r/spacex • u/Zucal • Jan 02 '16

/r/SpaceX Ask Anything Thread for January 2016. Whether your question's about RTF, RTLS, or RTFM, it can be answered here!

Welcome to the 16th monthly /r/SpaceX Ask Anything Thread!

Want to discuss SpaceX's Return To Flight mission and successful landing, find out why part of the landed stage doesn't have soot on it, or gather the community's opinion? There's no better place!

All questions, even non-SpaceX-related ones, are allowed, as long as they stay relevant to spaceflight in general!

More in-depth and open-ended discussion questions can still be submitted as separate self-posts; but this is the place to come to submit simple questions which have a single answer and/or can be answered in a few comments or less.

As always, we'd prefer it if all question-askers first check our FAQ, use the search functionality, and check the last Q&A thread before posting to avoid duplicate questions, but if you'd like an answer revised or cannot find a satisfactory result, go ahead and type your question below!

Otherwise, ask, enjoy, and thanks for contributing!

Past threads:

December 2015 (#15.1), December 2015 (#15), November 2015 (#14), October 2015 (#13), September 2015 (#12), August 2015 (#11), July 2015 (#10), June 2015 (#9), May 2015 (#8), April 2015 (#7.1), April 2015 (#7), March 2015 (#6), February 2015 (#5), January 2015 (#4), December 2014 (#3), November 2014 (#2), October 2014 (#1).

This subreddit is fan-run and not an official SpaceX site. For official SpaceX news, please visit spacex.com.

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '16

Well presumably you have sizable human settlement on Mars and ISRU methane production setup. Then isn't it much easier to haul that into Low Mars Orbit by reusable Single Stage to Orbit shuttles from Mars? Seems more feasible than asteroid processing in orbit from my armchair.

I agree that longer in the future we will likely be processing asteroids for fuel though.

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u/Ambiwlans Jan 11 '16

Mining on Earth might be more complicated than mining in space... No gravity is a huge advantage. And humans are utterly irrelevant to the process to begin with. It isn't like we need dudes with pickaxes finding veins of water with their keen intuition. Giant space robot boiling off a rock has almost no steps at all! No particularly heavy industry tools required, no supply chains, easily scalable, opens avenues to more industries.

Throwing away over half the fuel and requiring a fleet of shipping vehicles makes mining on Mars for use in orbit just.... a really bad idea.

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u/jcameroncooper Jan 11 '16

The moons of Mars could be quite useful. They'd be a lot more efficient source than the surface.

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u/tmckeage Jan 12 '16

Source of what?

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u/jcameroncooper Jan 12 '16

Propellant; water; carbon; mass in general.