Keep exploring at https://brilliant.org/MarcusHouse. Get started for free, the first 200 people get 20% off an annual premium subscription.
If you’ve been watching along here for quite some time, you will know that the team and I have been releasing some deep dive videos that look into the complexity of long duration crewed spaceflight. The primary concerns of course being the health of astronauts aboard these missions. To do all of this stuff right and protect those squishy fragile human bodies on board, it is going to take a lot of equipment. That also means a lot of mass. Well, here we explore Unleashing the Power of the Mars Cycler. Would SpaceX Starship to play a huge part? Almost certainly if SpaceX’s dreams of low mass to orbit become reality. What if I told you, that once we get all this up to the required speed for the journey, that was it. A reusable station taking trip after trip, only needing tiny course corrections from time to time? Well, with a nod to Buzz Aldrin, may I present to you the Atomic Powered, Shielded, Spinning Starship Mars Cycler!
The Hidden Threat to Our Astronauts – Marcus House
https://youtu.be/SNaaHvSkP2Q
Artificial Gravity is Critical for Mars Exploration & Beyond – Marcus House
https://youtu.be/he2thPRcpQc
Mars cycler architecture utilizing low-thrust propulsion (PDF)
https://tinyurl.com/MarsCyclerUtilizingLow-Thrust
Dennis Chamberland – Departing Earth Forever
(Book Two – Alien Worlds, explores similar topics)
http://departingearthforever.com/
👕Like this shirt? Pick it up on any product you like here.
https://marcus-house.myspreadshop.com/mars+here+we+come+-+light?idea=60adc49896e7c070513a8931
https://marcus-house.myspreadshop.com/mars+here+we+come+-+dark?idea=60adc4996ae5286c7eb437d5
🎁 Marcus House Merch – https://marcus-house.myspreadshop.com/
You can support me on:
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/MarcusHouse
Join my Discord – https://discord.gg/dAMmbqj
Follow/Subscribe on Twitter – https://twitter.com/MarcusHouse
The production crew:
GameplayReviewUK, TiagoCruz, Mr Pleasant, Virtu
Support from the below is always massively appreciated:
📷 NASASpaceFlight – https://www.youtube.com/@NASASpaceflight
📷 RGVAerialPhotography – https://www.youtube.com/@RGVAerialPhotography
📷 Greg Scott – https://twitter.com/GregScott_photo
📷 Starship Gazer – https://twitter.com/StarshipGazer
📷 Cosmic Perspective – https://www.youtube.com/@CosmicPerspective
📷 LabPadre – https://www.youtube.com/@LabPadre
📷 Epic Spaceflight – https://www.youtube.com/@EpicSpaceflight
3D artist magicians:
✨ Tony Bela – https://twitter.com/InfographicTony
✨ Ryan Hansen Space – https://twitter.com/RyanHansenSpace
✨ Erc X – https://twitter.com/ErcXspace
✨ Corey – https://twitter.com/C_Bass3d
✨ Alex Svan – https://twitter.com/AlexSvanArt
✨ DeepSpaceCourier – https://twitter.com/ds_courier
✨ SpaceXvision – https://twitter.com/SpacexVision
✨ Stanley Creative – https://twitter.com/Caspar_Stanley
✨ Matt Ryan – https://twitter.com/MattR5226
✨ TijnM_3DAnimations – https://twitter.com/m_tijn
✨ Christian Debney – https://twitter.com/ChristianDebney
✨ Evan Karen – https://www.youtube.com/@EvanKaren
✨ 3D Daniel – https://twitter.com/3DDaniel1
Set models:
Starship, & Crew Dragon by – https://morethan3d.com/
Moon/Mars Mova Globes – https://www.movaglobes.com/
Mini venting Starship/SLS – https://www.stardesk.co/
Saturn V – LEGO – https://www.lego.com/en-au/product/lego-nasa-apollo-saturn-v-92176
Space Shuttle – LEGO – https://www.lego.com/en-au/product/nasa-space-shuttle-discovery-10283
#spacex #starship #elonmusk
source
A bigger pipe dream since vows of fidelity were added to the French marriage license. Give it up, people. Conman Musk will be bankrupt by 2028.
What's the smallest known object to have an atmosphere? Make a craft that has an artificial atmosphere to protect from the radiation some?
three body problem anyone? to achieve this without spending fuel occasionally is impossible.
I really admire the enthusiasm. Even as a thought experiment, projects like these really stretch the technology and inspire research leading to newer techniques. A concept totally lost on deniers who voice their objections via their devices which are products of the space age.
It's just like the 'Resolute' colony ship on Netflix's Lost in Space, and it's taxis 'Jupiter 2'
And the taxis was used as the future living area at their destination.
Maybe the show makers, did look all the science of it all.
Thanks for making this video, well done.
That's a decent NASA plan. But that's not Elons plan. Which will definitely come first. Drop the crew from 100 to say 10 and alot more space on starship to shielding and maybe even a low gravity internal centrifuge work or entertainment area. Less crew would require less life's support and food. Ideally send pre settlement starships loaded with Optimus droids to setup the first colony and have food, water and other equipment already there from the first cargo starships sent.
Biggg ideas!
Exceptional Program Marcus. I read Bud Aldrins book on cyclers and found it mind boggling. So pleased you have taken it up. Must look at your program about shielding. How did I miss it…! Quite a subject ! Congratulations for this for sure anyway. I think Neutron shielding could be achieved by D2O and C13 but not sure how much for those nasty Galactic Cosmic Rays though…
Or you can have two stations orbiting between Mars and Earth and when you're going from Earth to Mars you choose the station for the best orbit and when you're going from Mars to Earth you choose the other station that has the better orbit.
You mean Buzz Lightyear?
i like Airbus LOOP space station module concept idea of a centrifuge to generate artificial gravity. it's internal and connected to external solar panels. it may be a way forward.
Forget government, almost all space should be private.
So, basically "catching the next train" on steroids.
Thank you for the insights presented in this deep dive video. This is a nice remembrance of the steepness of going from space station on low-earth orbit to long term interplanetary settling. Feels like going from nuclear fission energy to nuclear fusion energy sources in term of realizations… Keep up your excellent work!
Imagining the ever more sophisticated logistics tech needed and it's evolution for the interplanetary journeys makes one's head dizzy: walking tech from your door, rolling tech (maybe a bike then perhaps the train, automobile), aviation to reach the space port to leave the earth gravity and to reach the ultimate space train via yet a groovy space taxi of sorts 🤕
You are still stuck in old paradigm of very costly mass to orbit. Hence you say "massive shields are bad" or render those paper thin, barrel like space-objects. Starship will be up to 200 metric tons to orbic for 8-15mln$, maybe more like 15-25mln$ after inflation. So for one bilion of $ you get up to 10-12 000 tons. A mere billion! Think about that. No point in making those weak as stations and single-starhip missions anymore. You build massive, with triple redundancies and shields. For example in your render there are big glass windows which don't look even like many layers. Wrong! On each window of this type we can mount blast doors inside, outside and manual cover in case of sealing after critical event. Same with everything else. Paradigm must be reversed. Till now everything was going to not wide, low mass, little redudancies hence much higher precision and cost. Now it can go other way – heavy, thick, redundancies hence less precision and cheaper. For some uses we can straight take off the shelf stuff. Similar revolution that once hit Military Submarines when CAD programs became popular the Navy said to engineers to look for the civil alternatives before inventing their own solutions.
Great reporting, thanks for the deep dive.
I have long maintained this. We need a railroad not a series of Conestoga wagons.
Good
I refuse to buying book authored by any public servant whom we paid to experience such. F&%c You Kelly.
what a waste of time this is for one man's ego talk of colonizing mars is for the hill, literally science buffs who don't understand that colonizing mars is not only a waste of time, but it serves no purpose other than to boost the ego of Alon musk may be in 1000 years. We might have a reason to do it but for right now maybe he should focus on the problems on the planet earth since it was 133° today in death Valley the planet is burning up and he's talking about going somewhere else. This is all ego driven bs and it makes me very sad as a scientist and explorer to hear this trait talked about as if it's in the realm of reality spending $1 trillion to do nothing sounds like the DEA spending $1.6 trillion to increase drug supply by 71% I bet all of those drug enforcement agents making $150,000 a year. Think it's just great.
I loved the episode and it covered many things for me but it also didn't set the relationship for craft which enter, or live in, space. Starship is essentially a shuttle. An atmospheric exit and re-entry system. However a cycler is an interplanetary space ship. It is not designed to ever enter the atmosphere of a planet; or even get too close to the gravitational attraction of a planet. These have very different design characteristics. As does a cross transfer vehicle which may need to accelerate up to cycler speed and decelerate back down to normal orbiting speed. It was mentioned in general for the taxi vehicle but they all have different materials and construction challenges. This is an entire topic on its own.
Whilst there will be significant shielding, the structural body of the cycler only needs to withstand the forces of an interplanetary fly by rather than ascent from the planet or acceleration to meet the cycler. Which require different vehicles.
You didn't talk about the possibility for linear accelerator on the Moon or Phobos. This reduces fuel requirements and can rapidly deploy to the cyclers with minimum fuel requirements.
I did talk to an ex space operations manager about a different linear accelerator use case which is significantly more off the wall. Viable but harder. The whole subject is extremely interesting. You would want some Starship to go to Mars. If only to act as shuttles. But you would not want to accelerate all that mass which is only used for launch and landing for an interplanetary journey.
Multiple cycler designs?
how about a Venus, Earth ,Mars cycler and maybe only moon gravity are required to keep bone and health in check
The most intressint cycler would be to Jupiter and to Ceres or a another asteroid or to both + mars
If you match it's velocity exactly then you'd make it all the way on your own. Rather carry extra fuels on the interceptor and exploit it's human friendly facilities for a comfy trip.
Has there even been a Zero-G 3D printer been made yet? In theory it should be simple and you could, basically, Idle the construction process with minimal crew for refill of the printers. at worst cycle them out every couple weeks or less with satellite deploy missions. but back to the printer, anyone know?