Would you like to be "dumped" to Mars?

In the past two years, the whole society has become more and more "competitive", with a surge in the number of candidates for postgraduate and civil service examinations, and even the number of candidates for teacher qualification certificates has exceeded 10 million. In difficult times, the survival stories of ordinary people can always make us empathize and easily "break down".

After empathy, some people may ask: Is it possible to change?

In the long run, in a world with constant resources, the fate of mankind is "volume", and even countries or races will become enemies. What is the ultimate solution? Recently I read a book, "Going to Mars: The Red Planet Settlement Plan", which mentioned 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 immediate thirst?

The reason for mentioning this vision is that the author, aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin, believes that exploring Mars does not require any magical new technology. Using the technology that already exists today, we can establish the first outpost on Mars within ten years.

Cosmic rays, solar flares, zero gravity, high costs, psychological factors, life support systems - these obstacles raised by opponents are gradually being eliminated. For example, using existing chemical propellants, humans only need six months to travel from Earth to Mars, which is completely within the human and psychological tolerance of the journey and is also the standard time that many astronauts spend in space stations.

Facts have proven that it is not impossible for ordinary people to enter space. Last year, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic successfully completed their first suborbital space tourism trips, and SpaceX successfully sent four civilians into low-Earth orbit.

Therefore, the author boldly predicts that the next century belongs to Mars.

In this exploration that is as important as discovering a new continent, deciding who can go to Mars and who cannot has naturally become a new national competition focus. At the end of last year, Musk's SpaceX Starlink satellite actively maneuvered into the orbit of my country's space station twice in July and October 2021, which caused heated discussions. Not long ago, on January 21, the United States announced sanctions against the First Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the Fourth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, and Poly Technology Corporation.

If you can’t bear to look ahead, you might as well look into the distance, explore the next homeland, and develop outward to escape from the “involution”. This winter, let’s first learn about how humans can go to Mars.

Heading to Mars: How about trying to get thrown out?

Planning a long journey begins with choosing a route and mode of transportation, and the same is true for exploring Mars. So far, all interplanetary missions have been "direct launches," using fuel ignition, jet propulsion, and a launch vehicle to send the spacecraft into low-Earth orbit, as was done with the Apollo moon landings.

But as we all know, this method is very time-consuming. The Saturn V that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon cost $6.4 billion to develop. This kind of money-burning model is probably only possible to gain taxpayer support during the Cold War when the United States and the Soviet Union were competing for hegemony. In peacetime, it seems difficult to redesign and manufacture a heavy thruster like the Saturn V.

So, are there other ways to travel?

Recently, California-based startup SpinLaunch has made headlines for its innovative approach to space flight. In simple terms, the company wants to "throw" humans into space.

(The company's suborbital accelerator in New Mexico)

SpinLaunch has developed a launch system that uses kinetic energy as the primary method, spinning the rocket at thousands of miles per hour, several times the speed of sound, in a vacuum-sealed centrifuge to hurl it into space.

This method has two advantages. First, it is cheap. Traditional space rockets rely on a lot of fuel to leave the ground, which is very expensive. In the space shuttle era, the cost of sending items into Earth orbit was about $100,000 per pound. SpaceX's rocket recovery technology is reusable, which greatly reduces costs and brings the price to $2,000 per pound. SpinLaunch's kinetic energy system greatly reduces the fuel required to enter orbit, which can theoretically further reduce the price.

The second is capacity expansion. Without the need to carry a lot of fuel, the rocket's payload is naturally increased, improving the overall commercial value of the launch. SpinLaunch has designed its orbiter to carry a payload of about 200 kilograms, equivalent to several small satellites.

Is this method really reliable?

In fact, this technical logic is not new. As early as the 1960s, the United States and Canada developed the HARP (High Altitude Research Project) system, which could project probes into the upper atmosphere. This actually worked, but the project was eventually canceled for political reasons.

As a commercial company, SpinLaunch confirmed the commercial feasibility of kinetic launch last year. Its CEO Jonathan Yaney once told the media: "We have to prove that we can really do this."

In October 2021, SpacePort conducted a test launch in New Mexico, using only 20% of the power to send a prototype "tens of thousands of feet" into the air.

(Cross-section of SpinLaunch's orbital launch vehicle)

Of course, this method of "dumping people" also has risks.

The first is reliability. High-speed rotation is extremely dangerous and can have catastrophic consequences. Unlike a rocket explosion, if this kinetic launch system fails, the rocket and the entire power unit will be lost, while a rocket explosion will only lose a rocket. The cost of the two is incomparable.

The second is commercial potential. On the one hand, relying on kinetic energy, the rocket's ascent height is limited, and this method cannot launch a rocket that is too large; in addition, the atmospheric pressure in high-altitude areas is lower, which 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 that of a reusable rocket like SpaceX, then the commercial prospects are still slim.

In addition, the launch only solves the problem of the outbound journey. A complete space mission also requires a return plan, and this power device is obviously impossible to replicate on the moon or Mars.

Of course, this is just the beginning. SpinLaunch still has a lot to prove, so they are also planning to conduct about 30 suborbital test flights from Spaceport America in the next six to eight months.

In fact, in addition to SpaceX's rocket recovery solution and SpinLaunch's kinetic energy solution, the United States is also developing a rocket alternative that uses a ramjet to launch payloads into low-Earth orbit at a speed of Mach 7. This system can be launched multiple times a day and may be cheaper and safer than SpinLaunch.

There is no doubt that the journey to Mars has become the frontier of the new world, and mankind is one step closer to the endless universe.

Commercial power: Why have commercial companies become space stars?

Space exploration is a technical and financially demanding endeavor that has always been a field of national competition. However, more and more private commercial companies are joining in and bringing many model innovations, making space travel no longer a dream of a few elites, but becoming relevant to ordinary civilians.

The rapid growth of commercial aerospace companies, which are constantly changing the rules of the game and subverting the traditional "rocket equation", is a phenomenon worthy of attention, just like the rise of commercial companies in the Internet era.

We only know the basics about aerospace, but from the rules of mature information technology industry, we may be able to get a rough idea of ​​the future business blueprint.

One of the laws of the IT industry is Moore's Law. There are many ways to describe 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 purchased at the same price doubles every 18 months; or the price of a computer with the same performance drops by half every 18 months... In short, the essence is getting lower and lower in price and higher in quality, with a faster growth rate than traditional industries.

Obviously, rocket launches are also evolving along this route and achieving rapid development due to the participation of commercial companies.

On the one hand, commercial companies bring social capital, which can greatly reduce the country's financial burden. At the same time, healthy competition can accelerate technological innovation and further reduce costs. For example, after SpaceX successfully recovered its rocket, rocket operators and manufacturers in various countries began to explore reuse technology. For example, in addition to SpaceX's vertical recovery, the winged return method is also constantly improving.

In order for all of humanity to move outward into space, rocket companies must first move inward.

Another law of the IT industry is the Andy-Bill Law. If users hold on to their money and wait 18 months to buy electronic products at half the price, can the IT industry still develop rapidly? The desire of users to constantly upgrade hardware comes from the reconstruction of business imagination by technology companies, and new applications continue to emerge. In other words, Bill wants to take away what Andy gives (What Andy gives, Bill takes away.), and through innovative applications, users are forced to improve hardware performance and actively replace new machines, otherwise they will not be able to play games that take up more memory, take photos with higher precision, and lag behind others in surfing speed.

Back to the commercial launch sector, we can find that the three companies that first sent civilians into space and made space travel a reality are SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Atlantic, all of which are commercial companies. They constantly innovate business models, reshape people's perception of aerospace, and stimulate people's desire to go to the sky when many people think that space has nothing to do with them.

In China, the Kuaizhou-1 carrier rocket sold launch services worth RMB 40 million through a live broadcast platform, which indeed attracted customers to come for consultation. This also proves that the demand for rocket services in the Chinese market is real.

Making space a fashion and trend, isn't this the path the Internet has taken in the past twenty years?

Space Portal: Take a Rocket to the Infinite Universe

Many people in the industry have said that the mobile Internet carried by smartphones is the new "entrance" to the IT industry and the intersection of hardware and software. Through a huge ecosystem, it attracts people from the upstream, midstream and downstream of the industrial chain to profit from it.

From the perspective of the entire aerospace industry chain, rockets are the "entrance", which vertically includes the entire chain of design, manufacturing, launch, and operation, and horizontally expands to space station transportation, equipment development, software systems, and other industries. As the intersection of the entire system, rockets are as important to commercial aerospace as smartphones are to mobile Internet.

Looking back at China's development in the mobile Internet era, we can see 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 also important for the rocket industry, such as space calls, life support systems, video solutions, satellite traffic management, etc.

If the goal of the aerospace industry is really to "get to Mars," then these projects are very important and unnecessary. Moreover, they do not rely on any mysterious technology and can be independently innovated using current technology. For example, Cognitive Space, a startup in the United States, is developing an AI-driven control system to automate satellite operations, reduce the burden of monitoring and managing each satellite, and prevent orbital congestion.

The commercial space 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 gain commercial value from it.

The "China Aerospace Industry Report" released by European consulting firm Euroconsult shows that there are currently more than 100 private companies in China's civil aerospace sector, and more than 125 investments have been made since 2014.

In stark contrast to the space race of the 20th century, the current space race is mainly taking place within commercial enterprises. Even the renewed interest of national agencies in space missions is due to the emergence of potential commercial opportunities.

As the main means of transport into space, rockets are one of the keys to maintaining space superiority, representing a country's ability to independently enter space, and are also the focus of commercialization. For example, NASA hopes to commercialize the Space Launch System (SLS), which has been under research since 2010, and fly it once a year for the Artemis program.

Of course, starting to focus on commercial considerations does not mean that national space agencies are unimportant. In fact, the Mars vision must rely on the combined efforts of national and commercial forces to advance.

To give a typical example, as a commercial company, SpaceX has received a number of technical support and transfers from NASA. The Merlin engine of its Falcon series rockets uses the nozzle technology of the downgraded engine of the Apollo lunar module.

The "rocket-slinging" company SpinLaunch mentioned above has received commercial venture capital, with more than $100 million in funding from various investors including Google Venture, Airbus Ventures and Kleiner Perkins; as well as government orders. In 2019, the company signed a contract with the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit to conduct its first experimental orbital launch.

This trend also constitutes a paradoxical phenomenon. In order for all mankind to unite through outward expansion, we have to first be separated and compete with each other because of national interests on the earth.

But no matter what, only by taking the universe as the boundary and initiating the exploration of new worlds can human civilization escape the cycle of resource involution.

If we are lucky, we will see great progress in Mars research in our lifetime. By then, how would you like to be sent into space?