Number 5 in the series. The previous post is here.
Since the big success of IFT-4, I've been somewhat fixated on space colonization. I'm getting all Star-Trekkie here. The possibilities that could be opening up has my mind spinning. So here's another post in the series. It will be number 5 in the series.
What's whirling around my brain at the moment are these questions: Does Elon Musk know what he's making? If he's got it, will he be like the dog chasing the car? Will he know what to do with it once he has it?
I watched about 20 minutes of Tim Dodd's most recent interview of Musk. He wants to build thousands of Starships. What? Let me posit this. There's no way that thousands of Starships are going to be launched every day on this planet. People are going to start opposing it.
Why does he need 200 tons in orbit with every launch? He needs it for fuel to go to Mars. Therefore, he needs as many ships as he can build. Now consider this: he has to use up 5000 to 6000 tons of fuel on each launch in order to get that 200 tons of fuel to orbit. This isn't going to happen. People are going to say "wait a minute".
Instead of doing that, he needs to go off-world for fuel. That would be Venus. Last night, I plugged my idea into a spreadsheet with the rocket equation scenarios programmed in. From LVO ( Low Venus Orbit) to HEO (High Earth Orbit), you could bring along 700 to 800 tons of mined Venusian atmosphere which can be converted to rocket fuel. You could possibly do this without having to land on Venus at all. Just skim off the top of its atmosphere, and then rocket it up towards HVO. From there, it only takes a small push, and it's off for Mars or Earth. Capture orbits for these destinations don't require a lot of fuel due to low Delta-V requirements.
You can push along the fuel to these locations and use them as staging points. From HEO (High Earth Orbit), you could send a passenger craft that could hold upward of a thousand people each. They could go in comfort in a well shielded and rotating space habitation that could protect them from the major hazards of long duration space flight. That would be radiation and micro gravity. Somebody traveling on a Starship for months is going to be in rough shape when they get there. You may want to consider other options. An off-world source for fuel could drastically reduce the number of launches needed from Earth. People might consider a trip to Mars if they don't get killed in the process.
You don't need a lot of fuel to get from HEO to HMO ( High Mars Orbits). Consequently, one Starship can be like a tug to push along one big space hab for the long journey to Mars. Also, one Starship could be like a big space tug that ships lots of fuel from Venus to these same staging points. The Starship can use these staging point to fuel up and drop off passengers.
Musk's idea of using the Starship to do all these tasks by itself is unrealistic. He's likely to get a lot of people killed that way. They'll die of radiation sickness of body injuries due to micro-gravity. The space habs will solve that problem. Then Starship could specialize in what it does best. That would be getting a lot of mass to somewhere fast, and to get back to low Earth orbit and to Earth itself for more passengers and CARGO. CARGO would mean building those large space habs, and to provision them. Starship could also bring people and cargo back from Mars. It would be a commercial prospect that could fund the whole enterprise. The Earth could rest easier without all those launches.
That's what's been spinning around my noggin lately. Will Musk insist on using the Starship in ways that do not take full advantage of its capabilities? We'll see.
End of series (for now). Update: The series will have to end with this post. Too little is known about the atmosphere of Venus, and the necessary technology is not available. Therefore, it is too speculative to continue much further. Update: You still have the moon, which has oxygen. Another possibility are the moons of Mars. Plus the asteroids. Venus could supply plenty of carbon dioxide, but you need water in order to have hydrogen for making the methane. Update: NEXT!
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