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THE Solar System Thread (merged)

Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby dorlomin » Mon 30 Apr 2012, 18:28:29

SeaGypsy wrote:Looks like nuke plasma drive? Interesting. Any ideas how to reverse thrust/ brake? Not much use being capable of acceleration within deep space if you can't then slow down.

Point it in the other direction.
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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby radon » Mon 30 Apr 2012, 18:33:32

dissident wrote:
Anatolij Perminov, head of Russian Space Agency announced that RKA is going to develop a nuclear powered spacecraft for deep space travel. Design will be done by 2012, and 9 more years for development (in space assembly). The price is set to 17 billion rubles (600 million dollars).[13] The nuclear propulsion would have mega-watt class, provided necessary funding, Roscosmos Head stated.


"Provided necessary funding". What a stupid undertaking for Russia to be engaged in. If the US wants to harass the remote outer space then it's up to them (as long as they do not waste too much fossil fuels in the process), but for Russia, a "poor" underdeveloped country, to spend money on this type of project is totally non-sensible. Lots of other burning priorities. If anything, better spend these money on countering the ABM shield, far more useful being defense-oriented, and even the its scientific return would be more impressive. Most of people working on that nuclear engine would be involved in the anti-ABM stuff anyway, out of the remainder the productive ones would find use really easily on anti-ABM or other projects, and the non-productive ones are anyway useless leeches who do nothing other than lobbying this Martian fairy tail in order to park most of those 600 million to their personal pockets, including those outside Russia.

The situation changes of course if they secure exclusively foreign finance for this project, or if this engine is developed with a focus on the defense priorities. But it doesn't look like this.
Last edited by radon on Mon 30 Apr 2012, 18:54:35, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby radon » Mon 30 Apr 2012, 18:41:07

dorlomin wrote:
SeaGypsy wrote:Looks like nuke plasma drive? Interesting. Any ideas how to reverse thrust/ brake? Not much use being capable of acceleration within deep space if you can't then slow down.

Point it in the other direction.


Yes, + opportune use of gravity/atmosphere friction where possible.
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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby dissident » Mon 30 Apr 2012, 19:48:39

SeaGypsy wrote:Looks like nuke plasma drive? Interesting. Any ideas how to reverse thrust/ brake? Not much use being capable of acceleration within deep space if you can't then slow down.


Ideally they would do 1 g halfway and then flip direction for the remaining half of the journey. At the same time there would be artificial gravity all the way and the trip would take about 30 hours. But this engine will not have the power and energy reserve to produce a g of acceleration.

Of course the spacecraft would have to be something in a completely different class than the tin cans used up to now. It would have to have heavy metal plating in two layers with a rapidly setting foam adhesive to plug holes produce by collisions with micro-meteorites. A magnetic field around the spacecraft would also be useful provided it was strong enough to capture/deflect incoming protons and electrons. I haven't seen anything remotely similar to this in the Mars plans of the US and Russia. Just more of the 1960s with a makeover.
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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby dissident » Mon 30 Apr 2012, 19:58:43

radon wrote:
dissident wrote:
Anatolij Perminov, head of Russian Space Agency announced that RKA is going to develop a nuclear powered spacecraft for deep space travel. Design will be done by 2012, and 9 more years for development (in space assembly). The price is set to 17 billion rubles (600 million dollars).[13] The nuclear propulsion would have mega-watt class, provided necessary funding, Roscosmos Head stated.


"Provided necessary funding". What a stupid undertaking for Russia to be engaged in. If the US wants to harass the remote outer space then it's up to them (as long as they do not waste too much fossil fuels in the process), but for Russia, a "poor" underdeveloped country, to spend money on this type of project is totally non-sensible. Lots of other burning priorities. If anything, better spend these money on countering the ABM shield, far more useful being defense-oriented, and even the its scientific return would be more impressive. Most of people working on that nuclear engine would be involved in the anti-ABM stuff anyway, out of the remainder the productive ones would find use really easily on anti-ABM or other projects, and the non-productive ones are anyway useless leeches who do nothing other than lobbying this Martian fairy tail in order to park most of those 600 million to their personal pockets, including those outside Russia.

The situation changes of course if they secure exclusively foreign finance for this project, or if this engine is developed with a focus on the defense priorities. But it doesn't look like this.


The GDP doesn't care about what activity is being performed and its absolute value. The main thing is for money to circulate. This is why all the shock therapy from the 1990s and the associated non-payment of meager salaries for months on end was total criminal idiocy. I highly doubt that Russia's pool of people who can work on ABM systems and on this nuclear engine is so small as to make such projects mutually exclusive. If they really used all the 600 million to line their pockets then there would be nothing to show at the end of the project. This is not credible given that Russia develops weapons systems (e.g. Bulava, S-400) without blowing trillions on them, which would be the case if 4th world corruption levels were an accurate description of the current state of the country.
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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby radon » Tue 01 May 2012, 07:30:15

dissident wrote:
The GDP doesn't care about what activity is being performed and its absolute value. The main thing is for money to circulate. This is why all the shock therapy from the 1990s and the associated non-payment of meager salaries for months on end was total criminal idiocy. I highly doubt that Russia's pool of people who can work on ABM systems and on this nuclear engine is so small as to make such projects mutually exclusive. If they really used all the 600 million to line their pockets then there would be nothing to show at the end of the project. This is not credible given that Russia develops weapons systems (e.g. Bulava, S-400) without blowing trillions on them, which would be the case if 4th world corruption levels were an accurate description of the current state of the country.


GDP doesn't really matter that much. 4th world corruption levels are unnecessary, the Russian levels would suffice to make Bulava's test success rate similar to North Korean's - Bulava's testers have had every other rocket launch going screwed this or that way. Corruption is not particularly important, you can institutionalize corruption by legislating it in - as they did long ago in what is called "advanced western democracies" - or making it a part of the business customs. You can convert "illegitimate" bribe into "legitimate" profit by way of some legislating and business structuring, in the same manner as tax structurers convert taxable income into non-taxable capital gains. Corruption nowadays is mostly an empty buzz word for monetarist influential weeklies to express their general unhappiness with some remote overseas country or government.

There is too much fat and useless "business and managerial talent" - product of the "free market" reforms - in the space-military complex in Russia, while the engineering work is pulled by poorly paid people in their 60s-70s, and the quality of material procurement is appalling, despite the abundance of the "managerial talent" overseeing it. But all the test or operational failures are of course to be blamed on engineers.

We don't have excess money. Pull the money from underneath the "oligarchs", who for some unexplainable reason appear to be entitled to the bulk of the country's natural resource rents, stop the idiotic puppet policy of reserves accumulation and "money sterilisation", cut the "business and managerial talent", but in absence of these - put a plug on that space odysseys, invest in the military development, or in the high school, which is in shambles. Stop free eduction, with engineering talent leaving for serfdom in the west exploiting their student-loan-free status - this serfdom is still better than homeless miserable existence under the enlightened guidance of the "business and managerial talent" in their home country. Give the undergraduates the student loans, give them on graduation subsidized mortgages for buying housing and land - we have land in abundance, what can be better for the talent retention. Pay the rocket engineers to have them lecturing in the universities. Better then sending a piece of precious metal to the infinity in space. Straightforward things, no complex monetarist theories explaining why you have to be deep in sh*t for another **ty years , but then - of course, there are "vested interests". Lots of chest trumping and pompous imperial rhetorics produced for the populace (who already laugh at it), but in substance the behavior of a colonized laggard.

Bottom line - no excess money. If you have 600 million and human resources to do a task, - then unconditionally prioritize the vital tasks and discard everything else and direct the money and people there, as far as Russia is concerned.
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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Tue 01 May 2012, 09:26:30

Isn't that Stalin resurrected?
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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby radon » Tue 01 May 2012, 09:37:41

SeaGypsy wrote:Isn't that Stalin resurrected?
What "that"? Student loans and subsidized house/land mortgages for performing graduates?

What is your suggestion? Send stuff to space on the back of 60-70 years old retirees while no-strings-attached graduates are fleeing the country and heir morons endlessly partying?
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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Tue 01 May 2012, 16:43:48

Shoving people around the country to suit the whim of government? / Supposedly in the name of productivity.
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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby radon » Tue 01 May 2012, 18:04:44

SeaGypsy wrote:Shoving people around the country to suit the whim of government? / Supposedly in the name of productivity.
You probably misinterpreted something that I wrote - I never suggested shoving people around the country. Allocating various projects to them - true, but they do not have to move anywhere to do a different project. Instead of making engines for exploratory space rockets they can be making engines for commercial space launches or for the military on the same plant. Instead of making communication equipment for space they can be making communication for civil or commercial needs on the same plant. No need to travel anywhere, this is just how it really works in practice - they are often fulfilling space/military/civil/commercial orders in parallel on the same plant.

As to the mortgaged land plots - there are lots of those around the major scientific/production centers, but their circulation is notoriously screwed.

But that's an interesting thing that you suggested. Americans are said to be always traveling to "where the jobs are". Obviously, another form of the government's assistance to the graduates could be help to the graduates with their moves across the country if need be.

Anyways, if you were to pursue a scientific career in the Soviet Union you would have to go to one of the major universities in, mostly, four cities - Moscow, St.Petersburg, Kiev and Novosibirsk. With the Soviet Union gone, Kiev is off. So a scientific career would likely involve extensive travel anyway, nothing to do with Stalin.
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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby Graeme » Thu 07 Jun 2012, 03:41:41

Mars One: Human settlement on Mars in 2023

An ambitious new project has started. Mars One plans to establish the first human settlement on Mars in 2023. Only one problem, you can't come back.
The project plans to establish the first ever human settlement on Mars. The habitable settlement will be placed on Mars ready for the settlers when they land. This settlement will be set up so as to support them while they live and work on Mars.

The technical plan for the mission is being kept as simple as possible. Mars One have identified at least one supplier for every component required for the mission.

Only thing is, due to the difficulties involved, there will be no return to Earth for any of the crew. Once settled on Mars, they will remain there for the rest of their lives.

The whole project will be broadcast by the media back home, so that everyone can see their work and their discoveries on Mars. It will be a huge media spectacle.

In 2023, the first crew of 4 astronauts will emigrate to Mars - a journey that will take 7 months.


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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby dinopello » Sun 05 Aug 2012, 20:09:22

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Re: THE Mars (planet) Thread (merged)

Unread postby dissident » Sun 05 Aug 2012, 21:50:08

I am really hoping that this scheme works out. Sending robotic devices to Mars is vastly better use of money in the near future than manned missions.
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Current Model of Solar System Incorrect?

Unread postby vision-master » Tue 21 Aug 2012, 08:58:59

It this model of our solar system BS?

Do the Planets really circle around the Sun in a nice orderly plane?

Does the Sun really just sit static in the Milky Way?

Image
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Re: Current Model of Solar System Incorrect?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Tue 21 Aug 2012, 09:36:08

Nothing sits static, except the Buddha. Or VM with his bong.
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Re: Current Model of Solar System Incorrect?

Unread postby vision-master » Tue 21 Aug 2012, 10:12:10

Binary Sun System (Sun/ Sirius) ??

Image

Thanks to the work of Karl Heinz and Uwe Homann of Canada, the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, is receiving renewed attention as an unconventional companion star candidate. Please take a look at our new page on this. We have tried to show the data in an easy to understand way.


http://binaryresearchinstitute.org/srg/ ... ntro.shtml
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Re: Current Model of Solar System Incorrect?

Unread postby dissident » Tue 21 Aug 2012, 11:23:02

vision-master wrote:Binary Sun System (Sun/ Sirius) ??

Image

http://binaryresearchinstitute.org/srg/ ... ntro.shtml


You are not going to get any planetary system around binary star systems. The non-integrability of the three-body problem known since the days of Newton means no stable orbital configuration would exist. Only if the third body ("planet") was very small and sufficiently far from the binary stars would you get a quasi-stable orbit where the chance of ejection from the star system or collision with one of the stars was small.

In our solar system we have the typical disk orbit pattern produced after either ejection or collision of celestial bodies in non-coplanar orbits. That's why we do not have any planets in orbital planes at 90 degrees to each other (or any anything other than zero degrees for that matter). Our solar system is, in effect, a collection of two-body systems consisting of the Sun and each planet. The interaction between the planets is relatively weak and their spacing away from the Sun is such that they do not end up colliding with each other (it is not excluded that they can collide after billions of years, however, as the stability of the solar system is not assured since it is an N-body system with N > 3). In the distant past there were planets in the "wrong" orbits and there were massive collisions such as what gave rise the Earth's moon. But these unstable configurations have filtered themselves out over time.
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Re: Current Model of Solar System Incorrect?

Unread postby vision-master » Tue 21 Aug 2012, 13:47:42

So, you are saying the old model is correct?

Tell me about Precession of the Equinoxes - please don't come up with the antiquated theory of it's due to the Earths Wobble.......
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Re: Current Model of Solar System Incorrect?

Unread postby Beery1 » Tue 21 Aug 2012, 14:17:56

vision-master wrote:It this model of our solar system BS?
Do the Planets really circle around the Sun in a nice orderly plane?
Does the Sun really just sit static in the Milky Way?


We've known for decades that this is not the case. Not sure where your point is here.
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Re: Current Model of Solar System Incorrect?

Unread postby Beery1 » Tue 21 Aug 2012, 14:20:01

dissident wrote:
vision-master wrote:You are not going to get any planetary system around binary star systems...


That's weird, because I just read of just such a planet having been found:

http://www.space.com/12963-tatooine-pla ... r-16b.html
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