The Omaha Trail
A
system for high-efficiency transport between Earth and Mars
Collaboration
between the Lake
Matthew Team (LMT) and ISEC director M. Lades
Introduction
Mars
is popular as a new frontier destination for humanity, thanks to SpaceX
initiatives and other private enterprises. Governments are finally starting to
move on plans that were delayed when NERVA rockets proven on the test stand
never flew and a manned Mars program was never implemented in the 1970s. This
newsletter brings to you a proposed integrated framework of independently
valuable infrastructure components to support Mars efforts. We call our
framework the Omaha Trail. Just like the US transcontinental railroads,
constructed during the time of the civil war, such infrastructure requires
investments, but it can pay high dividends, especially in a time of strategic need.
The interested reader can find a starting point for more information in the LMT press release of September 18 2017.
The remainder of this article sketches Omaha Trail components for facilitated access to a proposed Mars settlement site. A hub on the second Mars moon, Deimos, with Deimos Dock and a Rail Launcher, is essential. The architecture is completed with an elevator-type drop line from space, the Mars Lift, and a surface Tramway from the Mars Lift ground station to the settlement site
Fig.
1: Omaha Trail at Deimos, with Deimos Dock, Deimos Rail Launcher, and Mars
Lift. Image Credit: Lake Matthew Team / Celestia
Lake Matthew
Global
terraforming concepts for Mars exist and examples can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars.
However, their impact is unclear, when unique
resources, only available once, are wasted when the planet relapses to a desert
state. The Lake Matthew plan is different. It proposes local terraforming, releasing
on Mars new bridgehead resources and promising a few thousand years of bedrock
heat for Lake Matthew, and for settlement. Sustainability is the key. TRL levels
seem viable, and the mission timeframe calls for a start of surface operations
in 2036.
In
our collaboration on the Omaha Trail we overlaid a new framework onto the Lake
Matthew plan to facilitate transport to and from Mars, with the primary
destination being the settlement site at Lake Matthew.
Deimos Dock and Deimos
Rail Launcher
Deimos,
while only a small rock on the planetary scale, promises the key to better Mars
access. In a first step, we propose a docking station on Deimos supported by solar
power photovoltaics (PV) and an ISRU mining operation, to manufacture propellant,
water, simple compressed materials for shielding and weights, and possibly more.
A suggested distribution of photovoltaics (PV), mining, and dock facilities was
given at the Space Elevator conference in August 2017.
Propellant
from Deimos has value superior to propellant from Mars due to its location near
the edge of the Mars gravity well. Also, Deimos'
local gravity is only 0.0025 m/s2, a quarter permille of Earth.
The gravity pull of 100 kg on Earth reduces to the equivalent of only 26 g on
Deimos, making docking cheap. SpaceX ITS transports traveling to and from Mars
can refuel at Deimos Dock with little effort, reducing the load of propellant
required to be carried to and from the planet, and making transfers more
efficient. While we used the best volatile prospecting data for volatiles available,
in situ tests on Deimos are recommended as a priority for Mars programs.
In
a second step the docking port on Deimos will be extended. The cold of space offers
interesting perspectives for superconductors. It makes superconducting magnetic
energy storage (SMES) viable with reduced containment, and much reduced mass,
compared to Earth. We propose a Deimos Rail Launcher (DRL) facility that uses
such SMES storage as an energy reservoir. SMES and direct PV provide vessels a Δv of up to 1 km/s over DRL tensioned
wire rails, with low g-forces. The DRL makes several destinations directly accessible,
e.g., the Mars periapsis as decision point to go to Earth or Mars, and the top
of a Mars elevator just inside the Deimos orbit, the Arestation of our proposed
Mars Lift.
Mars Lift and Tramway
Space
elevators list among their main benefits benign access to orbit, without exposure
to the violent power and vibration of rocket engines, and scalability. However,
climbing also requires high power density on a climber to drive it. The
established feasibility condition for Earth maps out a relationship between the
power density of the driving infrastructure of a climber, tether strength, and
house-keeping operations of a space elevator. Climber power density includes in
that case both components of the drive system, the motor and either a solar or
power beaming receiver array.
Our
Mars Lift uses the space elevator as a simple drop line that requires minimal
auxiliary engines on a climber to start the drop, and uses eddy-current brakes with
sufficient heat radiators to limit the maximum climber speed to around 300 km/h.
A final Joule-braking step is only required at the bottom of the tether. The
basic Mars Lift concept is therefore a descending vehicle, called a rappeller.
It uses standardized containers that lock into the rappeller frame. Empty rappellers
and containers are shuttled back to the Arestation via return ITS rocket. The Mars Lift saves propellant that would
otherwise be used to land the payload on Mars.
When augmented with
propellant manufactured on Deimos, the Mars Lift can reduce overall propellant
requirement for cargo flights by about 70%, and cut the number of required
Earth booster launches by a similar percentage.
Fig.
2. Schematic of cargo flight staging
(2,3,5). Deimos propellant (1,3,5). Mars Lift space elevator descend line in
gold (5). Image credit: Lake Matthew Team
We
scaled the tether significantly larger than the minimum safety factors typical
for other space elevator concepts to address concerns about climber grip and
the additional pull of the off-equator elevator.
What
about a Phobos drop tether instead of the Deimos configuration? Mars is not an
easy landing site, with only 0.6 % atmospheric density of Earth, as
concepts with sky-cranes and supersonic parachutes with ~20 m diameter for
approximately one metric ton of payload for the Curiosity rover
demonstrate. There will be no aerodynamic supersonic airplanes with high
payloads on Mars. Even a drop from 100 km altitude still requires
approximately 1/3 of the dropped mass as fuel/engine for proper braking. The terminal
velocity in the atmosphere approximates 1000 km/h. The Mars atmosphere is just
dense enough to be annoying without being useful. The issues of braking in the
Martian atmosphere and the high projected ground speed of Phobos drop made us
forego the concept of a drop tether. We
chose instead an elevator from the Martian surface to beyond areostatic-orbit,
the equivalent of geostationary-orbit, terminating about 100 km below Deimos
orbit.
Phobos
avoidance is the next step to clear for a Mars elevator. Oscillating elevators
were the solution proposed by A.C. Clarke in the Fountains of Paradise. Induced
oscillations are interesting as obstacle avoidance mechanism. We preferred instead
a steady state solution as a baseline that requires no additional input of energy,
i.e., an off-equator elevator. We followed the paradigms of Levin and Gassend
for our investigations of several scenarios: two sites were modeled, at ~12.65
degrees and 18 degrees South, with 10 MYuri and 20 MYuri tethers. All
investigated baselines, without additional loading by climbers, cleared Phobos
comfortably, including sufficient clearance for known variations in its orbit,
see presentation for 2017 SEC.
Once
on the ground, we use elevator-strength cables to establish a horizontal
tramway following the concepts of Pearson’s Lunar tramway. Elevator-strength
material permits cable spans with minimal sag over tens of kilometers, requiring
minimal infrastructure compared to a railroad. The rappellers are converted to
trammers for powered horizontal transport.
Open
items are the hazards of Martian dust and the electric properties of the Martian
atmosphere. Global dust storms are reported to reach up to 80-100 km above
the planet. Even the high mountains on Mars cannot escape these storms. Also,
atmospheric conductivity is significantly higher than on Earth, with many
discharges. Clearly a Mars tether has to
be well protected. On the positive side the energy of the drop could also be
converted to augment or service the tether. For example, DC current from the rappeller could be tapped to remove an
expected ice hazard: creating a
Joule-heating circuit in the final 100 km of tether, to sublimate water ice and
dry ice off the tether.
Summary
The
treatment of details of the Omaha Trail exceeds the format of this newsletter,
so we only highlighted a few basic points. A good starting point for further
information and appropriate references is the link provided at the start of
this article and the pdf of our August 2017 presentation
at the Space Elevator conference. For further science and engineering
questions you can contact the authors via email under Lake Matthew Team (LMT) and M. Lades. This is a work-in-progress
and numbers and concepts still undergo continued updates from our baseline
presented in August. For example, SpaceX revised their ITS architecture in September
2017, and the Omaha Trail specs were updated accordingly, as given in our
November 2017 presentation
to the British Interplanetary Society. Also, the LMT won in November the HP Mars Home Planet Urbanization
Concept Challenge, in the Innovation
in Science category. The entry was
an artificial magnetic shield that extends Omaha Trail facilities. It aims to reduce a crew’s exposure to cosmic
radiation, on the open Martian surface. We invite ISEC members to participate
in collaborative research, and we hope to keep everyone updated in future
newsletters on our progress along the Omaha Trail.
Larger pictures can be found at: https://isec.org/omaha-trail-overview
Architect’s View
High School magazine publishes Student’s
view of Space Elevator
Michael A. Fitzgerald
Interview
Recently, I was interviewed by a high
school student from Austin, Texas. He had heard some things about our Elevator.
He wanted more. The interview was a lot of fun; the young man was sincere and
curious. I answered all his questions & even put him in contact with an Indian
student that I have been mentoring. The well written article is impressive
& the products of the student from the other side of the world are
imaginative. (He is 14!) We are indeed the INTERNATIONAL Space Elevator
Consortium! Read the article and form your own opinion. It starts on page 17.
Here is the link https://issuu.com/lasaezine/docs/3-the-final-frontier-1
Fitzer
Michael A. Fitzgerald
Chief Architect
Why
Submit your abstracts
by Pete Swan
It turns out that in the President’s
Corner above, I mention several conferences that will be occurring this
year. I am excited about them for
several reasons: I love to travel, I
enjoy the bright new ideas I run into, the people are always exciting [why not
– they are interested in space and new ideas], and I get to spread the word on
space elevators and the future. Of note,
is the fact that the deadlines for abstracts are, in my opinion, always too
early – but I have no control over that. So, the proposal is that you should think about proposing a paper and
submitting today. Here are the
deadlines:
-
ISEC Conference [Aug23-26 Seattle]: somewhere around May 15th
-
International Space Development Conference [May 24-28 Los Angeles]: Essentially the first half of February [submit through me as chair of session]
-
International Astronautical Federation Congress [Oct 1-5 Bremen Germany]: The deadline is the end of February.
-
British Interplanetary Society’s West Midland Branch [Mar 24 Droitwich]: Work with Peter Robinson
-
Symposium on Lift (Elevator) and Escalator Technologies [Sept 19-20 Northampton]: Bryan Laubscher was invited to speak, so work with him.
If you believe you do not have the
“right stuff” to submit an abstract and be accepted, please revise your
thinking. Our space elevator conference needs new ideas and people who have
thought about the issues. The IAF in Bremen is always open for new concepts on
space topics and one session is focusing on space elevators. The ISDC in Los
Angeles is open to people who are interested in space and want to
participate.
Come join as active presenters or
just visit and enjoy the papers and concepts at these symposia. I encourage you
to participate in the space elevator conference as a first priority [of
course], but also the other ones. The ISDC in LA is always one of my favorite
gatherings as they focus on real aspects of how space effects each of us on
Earth AND shows the bigger vision of moving off planet.
Pete