Image source @ Visual China
Text | Brain polar body
In the past two years, the whole society has become more and more "volume", and the number of people who have taken the examination and examination has soared, and even the number of applicants for teacher qualification certificates has exceeded 10 million. In difficult times, the survival stories of ordinary people can always make us feel empathy and easily "break defenses".
After the empathy, some people may ask: Is it possible to change?
In the long run, in a world of constant resources, the fate of human beings is "rolled", and even nations or races will become enemies. What is the ultimate solution? Recently I read a book, "Rush to Mars: The Red Planet Settlement Plan," which mentions that only in a universe with unlimited resources can all people become brothers and sisters.
Settling on Mars sounds very far away and sci-fi, can distant water really quench near thirst?
The reason for mentioning this vision is because the author, aerospace engineer Robert Zublin, believes that the exploration of Mars does not require any magical new technology, and with the technology that already exists today, we can establish the first outpost on Mars within a decade.
Cosmic rays, solar flares, zero gravity, high costs, psychological factors, life support systems — the obstacles raised by these opponents are dissolving little by little. For example, with existing chemical propellants, it takes only six months for humans to travel from Earth to Mars, which is a fully human and psychologically bearable voyage, and the standard time that many astronauts spend on the space station.
Facts have proved that ordinary people entering space is not impossible. Last year, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic successfully completed their first suborbital space tourism trip, and SpaceX successfully sent four civilians into low-Earth orbit.
Therefore, the author boldly predicted that the next century would belong to Mars.
The front can't bear to look directly, it is better to look into the distance, to open up the next hometown, to develop outward and get rid of the "inner volume". In this winter, let's first understand, how do humans travel to Mars?
Travel to Mars: Or, try to be thrown out?
Planning a long trip starts with choosing a route and mode of transportation, as does exploring Mars. To date, all interplanetary missions have been "direct launches," fuel ignition, jet propulsion, and reliance on carrier rockets to send the spacecraft into low-Earth orbit, as was the case with the Apollo moon landing program.
But as you know, such an approach is very costly, and the research and development cost of Saturn V, which sent Apollo astronauts to the moon, was as high as $6.4 billion. This model of burning money is probably only possible to gain taxpayer support in the Cold War situation of the United States and the Soviet Union competing for hegemony. In peacetime, redesigning and building heavy thrusters like the Saturn V seems difficult.
So, are there any other ways to get around?
Recently, California-based startup SpinLaunch made headlines for its innovative approach to spaceflight. In simple terms, the company wants to "dump" humans into space.
(The company's suborbital accelerator in New Mexico)
SpinLaunch has developed an emission system that uses kinetic energy as its primary method. Through a vacuum-sealed centrifuge, the rocket is rotated at thousands of miles per hour and several times the speed of sound, throwing it into space.
This approach has two advantages. One is cheap. Traditional space rockets rely on large amounts of fuel to get off the ground, costly, and in the space shuttle era, the cost of sending items into Earth orbit was about $100,000 per pound. SpaceX's rocket recovery technology has significantly reduced costs because it can be reused, pulling the price to $2,000 per pound. SpinLaunch's kinetic energy system could theoretically further reduce prices by drastically reducing the amount of fuel needed to enter orbit.
The second is capacity expansion. Without the need to carry a large amount of fuel, it naturally increases the payload of the rocket and increases the overall commercial value of the launch. SpinLaunch has designed its orbiter to carry a payload of about 200 kilograms, the equivalent of several small satellites.
Is this way really reliable?
As early as the 1960s, the United States and Canada developed the HARP (High Altitude Research Project) system, which can project probes into the upper atmosphere. This actually worked, but the project was eventually canceled for political reasons.
SpinLaunch, as a commercial company, confirmed the commercial possibility of dynamic launch last year. Its chief executive, Jonathan Yaney, once told the media: "We have to prove that we can really do it." ”
In October 2021, SpacePort conducted a test launch in New Mexico, using only 20 percent of the power to launch the prototype into the air "tens of thousands of feet."
(SpinLaunch's orbital launch vehicle profile)
Of course, this "dumping" approach is also risky.
The first is reliability. High-speed rotation is extremely dangerous and can have catastrophic consequences. Unlike rocket explosions, if this kinetic energy launch system fails, it will lose the rocket and the entire power unit, while the rocket explosion will only lose one rocket, and the cost of the two is not the same.
The second is business potential. On the one hand, relying on kinetic energy, the rocket's ascent altitude is limited, and this method cannot launch too large rockets; in addition, the lower atmospheric pressure at high altitudes is more suitable for this launch mode, but at the same time, the construction cost and engineering complexity are also increased. If the final cost is higher than a reusable rocket like SpaceX, the commercial prospects are slim.
In addition, the launch only solves the problem of the outbound journey, and a complete space mission also needs a return plan, and this power device is obviously impossible to replicate on the moon and Mars.
Of course, this is just the beginning. SpinLaunch still has a lot to prove, so they also plan to make about 30 suborbital test flights from U.S. spaceports over the next six to eight months.
In fact, in addition to SpaceX's rocket recovery program and SpinLaunch's kinetic energy program, the United States is also developing a rocket alternative, launching the payload into low-Earth orbit at a speed of Mach 7 by ramjet. Such a system can be launched multiple times in a day and could be cheaper and safer than SpinLaunch.
There is no doubt that the journey to Mars has become the front line of the new world, and mankind is one step closer to the endless universe.
Business Power: Why Are Commercial Companies Space Stars?
Space exploration was originally a technology and financial matter, and has always been an area of national competition. More and more private commercial companies are joining in and bringing many model innovations, so that access to space is no longer the dream of a few elites, and it is beginning to be associated with ordinary civilians.
The rapid growth of commercial aerospace companies, constantly changing the rules of the game and subverting the traditional "rocket equation", is a remarkable phenomenon like the rise of commercial companies in the Internet era.
Regarding aerospace, we only know the skin, but from the mature rules of the information technology industry, we may be able to get a rough sense of the future business blueprint.
One of the laws of the IT industry is Moore's Law. There are many expressions of this law, which can be understood as the number of transistors that can be accommodated on an integrated circuit doubles every 18 months; or the performance of a computer bought at the same price doubles every 18 months; or a computer with the same performance drops in price by half every 18 months... In short, the essence is that it is getting cheaper and higher quality, and has a faster growth rate than the traditional industry.
Obviously, rocket launches have also evolved along this route because of the participation of commercial companies, achieving rapid development.
On the one hand, commercial companies come with social capital, which can greatly reduce the financial burden of the country, at the same time, through healthy competition, it can accelerate technological innovation and further reduce costs. For example, after SpaceX successfully realized rocket recovery, rocket operators and manufacturers in various countries have begun to explore reuse technologies, such as in addition to SpaceX's vertical recovery, the way of flying back with wings is also constantly improving.
In order for all mankind to roll out into space, the rocket enterprises themselves first rolled up.
Another law of the IT industry is the Andy-Bill law. If users hold the money in their hands and have to wait for 18 months to buy electronic products at half price, can the IT industry still develop at a high speed? The desire of users to continuously desire hardware updates and upgrades stems from the fact that technology companies have reconstructed their business imaginations and new applications continue to emerge. That is: Bill wants to take what Andy gives, Bill takes away.), through innovative applications to prompt users to have to improve hardware performance, take the initiative to replace the new machine, otherwise they will not be able to play more memory-consuming games, can not take higher precision photos, surfing speed are lagging behind.
Returning to the field of commercial launches, it can be found that spaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Atlantic, the three companies that sent civilians into space for the first time and made space travel a reality, are all commercial companies. Constantly innovating business models, at a time when many people think that space has nothing to do with themselves, reshaping people's perception of spaceflight and stimulating people's desire for heaven.
In China, the Kuaizhou 1 carrier rocket sold a launch service worth 40 million yuan through a live broadcast platform, which really attracted customers to come and consult. This also proves that the demand for rocket services in the Chinese market is real.
Isn't making space a fashion and a fad, and isn't that the path the Internet has followed over the past two decades?
Space Portal: Take a rocket to the infinite universe
Many people in the industry have said that the mobile Internet carried by smart phones is the new "entrance" of the IT industry, the intersection of hardware and software, and attracts people from the upper, middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain to obtain profits through a huge ecosystem.
From the perspective of the entire aerospace industry chain, the rocket is the "entrance", which vertically includes the entire link of design, manufacturing, launch, operation, etc., and extends horizontally to space station transportation, equipment development, software systems and other formats. As the intersection of the entire system, the significance of rockets to commercial aerospace is what smart phones are to mobile Internet.
Looking back at China's development in the era of mobile Internet, it will be found that behind the shining star companies such as BAT, there is actually infrastructure construction that cannot be ignored, which makes the business model possible and maintains rapid development. Such infrastructure construction is equally important for the rocket industry, such as space calls, life support systems, video solutions, satellite traffic management, and so on.
If the goal of the development of the space industry is really "to rush to Mars", then these projects are very important and unnecessary. Moreover, they do not rely on any mysterious technology, and they can completely innovate independently using current technology. For example, The American startup Cooperative Space is developing an artificial intelligence-driven control system to automate satellite operations, reduce the burden of monitoring and managing each satellite, and prevent orbital congestion.
The commercial aerospace supply chain carried by rockets is a more complex and huge ecosystem, which also means that more new technologies, new applications, and new service providers can extract commercial value from it.
According to the China Aerospace Industry Report, published by European consultancy Euroconsult, there are currently more than 100 private companies in China's civil aerospace sector, with more than 125 investments made since 2014.
In stark contrast to the space race of the 20th century, the space race now takes place mainly in commercial enterprises. Even national agencies have revived interest in space missions because potential business opportunities have sprung up.
As the main vehicle into space, the rocket is one of the keys to maintaining the advantage of space, representing a country's ability to enter space autonomously, and is also the focus of commercialization. FOR EXAMPLE, NASA wants to commercialize the Space Launch System (SLS), which has been working on since 2010, once a year for the Artemis program.
Of course, starting to focus on commercial considerations does not mean that the national space agency is not important. In fact, the Vision of Mars must be advanced by the combined power of nations and business.
As a typical example, SpaceX, as a commercial company, has received a number of technical support and transfer from NASA, and the grey-backed falcon engine of its Falcon series rockets has adopted the nozzle technology of the Apollo lunar module downgrade engine.
SpinLaunch, the aforementioned "dump rocket" company, has received commercial venture capital, receiving more than $100 million from various investors, including Google Venture, Airbus Ventures and Kleiner Perkins; and government orders, in 2019, the company signed a contract with the Pentagon's defense innovation division for the first experimental orbital launch.
This trend also constitutes a paradoxical phenomenon, in order to allow all mankind to unite together through outward expansion, it is necessary to separate and game each other on the earth because of national interests.
But in any case, only by taking the universe as the boundary and initiating the exploration of the new world can human civilization escape from the cycle of resources.
If you're lucky, we'll see great progress on Mars in our lifetime, and how would you like to be sent into space?