Quote from: Jimmy Murdok on 05/10/2017 01:43 pmHow do you get rid of the expensive plutonium heaters in a fully electric design? No plutonium in the MERs. That is Curiosity.
How do you get rid of the expensive plutonium heaters in a fully electric design?
Quote from: Oersted on 05/10/2017 08:44 amSpaceX is not focused on Mars to satisfy the science community. They are in it for colonization. Obviously, down the road, Mars colonization will hugely benefit the science community. Specifically there will be huge amounts of sample return.If MERs were to fly to Mars on a Falcon Heavy they would go with instruments to characterise soil, rock and water.Do anyone see a better, cheaper and faster way to surface-reconnoiter colony candidate sites?Yes. Build a clean-sheet, customized design for the purpose, rather than make a kludge with obsolete parts and designs.
SpaceX is not focused on Mars to satisfy the science community. They are in it for colonization. Obviously, down the road, Mars colonization will hugely benefit the science community. Specifically there will be huge amounts of sample return.If MERs were to fly to Mars on a Falcon Heavy they would go with instruments to characterise soil, rock and water.Do anyone see a better, cheaper and faster way to surface-reconnoiter colony candidate sites?
Quote from: Oersted on 05/10/2017 03:49 pmQuote from: Jimmy Murdok on 05/10/2017 01:43 pmHow do you get rid of the expensive plutonium heaters in a fully electric design? No plutonium in the MERs. That is Curiosity.The MER rovers have 8 Radioisotope Heater Units with about 3 grams of Plutonium 238 each.
Quote from: whitelancer64 on 05/10/2017 03:29 pmQuote from: Oersted on 05/10/2017 08:44 amSpaceX is not focused on Mars to satisfy the science community. They are in it for colonization. Obviously, down the road, Mars colonization will hugely benefit the science community. Specifically there will be huge amounts of sample return.If MERs were to fly to Mars on a Falcon Heavy they would go with instruments to characterise soil, rock and water.Do anyone see a better, cheaper and faster way to surface-reconnoiter colony candidate sites?Yes. Build a clean-sheet, customized design for the purpose, rather than make a kludge with obsolete parts and designs."Clean-sheet" and "customised" certainly sounds better, but not cheaper and certainly not faster.SpaceX has a huge amount of work on their plate. I think it won't hurt them to outsource some of it, and then why not outsource to the undisputed leaders in the field of Mars exploration, the JPL?A cooperation with the JPL around MER-based reconnaissance rovers will also be a huge boon for SpaceX as regards knowledge-transfer about Mars."We offer the delivery to Mars and together we cooperate on site-selection and the construction of rovers".. - Would JPL turn down such a deal?
I'd imagine an in-house SpaceX Mars rover would throw mass at the problem, and just have larger solar arrays with electric heatersThey would probably also use a Dragon as the starting point for the landing vehicle, rather than try to duplicate NASA's design, which relies on some very specialsed technology.(Note- NASA developed a Mars EDL architecture in the 70s for Viking and has reused it every time since then. Same cone/sphere heatshield shape, same disk-gap-band supersonic parachute. Only the terminal landing sequence has been altered, to suit each mission).
Quote from: Kaputnik on 05/10/2017 07:29 pmI'd imagine an in-house SpaceX Mars rover would throw mass at the problem, and just have larger solar arrays with electric heatersThey would probably also use a Dragon as the starting point for the landing vehicle, rather than try to duplicate NASA's design, which relies on some very specialsed technology.(Note- NASA developed a Mars EDL architecture in the 70s for Viking and has reused it every time since then. Same cone/sphere heatshield shape, same disk-gap-band supersonic parachute. Only the terminal landing sequence has been altered, to suit each mission).Not so, the EDL hardware designs were similar, but not the same. The MER heat shield was a different size and the backshell had a different geometry than the Viking landers, for example. Also the parachutes for the MER program were smaller and had to be extensively redesigned - early testing had squidding and tearing problems, with one parachute shredded completely. Curiosity was heavier than the Viking landers and so had a larger parachute, backshell, and heat shield (which was made of PICA).
Quote from: whitelancer64 on 05/10/2017 08:04 pmQuote from: Kaputnik on 05/10/2017 07:29 pmI'd imagine an in-house SpaceX Mars rover would throw mass at the problem, and just have larger solar arrays with electric heatersThey would probably also use a Dragon as the starting point for the landing vehicle, rather than try to duplicate NASA's design, which relies on some very specialsed technology.(Note- NASA developed a Mars EDL architecture in the 70s for Viking and has reused it every time since then. Same cone/sphere heatshield shape, same disk-gap-band supersonic parachute. Only the terminal landing sequence has been altered, to suit each mission).Not so, the EDL hardware designs were similar, but not the same. The MER heat shield was a different size and the backshell had a different geometry than the Viking landers, for example. Also the parachutes for the MER program were smaller and had to be extensively redesigned - early testing had squidding and tearing problems, with one parachute shredded completely. Curiosity was heavier than the Viking landers and so had a larger parachute, backshell, and heat shield (which was made of PICA). Perhaps I overstated the similarity. They are pretty much the same idea, though, just at different scale. And Curiosity maxes out the parachute technology, still on decades old upper atmoshere testing done in support of Viking. IIRC some versions used a ballistic entry and others used offset CG lifting entry.The key point is that this can really be considered a single design, just at different scales, when compared to Dragon, which is a completely different approach
I'd imagine an in-house SpaceX Mars rover would throw mass at the problem, and just have larger solar arrays with electric heatersThey would probably also use a Dragon as the starting point for the landing vehicle, rather than try to duplicate NASA's design, which relies on some very specialsed technology.
Not too big a manufacturing hurdle to handle. The CTO of the company that provide the FH have side businesses manufacturing electric car & comsats. So if you can persuade him that building new MER size rovers have merit, than he can conjoured up some mini rovers.