Space Ambulance

I thought of an emergency spaceship for the humans who would work on a lunar base. In case of emergency, the spaceship would transport the humans from the moon to the earth as soon as possible.  It took more than eight days for Apollo 11 to return back to earth. This pace would be quite slow for an emergency vehicle. When you do the math, quite big rocket would be necessary for the job. A much feasible alternative would be to deploy an emergency room module with autonomous robotic personal. Then, health intervention would be much faster and deploying the module on the moon would be more feasible than a giant rocket.

The biggest problem with this solution is that there is no such robotic emergency room exist. As I keep repeating, the success on space depends on improvements on earth. Many technologies required for a successful solar expansion for humans rely on systems that would be utilized on earth first. Proper health personal is difficult to source in many rural areas. Robotic health solutions would bring better health service to remote locations on earth. Even the military would benefit from that. The progress on such a goal is very slow. Big goals cannot be attained with slow pace. Like a rocket that requires high thrust to free itself from the gravity, big goals require high momentum to achieve their goals.

On my next article, I will propose a path for such a goal.

Falcon 9 & Heavy Third Stage

Exploration missions beyond the moon takes very long time to reach their target destinations. Yet their launches are quite rare. I believe, developing a third stage to the most frequently launched rocket in the world would enable us to explore the solar system faster.

Only in 2018 a SHERPA Space Tug was added to Falcon 9 to convert it to a three staged rocket. The Space Tug is just a commercial satellite dispenser. A high energy third stage on the other hand can deploy a small planetary satellite such as a lunar telecom relay. As a result, the spacecrafts orbiting the moon would experience minimum or no blackout. I also had proposed a solar relay network that enables connectivity between the Earth and the satellites orbiting a planet on the other side of the sun. The connectivity between Earth and Mars cannot be maintained a yearlong at the moment. However, solar relay network would allow almost continuous connectivity between Earth and the inner and outer planets.

Nothing is For Free

Space exploration is very expensive scientific research. Almost all effort put on it is related to science and technology. I believe that the monetization of the researches need improvement as well.

There are free live views from space. However, they are not well organized and not comfortable to watch for many. They are too raw. My proposition is they should be streamed for a fee and they should be well tagged to be serviced properly on demand. Research institutes would get special pricing and the individuals would get another. Even scientific research articles are accessible for a fee, why should the video stream from space be free. People demanding these contents to be free, pay subscription fees for the digital content they watch or exposed to millions of ads. Some of these multi-billion companies build space companies, then the countries pay money to these companies to access space and charge nothing from the content they acquire. The countries achieve this with tax. As a result, the individual demanding the space content to be free is actually paying for that “Free Content”. When space agencies come up with better income models, the space explorations would be more sustainable with less burden on the taxpayers.

Space Domino

Most of you had seen Dr. Stephen Morris’ “Domino Effect Demonstration”. Each domino knocks over one and a half times bigger domino over a chain reaction. I thought that why don’t we use this technique to change the orbit of a big celestial body.

This requires the detailed study of asteroid belt in our solar system. Once a more detailed information is gathered on the trajectories of the asteroids a path can be determined. A path of ever-increasing asteroid that ends on Ceres. Ceres is the closest celestial body to Earth that contains water. It is also surrounded with asteroids of many sizes. A chain reaction that can be triggered by a small spacecraft may deorbit Ceres so that it settles to a new orbit closer to Earth. If humanity is planning to form settlements in our solar system outside the Earth; Moon and Mars are not ideal due to lack of abundant water. Ceres with a much closer orbit would be an ideal candidate.

Domino effect requires asteroids of varying sizes in relative proximity. As far as I know, only the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter has the potential for such an experiment. If initial experiments prove successful, it would be humanities next big step after Moon landing, to deorbit a big celestial body to a planned trajectory.

of Mars and Men

In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes of mice and men
Go oft awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
        ('To a Mouse' by Robert Burns)

I had written so much about space exploration and the human involvement in them. There are laws of physics and exploring the space is not like exploring the Earth in 16ᵗʰ century. Carrying a human being on a mission could only complicate and reduce the probability of success. In the age of advanced robotics and AI, we shall let the robots explore the universe as our delegates.

A Mars human settlement would go awry and leave us nothing but grief and pain. For promised joy.

I am not George by the way who killed Lennie’s dream. Lennie’s dream was an impossible one in the first place.

Economical Robot Only Space Station (EROSS)

Creating a robot only space station eliminates most of the requirements from a space station. Robot only space station could be built by cascading the payload fairings of a rocket as a hole. Therefore, the payload of a rocket is fully utilized in terms of volume and mass.

I chose Falcon 9’s payload fairing as an example. It has an inner diameter of 4.6 meters and 11.4 meters of straight height. Curved nose section would house the docking port, the sat dishes and the folded solar panels. The center section of the tubular form would be reserved for the transport elevator. It would have multipurpose arms attached on its sides. These arms would mount the research modules to the special docking sections on the inner wall of the station. The arms would also move the research samples between the modules.

There would be two main types of research modules. One would house a self-sufficient robotic research environment (It would have its own robotic arm, lighting, camera, gas and liquid consumables. The wastes would be removed by the central elevator.), and the test equipment. There would be no air inside the space station. If research requires air, it would be contained inside the module. Only the modules would be air sealed. The space station would only provide cosmic ray shield.

When research requires detailed analysis, the sample would be moved to an advanced test equipment such as an atomic microscope or an X-Ray machine.

The last of the cascaded space station modules would have a hemispherical window to let the solar rays in. Any research requiring the sun would be placed there.

This easy setup allows multiple space stations to be built for different purposes and orbits. The ones deployed to a sun synchronous orbit would have continuous solar energy and would not have bulky batteries for backup.

Space Architecture

Internet is full of space structures that compete with earth architecture. With the help of AI these images inflated more. Construction in space has many limitations. As a result, the reality is way different than the computer-generated images. For example, the ISS looks like a shanty house made of expensive materials. There is no unity in the architecture, the pieces added at different times are quite different in style and form.

The architecture of space structures is determined by functionality and feasibility rather than esthetics which is the case on Earth. Due to limitations of the rockets, the launch frequencies and different countries involvement; the space structures are formed over a long duration with quite different modules. During the construction process, new technologies are tested and space verified which alter the architecture considerably over time. As a result, even the solar panels mounted are not in harmony.

On my next article, I will propose a feasible robotic only space station architecture that can be deployed using existing Falcon 9 rockets.