Day 13 - Beyond Red Dragon
Okay, back from hiatus. (Yes, at this point, I am very aware I'm still mostly talking to myself. Not counting the nice bots who have requested accounts.)
Thinking broadly about the sort of questions we need answers to, there are a whole variety of things we’d like to understand better before sending the first BFR. Maybe we’ll go with the tanker precursor and an orbital base camp (see Day 12). Maybe we can take advantage of a Blue Origins New Glenn, or a NASA SLS. Or, maybe SpaceX will decide the Red Dragon or something like it is necessary, after all. Let’s consider some of the problems.
- Automated solar power field deployment. This enables everything else. If we send some type of precursor ship, it won’t be launching again, so we have a variety of options. In particular, we might want to consider a deployment mechanism similar to that for the MCCS and MFR in-space solar arrays, to try out that possibility for the future. We might also consider options other than batteries for power storage, for example, power cells. This would also be a good opportunity to test out autonomous rovers. Ironically, the fact that NASA didn’t want to send science instruments on SpaceX’s first Red Dragon meant the entire mass budget would have been available to start proving out critical technologies. This is one.
One possible solution would be testing out solar power field deployment on the moon, but the different gravity, lack of atmosphere, and different dust problem will still leave a lot of unanswered questions.
- Regolith characterization. Orbital reconnaissance should be able to identify a number of promising locations for the first base, but that raises the question: who’s doing the recon? Two items need to be verified for any potential base location. First is the actual water availability, whether as a component of the regolith or as separate layers of buried ice. Second is the character of the regolith itself—specifically, how hard is it? In order to access any water, lots of dirt will need to be moved. Zubrin points out that Martian regolith is likely very hard, recommending colonists bring plenty of explosives.
Lots of dirt will also need to be moved in order to build underground bases, a necessary step to minimize long-term radiation exposure. In addition to explosives, a couple front end loaders and dump trucks need to be on the first big ships’ manifests.
To be really sure what we’re facing, we need on-site data. It would be nice to have a precursor ship with a drilling rig that can punch through about 10 meters of frozen, hard-packed Martian regolith. Absent that, perhaps such a drill rig could be on Finity’s End? Whether entirely autonomous, controlled from orbit, or simply prepositioned pending Heart of Gold’s arrival, drilling equipment is critical.
That same drilling technology will be used later in manned missions to plant explosives at the proper depth to break up regolith for our construction machinery to move. It would be nice if our drilling rig could make several sample bores, but the limitations of our ships and the necessary size of the equipment could make this problematic. We may need to settle for a mechanism fixed to the ship that can still make two or three angled sampling boreholes. SpaceX is going to need some very specialized skillsets to pull this off.
An aside on this point is the possibility of utilizing lava tubes instead of digging to move our base underground. That would be ideal, but it’s also possible that all the areas with lava tubes are missing water, and vice versa. Given a choice, we need water. But, lots of orbital recon time will be spent looking for this desirable combination.
- Once we have a tentative base location identified, more extensive local recon with a rover is called for. In particular, we’d like to characterize the regolith in the proposed MCCS landing zone. Ideally, we’d like small-scale drills and other sampling mechanism to be sure no soft spots will endanger the big ships’ landings. But, given the hardness of the surface in general, this may be a risk we just have to accept.
- The same Red Dragons doing local characterization could have brought navigation beacons to help guide the big ships to the correct location. Additionally, steerable, high-definition cameras to record every aspect of the landings are called for. That would provide absolute verification of Constellation’s condition prior to Finity’s End landing, but also provides forensic data in the event of a crash. At least two Red Dragons would’ve been desirable be in the area, with one positioned at about the planned distance between the two big ships. That would provide verification of plume models, ensuring that the follow-on ship’s landing won’t throw up too much debris, damaging earlier ones. The second Red Dragon could have been positioned at, say, twice the planned distance, to further characterize how the landing plume throws up debris. Different distance also minimize the chance of radio antennas being inadvertently shadowed by vehicle structure. Weather stations will also be needed, in particular to pass wind data. We don’t have Red Dragons, so we’ll need to decide whether we can just land without this data. Perhaps we just think of the first unmanned ships as really big Red Dragons.
- Those satellites doing orbital recon should also carry navigation packages, to ensure all the ships know their locations as accurately as possible. Store-and-forward packet radios on these orbiters would also ensure long-range rovers have multiple communications paths back to the main base. Zubrin points out that short wave radio will also work, since Mars has an ionosphere, but radio communications at low frequency can be fickle, even on Earth. Until Mars’ ionosphere is extremely well characterized, we’ll want alternatives.
Probably the biggest conclusion we can draw from these questions is that “someone” needs to get started on them. If SpaceX is serious about sending a ship to Mars within the decade, then these need to be right up there with BFR design. If SpaceX wants someone else to do that (Musk has hinted as much with regards to navigation and communication relays), then they need to put out that word loud and clear. So far, they haven’t.