He does talk at length about staging materials in orbit in "thousands of flights" to set up a constant resupply for both the spacecrafts and the Martian inhabitants. And, again, as he says at the very beginning, his whole intent here is to make a trip to Mars seem possible. To get people more comfortable with the idea, so that it simply becomes a series of problems to solve toward a visualized goal, rather than a long litany of problems that - once solved - could allow us to mount a trip to Mars. He's not going to do it alone. He's not going to do it without solving some very big problems. But a reusable barge with big fucking rockets on the back that goes to space, turns around, and locks itself back into position back on the pad, where it refuels, restocks, and flies again... that's a pretty fine start to solving almost all of the weight problems. And he has practical solutions to all of those issues at least in alpha testing, if not beta. Add to that the intent to refuel for the return trip using native elements on Mars, and a powered landing craft, and ... well ... it seems pretty Moon-shot (which worked) to me!
Yea. The water weight and volume shocked me as I was expecting those numbers to be much higher. If I was doing this myself, however, this is what I would do. Launch the 100 man vessel. Then launch the "refuler" and dock it. Then launch a propulsion unit to dock with the other two units, go to mars and use the unmanned portions as a space depot of sorts in martian orbit. Land the people, do you thing and with enough of the "empties, you can either refuel them or salvage them for parts. I'll go out on a limb here and assume you read Zubin's plan correct? Being able to dump 300 tons into LEO, and recycle the booster is going to create a massive demand for space based services IMO. I hope it all happens and we can cheer it along, but I am no on the Hype train... yet. Let's get a few Falcon 9 Heavy launches under our belts and get manned resupply to the ISS, maybe even a manned Lunar landing. Then I will start to get excited.
Hypothetical question (possibly also to am_Unition?): do you know of any benefits for placing similar 'refueller' at places like L4 and L5 Lagrangian points in Earth-Sun system? I know that what you wrote above is still a long way from any form of completion, but aside of sci-fi I'm rarely hearing about even as much as speculations about these locations.Launch the 100 man vessel. Then launch the "refuler" and dock it. Then launch a propulsion unit to dock with the other two units, go to mars and use the unmanned portions as a space depot of sorts in martian orbit. Land the people, do you thing and with enough of the "empties, you can either refuel them or salvage them for parts.
L4 and L5 have no benefits for an earth-Mars transfer orbit. We are talking about Hohmann transfer orbits as the most efficient fuel-wise trip to get to anywhere in the solar system.do you know of any benefits for placing similar 'refueller' at places like L4 and L5 Lagrangian points in Earth-Sun system?
Yeah, francopoli is right. You'd waste a fair bit of fuel decelerating to park at L4 or L5, and/or lengthen the total time of the trip unnecessarily. This on top of the fact that the station-keeping required to keep anything there would be fairly intensive. L1, L2, and L3 are "saddle" shaped (in gravitational potential) equilibriums, unstable in one dimension (radially), but L4 and L5 are unstable both radially and tangentially to the orbit. I can't think of anything that'd be gained by using Lagrange points to get to Mars, but it was a good exercise :).
Nailed it. The first one there is always the "crazy" one. Then, 18 months later, there are 25 companies doing the exact same thing, and you have a market. A virtual location in orbit where people can place things to go to Mars is a very tasty location to me. Everything from cubesats to Amazon Fresh shipments can sit there and be picked up by SpaceX for the continuous stream of missions going back and forth to Mars. (And the Moon.) I see some sort of a hub thingie floating in orbit. It has solar panels, power, and thousands of "mount points" where companies can attach their thingies to await pickup by SpaceX. Containers of water. Electronics. Food. Each of them just a simple box with a magnet on one side that can maneuver up to the Hub, attach, and await instructions to detach and maneuver into the waiting ship. FedEx hub in space, man. ...create a massive demand for space based services IMO...
Doesn't it make more sense to have the shipyards in space? I envision a future where we have two different types of vehicles, gravity well tugs, and interplanetary vessels. That way you're not dependent on one type of frame to do all the heavy lifting AND be efficient as an interplanetary transport.