[HN Gopher] "The Martian" + Starship
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"The Martian" + Starship
Author : Thorondor
Score : 103 points
Date : 2021-06-28 16:17 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (caseyhandmer.wordpress.com)
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| rbanffy wrote:
| A lot of the story is a consequence of how limited access to Mars
| is. With Starship on full-scale, a resupply mission can be
| diverted from a future landing site or assembled from scratch in
| weeks. Even an already landed Starship could probably still hop
| enough to take supplies to Watney.
|
| Starship, if it pans out as planned, is a huge game changer.
| rbanffy wrote:
| With Starship at full scale, Watney would just dial 911 and get
| emergency transport to a hospital in the nearest colony.
| cfraenkel wrote:
| Did you read the book? The limitation was that it takes 6
| months+ to get there. Assemble a mission from scratch in weeks
| - it'll still take you six months to get there.
| basementcat wrote:
| With a big enough rocket, you're no longer constrained to use
| a minimum energy trajectory. You can cut down the travel time
| but you'll need to do additional burns to speed up and slow
| down (with corresponding additional risks).
| rbanffy wrote:
| Not only that - with cheaper launches you could have more
| frequent launches. At any given time there would be at
| least one supply ship on its way to Mars that could be
| diverted to a different landing site. Even if the
| capability for multiple launches a day never materializes,
| it'd be safe to assume there could be a vehicle ready to
| launch in weeks. With a payload capacity of 100 tons, it
| could do a significantly higher energy trajectory with
| supplies for a single person. With 5 tons of food and
| replacement parts per flight, you'd still have 95 fewer
| tons to push to Mars. Not sure about my math, but it looks
| like it'd have about 11 km/s of extra delta-v, which seems
| to be a lot (more than twice what you need for an optimal
| trip from the Earth to Mars).
|
| And that is if the only upper stage developed for
| Superheavy is the reusable Starship. An expendable upper
| stage could carry a lot more fuel and cargo. On a mission
| you don't expect the vehicle to return, it'd be fine to use
| a lighter one. I'm thinking a truncated Starship with a Red
| Dragon lander, doing a burn to slow down enough the lander
| can get safely to the surface with the supplies needed.
|
| Finally, with that much launch capacity, I'd be pretty sure
| there would be more than one crew on Mars at any time.
| Watney's rescuers could probably just drive to his door
| with food from over the hills.
| m4rtink wrote:
| I read the book and that was one of the least believable
| parts, that they were already into the third Mars landing
| mission _without any cheap reusable launch vehicles_!
|
| Like seriously, how much that must have cost so far ?? Not
| just money, but all the time thousands of people would have
| invested into producing maybe hundreds of booster stages that
| would then be just dumped to the sea. Such a colloidal waste
| it must have been!
|
| No wonder every margin is so thin in the book and even just
| launching a module with food is a major hurdle...
|
| Also there is really no apparent orbital infrastructure
| mentioned anywhere in the book, likely again due to the
| stupidly high ELV launch costs.
|
| In a proper RLV/Starship world Watney would either most
| likely not get stranded due to the whole operation being done
| by a fleet of ships, with some likely kept in reserve as
| spares.
|
| And even if he managed to get stranded and was lacking
| supplies to last to the next synod (say the crate with
| emergency supplies turned out to by logistic mistake contain
| chainsaws instead) you could very likely get a sacrificial
| starship with a couple tons of payload, fueled from one of
| your propelant depots in Earth orbit, to Mars very quickly.
| rbanffy wrote:
| We have to remember that, when The Martian was written,
| reusable boosters were... science fiction.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Brilliant fan fic!
| shellerik wrote:
| I was hoping this article would be about "The Hail Mary" which is
| an amazing book by the author of The Martian that involves a
| starship. I listened to the audio book and basically binged the
| last quarter of it. It's rare to find something so good I prefer
| it over streaming TV shows & movies.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| I think they should use m/s for wind speed.
| dhosek wrote:
| I saw the title and imagined a scenario where someone combined
| the idea of "The Martian" with interstellar travel. Basic idea:
| interstellar colony ship with colonists in cryo-sleep. One of the
| colonists is inadvertently awakened mid-journey and has to
| attempt to survive the multi-year journey in solitude without
| jeopardizing the whole colony's travel.
|
| Feel free to write this if you like, any of you. Ideas are cheap
| and I have more than I'm likely to use in what remains of my
| life.
| pcmaffey wrote:
| Children of Time has this vibe. Though it's not just one person
| out of cryo working to save what's left of humanity (or what
| they think is left...)
| eximius wrote:
| Do you mean the sequel? Children of Ruin?
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| There was a story I read in the 1970s where a guy woke up in
| the transit and had a plan to "unfreeze" the females one by one
| and basically do bad things to each for one year then off them
| to pass the time.
|
| Spoiler...
|
| The second woman he unfreezes offs him.
|
| It was both representative of the male dominated era of science
| fiction, and a big progressive.
| mikestew wrote:
| _The second woman he unfreezes offs him._
|
| I was disappointed when this wasn't the ending to
| _Passengers_.
| qayxc wrote:
| What a twist that would've been :D
| zabzonk wrote:
| Also (kind of) Cordwainer Smith's "Think Blue, Count Two".
| aazaa wrote:
| Have a look at Passengers:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_(2016_film)
|
| And here's an alternative take that might work better:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gksxu-yeWcU
| psadauskas wrote:
| I liked the first 3/4 of that movie, the ending could have
| been way better.
|
| _Warning_ Spoilers: It would have been much better had Pratt
| died in the fusion exhaust pipe, and the movie ends one year
| later showing JLaw standing over another cryopod, internally
| conflicted if she should wake up another passenger, and only
| then finally forgiving Pratt.
| kzrdude wrote:
| When passengers ends, if feels like a cheap-o movie.
| Hollywood but with only two main actors and in total three
| actors for the whole film. So empty, no ensemble, no people.
| Only the two actors, production, special effects and the
| movie making machine.
| peakaboo wrote:
| Not to mention both actors look like Ken and Barbie and has
| extreamly predictable personalities. That movie could have
| been great if actors would have been like genuine people.
| Instead it became plastic and meaningless.
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| The movie could have been great if it was oriented around
| the female passenger waking up and not knowing what had
| already happened before instead of the audience knowing
| everything linearly
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gksxu-yeWcU
| imbnwa wrote:
| That musical vignette...
| croddin wrote:
| This is actually a similar idea to the latest novel by Andy
| Weir (Author of "The Martian"), "Project Hail Mary", which is
| great and I highly recommend if you liked "The Martian".
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| Never realised he had another book out - thank you. After
| being less interested in the drama presented in Artemis, I'm
| thrilled he seems to have another problem->fix type book I
| can read.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Note that Hail Mary is much closer in plot and style to
| Artemis than The Martian. I loved The Martian (9.5/10), but
| only passably liked Artemis (6/10) and Hail Mary (5/10).
| jkubicek wrote:
| YMMV: I liked Hail Mary just as much, if not more then,
| The Martian. It had the same "solo dude using science and
| cleverness to solve an impossible problem" with a
| massively more ambitious plot.
|
| Also, the plot twists in Hail Mary are very well
| delivered. The book ends up being _completely_ different
| then you 're expecting when you go into it.
| janpot wrote:
| Oxygen (2021)
| dmichulke wrote:
| You spoiled the plot :-p
| mikestew wrote:
| Boy, if you think that's a spoiler, don't watch the
| trailer. "Spoiler" != "Plot Summary".
| dnautics wrote:
| Passengers (2016)
| dexwiz wrote:
| Also Pandorum (2009).
| darkerside wrote:
| This movie was way more incredible than it had any right to
| be
| fsn4dN69ey wrote:
| Funnily enough, I thought the script was better than the
| movie itself. I read the script back in 2014 or something and
| it was way better than how the movie turned out.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That could have been so much cooler of a movie if they'd shot
| it from Jennifer Lawrence's POV but they probably didn't want
| to have Chris Pratt being super creepy (which in the story
| he's not a good guy).
| benchaney wrote:
| Andy Weir, the author of the Martian, just came out with a new
| book called Project Hail Marry. It's premise is similar to what
| you are describing. If you liked the Martian, I highly
| recommend it. It's one of the best books I have ever read.
| Aachen wrote:
| Seconded. The Martian is still my favorite, but Hail Mary is
| #2 now, pushing Daemon from Daniel Suarez to third place.
| m4rtink wrote:
| One book of the Revelation Space series has an interesting take
| on this.
|
| Though it's not just a single person, colonists in cryosleep
| (or more precisely their mass at braking time) are definitely
| involved. ;-)
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| This is part of the plot of Allen Steele's 2002 SF novel
| Coyote.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_(novel)
| jffry wrote:
| It's only similar to your premise, but I enjoyed Mur Lafferty's
| "Six Wakes", which is a scifi murder-mystery aboard a colony
| ship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Wakes
| afgasgbui wrote:
| I used to be confused by SpaceX marketing. Why do they talk about
| 90%+ cost reduction per KG to LEO? Maybe the general public will
| fall for it, but the general public doesn't often launch
| satellites. The actual experts will just laugh them out of the
| room. There's no way their marketing can fool anyone who is in a
| position to give them money.
|
| Apparently I was mistaken. There are people working at the JPL
| who seriously believe we'll be able to send payloads _to the
| Martian surface using a human-rated vehicle and bring it back to
| Earth_ for $1,000 /kg. There are people working for NASA who
| actually believe we will be able to launch to LEO for _$55 /kg._
|
| What the Hell?
|
| I guess it's no wonder NASA is doing so badly if these are the
| sorts of people they're hiring.
| dweekly wrote:
| For those of us not expert in the commercial space industry, it
| might be more helpful to point out some reasoning outlining the
| impossibility of these claims or pointing to resources that do
| instead of simply scoffing at them. An eyeroll is not a very
| educating comment (especially coming from a relatively new
| account with low karma and no clear expert credentials on this
| matter presented, though I am assuming you have them) and this
| is an area I think many of us on HN would like to learn more
| about as well as improve our critical thinking on such matters.
| We'd love to hear more about why you think what you think.
| dtparr wrote:
| Agreed, I'm curious if the scoffing was at the claim of 100
| metric tons to LEO or the pricing for such a launch ($55/kg
| would mean a $5.5M/launch cost). I'm assuming the latter
| since the Saturn V could put 140 metric tons in LEO, but the
| F9 costs roughly an order of magnitude more.
| afgasgbui wrote:
| The latter, of course. Launch prices have been fairly
| consistent for about 50 years. Promising a sudden 20x cost
| reduction over SpaceX's already exaggerated figures without
| any real innovation is ludicrous.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Yeah, it's not like you could say double the number of
| transistors on an IC every two years - those things are
| _tiny_. Totally impossible.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > There are people working for NASA who actually believe we
| will be able to launch to LEO for $55/kg.
|
| I mean, that works fine if you have something like a space
| elevator: $ units # assuming 10cent/kWh[0]
| You have: 300 km gravity * (.1$/kWh) Definition:
| 0.081722083 US$ / kg You have: sqrt(G
| earthmass/earthradius) Definition: 7911.1468 m / s
| You have: (9km/s)^2 * (.1$/kWh) Definition: 2.25 US$ / kg
| You have: ((9km/s)^2+300 km gravity) * (.1$/kWh)
| Definition: 2.3317221 US$ / kg
|
| So lifting stuff to LEO should cost ~2.50$/kg in energy at
| current retail prices. Adding (merely) a factor of twenty in
| overhead to actually deliver that energy is significantly more
| iffy, though.
|
| 0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183700/us-average-
| retail...
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| So far I've seen them achieve everything they set out to
| achieve. But I'm not an expert, or even a knowledgeable
| amateur, in this area.
|
| What's the reasoning behind your scepticism? More information
| would be good, it's an interesting subject.
| qayxc wrote:
| > So far I've seen them achieve everything they set out to
| achieve.
|
| That's not true. They've achieved _parts_ of what they set
| out for, yes. The important parts, too. But far from
| everything.
|
| Just one example, because that irks me every time someone
| brings up nonsense like Starship point-to-point as a
| realistic option: SpaceX planned to achieve a turnaround time
| for F9 of 24 hours. So far, the best they could do is 27
| days.
|
| I won't get into why faster turnaround times are actually
| irrelevant for F9, but it goes to show that reality and plans
| don't always align even with SpaceX.
|
| Now with regards to the turnaround time, people with be quick
| to point out that this beat the Shuttle record of 54 days,
| but then again the F9 in question wasn't a crewed mission and
| doesn't reuse its upper stage, so...
|
| Another reason for healthy scepticism is the lack of cold
| hard numbers regarding the system. We cannot know the total
| system cost yet or the launch cost, because neither the final
| spec system nor its launch infrastructure exists. The number
| can also be very deceiving: the STS had an estimated $2000/kg
| to LEO goal and that was realistic back in he 1970s. Why?
| Because the calculation assumed ~50 launches per year and
| lots of cargo missions.
|
| Instead, the shuttle launched only 4.5 times a year and the
| launch cost increased dramatically after the 1986 Challenger
| disaster and again after the 2003 Columbia accident due to
| safety procedures and maintenance.
|
| In addition all launch facilities, infrastructure costs and
| R&D are priced into the Shuttle launch cost (e.g. total
| program cost divided by number of missions), which is
| impossible to do for Starship since we don't know the R&D or
| infrastructure costs.
|
| Just throwing a number like $1000/kg into the ring is pretty
| meaningless as you need to provide context as well (number of
| launches per year, unit- and infrastructure costs, R&D costs,
| etc.). It's also important to keep in mind that this is the
| number SpaceX wants to achieve _eventually_ , e.g. not with
| the first launch.
|
| F9 launch costs haven't decreased either and NASA and the DoD
| in particular still pay a hefty premium compared to business
| customers. We'll see.
| smaddox wrote:
| F9 launch costs haven't decreased _for customers_. That in
| no way implies they haven 't decreased for SpaceX. Why
| would Space X reduce the cost for customers below what they
| are willing to pay?
| afgasgbui wrote:
| >So far I've seen them achieve everything they set out to
| achieve.
|
| They built competitive rockets. That's a big deal and I don't
| wish to diminish that. They promised magic 99% cost savings
| and are nowhere close.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I googled. It seems they're at a 40% reduction as of Oct
| 2020 [0] for Falcon launches of government satellites, and
| could go lower but there's politics involved - as always in
| government-funded anything.
|
| Is that correct? If so, then that's not "nowhere close",
| it's another order of magnitude away, for sure, but the
| high-volume approach of Spaceship could do that? Or not?
|
| [0] https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/10/05/how-much-
| cheaper-a...
| jcims wrote:
| Do we know their costs though? Even if they did achieve
| 99%, whats the incentive to reduce prices that far while
| the volume is this low?
| tectonic wrote:
| Everything on Casey's blog is pretty great.
| maxdo wrote:
| in a real world future chinese nuclear module would save him
| quite fast :)
| thrill wrote:
| This premise would make a delightful text adventure game.
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