+1
When I was at JPL as Spirit & Opportunity were winding down and Curiosity
was winding up people would say things like we can't just do another Spirit
& Opportunity because we want capability X (like the ability to reach a
specific location) so we need technology Y (like hypersonic guidance or
long distance autonomous driving).
I would ask have you looked at the probability of success of a shotgun
approach of sending N Spirit & Opportunities where you only need one to
succeed, and compared the cost of that to the development cost of a brand
new design that you will only ever make one of?
People didn't like when I asked that, especially the people who had spent
their careers developing technology Y.
I think some universities and nonprofits will do amazing things when IMLEO
becomes (relatively) cheap, but I would not be optimistic about JPL making
the paradigm shift.
On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 5:17 PM Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Decades ago, I was talking to people at JPL about massively parallel
exploration with mass-produced rovers. But they couldn't break out of the
one-off mindset. And imagine what we're going to do sending flocks of
cubesats with motherships to the ocean moons. Yuri Milner may actually be
planning that for Enceladus. I put a bug in Pete's ear about that.
On 10/6/21 16:33, Doug Jones wrote:
I wrote the following last year-
I think most people don't see the revolution that SpaceX's Starship will
usher in. Most of the extreme cost of those Mars missions was in the
non-recurring expense of building low mass bleeding-edge one-off hardware.
When you can put 100 tons into LEO for a few million dollars, most of that
goes out the window. Rovers will be bulky, have four times the mass, and
look like something out of Junkyard Wars. They can be built in groups of
5-10 for pennies on the dollar.
Computer array? Build a 5x redundant system using standard rack mount
hardware and put it in a pressure can with tungsten shielding to get the
single event upset rate down to something that can be handled routinely.
Cameras? Get a few top-of-the-line mirrorless DSLRs, put them in another
pressure can with a good window, done. Sure it has ten times the mass of
the exquisitely optimized jewelry on Perseverance, but who cares?
RTGs? Just put huge solar arrays on the rover. Massive things, overbuilt,
rugged, with built-in compressed gas nozzles to blow the dust off as
needed. A vacuum pump feeds an oilless air compressor- or rather, two of
each. Maybe a robotic arm with a whisk broom. Or both systems.
Drive train? Baja Rally buggy with major parts machined down to add a
little lightness but not too much. Install boots over the articulated
sections to keep the dust out. Send the vehicles in pairs with winches and
tow straps.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Much smaller university consortia, working with
existing smallsat builders, can go wild. With delta-V to (literally) burn,
missions to the outer planets won't take a freaking decade to get there,
either.
Brute force all the way. It'll be glorious.
On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 5:05 PM Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Actually, it's available now, but only for subcribers:
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/walmart-but-for-space
It will be out from behind the paywall in a few weeks.
On 10/6/21 07:38, Rand Simberg wrote:
I have an essay on this in the current issue of The New Atlantis. It
should be available on line soon.
On 10/6/21 06:28, Doug Jones wrote:
Perzackly. Who needs fancy-shmancy custom rad-hard featherweight
liquid-cooled vacuum-rated electronics when you can buy standard 19" rack
mount packages, put 'em in a steel pressure hull an inch thick with a
polyethylene liner to catch the secondaries, blow the cooling fans through
a flat plate heat exchanger, and call it good?
We're talking _literal_ battleship construction.
On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 1:22 AM J Farmer <jfarmer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think one of the points being overlooked, inadvertently or not, is the
sea change that the shear lift capacity StarShip will in have in size
and mass. To date, every payload has to watch every kg, every cubic
cm. What happens when you can throw another cubic meter, lift another
100kg mass at a problem? How much time and money will be saved when you
don't have to sweat that last one percent of your lift budget?
As Henry pointed out in an earlier thread about dealing with atmospheric
& water leaks, with reliable lift schedules, just lift enough to
replenish for several cycles while fixing the problem. What changes in
your planning when that supply run can be 50 or 100 tons of air or water?
John