They haven't done their insertion burn yet. There's still every possibility of their ship wobbling itself apart at the joints when they throttle up - especially if they're using one of those orange tanks.
From what I've seen they're not doing a full orbit of the earth, just getting into the optimum burn position.
The infographic on the last page showed how they're gradually adjusting their orbit to be more and more elliptical (multiple short burns each orbit at Pe to extend Ap), until the final burn to break free of Earth's gravity well. Then ~10 months of transfer to Mars's SOI, and an insertion burn to slow down and get into a stable orbit.
From what I've seen they're not doing a full orbit of the earth, just getting into the optimum burn position.
The launch, on 5 November 2013, placed the Mars Orbiter Mission into Earth orbit. Six orbit raising operations will be conducted on November 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 16, by using the craft's on-board propulsion system, which is a derivative of the system used on India's communications satellites. These manoeuvres will raise the orbit to one with an apogee of 23,000 km (14,000 mi) and perigee of 238 km (148 mi),[32][33] where it will remain for about 25 days. A final firing on 30 November 2013 will send MOM onto an interplanetary trajectory. Mars orbit insertion is planned for 21 September 2014,[7] and would allow the spacecraft to enter a highly elliptical orbit with a period of 76.72 hours and a periapsis of 377 km (234 mi) and apo-apsis of 80,000 km (50,000 mi) around Mars.
It sounds like they started with an eccentric orbit to start with so they may not be doing a full orbit of the earth. It certainly does not sound like it. Their launch window was something like 20 days?
edit: though idk if it stays in that one orbit for 25 days I don't see how it couldn't do a full orbit of the earth. I thought the ISS made an orbit rather quickly.
From what I've seen they're not doing a full orbit of the earth, just getting into the optimum burn position.
They're actually doing several Earth orbits (6, I think) of varying lengths, since they're doing 6 main engine periapsis burns to push their apoapsis out to the point of Earth escape.
Ohhh, my mistake. Haven't had time to read much about it - I thought this was like the final injection burn NASA did with one of the landers. To avoid contamination of the Mars surface, they initially set a trajectory past Mars, ejected the transit module, then the (pre-sterilized) lander module corrected course to actually intercept the planet.
The launch, on 5 November 2013, placed the Mars Orbiter Mission into Earth orbit. Six orbit raising operations will be conducted on November 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 16, by using the craft's on-board propulsion system, which is a derivative of the system used on India's communications satellites. These manoeuvres will raise the orbit to one with an apogee of 23,000 km (14,000 mi) and perigee of 238 km (148 mi),[32][33] where it will remain for about 25 days. A final firing on 30 November 2013 will send MOM onto an interplanetary trajectory. Mars orbit insertion is planned for 21 September 2014,[7] and would allow the spacecraft to enter a highly elliptical orbit with a period of 76.72 hours and a periapsis of 377 km (234 mi) and apo-apsis of 80,000 km (50,000 mi) around Mars.
Goddamn ten months in a rocket ship is a long time.
Is it? That is still well within NASA's 500 day limit for space radiation.
I'm not thinking space radiation so much as boredom and isolation. I mean you're in space, sure. That's gangsta. The novelty of that is going to wear off at some point and you're going to be stuck reading the same damn book and talking to the same damn people.
0
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Goddamn ten months in a rocket ship is a long time.
Is it? That is still well within NASA's 500 day limit for space radiation.
I'm not thinking space radiation so much as boredom and isolation. I mean you're in space, sure. That's gangsta. The novelty of that is going to wear off at some point and you're going to be stuck reading the same damn book and talking to the same damn people.
When they get the Oculus Rift squared away with teledildonics, isolation problems will disappear overnight.
Goddamn ten months in a rocket ship is a long time.
Is it? That is still well within NASA's 500 day limit for space radiation.
I'm not thinking space radiation so much as boredom and isolation. I mean you're in space, sure. That's gangsta. The novelty of that is going to wear off at some point and you're going to be stuck reading the same damn book and talking to the same damn people.
That's what ebooks are for! And extensive movie collections! If you get through all those, there's always the option of in-flight b/romance.
Psh. Jebediah Kermin has spent upwards of decades when I was trying to get to Duna and Mechjeb decided that the perfect insertion burn was a ton of orbits away.
I'd suggest the novel Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson - he covers the idea of a Mars colony in pretty incredible detail. He focuses on the psychological facet for good reason, since you spend so long in a tiny spaceship and then still have to live in a small sealed building once you get there.
He also goes into the terraforming concepts and beyond, but I didn't go past the first book. It was a fantastic read.
That's what ebooks are for! And extensive movie collections! If you get through all those, there's always the option of in-flight b/romance.
I hadn't considered this, but small form factor computers like tablets would actually make this a lot easier. You can't really take a bunch of DVDs up, because all weight has to be accounted for, but you can take up a tablet with 5000 books on it. I know that astronauts also spend a lot of the day exercising to prevent atrophy too. I'm not sure how much science will be done on the trip this time out though.
Man, on my longest ship-board binge I had 3 months on, 2 weeks off, 5 months on, 2 weeks off, 6 months on. Now I had a super low work level(up to 5 hours a day), and I would get to spend 3-4 hours on an average day out in port on land.
Also I would eat in the guest restaurants, so had awesome food. I could go to guest areas, including the outdoor promenades, and then had access to some fantastic amenities like the Officer's Bar, which also had a door out to the Bow when the weather was good, which was most of the time.
Starting about 5 months into that, I had also met my girlfriend, though we both were in cabins with roomates. Before that there was still the normal level of shipboard happy times.
During that I also had access to not only entertainment I brought with me(Which included a laptop loaded with games, a bunch of TV shows/movies, and a pretty loaded kindle), I had access to the crew office's collection of DVDs, which was pretty good, and there were always other crew members you could borrow entertainment from.
Even with all of that, 13 months where your living space is a tiny box, you're working with the same 5 other people most of the time, the job doesn't really change at all during it, the social environment doesn't really change at all, and you're always dealing with the typical bullshit of hideously unqualified management that is times a billion since they pretty much oversee every part of your life, it all adds up to really impressive amounts of unhappiness, boredom, all that.
Some people deal with it really well and can do super long contracts and be fine. Some people deal with it terribly. Almost everyone has a shorter fuse than normal, and is generally unhappier and angrier at everything. It's a really, really unhealthy mental situation overall. And an unhealthy physical situation, since basically the social options are "The Bar", "The other bar", or if you want to spend twice as much, "The passenger bar".
And that's with a crazy amount of amenities open where you have gravity and (crappy, but available) internet and huge amounts of entertainment and spend at least some of your day in Sydney or Honolulu or San Juan.
The percentage of people who last for any amount of time versus the people who quit within their first 2 years is staggering. In the 3 years I was on ships, slightly over 12,000 people were hired by the one company that I worked for, across 15 ships. Almost all of that is just to deal with turnover.
Spending 10 months on a spaceship would be some pretty shitty situation. And just having lots of books and work is pretty much necessary to avoid going crazy, but it would still be a super tough psychological situation to be in.
Khavall on
+3
ShogunHair long; money long; me and broke wizards we don't get alongRegistered Userregular
Honestly I would expect the first long-term flight manned mission to result in ,"...lost all contact with the crew of Isis station Alpha 1-1 after fires mysteriously started in two of the living quarters adjacent to the mono-propellant tanks. The craft is heavily damaged and is drifting on a course to collide with the red planet, leaving nothing but scarred burning hulk upon its entry to the atmosphere."
Honestly I would expect the first long-term flight manned mission to result in ,"...lost all contact with the crew of Isis station Alpha 1-1 after fires mysteriously started in two of the living quarters adjacent to the mono-propellant tanks. The craft is heavily damaged and is drifting on a course to collide with the red planet, leaving nothing but scarred burning hulk upon its entry to the atmosphere."
Then they somehow recover the black box and the last recording went along the lines of, "SIT ON MY SIDE OF THE CAPSULE AGAIN, MOTHERFUCKER, I FUCKING DARE YOU"
Not to mention the stress of knowing that the craft has to function for the entire 500+ day trip without any serious problems because there is just jack all you can do about it. And if something does go wrong, we all get to watch the first interplanetary ghost ship in the making.
One scary and novel thing for me about space is how easy it is to become completely out of options and without any chance of survival, whatsoever. It's a kind of knife-edge risk that hasn't been seen in the modern world since the 16th century.
...I should double-check that Bill's capsule has parachutes.
Speaking as someone who works with radiation..... the amount you'd get going to mars? No thanks
Oh come on, we've all played enough KSP by now to know that the radiation exposure from a long trip to Mars isn't going to be a problem, with the whole "forgot to put a parachute on the ship" issue and all.
By the time we get it right, we'll just build ships with enough shielding to be okay. Those first few guys are toast, though.
You can only shield so much against the types of radiation you would be exposed to. There is a reason nuclear plants have meters thick concrete walls lined with lead
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Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
To shield against radiation from SPE's (Solar flares) all you need is the water you're taking with you anyway, lead is overkill and adds too much mass:
I'm finding it extremely hard to find any information on the purpose of the Indian Mars Orbiter other than it being a phallus waving and nationalistic spirit building exercise.
Then you're not thinking hard enough. Doing it on the budget they did means they've got a really solid case that people should be doing commercial launches with them. To say nothing of the fairly small sets of ways to get practical knowledge on how to send a probe to, and then use it once it's at, another planet.
Particularly, that project was something like .33% of their national budget if I'm remember correctly (I could be off by a factor of 10), so it's a fairly negligible outlay. Particularly so if it helps them build a functioning space launch business.
edit: apparently I was off by more than a factor of 10
"Only 0.8 percent of India's national budget is spent on the space program, and only 0.7 percent of that budget has been spent on the Mars mission,”
I'm finding it extremely hard to find any information on the purpose of the Indian Mars Orbiter other than it being a phallus waving and nationalistic spirit building exercise.
Then you're not thinking hard enough. Doing it on the budget they did means they've got a really solid case that people should be doing commercial launches with them. To say nothing of the fairly small sets of ways to get practical knowledge on how to send a probe to, and then use it once it's at, another planet.
Particularly, that project was something like .33% of their national budget if I'm remember correctly (I could be off by a factor of 10), so it's a fairly negligible outlay. Particularly so if it helps them build a functioning space launch business.
edit: apparently I was off by a factor of 10
"Only 0.8 percent of India's national budget is spent on the space program, and only 0.7 percent of that budget has been spent on the Mars mission,”
I'm finding it extremely hard to find any information on the purpose of the Indian Mars Orbiter other than it being a phallus waving and nationalistic spirit building exercise.
Then you're not thinking hard enough. Doing it on the budget they did means they've got a really solid case that people should be doing commercial launches with them. To say nothing of the fairly small sets of ways to get practical knowledge on how to send a probe to, and then use it once it's at, another planet.
Particularly, that project was something like .33% of their national budget if I'm remember correctly (I could be off by a factor of 10), so it's a fairly negligible outlay. Particularly so if it helps them build a functioning space launch business.
edit: apparently I was off by a factor of 10
"Only 0.8 percent of India's national budget is spent on the space program, and only 0.7 percent of that budget has been spent on the Mars mission,”
My math says that that comes to 0.0056% of their national budget. Chump change indeed!
I wasn't going to push this too much...but "it's only x% of our GDP" is a good argument when a country is covering the basic needs of the populace, but India has millions starving and uneducated, horribly corrupt local governments, a largely non-functioning justice system in parts of the country, not to mention regional instability. They're not the poorest country out there with space ambitions, but it costs $850m to $1b it costs to run their program - India has better places for that money to go. I know I'd feel that way if I were an Indian citizen.
It seems like their space program is also endangering economic aide from places like the UK, which I can't say is too shocking. This is a weirdly topical article I read today:
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They haven't done their insertion burn yet. There's still every possibility of their ship wobbling itself apart at the joints when they throttle up - especially if they're using one of those orange tanks.
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The infographic on the last page showed how they're gradually adjusting their orbit to be more and more elliptical (multiple short burns each orbit at Pe to extend Ap), until the final burn to break free of Earth's gravity well. Then ~10 months of transfer to Mars's SOI, and an insertion burn to slow down and get into a stable orbit.
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It sounds like they started with an eccentric orbit to start with so they may not be doing a full orbit of the earth. It certainly does not sound like it. Their launch window was something like 20 days?
edit: though idk if it stays in that one orbit for 25 days I don't see how it couldn't do a full orbit of the earth. I thought the ISS made an orbit rather quickly.
Shogun Streams Vidya
They're actually doing several Earth orbits (6, I think) of varying lengths, since they're doing 6 main engine periapsis burns to push their apoapsis out to the point of Earth escape.
So, at least 5 orbits of the Earth.
EDIT:
You can see the planned orbits here:
http://www.isro.org/mars/mission-profile.aspx
5 rings around the Earth and the 6th is the Martian transition.
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Shogun Streams Vidya
Yeah - maximizing fuel efficiency by constraining how much before and after their periapsis point they're burning.
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You jerks and your factual reality.
Is it? That is still well within NASA's 500 day limit for space radiation.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Yeah, to get there.
But then you have to get back.
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500 days is more like a guideline, really.
Shogun Streams Vidya
I'm not thinking space radiation so much as boredom and isolation. I mean you're in space, sure. That's gangsta. The novelty of that is going to wear off at some point and you're going to be stuck reading the same damn book and talking to the same damn people.
When they get the Oculus Rift squared away with teledildonics, isolation problems will disappear overnight.
And the next night.
And the next.
Awwwww yeeeeeaaaah.
That's what ebooks are for! And extensive movie collections! If you get through all those, there's always the option of in-flight b/romance.
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He came out fine.
He also goes into the terraforming concepts and beyond, but I didn't go past the first book. It was a fantastic read.
I hadn't considered this, but small form factor computers like tablets would actually make this a lot easier. You can't really take a bunch of DVDs up, because all weight has to be accounted for, but you can take up a tablet with 5000 books on it. I know that astronauts also spend a lot of the day exercising to prevent atrophy too. I'm not sure how much science will be done on the trip this time out though.
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Also I would eat in the guest restaurants, so had awesome food. I could go to guest areas, including the outdoor promenades, and then had access to some fantastic amenities like the Officer's Bar, which also had a door out to the Bow when the weather was good, which was most of the time.
Starting about 5 months into that, I had also met my girlfriend, though we both were in cabins with roomates. Before that there was still the normal level of shipboard happy times.
During that I also had access to not only entertainment I brought with me(Which included a laptop loaded with games, a bunch of TV shows/movies, and a pretty loaded kindle), I had access to the crew office's collection of DVDs, which was pretty good, and there were always other crew members you could borrow entertainment from.
Even with all of that, 13 months where your living space is a tiny box, you're working with the same 5 other people most of the time, the job doesn't really change at all during it, the social environment doesn't really change at all, and you're always dealing with the typical bullshit of hideously unqualified management that is times a billion since they pretty much oversee every part of your life, it all adds up to really impressive amounts of unhappiness, boredom, all that.
Some people deal with it really well and can do super long contracts and be fine. Some people deal with it terribly. Almost everyone has a shorter fuse than normal, and is generally unhappier and angrier at everything. It's a really, really unhealthy mental situation overall. And an unhealthy physical situation, since basically the social options are "The Bar", "The other bar", or if you want to spend twice as much, "The passenger bar".
And that's with a crazy amount of amenities open where you have gravity and (crappy, but available) internet and huge amounts of entertainment and spend at least some of your day in Sydney or Honolulu or San Juan.
The percentage of people who last for any amount of time versus the people who quit within their first 2 years is staggering. In the 3 years I was on ships, slightly over 12,000 people were hired by the one company that I worked for, across 15 ships. Almost all of that is just to deal with turnover.
Spending 10 months on a spaceship would be some pretty shitty situation. And just having lots of books and work is pretty much necessary to avoid going crazy, but it would still be a super tough psychological situation to be in.
Shogun Streams Vidya
Then they somehow recover the black box and the last recording went along the lines of, "SIT ON MY SIDE OF THE CAPSULE AGAIN, MOTHERFUCKER, I FUCKING DARE YOU"
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One scary and novel thing for me about space is how easy it is to become completely out of options and without any chance of survival, whatsoever. It's a kind of knife-edge risk that hasn't been seen in the modern world since the 16th century.
...I should double-check that Bill's capsule has parachutes.
Oh come on, we've all played enough KSP by now to know that the radiation exposure from a long trip to Mars isn't going to be a problem, with the whole "forgot to put a parachute on the ship" issue and all.
By the time we get it right, we'll just build ships with enough shielding to be okay. Those first few guys are toast, though.
More on-topic... I need to work on getting to another planet one of these days. I still haven't been to a body outside Kerbin's SoI.
It depends on how tight your dV budget is. If you've got the fuel to waste, no reason not to go for convenience instead
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http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/03/dsh-module-concepts-outlined-beo-exploration/
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/04/delving-deeper-dsh-configurations-support-craft/
Particularly, that project was something like .33% of their national budget if I'm remember correctly (I could be off by a factor of 10), so it's a fairly negligible outlay. Particularly so if it helps them build a functioning space launch business.
edit: apparently I was off by more than a factor of 10 http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2013/1105/India-s-Mars-mission-worth-the-cost-video citing Kabir Taneja
.0056% of their budget. This mission was chump change.
edit2: math is hard.
My math says that that comes to 0.0056% of their national budget. Chump change indeed!
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But still, yes. What the Hell.
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I wasn't going to push this too much...but "it's only x% of our GDP" is a good argument when a country is covering the basic needs of the populace, but India has millions starving and uneducated, horribly corrupt local governments, a largely non-functioning justice system in parts of the country, not to mention regional instability. They're not the poorest country out there with space ambitions, but it costs $850m to $1b it costs to run their program - India has better places for that money to go. I know I'd feel that way if I were an Indian citizen.
It seems like their space program is also endangering economic aide from places like the UK, which I can't say is too shocking. This is a weirdly topical article I read today:
economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/11/economist-explains-0