Thread: SpaceX - On to Mars

Good feed from the Every Day Astronaut.

The Feed

It sounds like it's going to be a scrub at 10 seconds...

It has been scrubbed. 4/20 would be an auspicious date for the next try.

There was an issue with pressurization of the first stage tanks. Will need to check.

They will have to truck in more LOX and nitrogen.

Every test that does not end in destruction of the pad, is a good test.

Issue was a frozen He valve.

Next launch attempt on April 20. Wind, especially high altitude cross winds are a much bigger concern than the monday aborted attempt. So weather related scrub is not unlikely.

Link to the planned SpaceX YouTube coverage

All systems go for another attempt today. High altitude winds look good too, that was one concern.

Tim Dodd/Everyday Astronaut live stream. Starts earlier than the SpaceX stream.

It went boom....at about 31km up, before the stage separation. It was a pretty wild ride.

Pretty amazing they got it off the ground, onwards and upwards!

Tesla, Space X, and Twitter over the past few days…

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Quite a lot went wrong. Still, the design is very robust, it could have been much worse, blowing up on the pad.

In terms of the first manned flight to Mars getting off the ground, so to speak, is there a set number of successful launches that have to happen before they're allowed to stick a few very brave people on top?

For example, do they need to complete 3 successful test launches before putting people on it, or is one enough if they believe they've gotten everything right?

What is the turn around time between test launches? Can they do one every 6 weeks, or every 6 months, for example?

Cheers.

Originally Posted by Edmond

What is the turn around time between test launches? Can they do one every 6 weeks, or every 6 months, for example?

I'd assume it depends on the problems they found in the prior test, right?

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

Soil contains contaminants that make cultivation impossible

What contaminants? What soil?

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

People say that we can overcome these problems, My question is, If we have the political will and technology to overcome these problems on Mars, why can we overcome them here on Earth?

We should overcome both. Going to Mars is not abandoning Earth.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

What contaminants? What soil?

There are toxic perchlorates. Not too hard to remove, for making soil. But better not inhale the fine dust of the martian environment.

There is no soil on Mars, soil by definition contains organic matter from decomposed plant matter. You can grow plants with chemical fertilizers. Organic content would develop over time.

Perchlorates could be a sourde of oxygen, if it were needed. But there would be plenty of oxygen available without that from other processes.

Originally Posted by Edmond

In terms of the first manned flight to Mars getting off the ground, so to speak, is there a set number of successful launches that have to happen before they're allowed to stick a few very brave people on top?

Presently there is no regulation at all for putting private persons on rockets. When talking of manrating by NASA that is a purely NASA concept for people they fly.

The only requirement is to inform people of the risks and those people signing a waiver, declaring they are aware of the risks. Concept of informed consent. SpaceX will set their own standards on when they are comfortable with flying people. They don't want to kill their passengers. For sure they will have a different approach to determining safety than NASA who go about it in a very formal, abstract way.

There are recent moves to give the FAA much more authority to establish rules for safety of human flights. Some thinktank has recently proposed to Congress to introduce legislation to give FAA that authority. Unclear, if and when that might happen.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

What contaminants? What soil?

"Martian regolith has toxic levels of perchlorates and would make a very poor soil for plants seems to rule out dirt farming. "
Food production on Mars: Dirt farming as the most scalable solution for settlement

Originally Posted by Takeovers

We should overcome both. .

We could but it does not look like we are even overcoming Earth's problems.
Anyway , I hope I am wrong.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

Presently there is no regulation at all for putting private persons on rockets. When talking of manrating by NASA that is a purely NASA concept for people they fly.

The only requirement is to inform people of the risks and those people signing a waiver, declaring they are aware of the risks. Concept of informed consent. SpaceX will set their own standards on when they are comfortable with flying people. They don't want to kill their passengers.

Cool info, cheers.

It reminds me of a female cosmonauts, she was one of the first Russians in Space at around the age of 21 I think.

Much later in life she volunteered herself to be a one-way guinea pig for a one-way mission to Mars. Which obviously they didn't do.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

"Martian regolith has toxic levels of perchlorates and would make a very poor soil for plants seems to rule out dirt farming. "
Food production on Mars: Dirt farming as the most scalable solution for settlement

Regolith is not soil. Toxic perchlorates are not contaminants.

Originally Posted by Takeovers

There are toxic perchlorates. Not too hard to remove, for making soil. But better not inhale the fine dust of the martian environment.

There is no soil on Mars, soil by definition contains organic matter from decomposed plant matter. You can grow plants with chemical fertilizers. Organic content would develop over time.

Perchlorates could be a source of oxygen, if it were needed. But there would be plenty of oxygen available without that from other processes.

Cool info, thanks.

Interesting discussion on NSF forum about the flight. I just started reading it.

SpaceX Starship : First Flight : Starbase, TX : April 2023 - DISCUSSION THREAD 2

According to an NSF member who talked to SpaceX people, they are very pleased with the outcome. That fits with the cheers of the crowd at the Hawthorne headquarter.

That tumble was intentional, it was supposed to be part of the stage separation process, which unfortunately failed. Also that some engines were still running was intentional. They would provide thrust vector steering to point the booster for the boostback burn.

Infos were anonymous, no names given.

A video about the flight with lots of information, including when and which engines failed. Nowhere complete, of course.

A video with comments by Chris Hadfield, Canadian Astronaut and once commander of the ISS. Former test pilot. He lauds this flight as a huge succes, beyond what he expected.

BTW there was a lot of damage to the ground equipment. But then there was a lot of damage to the ground equipment at the Artemis 1 SLS launch too. NASA prohibited journalists to take any photos.

^ thanks!