Red Dragon 2.0

Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX is considering a manned mission to Mars as soon as 2024.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/06/02/elon-musk-hopes-spacex-will-send-humans-to-mars-in-2024/

A Rocket's-Eye View

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[Please stand by.]

A Brief Interlude

This blog will take a few posts to write about Biosphere 2 and related topics... because the author is heading that way for a few days.  :)

Another Landing

The most recent landing by a SpaceX rocket was after launching a payload on a geosynchronous transfer orbit, which resulted in the rocket coming back in much faster than from a mission to low Earth orbit.  The result, however, was again a successful landing at sea.

Terrae Novae

The tetrahedron of settlement includes three aspects entirely within the scope of people to develop (technology, techniques, and culture) and one without: the environment.  Naturally, one of the biggest questions, and perhaps the biggest, is where to go, with some arguing for the Moon, or for Mars, or for some other location.  For the Homesteader's Guide, the answer is "all of the above."

A national space program may have to make a decision between pursuing the goal of the Moon and the goal of Mars, but if the frontier is opened, then different groups of people will of course make different decisions about where to go, and the solar system offers many options, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

The many worlds of the solar system may be classified into certain groups, some with a sole example and some with a great multitude.  And while all are challenging, some are more challenging than others.

One classification of the solar system would be as follows: Mercury & the Moon (the hard-rock worlds), Venus (the terrestrial world with the hellish atmosphere), Mars (the terrestrial world with the cold, thin atmosphere), the minor bodies (asteroids & comets), the icy dwarf planets (including the icy moons), the gas giants (or at least the three without the crushing gravity of Jupiter), and Io (for those who want an especial challenge).

The Tetrahedron

In discussions about the manned exploration and settlement of the solar system, the focus is often primarily on the technology to get to the location, and secondarily on the technology to survive in the location, but technology alone is insufficient.  For example, the typical person dropped in the Arctic with all of the traditional technology of the native peoples wouldn't be likely to survive in the long-term (and maybe not even in the short term).  Beyond the necessary technology are the necessities of the appropriate techniques and the requisite culture.

The inter-related nature of the location's environment and the technology, techniques, and culture needed to thrive in that environment may be represented by a tetrahedron, in which each of the four elements is connected to and affected by each of the other three.  An apt expression, then, might be that it's not just rocket science...