Author Topic: Red Dragon science  (Read 13759 times)

Offline savuporo

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #20 on: 05/20/2017 09:52 pm »
3) Robotic Hatch Arm: A robotic arm, mounted inside the capsule, that pulls out devices from the interior and places them on the surface; said devices would be on the small size; Sojourners but not MERs for instance.  Essentially a larger version of the Phoenix and InSight robotic arms.


Deploy an evolved RoboSimian instead. It would cost a ton to make something like this capable of operating on Mars, but the flexibility of getting out, deploying experiments, and coming back to charge and warm up would be likely worth it.
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Offline redliox

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #21 on: 05/21/2017 12:22 am »
Deploy an evolved RoboSimian instead. It would cost a ton to make something like this capable of operating on Mars, but the flexibility of getting out, deploying experiments, and coming back to charge and warm up would be likely worth it.

So you want a robotic monkey?
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Offline philw1776

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #22 on: 05/21/2017 12:31 am »
Red Dragon could deploy a small rover with ground penetrating radar to gather ground truth about believed sub surface frozen water deposits.  More exotic, add a drill capable of boring 5-10 meters or so to validate the GPR detected ice. Seems to me that extensive water readily available and in an area suitable for solar power is the prime driver for colony site selection.  Land and find out in several places before wasting an ITS visit.
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Offline savuporo

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #23 on: 05/21/2017 12:39 am »
Deploy an evolved RoboSimian instead. It would cost a ton to make something like this capable of operating on Mars, but the flexibility of getting out, deploying experiments, and coming back to charge and warm up would be likely worth it.

So you want a robotic monkey?

Yep. Something akin to Qinetiq Talon or Endeavor PackBot would likely have interesting potential as well.
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Offline redliox

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #24 on: 05/21/2017 01:02 am »
Here's a further thought Blackstar suggested-in-a-way: What kind of science do you want to do with Red Dragon?  Blackstar stressed this detail affects everything else. 

I believe I could break down the possibilities into 5 categories:

Atmospheric
Biological
Engineering
Geologic
Public Relations

Let's take atmospheric science for an example.  The simplest way would be to install vents or otherwise some form of inlet for passive instruments.  A moderately involved way would be to deploy a boom with a weather station out of one of the hatches, on the level of Viking/Pathfinder.  A complex method would be launching a weather balloon out of the capsule.

Something physically mounted to Red Dragon will probably tend to be simple yet limited in science, whereas a rover (or balloon or drone) will be hard to get out of the capsule although able to do decent science.
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #25 on: 05/23/2017 02:29 am »
It's quite incredible to think that the first object to return from Mars may well not be a tiny unmanned sample canister, but a huge rocket ship descending on a plume of fire. Heinlein would have been proud.

Everyone one of the classic SF writers would have been proud. Stuff Heinlein, my least favourite SF writer.
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #26 on: 05/23/2017 02:31 am »
Red Dragon could deploy a small rover with ground penetrating radar to gather ground truth about believed sub surface frozen water deposits.  More exotic, add a drill capable of boring 5-10 meters or so to validate the GPR detected ice. Seems to me that extensive water readily available and in an area suitable for solar power is the prime driver for colony site selection.  Land and find out in several places before wasting an ITS visit.

Robotic drilling to any depth is really hard.  And you don't need to go that deep to reach ice in the northern plains of Mars.  Two to three metres should be more than enough.
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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #27 on: 05/23/2017 02:33 am »
3) Robotic Hatch Arm: A robotic arm, mounted inside the capsule, that pulls out devices from the interior and places them on the surface; said devices would be on the small size; Sojourners but not MERs for instance.  Essentially a larger version of the Phoenix and InSight robotic arms.


Deploy an evolved RoboSimian instead. It would cost a ton to make something like this capable of operating on Mars, but the flexibility of getting out, deploying experiments, and coming back to charge and warm up would be likely worth it.

Let's do things the easy way instead ;)
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Offline geza

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #28 on: 05/28/2017 08:42 am »
Red Dragon could deploy a small rover with ground penetrating radar to gather ground truth about believed sub surface frozen water deposits.  More exotic, add a drill capable of boring 5-10 meters or so to validate the GPR detected ice. Seems to me that extensive water readily available and in an area suitable for solar power is the prime driver for colony site selection.  Land and find out in several places before wasting an ITS visit.

Robotic drilling to any depth is really hard.  And you don't need to go that deep to reach ice in the northern plains of Mars.  Two to three metres should be more than enough.

Robotic drilling to depth of 2 meters into the Lunar soil was achieved by the Soviet Luna 24 in August, 1976. Four decades have passed since. It should not be THAT difficult today by US technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_24

Offline Dao Angkan

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Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #30 on: 06/03/2017 01:43 am »
Red Dragon could deploy a small rover with ground penetrating radar to gather ground truth about believed sub surface frozen water deposits.  More exotic, add a drill capable of boring 5-10 meters or so to validate the GPR detected ice. Seems to me that extensive water readily available and in an area suitable for solar power is the prime driver for colony site selection.  Land and find out in several places before wasting an ITS visit.

Robotic drilling to any depth is really hard.  And you don't need to go that deep to reach ice in the northern plains of Mars.  Two to three metres should be more than enough.

Robotic drilling to depth of 2 meters into the Lunar soil was achieved by the Soviet Luna 24 in August, 1976. Four decades have passed since. It should not be THAT difficult today by US technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_24

You'd be surprised!

Also note that the Luna mission drills were and are engineering triumphs of the first order.  They should not be dismissed because they were from the 70s or because they were done by the USSR (with the not so subtle implication if they could do it anyone can).  There is nothing magical about US technology.

Drilling off Earth with robotic technology remains hard.  Curiosity, Venera, and Vega all drilled only a few cm, and have often encountered problems. I have worked with MARTE, a  full scale prototype of a martian drill, which could, on a really good day, reach 5 m.  Most of the time it didn't.  And that was with human assistance on site.  The follow up Icebreaker drill was less ambitious, 1-2 m, and has worked a lot better. The ExoMars drill is designed to reach 2 m, and that has been a major achievement.

MARTE/Icebreaker type drills can in principle be deployed by Red Dragon, there's been studies on this (See Dao Angkan's post).  These were done by the NASA ARC MARTE/Icebreaker group.  Note that the drill shown there has a single core barrel (like Luna).  This simplifies matters considerably. But the devil, as always will be in the details.  Note that the Ice Dragon study was no more than 2 m with up to four attempts possible (which is wise, given the Luna (and terrestrial) experience).

Realistically, don't go any deeper than you have to.  There is ice within 1 m of the surface across much of the northern hemisphere.  Even with a margin for local variation and to collect sufficient sample, 2 m should be more than adequate.
 
« Last Edit: 06/03/2017 02:06 am by Dalhousie »
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Offline Dao Angkan

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #31 on: 06/03/2017 08:48 am »
ExoMars (2020) will have a 2 metre drill, Red Dragon could offer a bigger platform for deeper drilling, but it might be cheaper to just use existing designs.

Red Dragon could offer a cheap option to re-build previous failed missions such as Beagle. Looking at the previous designs posted above, and from some of the comments in this thread a robotic arm through the hatch would seem to be the most likely payload delivery to surface method. This would limit payloads to the hatch diameter (should be fine for something like Beagle), but they could still be designed to unfold to a larger area after deployment.
« Last Edit: 06/03/2017 08:49 am by Dao Angkan »

Offline TaurusLittrow

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #32 on: 06/03/2017 11:12 am »
KISS...keep it simple, Sherlock.

The primary purpose of Red Dragon in 2020 is demonstration of supersonic retropropulsion. The objectives are engineering.

The Europeans and some commercial entities have expressed interest in science payloads according to Shotwell and NASA will undoubtedly provide some science instruments given the shift to the 2020 window.

But 2 years isn't a lot of time and I can't imagine any entity will risk a great deal of resources developing science payloads on what is basically an engineering test.

I expect to see something more modest like a cantilever pallet shoved out the hatch of Red Dragon containing a few science instruments. Assuming Red Dragon lands upright w/o making a hole in the ground.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #33 on: 06/03/2017 11:23 am »
KISS...keep it simple, Sherlock.

The primary purpose of Red Dragon in 2020 is demonstration of supersonic retropropulsion. The objectives are engineering.

The Europeans and some commercial entities have expressed interest in science payloads according to Shotwell and NASA will undoubtedly provide some science instruments given the shift to the 2020 window.

But 2 years isn't a lot of time and I can't imagine any entity will risk a great deal of resources developing science payloads on what is basically an engineering test.

I expect to see something more modest like a cantilever pallet shoved out the hatch of Red Dragon containing a few science instruments. Assuming Red Dragon lands upright w/o making a hole in the ground.

I agree , prime purpose for 2020 appears proof of concept with minimum modification.  So very simple science, perhaps on residual battery power.

But Red Dragon is supposed to be a series o missions with paying customers. It's not clear whether SpaceX is prepared to customise each mission or simply off a series of standard deployment options. Or a mix of the two.
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Offline Eerie

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #34 on: 06/03/2017 07:46 pm »
KISS...keep it simple, Sherlock.

The primary purpose of Red Dragon in 2020 is demonstration of supersonic retropropulsion.

I'm pretty sure Falcon 9 first stage had already demonstrated supersonic retropropulsion. Repeatedly.

Online dy6448

Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #35 on: 06/03/2017 09:02 pm »
Did anyone notice this slide very briefly displayed by Paul Wooster (SpaceX) at H2M summit on May 9 at  the end of his presentation during the Mars Architectures session :

Red Dragon Mission Objectives

- Learn how to transport and land large payloads on Mars
- Identify and characterize potential resources such as water
- Characterize potential landing sites, including identifying surface hazards
- Demonstrate key surface capabilities on Mars

Online guckyfan

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #36 on: 06/03/2017 10:02 pm »
The slide is from Elon Musks presentation of ITS at the IAC.

Offline Dalhousie

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Re: Red Dragon science
« Reply #37 on: 06/03/2017 11:18 pm »
KISS...keep it simple, Sherlock.

The primary purpose of Red Dragon in 2020 is demonstration of supersonic retropropulsion.

I'm pretty sure Falcon 9 first stage had already demonstrated supersonic retropropulsion. Repeatedly.

Doing so Mars is a still very important, in conjunction with a complex descent profile.
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