Author Topic: How will SpaceX select their 2020s landing site & where could it be?  (Read 88983 times)

Offline philw1776

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Can NASA or SpaceX do ground penetrating radar from orbit?  Or will they have to do this on the surface like oil companies trying to find oil deposits?  SpaceX will need to find water, and to me, a lot of it to make rocket fuel for return.

https://phys.org/news/2016-11-mars-ice-deposit-lake-superior.html

More details here..

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2016/1122-subsurface-water-ice-in-utopia-planitia-mars.html

"Scientists examined part of Mars' Utopia Planitia region, in the mid-northern latitudes, with Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's ground-penetrating Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument. Analyses of data from more than 600 overhead passes revealed a deposit more extensive in area than the state of New Mexico. The deposit ranges in thickness from about 260 feet to about 560 feet, with a composition that's 50 to 85 percent water ice"

Problem here is that with latitude 45 degrees or more winter days are too short for massive solar power generation.  Winter lasts a long time on Mars.
And the terrain is flat, featureless and boring.  Musk has always said he wants to make living on Mars fun.
« Last Edit: 06/01/2018 02:18 pm by philw1776 »
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Offline geza

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Water on equatorial location: Medusae Fossae

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.00518.pdf


Offline philw1776

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Excellent paper.  Through Bayesian analysis statistics they improved the resolution of the MONS neutron spectrometer from its 550Km minimum.  But it's still quite limited, "variations on scales smaller than 290 km are unlikely to be found in our reconstruction."
Bottom line is they showed that there ARE places below 30 degrees latitude with extensive buried ice.  No need for 45 degree north sites with serious solar energy constraints.
As previously mentioned, a SpaceX orbital mission with improved 2020s instrumentation could find "smaller" deposits at low latitude sites. Buried ice many tens of Km in area would make excellent sites for a base/colony.
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Offline Oersted

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I imagine the first Mars base will consist of tunnels in bedrock next to a big water ice deposit. Drill small tubes from the tunnels up into the water ice deposit, blow hot air into the tubes and voilŕ: you have a near limitless supply of H2O coming out of taps in your tunnel wall.

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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A bump for this thread.


With a possible liquid water lake, although underground, it would simplify the "mining" problem for obtaining water. Drill a well (piping) to pump the brine for processing. This is actually very low infrastructure and maintenance implementation in order to obtain millions of tons of water. At 14km and 1 meter depth that is 150 million metric tons.


https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=46052.0

Offline Bynaus

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A bump for this thread.


With a possible liquid water lake, although underground, it would simplify the "mining" problem for obtaining water. Drill a well (piping) to pump the brine for processing. This is actually very low infrastructure and maintenance implementation in order to obtain millions of tons of water. At 14km and 1 meter depth that is 150 million metric tons.


https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=46052.0

Also, the CO2 ice cap would probably speed up the process of collecting CO2 for the methane...

Unfortunately, the southern highlands are high up and very cold, so not necessarily a good place for human settlement. But perhaps the perfect place to run a fuel station - just deliver the fuels via hyperloop tunnels to Hellas?
More of my thoughts: www.final-frontier.ch (in German)

Offline Tulse

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Why would one even need tunnels?  Wouldn't just a smooth roadbed work?  I wouldn't think that speed would be an issue for transporting bulk water.

Offline Bynaus

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Yeah, that didn't get out right, I don't mean tunnels per se (or hyperloop pods), just a kind of pipeline, made with the same "boring" technology that is used on Earth to build hyperloops.
More of my thoughts: www.final-frontier.ch (in German)

Offline Tulse

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I doubt any kind of tunnelled solution would be effective.  The tunnels would need a water-tight liner, which would essentially make them a pipe.  I would think it would be easier to run a pipe on the surface.

And more to the point, the water is at the pole, which is likely thousands of km from where a settlement will be.  Tunnelling that far isn't practical. 

I think a more likely solution would be self-driving tankers running back and forth from a well facility to the settlement.

Offline RobLynn

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Unfortunately, the southern highlands are high up and very cold, so not necessarily a good place for human settlement. But perhaps the perfect place to run a fuel station - just deliver the fuels via hyperloop tunnels to Hellas?

Is cold really a problem?  Makes cooling much easier, makes electronics much more efficient, helps in cooling cryogens, and really easy to add a little more insulation to habitats etc.  You are in near vacuum anyway, the difference between 1000Pa and 100Pa is pretty irrelevant to machinery, spacesuits and life-support and ready access to large quantities of condensed CO2 and Water for all sorts of purposes is extremely useful
The glass is neither half full nor half empty, it's just twice as big as it needs to be.

Offline wannamoonbase

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A bump for this thread.


With a possible liquid water lake, although underground, it would simplify the "mining" problem for obtaining water. Drill a well (piping) to pump the brine for processing. This is actually very low infrastructure and maintenance implementation in order to obtain millions of tons of water. At 14km and 1 meter depth that is 150 million metric tons.


https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=46052.0

The South Pole of Mars is very cold for humans. 

Hopefully they’ll find a similar equatorial source. 

Edit: also let’s remember orbital mechanics makes getting to orbit easier from the equator.

« Last Edit: 07/26/2018 01:59 am by wannamoonbase »
Wildly optimistic prediction, Superheavy recovery on IFT-4 or IFT-5

Offline matthewkantar

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Though I am no geologist, I suspect at the right location and depth, drillers on Mars should be able to hit "gushers" of brine. Just have to keep the well casing warm so it does not freeze on the way up.

Matthew

Offline wannamoonbase

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Though I am no geologist, I suspect at the right location and depth, drillers on Mars should be able to hit "gushers" of brine. Just have to keep the well casing warm so it does not freeze on the way up.

Matthew

Mars is not the moon.  Scrounging up H2O mars is going to require effort, but ultimately I think it will prove to be small compared to living on a dimmer, frozen dirt ball with a thin atmosphere.
Wildly optimistic prediction, Superheavy recovery on IFT-4 or IFT-5

Offline Robotbeat

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Barely dimmer. Beats England or Seattle.
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

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Online guckyfan

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I doubt that brines will be that useful for water. Separation of the water from the salts may be more demanding than digging for glacial water. Except when the minerals turn out to be the top benefit.

Offline meekGee

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This discovery is interesting for geological reasons.  Maybe biological.  But for ISRU water, there's water ice on the surface, and plenty sunshine to melt it with...

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Offline CuddlyRocket

I doubt any kind of tunnelled solution would be effective. The tunnels would need a water-tight liner, which would essentially make them a pipe. I would think it would be easier to run a pipe on the surface.

And more to the point, the water is at the pole, which is likely thousands of km from where a settlement will be. Tunnelling that far isn't practical. 

I think a more likely solution would be self-driving tankers running back and forth from a well facility to the settlement.

Where do you get the pipe or the tankers from? How are you going to power them (remembering the poles are dark for half the year)?

You can get (pure|) water from the Martian atmosphere; it just takes power and equipment. Any source of water that requires more power and equipment than this baseline is not likely to be used, certainly in the early days of any base or colony.

Offline geza

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As several of you wrote already, the South Pole subglacial lake is not a meaningful candidate for a SpaceX landing site. Still, this result is very relevant here, as it demonstrates the possibilities for orbital prospecting. Earlier I posted a paper on near-equatorial water source, discovered via neutron spectrometer. This lake was discovered via low frequency radar. Here is a good summary:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/early/2018/07/24/science.aau1829.full.pdf

For both methods, the limitation is spatial resolution. The lake of 20 km diameter was discovered with 5 km resolution. It cries for better equipments. If SpaceX want to land in 2022, then it would be good to do early satellite deployment in the 2020 window to inform site selection. BFR will start orbital flights in 2021, so it will not be available for this purpose. Maybe, a few Mars satellite by FH for early com/nav and prospecting? Of course this is possible only if that satellites are in development already...

Offline Bynaus

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Unfortunately, the southern highlands are high up and very cold, so not necessarily a good place for human settlement. But perhaps the perfect place to run a fuel station - just deliver the fuels via hyperloop tunnels to Hellas?

Is cold really a problem?  Makes cooling much easier, makes electronics much more efficient, helps in cooling cryogens, and really easy to add a little more insulation to habitats etc.  You are in near vacuum anyway, the difference between 1000Pa and 100Pa is pretty irrelevant to machinery, spacesuits and life-support and ready access to large quantities of condensed CO2 and Water for all sorts of purposes is extremely useful

Its cold because its longer in the dark due to Mars' axis tilt, so solar energy is not a good option at either of the poles, and in particular at the southern pole because southern winter is over aphelion (making it longer). So really not the best option for a human settlement.

Less atmosphere means more radiation (although that effect is much less pronounced on Mars than on Earth, simply because the shielding provided by its atmosphere is much less), and its more difficult to land because there is less atmosphere to cross (= use for slowing down) between space and the surface.

@Tulse: yes, a pipe(line) on the surface. I didn't want to suggest a 1000km+ tunnel ("not tunnels per se")! That "boring" was just in there for the pun, and I can see now how it was confusing.
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Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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The basic item here is that there is likely liquid H2O exists that can be easily tapped (relative to collecting ice and the amount of infrastructure required to mine ice). 

Now these sources need to be found. NOTE: Spacex is designing a 400kg sat platform that could be used as the basis for a comm/sensor platform deployed in a constellation of 15 sats around Mars (3 orbit planes with 5 sats per orbit plane). Enabling high bandwidth to Earth thru use of laser comm and a 24/7 comm channel with all sats in the constellation and additional 24/7 comm support for any surface assets. Could be done with a single FH launch. Total costs of sats + launch ~$250M (FH ~$100M and $10M per sat [this is a pessimistic estimate for sat costs $1M for bus/comm systems and $9M for sensors])

A lower latitude location of an underground lake is what we are looking for. But even if that does not exist shipping water via a pipe for 1,000km is possible. But this would not be something that would be done at first. over land autodrive tanker trucks such that 100mt per truck trip would require for the immediate to support refueling 6 BFS would need only 18 trips per year. A 10 day trip 1 way is 100km per day using solar cell powered trucks that operate only during daylight at a speed of 10km/hr. You would need just 2 trucks. One of them is actually a spare. Use of smaller 20mt trucks would require just 8 trucks (3 spares).

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