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[Teaser] A question for the ages
09-09-2008, 03:53 AM
This is front-burner for at least the next 24 hours. Hopefully it won't take as long as First Impressions to get out on the road. Until then, here's the money line. --Mal
Question: How do you land a space shuttle on Mars?
Answer: You can't.
There is no way in hell that you can land a space shuttle on Mars. You'd need wings the size of a football stadium - or bigger - to catch enough lift in the bad joke Mars calls an atmosphere. Your super-sized wings would have to be made of something lighter than a sheet of the thinnest possible plastic to avoid adding too much mass. Or you could just cut a hole in the belly and install a descent engine like the old Apollo LEMs. Maybe you'd have to do both. The shuttle's native orbital maneuvering rockets are useless in any sort of atmosphere. Alierons and rudder equally so when considering Mars.
Trying to land a space shuttle on Mars without some sort of handwavium support is, at best, an elaborate form of suicide.
Naturally, this was our only option.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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... I'd've used a massive parachute. Perhaps handwaviumived for optimal performance. The Bullet Boy Express wouldn't have any problems landing there, given the nature of its wheel-thrusters, and I'd imagine that Ben and Gina have made a few jaunts to the Red Planet just for the hell of it and the scenery. ^_^
How would we get a viable atmosphere going on Mars anyhow? I've recently started watching Martian Succesor Nadsico and they had what sounds like the best solution - a web of air-born nanomachines to provide radiation shielding and to help retain the atmosphere.
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Mars does have some atmosphere. Depending on speed and angle of entry you're gonna need at least some attitude control at the start to get your
heat-shielded belly front and centre.
blackaeronaut, the main problem on Mars is its lack of a magnetic field. Solar winds strip more atmosphere from the planet than anything else. I asume someone
dipped into the Xavier Protocols and placed a web of magnetic field satellites in orbit at least. No-one in Fenspace has working nanomachines yet. And would
YOU trust an aerosol of handwavium to do it? And not mod all the settlers?
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I thought I mentioned that part of the nanomachines' purpose was to provide a protective shield.
As for not having that level of wave-tech yet... Well, if I recall correctly, Mars doesn't get a real working atmosphere until later after we work the
kinks of handwavium out beyond the Slap-Stick factor (besides, you can't tell me that someone like The Professor isn't working on making their own
nanomachines). At least, that's what I thought. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this here.
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(thread necromancy, the Devil's work!)
Another snippet, this time of dialogue. Slow going, but I do want to get this story out, hopefully before Rob finishes LoGG Chapter 3.
"Flight deck to main deck, what's your status?"
"We're still here, Colonel," Kyon replied. "Where's Haruhi?"
Mal glanced behind him. Haruhi was still strapped in, a little pale and wide-eyed but on the whole had apparently decided to set aside fear of potential horrible death in favor of trying to glare a hole in the back of Mal's head.
"Giving me the silent treatment, for which I'm thankful at the moment. Things are about to get a little weird, but everything's under control so don't worry. Oh, and you might not want to look out the windows. Flight deck out."
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You have THEM on board? Are we sure it's not sabotage? Or did Haruhi get too lively and spill a drink? Or did Ptichka simply get so mad at Haruhi that she
accidently fried something?
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... This sounds very much un-planned. Should we expect interpersonal fireworks and big explosions?
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Quote:Should we expect interpersonal fireworks and big explosions?
Considering Haruhi and Mal are in the same room at the same time, I assume that question's rhetorical...
--
Rob Kelk
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In order:
Yes, it's them. No, it's not Haruhi's fault. There *were* fireworks in an earlier section, but at that point Mal's a little too busy trying to
keep everybody alive to bother with verbal fencing.
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1. You need to remember that any landing is just a controlled collision.
2. One of the origional Options for landing a probe on Mars was effectively a layer of preinflated airbags to cushion the impact.
3. Any Landing that everyone could walk away from ... is a landing that everyone walked away from.
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Quote:3. Any Landing that everyone could walk away from ...
...is probably in the Hudson.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Bob Schroeck Wrote:Quote:3. Any Landing that everyone could walk away from ...
...is probably in the Hudson. I thought that was a landing that everybody could swim away from...
--
Rob Kelk
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They walked out onto the wings, didn't they?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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Fnord, came across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_225]THIS. I was wondering, do the VVS have one? Just in case, you know, Ptichka crash lands or something and has to be transported back to base.
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The VVS doesn't have a Mriya for a number of reasons - mostly involving Antonov not wanting to sell anything 225 related to a bunch of Yankee weirdos.
Mriya *does* show up in the orgin story, though, as it's the only commercial aircraft capable of getting an orbiter-sized package from Kazakhstan to
Wisconsin in anything resembling "on time" and "in one piece."
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No plans to build a copy then? Shame.
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Indeed. Especially considering the other outfits that have performed similar things, i.e.: the Roughriders and their behemoth B-36 Peacemakers.
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Quote:Indeed. Especially considering the other outfits that have performed similar things, i.e.: the Roughriders and their behemoth B-36 Peacemakers.
There's a lot of debate within the Soviet ranks as to a) whether Ptichka really *needs* a mothership/tender in the first place, and b) if so, what the vehicle should be. Options include Mriya, an Energia stack, some sort of custom design... and that's not getting into side proposals like new engines or mission-variable cargo pods. It's a mess, and no clear consensus has yet to emerge.
Though to be honest, if Rhodes keeps bragging about his Peacemakers, the Generalissimo might authorize building a Mriya just to shut the loudmouthed bourgeois Yankee the hell up. 
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He's welcome to do so. Progress is usually fueled by competition, even if it is the friendly variety. Wouldn't you agree, comrad?
Besides, you want bourgeois? Ben's already thinking of a strictly comercial project for the 'post-war' era. Try taking a tour of the Solar System
in this.
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Quote:Though to be honest, if Rhodes keeps bragging about his Peacemakers, the Generalissimo might authorize building a Mriya just to shut the loudmouthed bourgeois Yankee the hell up.
The nice thing about this, from Noah's point of view, is that he'd have more than one source to rent some "heavy lifting" capabiity from if he ever needs it. Usually, he doesn't.
Even Wonderland doesn't need anything that big for cargo - Stellvia's right next door and other clients don't buy quite as much food from them, so a small fleet of cargo haulers each the size of an 18-wheeler will work for most purposes. No, wait - the 'wave says that larger ships have slower top speeds, and food is perishable. But a large fleet of panel trucks instead of a small fleet of semis means more maintenance... Hmmmmm...
These megaprojects are great for "who's got the biggest?" competitions (which in some circles is justification enough), but are they really cost-effective?
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Quote: robkelk wrote:Even Wonderland doesn't need anything that big for cargo - Stellvia's right next door and
other clients don't buy quite as much food from them, so a small fleet of cargo haulers each the size of an 18-wheeler will work for most purposes. No,
wait - the 'wave says that larger ships have slower top speeds, and food is perishable. But a large fleet of panel trucks instead of a small fleet of
semis means more maintenance... Hmmmmm...
These megaprojects are great for "who's got the biggest?" competitions (which in some circles is justification enough), but are they really
cost-effective?
I had an idea the other day about just this sort of thing (mid-size transporters), and I think I've found the perfect response: Has anybody
thought about building the Space: 1999 Eagle?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_1999_Eagle
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Quote:Has anybody thought about building the Space: 1999 Eagle?
Not as such, but the concept (at least, the Rescue Eagle and Transport Eagle concept) did serve as the core of http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/reply/38217]a shared project between Stellvia Corp. and the Blue Blazers.
("But ... it's a helicopter!")
We'll let the Gerry Anderson Fen build actual Eagle replicas...
--
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Applying CPR to this thread in the hopes that Mal hasn't forgotten about this story.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/17 ... o_to_mars/]The Register has a story about a way to areobrake and land on Mars. Don't know whether the technique or the equipment will work for something the size of Ptichka, though...
--
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Stuff like that tends to scale up pretty well. It's only a question of the durability of the materials, which really isn't an issue if Handwavium is
involved. I can imagine that they would be stalling on using such a device until the last possible moment because Ptichka hates the thing and think it looks
absolutely ridiculous.
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Quote:I can imagine that they would be stalling on using such a device until the last possible moment because Ptichka hates the thing and think it looks absolutely ridiculous.
I'm sure she only thinks that because it looks absolutely ridiculous...
Actually, I suspect Ptichka doesn't have one of these. The size of the aerobrake compared to the size of the probe hints that, if it was scaled up to Shuttle-size, it would fill Ptichka's entire hold. And the VVS have better things to carry there. (Such as crew quarters.)
--
Rob Kelk
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them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
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- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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