonaut for acting as our Reddit - Mars Society liaisons (even if it cost them event tickets!).

Thanks for this video! Glad I could hear this with out having been there. A few production notes:

Please do some establishing shots before or after the interview, don't get all ADD on us and start zooming in on the Water Suppression tower and the Processing Building.

Make sure she's in focus... for a majority of the video, the background was in focus.

Clean your lens! Low contrast areas where there was dirt or water was extremely evident.

A small shotgun mic would go a long ways to help distracting audio from getting in the way. Something lightweight and inexpensive like this

Try J cuts for your audio if you do transitions/edits. The abrupt audio and rapid, random cuts were distracting. Either play the whole thing front to back, un interrupted, or make tasteful edits. No point in just cutting to cut. Always record the full event, beginning to end, never start and stop while recording as you can always take stuff out in post.

The text at the beginning should be simple, lower thirds, and un-distracting. Throwing it up there all willy nilly does no one a favor.

Again, I'm not ungrateful here, just trying to give you some tips to up your production value. You've already done 90% of the work by being there with gear on hand, let's help you take it up a notch so it can be more enjoyable for us to watch! Thanks for your time and effort, let me know if you have any questions about production notes in the future. I'm sure I'll run into you at OG2 :)

If this is a troll then it is excellent; I'm falling for it hook line and sinker.

However, if you are open to reading about why the reaction has been so negative (with all the downvotes) and want to read something cool instead Zubrin has a book called ["The Case for Mars"][1].

The book is not perfect (there are a few sections that could do with more recent information or more research input) but largely it's a good book that makes the wider points clear.

Or just read the much more approachable blog by Wait but why. Many people on this subreddit are here from that one post.

I promise this is usually a fun sub and people don't often get downvoted so harshly. :)

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Case-Mars-Settle-Planet/dp/145160811X

The list provided by david is good, and I'm just going to point out two that are really good for understanding rockets and spaceflight:

One is Rocket Propulsion Elements, which I hear is great if you actually want to build your own engine. The other is Fundamentals of Astrodynamics, which helps to explain orbital mechanics, controls, and some other important facets of spaceflight like how we track a satellite from the ground.

> It has always been about flags and footprints

He literally went against all of NASA by saying 30 days missions were a huge waste of resources and that the only way to properly do Mars Missions was to do opposition class mission, with a year and half stay... That's all in the book.

What's also in the book is that after 5 or 6 cycles (MAV lands at window n, crew lands at window n+1, leaves at window n+2), the covered surface by the frequently spaced landing sites (and by the methane powered rovers) would be sufficient to decide on the best landing site to start a more permanent base.

It's called The Case for Mars (which incidentally will totally be the name of my suitcase if I ever get a seat on one of these MCT), and while it smells like the 90s (built on STS assets, expandable rockets), it definitely is geared toward creating a permanent civilization on Mars. Watch this and tell me again that he is an Apollo kind of guy.

How To Build Your Own Spaceship is a fantastic introduction to rocket appliances and commercial space flight. It's pretty short, too. I highly recommend.

And obviously The Case for Mars.

If you want to learn more about Elon Musk, this book is a very good biography.

Alternatively, this (free) blog series by Tim Urban is a great in-depth look at him and his companies, part 3 is all about SpaceX

You can get the epub of the recent reprint for free here

Or buy it on Amazon

Fantastic book.

Rocket Propulsion Elements by Sutton & Biblarz is propably the best introduction to rocket engines there is
https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Propulsion-Elements-George-Sutton/dp/0470080248

This notion of "Elon Time" is actually discussed in his biography. To determine the amount of time something will take, Musk asks himself, "how long will it take me to code a line? How many lines will there be?" Then, multiply to get an estimate. These are the values we see in his tweets. His secretary then goes back to customers and gives them a more 'realistic' timeline.

But you have to look at what they have now and extrapolate. The ITS will not come by magic. If developing the FH is this difficult, why should the ITS/BFR or the V2 be any better right away? SpaceX will get there, it will take a lot of time, but we need to be patient.

Huh? Paperback and Hardcover editions exist on amazon, for $25 and $99 respectively.

It's been reprinted, although it looks like Amazon may not have it in stock currently.

https://smile.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-Propellants-University-Classics/dp/0813595835/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536254029&sr=8-1&keywords=ignition

I bet these hotwheel teslas will be flying off the shelves for the kids!

Edit: yep, nearly sold out!

In Rubert Zurbin's excellent 1996 book The Case For Mars, he describes the Mars Direct plan which places a small nuclear reactor (does not say what type) capable of 100 kilowatts and lowers it into a crater or natural depression. This powers the chemical plant to produce fuel for the trip back.

To my mind, this seems to be the easiest solution; many small reactors. Portable with a rover, you can set up perimeter/remote bases that are not limited by umbilical cord length. If one has a problem, you still have capacity in the others.

I would also expect a few small RTGs laying about as well. Though an RTG is fairly inefficient for producing electricity, they are simple, dependable, and long-lived. The radioactivity is obviously a concern, but not insurmountable. Also, Mars is cold and a lot of energy will be needed for heat, and the RTG's waste heat can tapped directly without inefficient conversions.

Ashlee Vance's autobiography is worth reading.

https://www.amazon.com/Hot-Wheels-Green-Speed-Roadster/dp/B01636AAJU

as he said, you CAN order on amazon....
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Report-Space-Reminiscence-Orbcomm-2-NASASocial/dp/1615470433/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463155485&sr=8-1&keywords=we+report+space
no shame to be had, just order it!