dayton3
Chief petty officer
Posts: 118 
Likes: 26
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Post by dayton3 on Jan 16, 2020 13:52:42 GMT
Fortunately the United States has a "heck load of money". But what is the gain to explore planets that are far away compared to planets like Mars that are closer by. comparative data. collection of information about what is common about both types of worlds and also what is different. |
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archibald
Ensign
The PRC was standing on the edge of an abyss. And Mao said "let's make a Great Leap Forward"
Posts: 359
Likes: 364
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Post by archibald on Aug 5, 2020 12:49:02 GMT
Elon Musk is presently creating some kind of "brute force" approach: an atempt at a spaceborne Boeing 747. Going huge to drop cost of kilogram / passenger transportation, as done with airliners in the 70's: 747, DC-10, Tristar, A300. He did not tried something sophisticated... a hugely powerful first stage, recoverable and reusable. As for the second stage, it does everything else. Earth escape, manned spacecraft, Mars lander... Add to that, low Earth orbit refueling. What Musk is trying to do, is to create a fully reusable TSTO to Mars. Main objective is Mars, but the system (as secondary missions) can also plenty of different things - lunar flights (and asteroids, too) - suborbital Earth passenger transportation - massive satellite launching (for spaceborne broadband internet). With Falcon 9 he essentially created a system that succeded where the Shuttle failed, on technical grounds.
With BFR/Starship, he attacks the other "failure" of NASA: conquest of the solar system, as imagined by von Braun in 1952, 1969 but never happened.
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