The Martian Challenge

[N_Molson]

Hello,

After a heated discussion I had with TNeo in the basement on the advantages and inconveniences of a "SLS-type approach" versus a "Medium-Heavy lifters" strategy to land a manned mission on Mars, I proposed to make the experiment in Orbiter.

I have a deal for you. I make a fairly-realistic Atlas V rocket with heavy upgrades possiblities up to 100 tons, you design and fly a Mars mission in Orbiter. You need a specific vehicle, ask me, I'll do it for you (for experimental use). I'm curious to see what will come out of it. Objective : land at least 3 uMMu on Mars and allow them to spend 1 month there or more. We'll see how "simple" it is.

Only three astronauts, and no further missions? I would then go for the Atlas V Heavy. Flags and footprints!

if you want me to design something that launches multiple spacecraft in every launch window to Mars with growing capacity, I would just ask you to unify all "25 ton to 51.6° LEO"-launchers to permit simulating a 18 month campaign starting at the closing of one launch window and ending when the spacecraft return to Earth again after 48 months.

See that as a minimal requirement, there is no upper limit in crew number or staying duration or Mars activities. If TNeo accepts to play the game, I'd be glad to have you as a "referee" in judging as neutrally as possible what is realistic or not concerning timeframe, technological, technical, geopolitical and economical aspects. :yes:

I am strongly biased, that makes me a rather poor referee. But if you would like to find a few more people for the "board of referees", I would sure be on board. Three or five referees might a nice number.

Also, there should be a clearer goal then for making the referee decisions as clear as possible. I would say the goal should be more than just one landing, so what about the following:

Crew size is three or more for fulfilling basic EVA safety rules, three landings or more. All landings of one team should be in one landing zone, of less than 2 kilometer radius.

0. Landing: Unmanned landing test and marking of the target. Option to leave equipment for first manned landing.
1. Landing: Proof of concept and initial exploration. 30 days stay on mars and early abort return test.
2. Landing: First full length mission.
3. Landing: Second full length mission.

...

More landings are optional.

There should be a number of political and science objectives, that the teams would have to finish in the first three landings. Not just staying on Mars and pretending to do something there. If you can achieve these goals with just three astronauts on Mars, it is fine, but that would mean no EVA time for any assembly work on Mars.

The next aspect: All fair weather or should there be pseudorandom, unexpected events, that the crews of the mission would have to face and handle? I think it increases realism, if all teams would get the same random events at the same time of their scheduled three landings. The teams should not know anything at all about what the referees will play out against them, but they can be sure, all will get the same task to solve.

Finally, the economic side. I think a full economic analysis would make me go nuts. For proper comparison of the teams, it is needed, so a minimalist solution has a fair chance against a gold-plated solution.

The fairest solution would be forbidding all real world launchers and use fictional currencies. All vehicles have to be made from parts and every part has its capabilities and costs fixed and published by the board of referees and every team can make use of already published components. But my feeling is, that this solution also means too much development work and should be avoided.

So... not really an easy challenge and less easy to set up a proper competition. I think my remarks are pretty poorly designed.

Urwumpe
Three or five referees might a nice number.

N_Molson
Agreed. 5 would be nice : 2 pro "SLS approach", 2 pro "EELV approach", 1 neutral.

UrwumpeCrew size is three or more for fulfilling basic EVA safety rules, three landings or more. All landings of one team should be in one landing zone, of less than 2 kilometer radius.

N_Molson
Makes sense. Agreed.

Urwumpe
0. Landing: Unmanned landing test and marking of the target. Option to leave equipment for first manned landing.
1. Landing: Proof of concept and initial exploration. 30 days stay on mars and early abort return test.
2. Landing: First full length mission.
3. Landing: Second full length mission.[/I]

N_Molson
Agreed. Let's call this "milestones" (à la Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space if you see what I mean).

Urwumpe
There should be a number of political and science objectives, that the teams would have to finish in the first three landings. Not just staying on Mars and pretending to do something there. If you can achieve these goals with just three astronauts on Mars, it is fine, but that would mean no EVA time for any assembly work on Mars.

N_Molson
Agreed. It should be possible to have a vessel or a module tracking down the MEVA durations and summing those up. The jury could set the required on-surface objectives. From the addon point of view, it shouldn't be too hard to make vessel-structures that grows in size with time, function of the number of uMMu in a given radius and time they spend here. Then the jury would tell "this is going to require 20 hours of MEVA", etc...).

Urwumpe
The next aspect: All fair weather or should there be pseudorandom, unexpected events, that the crews of the mission would have to face and handle? I think it increases realism, if all teams would get the same random events at the same time of their scheduled three landings. The teams should not know anything at all about what the referees will play out against them, but they can be sure, all will get the same task to solve.

N_Molson
Agreed. Concerning the weather, it should not be too hard to find meteorological statistics for major launch sites and then the jury would roll a "weather dice" for each launch (the year could be divided in 4 seasons to reflect the changing odds).

If only the Atlas V I'm developping is used, I plan to add a "reliability" factor much like what you have in Thorton's addons. We would set those to the real Atlas V statistics (which are currently very near 100%). For other vehicles, that could be implemented too ("failure tables" against random rolls). If we take for exemple a martian rover, a minor failure could cost EVA time, while a major would get the rover stranded with the necessity to spend more EVA time to get it back in function (EVA time could be the ultimate "money" on Mars). Of course the hardware would have to be "Jury Approved *stamp*".

Urwumpe
Finally, the economic side. I think a full economic analysis would make me go nuts. For proper comparison of the teams, it is needed, so a minimalist solution has a fair chance against a gold-plated solution.

The fairest solution would be forbidding all real world launchers and use fictional currencies. All vehicles have to be made from parts and every part has its capabilities and costs fixed and published by the board of referees and every team can make use of already published components. But my feeling is, that this solution also means too much development work and should be avoided.

N_Molson
I share your conclusion, especially since the ultimate goal of the challenge is to simulate operations with hardware that is already in operation "in the tubes".

I would give free credits concerning the rate of launches, as long as it means using existing or "soon existing" (planned) launch sites / launch pads. Within the limit of ground crews readiness (like 10 launches a day on the same pad is not an option).

Urwumpe
So... not really an easy challenge and less easy to set up a proper competition. I think my remarks are pretty poorly designed.

N_Molson
But how much more constructive than what has been posted above. There's a time for words and another for action.

I think really random failures are a bit distorting the competition, since we have a really small sample size. If we would do thousand missions, one mission that fails isn't that bad. But with three landings to score, it hurts.

Maybe we should just sum up reliability scores for every component and then have a table how many "hardware failures" somebody would have to handle along the way...maybe one table and reliability score per mission phase. What will go wrong will be randomly decided by the reliability scoring, but the timing will be fixed, and this fixed timing will follow Murphies law for all: In the moment, that one failure annoys you most.

If we would do thousand missions
Good luck :lol:

But I get the point. Or maybe the jury could sovereignly decide of the failures like : "hm, they are doing a little too well, let's put them something in the way". With a "fair play" spirit : catastrophic failures should be distributed only when the jury agrees that one player move was a very risky one (and to temper that, a dice roll could still be added, like "ok, they took some risks here, but sometimes risk pays off").

Notice that a jury member could be biased towards a mission plan, but would have to be neutral towards players (not easy, but that's what's make the referee job difficult after all ; in soccer some referees may like the play style of some teams, but they still have to be neutral on the field).

The first thing to do would be to get the referees team, or Jury. That way they could agree on the basic rules we discussed with Urwumpe above. I can't be part of that Jury, of course. I supply the "hardware", which is going to consume a lot of time already. Like a team asks for a vehicle with specification (mass, Isp, etc...), the Jury decides if those specs are realistic in the (for example) 2015-2035 context, and I make the stuff.

So yes, it is definitively open to anyone interested. Let's get a Jury (if possible, some technical knowledge would be appreciated) and let's declare the Games open !

- So, before anything get started, we need the referees, or Jury, team. After that I'll let them run the show under the conditions debated above.

People that want to apply as Jury Members can declare themselves here. It could be good to have substitutes, in case of a member temporary indisponiblity.

 

[orbitingpluto]

I think picking the jury should wait until enough people have offered to join it that there can be a choosing of options. For instance, I would like to join the referees myself, but I would rather get the job because of own qualities rather than because I got here first.

What qualities can I boast of? I read spaceflight non-fiction as a hobby and do look for more materiel in places like the NTRS. While my attempts to fly to Mars have failed so far(Orbiter-wise), I do understand the basics of interplanetary flight enough to have figured out why I failed on the occasions I've tried. It is true I rarely post on the forum; I have lurked daily since I've first joined, and I don't intend to stop in the future. I also believe that in the end, this challenge will at least shine some light on the endless debate on how big does the LV have to go.

As for my bias, I do like the idea of using the already available LVs like the Atlas Vs and the Protons of the world instead of the SLSes. However, the last time I planed a moon landing in Orbiter, did use the Energia, so maybe my bias isn't so strong. Even so, I wouldn't claim to be totally neutral.

 

[jonmatifa]

This sounds like a very interesting competition, whether or not I participate in anyway, I'd love to be an observer still...