Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "The Dream Palace of the Space Cadets - Dr Jeffrey F Bell" video.

I am an aerospace engineer with 30+ years in automation & control systems. The basic problem is that rocket engines are highly strung systems where you only need to be a tiny bit off and its a major hassle. With respect to Raptor, out side of the team working on it, nobody actually knows the problems. That's for the simple reason we haven't been there through the process and heard about all the problems they have so far overcome. What I can try an explain is what its like working on highly complex systems with simplistic managers. One of the problems with highly strung systems is that even the tiniest fault can be catastrophic. I have worked around race car mechanics and they get the concept because every part of a race car is being pushed to the limit and small things can be huge problems. At SpaceX you have a guy like Elon Musk who dismisses every problem with "We'll just do." He's a lot like the racecar driver and I've met them. They don't care about details, just make the car go faster. You only need to watch one of his interviews for a few minutes to realise he can't handle details. I have worked with managers who are exactly the same and they are nightmares. They don't give a damn about solving any problem or what it will take and they quite often heap loads of pressure and stress onto people. They're a nightmare for people like me who have to deal with the details and SOLVE THE PROBLEMS. I can't tell you or anyone what the actual issue with the Raptor is. It could be something simple that appears trivial and just isn't. It could be a bunch of things. What I can say is that working with managers like Elon Musk makes the process of getting ANYTHING working very difficult and very stressful.
8
I'm an aerospace engineer (U. Illinois) and Dr. Jonathan Trent commented a while back that people are not paying attention to just how harsh of an environment Space and particularly Mars actually is. He's also commented that NOBDY is even close to a functioning self supporting closed loop bio-logical system. As a doctor you'd have a more detailed grasp of what it actually takes to sustain life. Beyond water and oxygen there's food and that means DIET. It seems that the space cadet family have just ignored that human beings EAT, PEE and POOP or as I call it the EPP problem. Your an ER doc. Does the human body stop EPP when you put it into an induced coma? And yes I know what its like to come out of an IC. People generally have no idea of going into IC but they sure do remember coming out. I'll never forget the doctor saying "Relax. Congratulations you made it!" What amazes me is that the space cadet family have as a core belief that we must become an interplanetary species to survive, because we have basically broken the life support system on the planet we live on. They then proceed to ignore the issues of life support which are at the core of their beliefs. As doc you might also have better knowledge on the psychology of cults. But my understanding is that all cults have people who CHOOSE to WILLFULLY IGNORE basic facts that are right there to be clearly seen. These are people who can look at something and then deny or dismiss it. Feel free to comment further on that.
5
@commonsenseskeptic I did aeronautical & astronautical engineering at Illinois in the late 80s. So far love your channel. The fact you are using simple basic math to prove points is fantastic. I totally empathize with your frustration with the "space cadet family" (SCF). I'll call them that instead of a cult. Irrespective of what we call them the point is there is too much of public discussion about technology (across all industries) being presented by people with no technical training or those with technical training who have just thrown away all they were taught. A while back Dr. Jonathan Trent (who is without doubt one of the smartest people I've ever encountered) commented that NOBODY is even close to being able to deploy a fully self sustaining closed loop biological system for off world use. So at the most fundamental basics we don't yet have the technology for long term off world self supporting habitation. That's not to say its impossible but the actual science (both R &D) hasn't been done to where we have a deployable system. Put it this way: If we only had a partial system that was deployable and could recycle SOME air, SOME water and provide SOME food, then why isn't that module already attached to the ISS. Even if it only provided a few cubic meters of Oxygen, few liters of water each week and few kilos of food each month, then that's a huge cost saving because that's supplies that DON'T need to be lifted to orbit. Go back an look at the ORIGINAL Space Station Freedom concepts that merged into the ISS. That was all being done while I was an undergrad. Those concepts called for 6-8 people stationed in space NOT 3. The simple reason why it was quickly scaled back was food, water and oxygen COSTS. Going back to basic math. Look at the next planned lunar mission. The Apollo LM had 75hours for 2 men that's 150 (2 x 75) man hours of life support. When Trump announced 4 people for 2 weeks that became 4men x 24hours x 14days or 1344 man hours. That means you need to land on the moon 9 times as much water, food, oxygen, CO2 filters, etc. and al the hardware to use it. Reducing that mission profile to 3 people on the moon for 10 days brings that back to 720 man hours, almost halving the life support requirement. Basic math is a great tool. Its also something people who like spinning daft ideas hate. In space discussions the ridiculous spin masters are the terraforming people. Way back when I was in college we had a guest lecture from an alumni who had just done a study for NASA on terraforming Mars. He basically told us to forget it. To change a planet that much was technically impossible and he gave us a list of reasons. The number one reason he gave is that planets are massive STABLE systems. For sure at the detailed level they are incredibly chaotic, but at the planetary level they are hyper stable. Otherwise they'd be falling apart. Planetary systems are like mob psychology. Its impossible to predict details like what individual members of a mob will exactly do. Yet you can predict a mobs overall behavior with incredible accuracy. That's one of the basic tenements of Isaac Asimov's psychohistory, which is now a genuine scientific field of study and we see every day in both commercial and political advertising. Its part of why public understanding of climate change is so poor. This entire concept of terraforming mars was DISMISSED by NASA over 30 years ago as folly. This is just a discussion on space. If we start going into other areas of technology like energy, water, agriculture, the ocean systems and the insane public discussions on them we'll be here for weeks. I you want to have a discussion on this stuff let me know.
5
I'm an aerospace engineer and that's about the best layman's description of the situation I've seen in a while.
3
@brindlebucker4741 I was actually referring to the comment by DancingCactus. As an engineer (and I am not alone) I'm tired of trying to explain why Mars is unrealistic and why we haven't been back to the moon and why a moon base right now is almost impossible because we really are missing a number of key technologies. Most of all I am tired of uneducated social media clowns making great pronouncements. I do actually like the fact that SOME of them are standing up and calling out the (what I call) the Space Industrial Complex (Boeing, Rockwell, Thiokol,.... etc.) who have sucked up billions to NOT deliver. There's plenty of examples. BUT I hate with a passion the ignorance many of them then spout often in the next breath. Angry Astronaut is a perfect example of people who do this. He'll call out companies like Blue Origin for not delivering and in the next breath BS on about Mars colonies as if they were a finger click away. Almost 20 years ago I met Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17) who told me to check out Helium-3. So I went off to the Australian mining industry to learn about mining. I get a hell of a reality check on just how difficult it is. Better still I got a monster reality check that would scare Godzilla on what it takes to support a workforce in a remote location. I can tell you from what I know has been published that NASA has no clue on remote construction or that kind of remote operations. A while back I was sent the official notes from a lunar conference hosted by NASA. Out of 170+ pages there was 1-1/2 pages on maintenance. I can tell from real experience that if there was 170 page compendium on potential lunar bases it SHOULD have at least 120pages on maintenance. For every 1 page on what you might deploy would need at least 4 pages on how you intend to maintain it. Anybody who has ever really been on a mine would know that. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️
3
@caked3953 Great point and it why the Elon fanbots (what I now call his fanboys and fan girls) dismiss the food, water and oxygen discussion with "we'll just use hydroponics or aquaponics" without any understanding that NOBODY yet knows how to make it work. There is actually an obscure corner of the aquarium hobby brigade who specialize in these minimal input tanks. I don't think they have an actual solution for taking to space because it does not involve food production but they have a sound understanding of what it takes to maintain those sorts of systems. But as for creating actual soil to grow things and create a functional environment - these fanbots are truly ignorant of reality. If you try and discuss these things with them they think you're barking mad and start howling. Elon has done a great job of creating a personality club around himself. Its going to get very interesting when that bubble bursts.
2
@starofjustice1 Its more than that as several of the videos that are on this channel show its about making money from selling pipedreams. Bas Lansdorp made around $10 million from the utter BS he pitched for Mars One. As Snake oil salesmen learnt decades ago the bulk of society are ignorant of reality no matter how well we try and educate them and they are easily fooled into handing over money. Think about all the Nigerian money scams that were prevalent in the late 90s early 2000s that we got in our emails and THEY CONTINUE TO THIS DAY no matter how many news stories are told. Think about the flat earth promoters. None of them believe its flat but they all know there are people stupid enough to buy merchandise and books and videos about it.
1
@illsaveus Your very right on all that, but do try and remember that Elon has also lucked into a couple of things where he was blessed with some superb engineers. He's also one of the best ever marketers of other peoples technology. First at PayPal - his code might have sucked and they wanted nothing to do with him but he was smart enough to make money out of it. Second with Tesla - his input to the car and development is a joke. I'm an aerospace engineer who works in industrial control and safety systems. Anyone who understands even the basics of vision guided systems knows how full of shite the driverless car stuff was. Have you notice that not even Uber mentions that stuff anymore. Third with SpaceX where he got blessed with Gwynne Shotwell and her team on the Falcon series. Yes they've had issues, but when you compare them to Boeing Starliner or SLS they actually have things that work including a man rated rocket. Yes I have seen some of the criticism of Gwynne Shotwell regarding some of her comments, but if you actually listen to what she's said there's no issue except for who she works for. As far as Starship and Starlink go. They are both Elon fantasies that will end in tears. Just like the hyper-inflated ridiculous valuations of Tesla shares will end in tears. Its one of those things with Elon Musk, at times you need to untangle some of the things he's into from the garbage he claims. If Jeff Bezos asked me the quickest way to go to the moon. I'd tell him to buy that chunk of SpaceX with the Falcons. Use Falcon Heavy to launch an Earth-Lunar transfer vehicle, a Lunar orbit transfer station and a Lunar lander. Use Dragon to take the crew up & down. Development time 2-3 years. Its call breaking the problem into manageable chunks. But then Elon isn't into manageable chunks he's into fantasy ships to Mars.
1
@anirudhmitra4232 I don't know who "spacefanboy" is or what he's claiming. At its most basic the idea of us becoming an "interplanetary species" within this solar system its pretty ridiculous as there's so few places with even the right gravity for our bodies to function properly. It doesn't matter if you believe in god or mother nature our bodies work best in 1g and 14.7psi of air that's about 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen. The moment you start getting away from that human bodies don't do so well. Remember above a certain height on Mt Everest you start to die no matter how well conditioned you are. Its not fundamentally wrong to think we'll live on other planets, but the proponents overlook so many basic facts. Its easy to do and we've all done it at some point, but then you also need listen to people who have expertise and experience, which so many of the clowns these days just won't do. Back around 2000 I got into an argument with a friend who was at NASA on the ISS construction. Like many others I wanted it finished so we could get on with stuff. When we'd been in college in the late 80s we all expected to build the next space station in the 90s and be back on the moon circa 2001. Then we got the rudest wakeup when Challenger blew up one morning. So by the year 2000 a lot of us just wanted the ISS finished so we could get on with stuff. At that time I wanted to go into fixing satellites. Instead of just dumping them when they ran out of fuel I wanted to refuel them. I was was just 1 of 100s wanting to do that. This friend of mine just slapped me down with the fact of the basic fuel and life support requirements for a mission like that. Her and others at NASA were tired of complaints on how long the ISS was taking. She'd had enough at that stage and told me to do some basic math or never bother her again. SHE WAS RIGHT and I apologised when I worked out what she and others at NASA already knew. There were a bunch of technologies that weren't ready and most still aren't ready. There were decisions made way back in the 1970s before me and my friend were even out of grade school, let alone out of college, that have had some very negative consequences we are still living with. Its one thing I do agree with the Angry Astronaut about. Right after Apollo we were betrayed. Some stupid decisions were made and the big aerospace companies stepped in and started milking NASA by the billion. I honestly don't know how far we'd be if smarter decisions had been made. I like to think we'd at least have a lunar base but can't say for certain because its just damn difficult. I heard claims just last week on one podcast about plans for being on Mars by the mid 80s, Saturn by the 90s and Alpha Centauri by 2000. It was just a ridiculous and stupid remark and yet its the sort of stuff people latch onto. Its very frustrating being an engineer these days because there are so many people saying things in bad faith. The person who made the claims about Mars in the 80s,... etc is doing a book promotion tour. He's not saying these things because they are true he's saying these things to get people to buy his book. And that's so common with so many people. They are trying to sell something.
1