
SpaceX announces a mission to land on Mars by 2018 - jonbaer
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/05/03/spacex_announces_a_mission_to_land_on_mars_by_2018.html
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lorenzhs
Previously discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11582605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11582605)
last week

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neuromancer2701
If you read near the end of the article, they say that SpaceX is going to
launch a Falcon Heavy in November as a test. But additionally they are going
to try to land all three boosters. The two side boosters on land and the
middle booster on the drone ship(because it will be going a lot faster)

Here is a
simulation([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ca6x4QbpoM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ca6x4QbpoM)).
I have probably watch this video 20+ times just amazing.

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dsfuoi
That is a promo.

Here is an actual simulation:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89AIsPTCJLs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89AIsPTCJLs)

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dsfuoi
Replay at 16x speed if you're busy:
[https://youtu.be/89AIsPTCJLs?t=10m35s](https://youtu.be/89AIsPTCJLs?t=10m35s)

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cardamomo
I am an elementary school teacher, and while I teach many subjects, this news
has the geek in me very excited. As we get closer to the launch date, kids, no
doubt, will be very excited about this mission. I get to plan space- and Mars-
based curriculum now!

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solipsism
Will you show the launch in class, if the timing works out?

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cardamomo
Absolutely! My goal would be to plan a series of experiences _prior_ to the
launch that would give the children a real-world understanding of what they're
seeing on the screen. I imagine many of this article's readers who arrive from
HN may have a deep understanding of the technical difficulty of what SpaceX is
trying to do, especially given their timeframe. How would children understand
this event, however, if we simply watched the launch on screen? People hurl
giant flying objects through the sky every minute of every day, so what's the
big deal?

Creating soda bottle rockets in the classroom and encountering real-world
(though kid-level) engineering challenges would be a first step.

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bisby
my dad always used to joke that the key to flying is to throw yourself at the
ground and miss. Which is surprisingly an accurate representation of how orbit
works.

I find that the biggest thing that is often mistaught/misunderstood is orbital
mechanics. You dont get to the moon by aiming directly at the moon. You dont
get to mars by aiming directly at mars.

Watching lil einsteins with my kid the other day. and in episode one they say
"we've left gravity!" as they travel to space. Which clearly is not how it
works.

I think the falling past the edge of the world repeatedly really helps people
get a grasp on how orbit works. and once you get that concept down, you can
move the sphere of influence to the sun and get space travel down.

Might depend on what grade "elementary" is. Kindergarden might struggle, but I
bet 5th grade could handle it.

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lmm
[https://xkcd.com/1356/](https://xkcd.com/1356/) . Seriously, Kerbal Space
Program teaches you so much more and faster than anything else.

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bisby
Yeah. I have an engineering degree but never really thought much about orbital
mechanics.

My first try at KSP I just overbuilt a rocket and aimed it directly at the
mun. I missed. Quickload. Back on target, sudden realization that I need about
6000 dV to slow down in time. Watch a Scott Manley video -> instant
understanding.

It's definitely one of those things that once you understand it, it's mind
boggling how often space is depicted incorrectly.

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jawns
There's a really great throwaway joke in the caption of one of the
illustrations that accompany the story.

In the image captioned "The trajectory of a Falcon 9 booster from launch to
landing," the caption directs the reader: "Click to vonbraunenate."

I googled "vonbraunenate," and there were only a handful of results aside from
this particular article.

So then I googled "von braun," and of course, the first result that came up
was the Wikipedia entry for Wernher von Braun.

So what's the connection?

Von Braun was an aerospace engineer who "developed the rockets that launched
United States first space satellite and first series of manned lunar
missions."

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user24
I get the connection, I don't get the joke...

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samsari
Diagrams are occasionally labelled "click to explode".

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lmm
SpaceX has a pretty poor history of keeping to their announced schedules (e.g.
Falcon Heavy was supposed to fly in what, 2015?). So while this will be great
if it happens, I wouldn't get too excited yet.

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findthewords
The thing is, if they miss the date by mere months, they will have to wait 2
years for the next launch window.

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iandanforth
More info for people curious about this. The best time to launch is during
"Earth Mars opposition" and the next window is in Jul 2018. After that there
is a 26 month wait before the next optimal (from a fuel perspective) time.

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ohitsdom
I thought the biggest concern about launch window was journey time? And that
would only matter for a crewed mission. I didn't think fuel mattered because
it would probably be close for either mission profile- burn to get up to
speed, shutdown and coast for months, then any orbit corrections and slowdowns
as the Mars approach nears. It's not like the engine is burning for the whole
trip, and they'll be using solar for internal instruments. Or am I
misunderstanding?

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zardo
You are, the total energy required for a transfer varies considerably
depending on the phasing of the planets.

This is mars->Earth, but you get the idea.
[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/images/mission/...](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/images/mission/Mars2103PorkChop.png)

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baldfat
I never thought I would live to actually see the day. Seemed like everything
just slowed down on that front for two decades and now it seems almost to
soon.

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tlrobinson
To be clear, this particular mission is an unmanned mission, which of course
has done many times before. But it would be the heaviest payload ever landed
on Mars, and would pave the way for future manned missions.

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Frompo
No way they will be able to plan, make, and test any interesting instruments
if they start now. With the proposed time line it is guaranteed to be a pure
put trash on Mars mission.

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aerovistae
I wouldn't bet on that. What they're building is a vehicle that conveys things
to Mars. If that massive problem is being handled, entities like NASA are free
to focus on _what they want to put on Mars._ If SpaceX is just ferrying NASA's
shit, I'd bet we'll see more than trash inside Red Dragon.

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Frompo
Not for the first launch we won't. They might get something a cut over an rc
car with an iphone taped to the top, but with the time line suggested there is
no way to slap together something that will do anything _new_ : the trip will
be purely to show the trip can be done, and not contribute very much for
science.

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aerovistae
I guess we'll see.

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ohitsdom
I'm really interested to see if and how SpaceX covers the cost of this
mission. Is it just a huge R&D/PR write off? Do they sell data/instrument
payload slots to NASA or others?

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ljf
Few other interesting articles on this have been posed in the last few days,
but none have got much traction - if you are interested more to read here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11617988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11617988)

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richmarr
Is that the link you meant to post? Looks like it's about solar

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ljf
Ha no! Ah well a bit late now!

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onion2k
I'm sure it'd be impossible, or foolish, or just plain silly, but I'd really
like it if a SpaceX launch could be "crowdsourced". Not money or ideas, but
the actual process of the launch itself. Set up a website with a big red
"launch" button that links to the physical launch process, and only launch the
mission once, say, a million people have clicked the button. All those people
would get to say they've played a tiny part in launching a mission to space.

It'd certainly be about the closest I'll ever come to participating in an
actual space mission, and it'd be a heck of a lot of fun.

It probably needs to be more rigorous than that though.

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outworlder
Launch windows are pretty specific. Not sure about the next Mars one, but some
windows are so narrow that launches can be scrapped if the window is missed by
even a couple of seconds.

