Main Engine Cut Off - T+22: SpaceX Mars Architecture Announcement Preamble

Episode Date: September 21, 2016

SpaceX is set to make an announcement next week at the IAC 2016 regarding their Mars colonization architecture. I talk about what we know, what I expect to see, and what I hope is included in their plans. IAC - International Astronautical Congress | September 26th - 30th 2016 Guadalajara, Mexico IAC 2016 ENG on Livestream WeMartians | Follow humanity's journey to Mars Inevitable SpaceX FUD - Main Engine Cut Off I am Elon Musk, CEO/CTO of a rocket company, AMA! Gwynne Shotwell at SmallSat: First Raptor Shipped to McGregor - Main Engine Cut Off t/Space Vision for Space Exploration Presentation (PDF, 6.9MB) Email feedback to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Hello and welcome to the Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo and we are just about a week out from SpaceX's big announcement down at the IIC in Mexico. This is their announcement of their Mars architecture, of their Humans to Mars programs, and really everything that comes after Red Dragon. We've heard about Red Dragon already. We haven't heard about much else after that initial mission, or even that second and third mission. So this is about what comes after that. And this is the event that we've been looking to for a while now. We've been looking forward to this through a slow summer, and everyone's really excited to hear about whatever SpaceX has to say. We don't know all too much about what will be announced, but we definitely know that SpaceX will be there.

They will be talking about something. The announcement is still on for all intents and purposes. Now, just a schedule reminder, this is going to be taking place on the second day of the IAC. So this is next Tuesday, September 27th, 2.30 p.m. Eastern, 6.30 p.m. UTC. This is going to be a talk by Elon Musk, and it's titled Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species. So, you know, what we've assumed so far and what's been the sound of it so far is that this is going to be about their big grand visions for their architecture. A little bit of that was thrown into doubt after the AMO6 incident. People were unsure whether they're going to talk about everything they were planning on talking about before, whether they're going to shift the tone of it a little bit based on that incident.

We don't really know how they're going to handle that. We will never actually know because we won't know what they were planning before that and what they are planning now. But all we know is that they're going to be talking about these plans. So it is worth watching for sure based on what we're hearing coming out of this. And that's what we're going to talk about here. I figured it would be a good day to do a little bit of preamble to the IAC. We'll talk about what we know already, what I hope to see, see some predictions that kind of thing to get ready for the announcement we'll talk about uh you know some different things that we need to be looking out for things that we haven't heard about yet that we need to be sure to get some

information on to really know how this is all going to go down and just a reminder uh i'm going to be following along with this very closely so if you want to follow along with some of my thoughts as this event goes on, be sure to follow at WeHaveMiko on Twitter. That's where I'll be posting a lot of this kind of stuff as I watch the live stream. Oh, I should mention that as well. All of these sessions, the main sessions of the ISE are going to be live streamed, and that includes the SpaceX announcement. So I'm sure everyone will be posting links to this live stream. I'll put one in the show notes where you can go for the live stream of this event. So I'll be following along very closely. I'll be talking about it on Twitter. And then later that afternoon on Tuesday, I will be coming on Main Engine Cutoff and recording an episode with Jake from the We Martians podcast. I talked about this a bit last week, and there will be some other links in the

show notes out to We Martians. If you head over toineCutoff.com, I'll have a bunch of links there. We're going to get on and talk about what was announced that day, sort of an initial reactions podcast. We're going to talk about what was talked about, what wasn't talked about, and just kind of break down what we heard. And that will be on Tuesday afternoon. I might even do a little bit of Google Hangout or live stream or something like that. So look out on Twitter for any links to that kind of stuff. And that'll be the show that gets posted next week after the show. And then the week after that, I'm going to be on the Wee Martians podcast with Jake doing a little bit of a more slow and thoughtful kind of breakdown of what we heard. So the main engine cutoff episode that we're doing this kind of crossover

thing on, that'll be an initial reactions and just kind of our, you know, off the cuff episode. And then the We Martians episode will be something that's a little slower and more thoughtful. Not maybe not so much in the heat of the moment. Now, before we talk about what is going to be announced or what we already know is going to be announced, I just want to mention, you know, some of the inevitable feelings towards SpaceX making this announcement. It's certainly clouded by the fact that they had that Amos 6 incident recently, where we all saw a Falcon 9 explode on the launch pad, not even during launch day. And there's a certain segment of the industry that feels that SpaceX is moving too fast,

iterating too fast, isn't focused enough, is unreliable. And that segment of the industry will always feel that way. They would have felt that way about SpaceX even without the AMO6 incident. They already did feel that way about SpaceX. And if SpaceX went out to make this announcement at the IAC and they had not had the AMO6 incident, these people would still feel that way about SpaceX, that they would still feel like they're being too unfocused and too iterative and too quick moving, and that by announcing their Mars plans and this plan for another family of rockets, that they wouldn't be focused enough on the Falcon family of rockets. So this is a feeling that SpaceX itself really can't escape,

because they came into an industry that was pretty established, that was pretty set in its ways, and they really were a change agent for the industry. There are other companies doing that as well. There are other companies that are certainly changing the way that things work in the industry. But it is not arguable that SpaceX is the one that came in and really shook things up the hardest. So when you are that person, when you are in that position, when you are the company that comes in and says, you know those old ways that you guys were doing things? We're going to change all that. We're going to do it this way. And it's going to be something that's going to get a lot of traction and force you to change your business. When you are that company, you get this kind of feeling a lot where, oh, you're being too fast and loose

on your plans. You're being too iterative. You're not focused enough. These are the feelings that get sent your way when you are that player in an industry. And certain people will respond in a way that fits in with the competitive attitude. You look at ULA, a very, very stagnant company over the past decade. Tory Bruno is doing a lot of work to make sure that they can stay up and be competitive in the new environment. And they're certainly making strides towards that. They're cutting their costs on their rockets that they're producing. Now they're working towards a next generation rocket. And you contrast that with Arian Space, who kind of just continually puts out this fear, uncertainty, and doubt around SpaceX and say

that, you know, reusable rockets haven't hit their time yet. You know, they recovered one, but they haven't reflown it yet. And they keep saying this over and over again. And they're kind of set in their own ways and saying that we're going to be fine with our expendable rockets, with solid rocket boosters, et cetera, et cetera. And these are the kind of two competing attitudes where you have someone who looks at SpaceX and says, that's a big wave in the industry, so we need to do something to respond. And there's another side that says, that's a big wave in the industry that's going to just fade out. So all that is to say that SpaceX being SpaceX, their burden is this feeling that they are being too quick, they're being too iterative, they're not focused enough, and that anything they do will get a certain amount of flack from a segment of the industry that thinks

that they are being irresponsible. So all in all, I am really, you know, happy that they are pushing on with this announcement. It got pushed off before because of the CRS-7 incident, which was certainly something that was a big issue. They needed to focus on getting that back to flight. You know, an in-flight failure is certainly something that should not be taken lightly. And a pad failure shouldn't be taken lightly either. But if you're willing to push off an announcement like this about the future of your company, about the things that your company is working on, you might never get to this announcement. There will always be something in the way that you should push this announcement off for. And a lot of the general refrain is that SpaceX needs to focus all

of their energy on getting Falcon 9 back up and running, when in reality, SpaceX is a company of multiple thousands of people. They have these teams that are focused on different projects. They have a contract with the United States Air Force to work on this Raptor engine as a Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy upper stage engine. So, you know, are those people going to stand down and try to help out with the Falcon 9 issue? No, they're not going to do that because that would not make any sense. You're not going to throw more people into the mix and just confuse things and make things harder when in reality that issue is unrelated to their section of the company. SpaceX does not and should not have to operate like the old startup that they once were,

you know, the small company that needed to be really focused and quick turning and kind of throw all hands on deck in certain instances. They are a bigger company now. They are more established now. They have different businesses they're interested in. They have different revenue streams. They have different projects that don't cross over too much, where you have people working on the actual stages of Falcon 9. You have people working on the Merlin engines. You have people working on the Raptor engines. There's all these different sides of the company that you don't necessarily need to throw up into upheaval when something happens in another segment of the company. And that's where SpaceX is at today. So push on with this announcement, SpaceX. Don't hold back from talking about the future

of your own private company. You are a private company still. You have the ability to talk about these plans and to look beyond where you are now, because that is how you stay relevant. That is how you stay on top of things. If you're only ever focused on the here and now, you get into a situation where you're airy in space, or you get into a situation where you're ULA five years ago, that you're set flying the Atlas V and Delta IV until the end of times, with these hundreds of millions of dollars of launch costs. So this is what makes SpaceX SpaceX, is their ability to look beyond where they are today, to look beyond what is working today for them and say, this is working now, but what do we need to do five years from now,

10 years from now, 20 years from now? Where do we need to be to be the company we want to be? So maybe that was just a long-winded rant that really wasn't going anywhere. But my point is, this is SpaceX's burden as the company they are. and I am so happy that they're going on with this announcement. Even with everyone else talking about how bad this is for them, how bad it looks, go on with this announcement and show that you are the future thinkers. You are the people pushing this industry forward and sometimes dragging it, kicking and screaming into the future. All right, well, with that out of the way, let's get into what is going to be announced and talked about at that session next week. So we'll start off with what we already know and some things that have kind of been leaked and we don't really know, but we sort

of know. And a lot of the most hard evidence and hard stats that we've got for this came out of a Ask Me Anything that Elon Musk did on Reddit just about a year ago, or maybe a year and a half ago now. He did say, you know, he talked about the Raptor engine a little bit. And what he did say was that each engine is going to have a thrust of 230 metric tons. So that's about 500,000 pounds of thrust, very equivalent to the BE-4 engine that we talked about last week. So this is the engine that they're working on. Like I mentioned before, they have a contract with the U.S. Air Force to work on this engine for use on the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy as an upper stage engine. We don't know, you know, where they're at with the scale of this engine. Is the one that they're building for the Falcon family,

is that the same scale as the one that's going to be built for this next generation of rockets? Or is it a smaller one for the Falcon and then be built for this next generation of rockets, or is it a smaller one for the Falcon and then scaled up for the next generation rocket? A few months ago, we heard from Gwen Shotwell that the first Raptor engine had been shipped to McGregor for testing. You know, people are watching those test stands in McGregor all the time. We haven't seen a firing yet of those. I would hope that we see a video during the announcement of a engine firing from that Raptor or something like that. Maybe just a picture of the hardware that is at McGregor, so we can kind of get a sense for where they're at. But that would definitely seem to be the most

hard side of this announcement, is that we know these Raptor engines exist. We know there's one in Texas right now at their test site in Texas. We're definitely going to hear a lot more about Raptor in that conference talk, and we'll get to what I hope to hear about Raptor in a little bit. The other things we know is that it's going to be a two-stage system. So in the AMA, Elon Musk was talking about a single monster boost stage and the spaceship part of the system. So it's sort of this two-stage situation where you have a huge reusable first stage with then the bigger spacecraft on top that would be, you know, in orbit and then refueled and be used to go to Mars and land on Mars. So it's going to be some sort of that two-stage system. The first stage is going to have probably 20 or 30 some Raptor engines, and that would,

you know, launch the upper stage spacecraft and then come back to land, maybe either on a ship like the Falcon 9 does now, or maybe even on land somewhere. We'll talk about that in a bit when we talk about launch site. In terms of how big this spacecraft is, Elon Musk himself said that the goal is to have 100 metric tons of useful payload to the surface of Mars. So that's 100 metric tons of stuff that you're bringing to Mars, not even the dry mass of the spacecraft when you land at Mars. 100 metric tons of cargo, of useful cargo when you get to Mars. So certainly that gives you an idea of the scale of this rocket. There have been some leaks that have come out that we, you know, we don't know how true those are or where they're at on the scale. But, you know, one of them was that

this system in general could lift some 236 metric tons to low Earth orbit. You know, we don't know how much that has changed since that leak that kind of came out and got posted on Reddit once and then kind of taken down. A lot of weirdness around that whole thing. But, you know, some of the ways that this would work have been leaked as well,

where you would launch the spacecraft up to low Earth orbit with this two-stage system, and the second stage being the spacecraft itself. That would get to orbit and then be refueled before it heads out to Mars. And certainly, you know, the Raptor being a methane engine, you can imagine the spacecraft landing on Mars and using ISRU to refuel when they're on the surface of Mars, you know, make some methane for your trip back, kind of in a Mars Direct type of method. methane for your trip back, kind of in a Mars direct type of method. There's also been talk that the 100 metric tons of useful payload would fit, you know, 100 people to Mars at one shot.

And certainly their initial trips would not have 100 people. They're not going to do the first landing on Mars with 100 people. But, you know, once this system is up and running and functioning as it intends to, the goal would be to have 100 people on the way to Mars with each one of these. So that's something that would kind of be like a small cruise ship headed to Mars every, you know, every launch window or so. Some other things that Elon Musk has said, he did say in that Ask Me Anything, at first I was thinking we would just scale up Falcon Heavy, but it looks like it would probably make more sense to just have a single monster boost stage.

So this is going to be a single core rocket, which certainly simplifies the design a good bit. Look at how many issues they're having getting Falcon Heavy off the ground. There's been delay after delay. Unrelated to some of the structural side of things, certainly. Definitely, that was a different situation because they already have a flying rocket that has been uprated and uprated to compete with some of the market of Falcon Heavy.

So there's certainly other things at play there. But a single core rocket is certainly a lot easier from an engineering side of things. And you look at what Blue Origin announced last week with the new Glenn rocket, a single core monster stage. It's something that makes a lot of sense for this kind of usage. And certainly when you look at what they've been doing with Falcon 9, you can see that this is a system that is meant to scale up. They've built this in a way that isn't so reliant on any one particular aspect of Falcon 9. They have this kind of system at play with the Falcon 9 first stage reusability. You know, they have the multiple engines that help with the throttling, so they don't have to have a

super deep throttling engine. They can kind of limit what engines are firing at what time to get the right thrust values. And there's systems at work there that can be applied to something larger than the Falcon 9 itself. And that's the way that SpaceX likes to work. They like to implement something and then scale it up and scale it up and scale it up and keep going to build out a bigger system. So I think that wraps up the hard truths of what we know is going to be announced. You know, a big boost stage with these Raptor engines that are burning methane, 500,000 pounds of thrust, 20 or 30 on the first stage, maybe a handful of six or eight on the spacecraft section. I don't know there's much else there that we can talk about in terms of things that are definitely going to be announced. So we will move into things I'm excited to find out, what I hope to see,

what I hope is included in their plans for Mars. But before we get into that, I just want to say thank you very much to all of the patrons that are supporting Main Engine Cutoff over on Patreon. If you want to help support the show, if you want to help support the blog, head over to Patreon at patreon.com slash Miko. there will be a link in the show notes as well head over there and support for as little as one dollar a month all of your support really really helps me work on the show and the podcast and the blog and everything that's surrounding main engine cutoff it helps me improve that continually so thank you very much to all of the patrons supporting over on patreon so now as i move into things i'm excited to find out, what I hope to see,

what I hope is included, I want to hear from you what you're looking for in this announcement. So if you've got any feedback on what you're expecting to see from SpaceX, on what you're hoping to see from SpaceX, email me anthony at managingcutoff.com or tweet at wehavemiko. And the first thing that I think is top of mind for a lot of us is, you know, we're excited to find out what the shape of the spacecraft is itself. We know what the boost stage is going to look like. It's going to look like a giant Falcon 9. That's a pretty well-considered design. You know, we assume there's going to be grid fins and a cluster of engines at the bottom, certainly. Some sort of landing leg system. whether or not it looks like the Falcon 9 legs is up to be debated because, you know, uh, oh, I should mention that

the boost stage of this is probably going to be something in the range of, of 10 to 15 meters, probably at the upper end of that range. Um, so, you know, with such a wide, uh, area that you're covering, you might not need legs that extend out. You might just need legs that extend down below the engine belt. So we sort of have an idea of what the boost stage is going to look like. But the shape of the spacecraft is something that I've been thinking about a lot, you know, because there's really a few ways to go for that. The first one that kind of fits in with the SpaceX model is something that is like a Dragon 2, but scaled up a huge amount. This is certainly the SpaceX way to go about it, because they like taking things that they're doing and scaling up. And when you think about the Red Dragon missions, you think about them doing

the entry, descent, and landing modeling of Red Dragon and doing those actual missions to learn how to land on Mars. I don't know if you'd want to throw all of that out the window to develop a different model for EDL, a different shaped spacecraft, and have to relearn EDL with that different shaped spacecraft. So when you're thinking about their system as a whole, they're doing these Red Dragon missions with a Dragon 2. Maybe it makes sense to take that and scale it up to the size that you need, because then you have, you know, for all intents and purposes, you have a model for how that spacecraft would work in the atmosphere of Mars. So when you think about scaling this up, you know, you keep that Dragon 2 shape, but you replace Super Dracos with Raptor engines or something like that. That's something that I could see being the case. And

that's certainly, you know, maybe my baseline expectations for the shape of the spacecraft. I'm not sure how you would handle some of the layout of that spacecraft itself. And, you know, but that's obviously not my job or I would be doing something else other than this podcast. But the other way to go about it is to do something that is more biconic in shape. So this is, you know, the shape that Blue Origin is probably going to use for their crew vehicle. We've seen some other concepts for crew vehicles that are biconic in the past. And this is something that has a better lift-to-drag ratio. So that's really good for the atmospheric entry of Mars because, again, there's not a lot of atmosphere at Mars. It's

just enough to make things difficult, but not enough to really slow you down when you've got a capsule aeroshell type of design. So a biconic shape would certainly have some benefits because of the better lift to drag ratio. You can consider, you know, the entry type for that might be coming in, let's say, in a space shuttle type manner where you've got, you know, you're coming in nose first and you can kind of do some turns or something like that to bleed off some speed. And then eventually you would have to flip over to do a Falcon 9 style landing, you know, propulsive of landing in that last bit of descent. So I think that is the other big option that we might see used. The Dragon 2 scaled up would be very beneficial

because they can take what they're doing with Red Dragon and apply it to the bigger spacecraft here. The Biconic spacecraft has some advantages and there is some pre-existing work that SpaceX has that might be applicable. And I'll get into that in one second. I think I've got something that you might love to read through. So those are the two options that I see that make the most sense for

what they're doing. You know, they're not going to do wings or anything like that. They're not going to do some sort of space shuttle type glider. Certainly, that's a lot of mass that you would be bringing in. And they're going to want to keep it something that, you know, is applicable to what they're doing now, something they can learn the aspects of while they're doing their work now, but something that is going to be the best solution for Mars. The other thing to consider is that this spacecraft is going to come back to Earth at some point, you know, it's going to head to Mars, land on Mars, refuel, and then be the return trip to Earth. So whatever they do is going to have to work at Mars

and it's going to have to work at Earth. So that's good in general because it does let you do some test missions around Earth without going all the way out to Mars and having to do all of these tests on the surface of Mars for the first time. You can fly it in low Earth orbit here, do some in-space checkouts, and then do an entry phase here at Earth. So now the thing that I was just mentioning, that there's some pre-existing work that SpaceX could draw on, I have in the show notes for you a link to a PDF from 2004. Now, this is going back into the well a good amount. You know, we're going back 12 years here. And what this is, is from the Vision for Space Exploration days.

There was a company that was in some of the proposals for COTS and some of the initial commercial crew programs and some of this Vision for Space Exploration kind of stuff. This one relevant to the crew exploration vehicle for the Vision for Space Exploration. This is a company called T-Space. And they were proposing some different ideas for the crew vehicle that would be used in the Vision for Space exploration, but they were doing it in concert with some of the different companies that were around at the time. Some of the smaller companies, they sort of made almost a conglomerate type of thing where they kind of came together and said, here's what we've got, here's what you've got, let's put it together in a way

that is competitive with a bigger company like a Boeing or like a Lockheed. Some of these bigger companies that have all these different parts of their company, if we all pool our resources and come together, we could do something in a pretty competitive manner. Now, SpaceX in this was included as someone who would be building the launch vehicles and I guess operating their own crew vehicles in some circumstances. But the Falcon rocket talked about in this, uh, in this PDF is the

Falcon five. So this is the, the thing that never actually existed between the Falcon one and the Falcon nine. It was obviously, you know, fitting in with the, uh, with the naming nomenclature of Falcon family rockets. It would have five first stage engines arranged in a Saturn V kind of style, you know, across, and probably would operate a lot like the Falcon 9 today, but a bit smaller of a size. Now in this PDF itself, you'll look through and there's a lot of different diagrams. And I highly recommend checking out this PDF because it's just, it's pretty great to think about what was in this PDF and where it might have led to and even, you know, how much of this is still alive today. Now, this was focused on the

lunar missions that were going to be part of the vision for space exploration. So there's certainly, you know, it's, this is not focused on atmospheric entry, though it is focused on atmospheric entry for Earth. So in a lot of ways, this is very applicable to what SpaceX might be working on for their Mars architecture, because it's been said in the past that if you develop an architecture for Mars, you've developed the architecture for a lunar landing. So, you know, if SpaceX comes out with all of this architecture next week and shows some of the different components, those components could be used to land on the moon as well. That is just, you know, it's, that's inherent to the way that you

have to get to Mars and the way that you have to get to the moon. You can do a lunar landing with Mars architecture and you can't necessarily do a Mars landing with lunar landing architecture. So this is something that, you know, Dr. Robert Zubern's talked about a lot. He's even mentioned it on this show itself, that if you're building for Mars, you can also land on the moon. But if you're building for the moon, you can't also land on Mars. So that's important to keep in mind when you're looking at this PDF itself. But the interesting thing in this PDF, if you look on, what is this page? Sorry, here it's page six or seven. There is a transit crew exploration vehicle, and there's three versions of this that they show. There's a crew transfer version, a cargo transfer version, and a propellant

transfer version. Now, this spacecraft itself is probably smaller than the SpaceX thing that we'll hear about next week, but it is biconic in shape. It has the fuel tanks up at the top part of the spacecraft in the nose, if you will, and then a section at the bottom that is either a cargo hold or a crew transfer, kind of a little habitat almost, and with a docking port at the bottom and all sorts of that stuff. There's landing legs that come out of the bottom of this, at the bottom of the spacecraft itself, so kind of at the tail end, not the nose end. of the spacecraft itself, so kind of at the tail end, not the nose end. And the cargo transfer version has the ability to leave the cargo module on the surface. So a little later on in the PDF,

there's a picture of these modules landed on the moon. And you see one of the spacecraft on the surface of the moon. And you see some cargo canisters that have been left there by other spacecraft. And you see one that is in the process of leaving its cargo hold behind. Now, this is a biconic module that's pretty big. It's got a pretty big diameter, probably not the size of what SpaceX will be announcing, but it has the ability to transfer crew, it has the ability to transfer cargo in a way that would leave cargo behind on the surface, and it even has a way that could transfer propellant. So in-space refueling was part of this T-SPACE proposal.

And when you look at those pieces, that sounds a lot like what we're going to hear from SpaceX next week. There's going to be, obviously, uncrewed versions of the Mars ship that go out to Mars before they're ready to send humans. Then there's going to be versions that send humans. There's going to be versions that refuel some of the different spacecraft. Now, in SpaceX's case, who knows if they're going to build three distinct models for this, you know, three distinct configurations, one for crew, one for cargo, one for propellant. I could see them doing it in a way that they could use each one for any of the other

models or maybe use the cargo version as a propellant transfer as well. However, it shakes out. I see a lot of what's going on in this PDF as something that's very relevant for SpaceX's plans. So I would suggest looking through this PDF because I think you'll get a little bit of a sneak peek of what we might see from SpaceX next week, which is a biconic thing that has the ability to leave some cargo on the surface, the ability to have a crew habitat in there, the ability to transfer payloads or transfer propellant and different things like that, the ability to re-enter Earth after its mission. There's a lot of elements in here that seem very applicable to what SpaceX is going to be working on. So again, in the show notes at mainenginecutoff.com, I have a link to a PDF in there. Please check it out because it's very,

very cool for what we might see from SpaceX next week. So in that vein, I really do hope that we see a version of their architecture that leaves cargo behind on the surface. You know, maybe in certain circumstances when you're doing these initial missions to the surface, you leave the cargo hold there as a habitat for future people that come to the base at Mars. I would love to see a version like that and very much in the T-space type method where the cargo hold is at the bottom of the spacecraft,

you land and then leave that hold there and take back off again and head back to Earth. The other thing I can't wait to find out about is where this thing is going to launch from. We don't even know if land-based is even an option at the scale that they're talking about for this architecture. You know, even the Saturn V at its scale was rattling things throughout Florida. So something, you know, even bigger than that with 30 some engines, that's going to be pretty, pretty massive when you think about, you know, the ability to kind of shake all of the land around you. So who knows if land base is even an option for this in what they're considering. Sea launch type of thing is certainly in the cards. If you remember, the Sea Dragon was something that was way, way, way, way bigger than the Saturn V,

and that would have considered sea launch, or at least it would have used sea launch exclusively. So I hope we hear some clarification about where this is going to launch, where this is going to land. I assume some sort of ship like the Falcon 9, but maybe it does come back to land as well, maybe in Boca Chica or something like that. I hope we get some clarification about where this is going to launch and maybe not even, you know, a specific spot in the world, but give us an idea of is this going to go from land? Is this going to go from sea? What's going to be the idea for the launch. Now another thing that I've been thinking about and hoping to see, you know, I brought up ISRU before to refuel the spacecraft at Mars before

it heads back, and when we start looking at what's needed for that, there's going to need to be a human-scale experiment on the surface of Mars that SpaceX runs before they can really design and build that system itself. So what I'm hoping is to use some Red Dragon missions to develop these technologies. The first window is obviously only going to have one Red Dragon, and that's going to test their entry, descent, and landing system. That's going to be the thing that they use to test some of these different theories on EDL, the theories on where they'd land, the landing site selection. That first mission is going to be a big thing to pave the way. But after that, they're

going to do two missions per window. I could see them doing one mission that they sell space on, you know, at a pretty good profit margin where you're selling space on a Red Dragon mission to fund their research of the other Red Dragon mission. Now, you know, the benefit for SpaceX is they get two times the EDL practice on each window. And that's kind of what makes me believe they might do something closer to a dragon shape capsule to kind of take advantage of that practice they're getting. And then the other benefits are that if you sell space on one red dragon, you can fund experiments for the other red dragon. So I hope that they take an entire dragon and devote it to human-scale ISRU demonstration on the surface of Mars. You've already got one dragon going that can be used for other

experiments to sell space to NASA or whoever else wants to put an experiment on the surface of Mars for a handful of million dollars. Devote another Red Dragon entirely to ISRU. And I hope that we see that, you know, the second window, the third window, that's going to have to be happening pretty quickly if ISRU is going to be part of their architecture overall. So I really hope that they talk about that a little bit. I hope that they're planning something like that. Otherwise, it seems like a waste of Red Dragons to me. If you're sending two per window and you're not going to devote any of that to ISRU,

you seem a little nuts in my eyes. Now, the final thing that I'm really, really, really hoping to see is obviously, predictably, based on some of my past comments, is artificial gravity. This is something that is not part of the NASA plans for Mars or for long-duration spaceflight. I talked about this with Dr. Robert Zubrin about why that is the case, why it's being left out of the NASA plans. It seems to be re-entering a little bit as they keep discovering other issues that would be problems in microgravity. You know, they kind of defeat one issue or at least defeat it enough that they would be comfortable sending people to Mars in zero G. And then they discover something else like the visual impairment issue that they're discovering now.

So every time they discover one of those, the artificial gravity movement gets a little bit stronger within NASA. There are obviously people in NASA that support artificial gravity. But for political reasons that have got us here today, artificial gravity is not yet in the deemed plans for Mars, for NASA. But when you've got a company like SpaceX who looks at things from an engineering perspective, when you look at, you know, if you look at a architecture for a Mars mission from a strictly engineering position, artificial gravity is the choice for your mission. Artificial gravity is the choice for your mission because you can design it in a way that is not harmful to the mission overall or harmful to the people on the mission overall if something were to go wrong with it. In the Mars Direct plan, he uses the upper stage that sent you on the way to Mars as the counterweight for a system that would spin the habitat. And, you know, that way, if there was an issue, you can just, you know, sever the tether and you're without artificial gravity on your way to Mars and you'll still be alive. You just might not be able to do much when you get there. So you might have to come back to Earth right away. So there certainly are ways to design an artificial gravity system that would not be,

you know, completely devastating to the mission at large or to the humans aboard the mission if something were to go wrong with it. When you're a company like SpaceX who thinks in that way, who thinks with an engineering mind and thinks in a way that you hope for the best but plan for the worst, this is something that looks very attractive for their architecture. Certainly when you think about a system that scales up to 100 people to Mars, you've got to assume artificial gravity is in the cards because the best way to keep humans healthy in that kind of flight is with artificial gravity. And SpaceX has said that they want a four-month transfer, not a six-month, not longer than that.

gravity. And SpaceX has said that they want a four-month transfer, not a six-month, not longer than that. But even so, you've got 100 people on board a spacecraft for this long. The constraints around the exercise it would take to keep your bone and muscle mass up during that cruise with 100 people, that's a lot of overhead we're talking about for workout equipment and things like that. And those things would be running all times of the day if you've got 100 people on the spacecraft. So when you look at all these different issues, artificial gravity is something that I see as almost a must in this case. If their plans are going to work out long term to actually colonize Mars, you need to have artificial gravity to get you there because that's going to keep your people on board healthier, ready to start work

immediately when you get to the surface of Mars. And when you're thinking at that scale, artificial gravity makes the most sense. So all that being the case, with artificial gravity seeming like a good way to go, how could they implement this? And this is something that I've kind of been thinking about and tossing around in my mind the last few months. Well, let's get back to our red dragon topic that we talked about a little while ago when we were talking about ISRU. There's going to be two red dragons going per transfer window.

And this seems like a good example of something that could be applied for a larger experiment, a larger proof of concept. You've got two red dragons going out. You think about a tether-type system as being the best for artificial gravity from an engineering perspective because it doesn't require a massive radius, you know,

massive radius centrifuge to do. And it's something that you could supply the entire ship with artificial gravity if you do it right. So when you're thinking about artificial gravity, you think about a tether system, you need two things of somewhat equal mass to spin, you think about a tether system, you need two things of somewhat equal mass to spin, or at least a mass that's going to create a good center of rotation for the thing that you care about. What if they were to use the Red Dragons as a testbed for that? Join up these two Red Dragon capsules that are headed to Mars, dock them or tether them together in some way. Maybe you're using the docking port at top where they're not going to have a docking port on the Red Dragon, so maybe they replaced that hardware with some sort of tethering hardware. So you join these Red Dragons up in space, tether them together, extend the tether,

and spin them up while they're en route to Mars. If you were to do that and then design your larger ship, your Mars Colonial Transporter, whatever the name tends to be for that thing. If you then use the same idea for that system, send two at a time per transfer window, meet them up in space, tether them together, and then extend the tether and spin them up, you've got a pretty good system in the SpaceX type way where they like to do something and then scale up. So do it with a Red Dragon, tether two things together, spin them up, see if it works, and then scale up to your larger ship. Tether two ships together, extend the tether, and spin them up. This seems like a good way to go about it to me. You know, you've got two habitats on either end that could

be spun up and provided with artificial gravity. Maybe in some cases where you're going with one ship with the humans on it and another one with cargo on it, you can spin them up and use the cargo as the counterweight and make sure that you get the best gravity for the humans in the habitat. This seems like a way that I could see them doing. So if they're going to go with artificial gravity, this would be my hope, is that they use Red Dragon as a testbed for that artificial gravity

and they scale up that system of tethering and spinning to their larger ships. When you start thinking about things like this, you know, I mentioned with the ISRU demonstration on Red Dragon, and now we talk about artificial gravity in concert with Red Dragon, you start seeing why these Red Dragon missions make so much sense for SpaceX. They could sell, you know, one entire Red Dragon, as I talked about, to, you know, NASA or whoever else to fund the research going on on their other Red Dragons. So, you know, you start looking at this kind of idea and you start seeing why Red Dragon makes so much sense because they can take these scale demonstrators, put them in a Red Dragon either on the surface or in space and

prove out some of these concepts before they do it with their giant, giant spacecraft later on. So all in all, you know, I wouldn't be surprised to hear more about Red Dragon from SpaceX. I wouldn't be surprised to hear about some of the Falcon Heavy things going on now. They'll probably mention the Falcon 9 incident just to kind of say, you know, we're investigating, we're hoping to get back to flight, etc., etc. But all in all, this architecture seems like something that they're going to pursue aggressively, you know, with or without those incidents. And I just hope to hear about these kind of systems that they're going to put in place to do some scale demonstrators, some prototypes, and build up to that larger architecture.

So anyway, I went on long enough at this point about things that will be completely outdated by the end of next week. So, you know, that'll be it for me today. I'm talking about all these things today and we will find out which things I was right about, which things I was wrong about in just under a week here. And just a reminder again, I'm going to be recording later in the day, next Tuesday, after SpaceX's announcement about what they announced that day. We'll do a similar kind of talk, what was announced, what we think about it, what we missed announcements of, etc., etc. Follow along at WeHaveMiko on Twitter if you want to see what SpaceX announced and what I'm thinking about all that stuff. If you've got any feedback,

email me, anthony at managingcutoff.com. Help support over on Patreon at patreon.com slash Miko, and I will talk to you next week.