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XKCD Rocks - Space is Hard
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War Kitten
Panda McLegion
#1 - 2013-03-26 17:17:38 UTC
I love the "What-if?" series, and today's article strikes me as appropriate to EVE. Just change the logo on the ship image at the bottom from NASA to CCP.

http://what-if.xkcd.com/

:)

I don't judge people by their race, religion, color, size, age, gender, or ethnicity. I judge them by their grammar, spelling, syntax, punctuation, clarity of expression, and logical consistency.
Mizhir
Devara Biotech
#2 - 2013-03-26 17:30:14 UTC
Nice one :)

"It’s like if you had a car that gets amazing mileage but has a one-horsepower engine. (Actually, are you sure that’s not just a horse?)"
I LOL'ed

❤️️💛💚💙💜
silens vesica
Corsair Cartel
#3 - 2013-03-26 17:30:24 UTC
XKCD is full of brilliant tid-bits like that. Cool

Tell someone you love them today, because life is short. But scream it at them in Esperanto, because life is also terrifying and confusing.

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Kirjava
Lothian Enterprises
#4 - 2013-03-26 17:44:08 UTC
And this is the logic for a moon base. Get the volatiles from the moon and boost it to low Earth Orbit (the ISS with a large fuel tank attached). At a certain point you get less mass used from lifting from the Moon after dropping the infrastructure than you do from lifting form the Earth itself.

Why the hell was that base canceled?

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silens vesica
Corsair Cartel
#5 - 2013-03-26 19:05:43 UTC  |  Edited by: silens vesica
Kirjava wrote:
And this is the logic for a moon base. Get the volatiles from the moon and boost it to low Earth Orbit (the ISS with a large fuel tank attached). At a certain point you get less mass used from lifting from the Moon after dropping the infrastructure than you do from lifting form the Earth itself.

Why the hell was that base canceled?
Because it's boody expenisve to build in the first place - and resupply is a *****, too. At least until such time as you can move sufficient mass to allow it to start running self-sufficiantly.

The cost would beggar the cost of catching Voyager. Of course, once set up, future launches become much less expensive, but the sunk costs are staggering.


What you might try is a Bussard ramjet, or ramjet assisted, craft. They've got some serious problems with going straight into a solar wind, and even problems going straight away, but if you set up an eliptical orbit with an intersection some hundreds of years in the future, you could possible manage an intercept, and the eliptical orbit would set you up for a powered return in relatvely short time. Mind you, you stand a real good chance of frying Voyager in the electrostatic scoop field.

Tell someone you love them today, because life is short. But scream it at them in Esperanto, because life is also terrifying and confusing.

Didn't vote? Then you voted for NulBloc
Indahmawar Fazmarai
#6 - 2013-03-26 20:35:38 UTC
Space. Elevator.

And f*** the gravity well.

Bear
Kirjava
Lothian Enterprises
#7 - 2013-03-26 21:42:49 UTC
silens vesica wrote:
Kirjava wrote:
And this is the logic for a moon base. Get the volatiles from the moon and boost it to low Earth Orbit (the ISS with a large fuel tank attached). At a certain point you get less mass used from lifting from the Moon after dropping the infrastructure than you do from lifting form the Earth itself.

Why the hell was that base canceled?
Because it's boody expenisve to build in the first place - and resupply is a *****, too. At least until such time as you can move sufficient mass to allow it to start running self-sufficiantly.

The cost would beggar the cost of catching Voyager. Of course, once set up, future launches become much less expensive, but the sunk costs are staggering.


Aye but we already sunk the money into 2 of the three main parts of LEO infrastructure, the Shuttle, the ISS and the Moon base was never made (I mean an automated base for mining of volatile, minimum need for crew). That was the system that was intended, so all of the payload from Earth would be long term infrastructure (building Spaceships at the ISS, the ISS itself and systems to recycle food and water). Long term the plan needed around another 100B or so, but when you're 150B+ into the plan.... well just the existence of a fuel depot in LEO would have jump started a spacebourne economy there and then.

Pet peeve really, I'm convinced that this system would have paid for itself within a few years and been the big driver of the global economy after the internet had run its course in modernization in just in time production systems.

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silens vesica
Corsair Cartel
#8 - 2013-03-27 04:45:47 UTC  |  Edited by: silens vesica
Kirjava wrote:

Aye but we already sunk the money into 2 of the three main parts of LEO infrastructure, the Shuttle, the ISS and the Moon base was never made (I mean an automated base for mining of volatile, minimum need for crew).
Not really. The shuttle was an immensely over-spec'd and under-performing system. One which had a full 50% of its planned missions killed long before it even flew when the Air Force backed out of the deal. And even then couldn't keep up. Also the most fatal piece of space hardware ever designed.

The ISS was never a real stepping stone to the Moon, despite the sales-hype. It is a decent research platform, and at best, a microgravity life proof-of-concept testing platform. It has also under-performed and cost an incredible every-bloating budget.

Quote:
That was the system that was intended, so all of the payload from Earth would be long term infrastructure (building Spaceships at the ISS, the ISS itself and systems to recycle food and water).
Pie-in-the-sky sales-hype that never made it to the actual engineers.

Quote:
Long term the plan needed around another 100B or so, but when you're 150B+ into the plan.... well just the existence of a fuel depot in LEO would have jump started a spacebourne economy there and then.
Wow. You live in Optimism Land! Call it a trillion before you'd even have an over-(lunar)night camp up and running, much less a self-sustaining one.

Quote:
I'm convinced that this system would have paid for itself within a few years and been the big driver of the global economy after the internet had run its course in modernization in just in time production systems.
Never.
The economics are again all 'pie-in-the-sky.' In no real economic model would it have paid for itself without deep-space colonies, which colonies themselves have no viable economic model. And without a viable economic model, it's just prestige-spending. A high-tech potlatch. In short, a very shiny piece of conspicuous consumption.

Don't get me wrong - I grew up on Lester Del Rey, Issac Asimov, Ben Bova, and Robert Heinlein. A friend of mine is a principle lead on one of the Messenger mission science packages. But without cold hard cash, space programs are gunna crash. Right now, the unmanned program is returning bucket-loads more science than a manned program because they're cheaper, more frequent, and expendable.

Tell someone you love them today, because life is short. But scream it at them in Esperanto, because life is also terrifying and confusing.

Didn't vote? Then you voted for NulBloc
Graygor
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#9 - 2013-03-27 05:10:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Graygor
I would so be up to be an early colonist.

But id probably be too old or dead by that point.

"I think you should buy a new Mayan calendar. Mine has muscle cars on it." - Kenneth O'Hara

"I dont think that can happen, you can see Gray has his invuln field on in his portrait." - Commissar "Cake" Kate
Kirjava
Lothian Enterprises
#10 - 2013-03-27 16:43:20 UTC
Silens, I'm going back to the original proposals for things like the Freedom Station, these concepts were calculated and weighed as the logical successor to Apollo for purposes of commercialization of space. My main reference for this is Mining he Sky by John S. Lewis.

The core principals were cut back to being a mere orbital laboratory due to the end of the cold war and the perceived need to cut spending, which is why the earlier shuttle appears to be inappropriately used. Again with the Shuttle, cost cutting meant long term it costed more due in part to the Solid Booster rockets instead of bulkier Hydrogen/Oxygen or Kerosene/Oxygene boosters.

The ISS of today was a last ditch attempt to keep Space Station Freedom by getting the Russians involved with their bow underused Space Industry and Pentagon fears they could end up working for regimes with ICBM ambitions. Yes, we got the station, but we didn't get the original goals of why build a station in the first place, or at least not the ones that would lead it to paying a chunk or all of its own way.

If you can launch a payload to the ISS, have it checked out then boosted from there using fuel brought in from the Moon (more economical after fuel demand exceeds infrastructure to the Moon in terms of Earth launch payload). This lowers costs for things like prospecting asteroids and working on beamed orbital solar satellites. Its pie in the sky, but that's DARPA and NASA for you.

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