
Airbus to build 'first interplanetary cargo ship' - pseudolus
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53575353
======
pansa2
> "This is not just twice as difficult as any typical Mars mission; it's twice
> squared"

So, four times as difficult?

~~~
sandworm101
>> So, four times as difficult?

Or, by "twice squared" they mean to say "It has been squared ... twice". That
would be 16x, which is probably more in line with the total deltaV
requirements.

~~~
jmkerr
Did you just linearize squaring?

~~~
sandworm101
"not just twice ...; it's twice squared"

So "twice"(2) and "twice squared" (x^2^2) = 2^2^2 = 16

~~~
whatshisface
Where are you getting the third two to put in for x? Your number would be
phrased as "twice squared twice."

~~~
AshleyGrant
English is a strange language. "Twice squared" could be interpreted both as
"Twice as hard, squared" or "Twice as hard, squared two times."

Think of the sentence, "A man, twice fooled, shall not be fooled again."

~~~
cgriswald
If x is the difficulty, the phrase either means “twice the difficulty,
squared”: (2x)^2 or 4x^2.

Or “the difficulty squared and squared again”: (x^2)^2 or x^4.

The GP is asking why x == 2 in the second example rather than just “the
difficulty”. English interpretation doesn’t explain that.

------
lt_kernelpanic
Question for the experts: what are the tests and analysis that we cannot do
via a rover-based lab and hence need to send the samples to Earth? Asking out
of curiosity (pun not intended!).

~~~
sandworm101
Better question: What will we learn that we cannot learn from all the Martian
rocks _we already have on earth_.

There have been plenty or Martian meteors found in Antarctica, and no doubt
many more if we redoubled our efforts to find them. Many once claimed to have
found evidence of life in these rocks already. Some of us are even old enough
to remember President Clinton's speech on the subject. (That isn't a deepfake
video. The US president really did talk about the discovery of life on mars.)

~~~
ceejayoz
> Better question: What will we learn that we cannot learn from all the
> Martian rocks we already have on earth.

These particular samples will be from the present-day surface, with known
geographic (aerographic?) origin, not affected by potentially millions of
years of interplanetary travel, and not contaminated by sitting around on
Earth for who knows how long.

~~~
sandworm101
That would be true if we were looking for life _currently_ alive on mars, but
this is a search for _fossil_ life, life that once existed but died off
perhaps a billion years ago. Fossils would survive a million-year trip just
fine.

There has only been one serious attempt to detect current life, the labeled
release experiment on the Viking lander. It came back positive. If we are
seriously interested in detecting current life we don't need a sample return.
Any rover can dump some rock into a nutrient bath and put the results under a
microscope. If anything is growing/moving, life is detected. Viking didn't
have the bandwidth for such things. Lets do that a couple times first.

~~~
ceejayoz
> That would be true if we were looking for life currently alive on mars

I mean, why not?

> Fossils would survive a million-year trip just fine.

Sure, but getting to pick where we take the rocks from helps us maximize the
possibility of fossils in the sample. The rovers have found rocks with
evidence of water - being able to pick those instead of a random chunk (which
might've been blasted from deep bedrock) found in Antarctica has its appeal.

> There has only been one serious attempt to detect current life, the labeled
> release experiment on the Viking lander. It came back positive.

This seems like a good argument for sample return.

------
bufferoverflow
> _The joint American-European project is expected to cost billions and take
> just over a decade to implement._

I'm 99% sure that if SpaceX's starship takes off, it will fly to Mars and back
within a few years.

But still, competition is good.

~~~
rsynnott
I don't think even Musk, master of the dubious marketing promise, has claimed
that; the first ones would be one-way jobs AIUI.

~~~
throw1234651234
I don't think you can call him Musk "master of the dubious marketing promise"
anymore now that Tesla is meeting production goals, SpaceX is landing
boosters, re-supplying the ISS, and has brought astronauts to the ISS.

His promises are far more reliable than most at this point.

~~~
rrss
Yeah, you definitely can.

1) Tesla driving fully autonomously from LA to NY by the end of 2017 [1][and
many others]

2) Tesla producing 10,000 cars per week by the end of 2018 [2][3]

3) "Funding secured" [4]

4) All Teslas produced after Oct 2016 have all the hardware necessary for full
self driving [5]. This was apparently before Tesla realized they needed/wanted
to design a custom ASIC for full self driving.

Many more.

[1] [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-two-years-
car-20285...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-two-years-
car-202858960.html)

[2] [https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/tesla-ceo-musk-
th...](https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/tesla-ceo-musk-this-is-the-
best-i-ve-ever-felt-about-tesla-14255072)

[3]
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1117526382563643392](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1117526382563643392)

[4]
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776)

[5] [https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-
now...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now-have-
full-self-driving-hardware)

~~~
vardump
1) It's again that time of the year... although this time he merely promised
FSD to be _feature complete_ by the end of the year. I think same will happen
2021, 2022, etc.

2) That they did achieve pretty much that, just a bit late.

3) Head scratcher, but some speculation it was to fend off a hostile takeover
attempt. A bit fishy indeed.

4) They do replace all HW 2 & 2.5 computers for free, if the owner got FSD
package.

~~~
rrss
2) Pretty sure Tesla is still not producing 10k cars per week. Their Q2 2020
update shows max quarterly production was ~105k in Q42019, which is ~8k per
week. I can't find anything suggesting they have ever peaked over 10k per
week.

4) Replacing old hardware is obviously not the same as shipping all the
necessary hardware in 2016.

------
jiofih
SpaceX Starship is planned for 2024, and with a cargo capacity in the hundreds
of tons. Even if it gets delayed by four or five years it will be able to
bring back samples before this is is even launched. NASA’s plans seem very
slow in comparison.

~~~
kerkeslager
Marketing materials aren't plans.

Musk has made a strategy of "overpromise, maybe deliver", rebranded as
"vision" or "ambitious goals". Some of what his companies have delivered _is_
impressive, but you never know what they're going to actually deliver until
there are at least working prototypes.

~~~
ben_w
Yeah, but that’s true for all space companies. The surprising thing about
SpaceX is that SpaceX delivers more than other corporations which promise less
than SpaceX promises.

~~~
kerkeslager
You agree with what I said, but the sentiment with which I said it wasn't
positive enough, so now you've gotta jump in to defend SpaceX?

That marketing scheme sure does work.

It's no surprise that the best-funded company produces the best results, but
it would be interesting to find out if a more honest company could produce
better results with equal funding.

~~~
ben_w
No, I’m saying everyone else is _more guilty of the same sins_.

Generally with more money behind them, too.

~~~
kerkeslager
> No, I’m saying everyone else is more guilty of the same sins.

Given the sin in question is "lying", I'm pretty sure that's just not true.
Can you give another example of a space corporation with such a consistent
strategy of very publicly overpromising to win contracts and investment?

> Generally with more money behind them, too.

I'm not sure who you're referring to. NASA might have more funding, but if you
subtract what they turn over to SpaceX I'm not sure that counts. Other
aerospace companies have other obligations in the _aero_ part of aerospace, so
funds devoted to those obligations are not particularly relevant either.

~~~
jiofih
They only got large funding from NASA _after_ building fully production-ready
rockets and demonstrating they could deliver. It took around $100m of private
investment to get the first Falcon generation flying.

~~~
kerkeslager
Yes, that's the "and investment" part of what I said.

------
ClumsyPilot
I am very haply to see the idea of electric propultion tug finally commited to
implementation. This has a lot more utility than delivering samples from Mars
- in principle there is a lot of equipment that could use rugging between ,
and Mars.

I hope this becomes a configurable platform for future missions, nur just a
one-off experiment.

------
Tepix
It will be interesting to see what the situation will be like when this
spaceship is ready. By that time we should have Starship and New Glenn flying
regularly. Even New Armstrong could be close to ready by then.

~~~
_Microft
New Glenn is not that different from Falcon 9 regarding reusability as they
will have to expend the upper stage and fairings every single launch.

~~~
hinkley
Didn’t they just recover both fairings on the last launch?

I don’t know how you want to work the math, but it is probably best to think
of it in a fractional way. Between accidents and wear do they manage better
than 4 launches in average? They just managed 6 for one lower stage, with
tighter turnaround time. We don’t know how much of that rocket was reused. So
we might be talking about expending 20% of a lower stage per launch, and some
higher ratio of upper stages.

~~~
_Microft
Yes, they did. Great achievement, I was afraid they might abandon the approach
sooner or later.

This only meant to say that New Glenn isn't that different from Falcon 9. Both
are limited (with respect to cost and frequency of launches) in that they need
to throw away hardware on every launch. Starship on the other hand will be a
true game changer if it works as intended.

~~~
hinkley
I wonder how accurate it is to call the Falcon 9 the Model T of the rocket
world.

I wonder how long we have to wait for the moral equivalent of the 65 Mustang,
or even the '63 Stingray, complete with malfunctioning headlights.

Almost all scifi is SSTO craft, or craft that never enter atmosphere. Maybe if
we start building skyhooks we can split the difference, and have craft you
reuse with only minor maintenance between flights.

------
ape4
The article mentions a "football sized package". Hope there is no confusion
between American and European football.

~~~
Someone
Reading
[https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Ex...](https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Exploration/Mars_sample_return),
they mean “basketball size”. It seems the BBC thinks their readers do not know
how large those are.

~~~
capableweb
Or maybe BBC thinks it's readers are more familiar with the size of a football
(as in soccer, of course) than the size of a basketball (although they are the
same, but someone who doesn't know the size of a basketball wouldn't, of
course)

~~~
Someone
I learned something checking that. A basketball (29½ inch circumference)
indeed is only slightly larger (27 to 28 inch circumference) than a football.

I thought the difference was larger, possibly because of the volume (about 20%
more) and weight difference (22-23 oz vs 14-16 oz)

------
adrianmonk
Are they going to have to change their name to Vacuumbus?

Although, it is a cargo ship, so maybe Vacuumtruck would be more accurate.

~~~
knodi123
It doesn't exactly roll trippingly off the tongue, does it?

~~~
ragebol
Spacebus is better. Better hop on the Spacebus!

------
Aeolun
10 years to implement? Aren’t we supposed to have a starship in orbit of Mars
by that time?

~~~
ClumsyPilot
Thats in Elon time, I would not bet my house on starship being in orbit by
2030.

Secondly, there is need to independant access to space free of US technology
export rules and foreign policy and sanctions.

US administration has forbidden NASA collaboration with China, and as a result
they built a separate space station, and are having a separate moon-capable
rocket. And i would bet my house that they will get to the moon, CCP seems to
plan in 20 years+ horizons, not elevtuom cycles. Perks of being a dictatorship
and all that.

~~~
lrnStats
Orbit isn't hard. The hard part is landing something that can later return to
space.

That said, you can't trust anything Elon says.

~~~
bvm
Orbit is incredibly hard. It's only just possible. A few percent more gravity
and we would be permanently earth-bound. Getting to orbit requires hundreds of
thousands of components to function together perfectly. Failure requires one
to go wrong.

------
gostsamo
So many people who wonder about the exact cost and do not read the article to
the end... And this is the ESA bet against SpaceX btw.
[http://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/ESA...](http://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/ESA_moves_ahead_on_low-
cost_reusable_rocket_engine)

------
mud_dauber
I want to see it named "Nostromo". Or the "Ripley".

------
woodandsteel
Interesting, but the SpaceX Starship/Falcon Heavy, which will start flying in
a few years, will be able to do this a thousand times better.

------
habosa
Remember when Uber’s business got a little shaky so they started making a
bunch of noise about a flying taxi project that would launch soon and be
cheaper than a car?

Well this smells like that. Airbus knows that orders for commercial airplanes
may be low for years as we work through the fallout of this virus. So time to
go to space to give the investors something to think about.

~~~
rsynnott
Eh? Airbus has always been a large contractor for ESA; they make a lot of ESA
probes and are a stakeholder in Arianespace, which makes the launchers. This
is pretty normal for them.

------
bryanlarsen
If NASA really wanted to answer the 'life on Mars' question, Perseverance
would have included a microscope. AFAICT, the reason it doesn't is because
nobody wants to stake their reputation on the hypothesis.

~~~
mhh__
What hypothesis?

If you found life on Mars you're going to be rendered immortal as long as
knowledge survived. No one is refusing out of pride.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Gilbert Levin might disagree.

------
zpeti
Why don’t they just give the money to spacex? This is such typical French/eu
behaviour. Let’s build something that already exists, for 10x the price, 10
years late, so that we can create jobs and have our own... Except the market
viability is close to 0.

how about using that money for something that’s actually innovative? Or
perhaps charge less tax so people can decide on their own what’s worthwhile.

~~~
ever1
On the contrary, it would be foolish of the EU to be so dependent on a foreign
company, dependent on a foreign law on a subject as strategic as space. It is
a crucial choice that, as a EU citizen, I applaud.

~~~
growlist
It's not beyond the realms of possibility that around the same time as the
sample returns to Earth, the US could have geologists' boots on the ground on
Mars doing actual geology in situ, courtesy of SpaceX/Starship. Kind of puts
this effort in perspective.

They should be going all out for reusability, but instead they chose the
oldspace pork approach. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

~~~
rsynnott
> It's not beyond the realms of possibility that around the same time as the
> sample returns to Earth, the US could have geologists' boots on the ground
> on Mars doing actual geology in situ, courtesy of SpaceX/Starship.

I mean... maybe? What's your suggestion here? NASA and ESA should put all
interplanetary work on hold, in case Musk delivers on time and on budget for
once?

~~~
growlist
> I mean... maybe? What's your suggestion here? NASA and ESA should put all
> interplanetary work on hold, in case Musk delivers on time and on budget for
> once?

No. I'd prefer ESA to be building reusable rockets of their own, which offer
the prospect of orders of magnitudes greater potential for exploration.

I just find it amusing to imagine the Earth-based geologists poring over their
few crumbs whilst actual geologists stomp about on Mars with hammers chipping
away to their hearts' content, likely also deploying fleets of rovers etc. and
thereby gathering terabytes of data, and it could be the case that these two
things are happening very close together in time. Surely you'd agree that's a
poignant juxtaposition.

~~~
rsynnott
> No. I'd prefer ESA to be building reusable rockets of their own

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adeline_(rocket_stage)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adeline_\(rocket_stage\))

The numbers didn't work particularly well on this one, but it's not like
they're ignoring it.

And, frankly, commercial space is doing fine on launchers right now. It's
doing very little on future interplanetary concepts, so if anything it would
make MORE sense for ESA to focus on them now than previously.

> I just find it amusing to imagine the Earth-based geologists poring over
> their few crumbs whilst actual geologists stomp about on Mars with hammers
> chipping away to their hearts' content

I mean, it's _possible_, maybe. But it's not likely. And you can't suspend all
work due to dubious claims by someone else. In the 1950s, British fusion
researchers claimed that cheap fusion energy would be a thing within a decade.
If we had believed them absolutely, the world would still be powered by low
efficiency coal and oil power plants; why bother spending all that money
developing high efficiency steam and gas turbines, wind and solar power, and
fission power, when cheap fusion was about to sweep it away?

And of course, even in the Musk dream scenario where this actually happens,
solar electric drive cargo tugs would still be very useful, and this is a
decent first step towards those. No-one envisages a long-term purely chemical
exploration of space.

