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[Madman198237]

There's well-studied methods to produce hydrogen or methane (hello, SpaceX and also Blue Origin, if they matter all that much given the pace of SpaceX innovation) on Mars as well, so you can deal with fuel.

As to the weight of the oxidizer in proportion, it depends quite heavily. Different fuels are burned at different ratios to oxidizer depending on the densities and molecular weights of each propellant as well as the resulting temperature and chemistry of the outputs. Most systems that use liquid oxygen as an oxidizer (that is to say, most rocket engines), for instance, don't run anything oxygen-rich even in preburners and the like, if they can avoid it, because the resulting hot oxygen gas does Not Nice Things^TM to any, say, rapidly spinning metal components that the designers would prefer not literally catch fire whenever they turn on the engine.

Anyway saving the mass of oxidizer would be a HUGE bonus, though not as much as saving the mass of both fuel and oxidizer. Not needing to haul the water and oxygen and hydrogen for fuel cells, humans, cooling, hydroponics, etc. is also a huge benefit.

[martinuzz]

The Moxie is a nice proof of concept, and a first step towards creating self refueling space expeditions to Mars in the future.

[Starver]

Michael Collins[1], at one time arguably the most isolated single human being there had ever been, has died, aged 90.



[1] Sometimes known as "Not even the most famous Michael Collins". Even right now, for me, the other one still leads on a trivial web-search!

[Bumber]

[1] Sometimes known as "Not even the most famous Michael Collins". Even right now, for me, the other one still leads on a trivial web-search!

[2] Who I just mistook for Phil Collins

[Starver]

Well, SN15 (Musk) didn't explode.

And NS4 (Bezos) is slated to go up on 20/Jul, as its first manned suborbital/superKarmen flight, it was announced shortly beforehand.

(I'm not entirely sure which of them is trolling the other, but the "Starship Mk3 'Serial Number' <n>" nomenclature did arise later than than the established New Shepard project.)

Just to explain the edit, for those who notice this: the "L" key is bordered by the <Backspace> key on this device's on-screen keyboard, with absolutely no haptic feedback possible to tell me when words like "established" become "estaished", etc, by miskeying. Mostly I spot this sort of thing before posting, but sometimes it's annoyingly spotted only when rereading long afterwards.

[delphonso]

Hopefully the astronauts are allowed to use the restroom.

[Flying Dice]

Long March 5B is on course to crash if any debris survives re-entry.

There are several live-trackers of it going if anyone wants to watch.

[Starver]

If it lands on the Côte d'Ivoire again, some people might suspect it's a definite grudge...

edit: From a few minutes following the track and decreasing Altitude value, and a little (maybe slightly optomistic) expeience with KSP and the like, I'd lay relatively high odds on it doing a Skylab but probably further somewhere between there and NZ.

[Starver]

Seems to have traded just enough height for velocity to fool me,. It really looked like it'd at least get below the Karman Line before crossing the Sea Of Tasman, but the visible rate of decent slowed. Maybe it was approaching a perigee point (atmosphere excepting)...

But I suppose a SPOUA landing is still on the cards. (I stopped watching it a few minutes back... I'll see what news there is tomorrow. I'm well outside anybpersonal danger-zone.)

[Starver]

(So it ended up in/on/scattered over the Indian Ocean.  And, yes, I learnt later that the perigree at that point was over Australia, obviously when I saw it rapidlly fall through (IIRC) 170km, 160km, towards 150km altitude I was indeed seeing it as it was converting height for sufficient velocity for another swing up and round (or three). That'll teach me for only taking a few minutes to make a snap decision. But, in my defence, I was also deprived of a ground-speed or other indicator of instantaneous orbital velocity, on that tracker, which intrinsically and severely impeded my attempts at accurate guessing! )

[Starver]

Change of subject...

Red China is on the Red Planet, apparently. After having surveyed the LZ thoroughly since the mothercraft/orbiter arrived, their rover/lander-combo (the more traditional 'perched atop the rocket-table, needs to drive down ramps to dismount' type of setup) is reportedly landed, making them only the second country to achieve that particular feat.

Not quite sure when the wheels touch dust (if I didn't mishear the news, and they perhaps already did that too) but if they've done the difficult bit that's claimed so many other scalps in the race for Mars they should be laughing...

[Duuvian]

Congrats

One step closer to a Star Trekky future I guess (hopefully without the nuclear war part of that fictional setting of course, seems unlikely Cochrane would have been able to build a spaceship after that in addition to being no fun in general one can assume)

[Starver]

Just to mark, as if anybody isn't already more than aware, that Bezos became the second self-launching space-tourist today (if Branson counted as the first, the other day, give or take the whole Karman line thang...).

I think I'm most pleased about Wally Funk (who hopes to get another go, I think).


What else has been happening in the theatre of space?

Well, everyone who recently got to Mars seems to be working still. (And China is also manning its fledgling Space Station core module.)

There were plans put forward the other day to switch power supply/regulator/whatever units in Hubble to get it back up and Sciencing again. Which I must really follow up on.

There also is an open invitation to retrieve Prospero (UK's first and so far only self-launched satellite, from decades ago), and possibly also its launcher's upper stage which is also floating around up there still. Ideally a soft-capture and graceful deorbit to put on show, but at the very least to officially declutter its orbit by forcing it down at last. (A mixed feeling about that.) I'm personally pondering the concept of an ablative-shield, drag-chute then enclosing airbags approach, a la Beagle 2 but an ocean-landing unless you want to try to land it back on a remote stretch of Australia as a bookending. But first you need to catch and enclose it, which is something that is already being investigated for other decluttering experiments.
 

[Culise]

There were plans put forward the other day to switch power supply/regulator/whatever units in Hubble to get it back up and Sciencing again. Which I must really follow up on.

They succeeded, by the bye.  The backup hardware is running normally and the sciencing has now resumed.

[Starver]

(Cheers for the Hubble update. I hadn't seen anything like that when I posted, and your post got there before I did a more extensive look at less generalised/more spacey news sites.)

Just to mark, as if anybody isn't already more than aware, that Bezos became the second self-launching space-tourist today (if Branson counted as the first, the other day, give or take the whole Karman line thang...)

#insert simpsons-nelson_muntz-haha

Of course, the term "space tourist" still applies as unofficially as before. And "spaceflight participant" was already something they didn't qualify for, despite the apparent slack in the description (it involves NASA/Roscosmos-sponsored passage to the ISS, so is beyond the current ability of either's own craft, though possibly could apply if Elon took a jaunt in his). Expect a whole lot more shake-ups, I suppose, until the point at which everyone is going everywhere every-which-way just for the "100 Mile High Club" bragging rights, then it'll be quietly forgotten about beyond the first few thousand individuals, or so.