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phantom000 wrote:What worries me is that companies will be tripping over each other. Like satellites crashing into each other because they were launched by different companies that did not bother to check the orbits. Or a space probe doing something that completely screws up another space probe from a different company.
The larger problem has come from governments. The People's Republic of China and their anti-satellite missile test threw a huge amount of debris up. We have less to fear from Space Capitalism than the Reds
As for two probes interfering with each other. The absolute, mindbogglingly huge, vastness of space would resolve that. It's hard enough to get a probe to go where it's supposed in the first place to before we get to the infinitesimally small chance of a collision.
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Fixer wrote: As for two probes interfering with each other. The absolute, mindbogglingly huge, vastness of space would resolve that. It's hard enough to get a probe to go where it's supposed in the first place to before we get to the infinitesimally small chance of a collision.
Space is vast, but it is by no means infinite. Modern Marvels did an episode about satellites once and they talked about running out of space for new ones. The point is that satellites have to so much distance between them to avoid their signals interfering with each other and depending on what kind of satellite its orbit has to be very particular. So there is a limit to how many satellites we can put up at one time.
I saw a documentary about Mars rover missions and it said that while we could land a probe anywhere on the surface, the needs of the probe eliminated a large portion of it. A landing site has to be clear of obstacles so it will not crash and it has to be near the equator because rovers run on solar power. Those two conditions together eliminate about 70% of the Martian surface for robot exploration. That is a big part of why they want to send manned missions.
So if you consider that a lot of probes might actually have the same destination suddenly the chances of a collision take a big step up from infinitesimal.
phantom000 wrote: A landing site has to be clear of obstacles so it will not crash and it has to be near the equator because rovers run on solar power. Those two conditions together eliminate about 70% of the Martian surface for robot exploration. That is a big part of why they want to send manned missions.
Seems like a greater motivation to send nuclear powered robots. The landing site would still have to be clear of obstacles on landing for humans, and unless your sending a nuclear reactor, you'll still need solar power.
As I understand it, the motivation for sending humans to Mars is to reduce teleoperation time and fix problems on-site.
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phantom000 wrote: A landing site has to be clear of obstacles so it will not crash and it has to be near the equator because rovers run on solar power. Those two conditions together eliminate about 70% of the Martian surface for robot exploration. That is a big part of why they want to send manned missions.
Seems like a greater motivation to send nuclear powered robots. The landing site would still have to be clear of obstacles on landing for humans, and unless your sending a nuclear reactor, you'll still need solar power.
As I understand it, the motivation for sending humans to Mars is to reduce teleoperation time and fix problems on-site.
NASA and planet-side nuke power are like oil and water. See what they did with Cassini sending her into Saturn than risk a chance of contaminating Titan.
phantom000 wrote:
Fixer wrote:Rejoice. For now there is a mannequin astronaut in a car with Space Oddity playing on the radio, a Don't Panic sign on the dashboard and a towel in the glove compartment, driving to mars.
Outside of that the engineering is quite impressive. The Falcon 9 heavy with recoverable components means a launch price a quarter of its nearest competitor.
Optimistically, this might start to kick start a new space race as rival companies compete.
What worries me is that companies will be tripping over each other. Like satellites crashing into each other because they were launched by different companies that did not bother to check the orbits. Or a space probe doing something that completely screws up another space probe from a different company.
The space junk probe will have to be dealt with eventually. Hell, such antics would encourage development of an efficient cleaning mechanism even if it's putting a metaphorical bullet to the telecommunications and many other fields.
