William-Black on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/william-black/art/First-Flight-392062228William-Black

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First Flight

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Concept vehicle derived from the historical Convair Nexus heavy lift launch vehicle (circa 1962-63) – see my post here and here  – and current developments in in the field of autonomously guided, self-landing, reusable spacecraft such as the SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon Capsule.

Image is part of my Orion's Arm future history setting, see my journal entry Orion’s Arm Future History, A Synopsis. A Timeline Graph is to be found here: Timeline. For contextual placement within the framework of my Orion's Arm Future History see my journal entry Martian Frontier.

A Martian Nexus thundering skyward, lofting a 5 million pound payload to orbit.

The payoff moment, a culmination of thousands of man-hours of dedicated effort – engineers and developers react to the launch of a Martian variant of the General Dynamic’s Convair Nexus heavy booster. Note [Image Right] one of the figures has literally launched himself right off the ground in his excitement.

Image depicts my design variant of the historical Nexus LV 3.1 which I envision being developed by the Martians for heavy payload launches in support of the Martian terraforming program.

The 400 foot tall vehicle climbs skyward [Image Right] while on the nearer launch pad [Image Left of Center] another Nexus – sans its 256 foot (120 foot diameter) payload aero shell – towers over the foreground figures. This is the reusable booster itself – 202 feet in diameter, 144 feet tall. The booster is powered by twenty-four LH₂/LO₂ burning engines in a unified truncated-plug arrangement. The curved upper surface of the booster forms its re-entry heat shield. On orbit the unmanned vehicle sheds the payload aero shell, deploys its payload, and re-enters the Martian atmosphere nose-first, descending to a powered tail-landing at its point of origin, on the pad from which it launched.

Visible in the distance [Image Left] is the Payload Assembly building which contains the mobile gantry required to mount an assembled payload with its aero shell atop the reusable booster.

The historical Nexus reusable SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit) was designed at Convair, circa 1962-63, for a Post-Saturn program which sadly never materialized.

Convair produced engineering specifications and drawings for several variants of the Nexus.

The basic Nexus platform is a reusable booster with hydrogen/oxygen burning engines, 1 million lbs to LEO. A larger version of the same booster, the Nexus LV 3.1, would loft 2 million lbs to LEO.

According to my math a Nexus LV 3.1 launched from the surface of Mars could loft over five million lbs of payload into Martian orbit (5,320,000 lbs, to be exact – fuel load and structural mass of the vehicle inclusive) – Mars gravity being .375 of Earth’s.

I envision the Martian Nexus being used to loft entire nuclear impulse fuel-stacks for Jupiter and Saturn resource recovery missions related to Martian terrraforming; to place components for the Martian Polar-Mirror arrays in orbit (to be assembled by crews riding to orbit aboard the Martian Nuclear SSTO); and to place the core modules of Phobos Station on the Martian moon – Phobos Station later becomes the main orbital port complex, being a site of historical importance during the System States War era of my future history.

The historical Nexus booster is an unmanned, recoverable/reusable, design – my design variant is an powered tail-landing reusable launch vehicle – powered touch-down would be similar to (and rely on technology equivalent to) SpaceX’s Grasshopper.

Note: Terraforming Program, Launch Services contracting under the Martian System.

The Martian terraforming program requires diverse lunch solutions to address an array of different needs. Multiple heavy payload types are required, launched to orbit and to outer as well as to inner solar system targets, orbital construction capability, along with the capability to de-orbit heavy return payloads are part of the program requirments. The pitfall of a one-size-fits-all, single complex vehicle system is necessarily avoided.

To be highlighted in an upcoming journal entry, under the heading Economics, is the relationship of government to industry under the Martian system, there are distinct examples in my Orion’s Arm future history and these fit within an overall philosophical scheme. Other examples will be given; here the focus is in regard to the Martian government and the matter of contracting in the context of the Martian terraforming program.

The defining characteristic of Martian culture is the free market implementation of capitalism and the trader principal.

When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism—with a separation of state and economics as strong and profound as the separation of state and church (in respect to its implementation) in the U.S. Constitution.

Breech of contract and liability are addressed under Martian civil law—depending on severity, penalties are dire—as one might imagine in a legal system formulated to defend the integrity of habitats in an environment lethal to human life. Perhaps devastating might be a better word. Under Martian law there are few crimes higher than wasting resource or disrupting services necessary to survival of the settlement.  

Politically there is only one agenda – to advance the terraforming program. Once program guidelines are established development and operation of launch systems proceed with little bureaucratic intervention. There is no political wrangling over pork-barrel projects, politicians cannot intervene in the process, and government cannot pick winners and losers, and launch systems are never developed in the absence of an objective goal or specific purpose. 

An intentional monopoly like the ULA (in our real-world present) could not come into existence under the Martian system.

A note on capitalism and governance of space settlements.

The question of government, in terms of permanent and independent space settlements, is this: Is the government sovereign and the people servants to it? or are the people sovereign, and the government merely the agent tasked to carry out their agenda?

I hold the position that the best type of society for man is a free society—that the entire population should be the arbiter in determining how resources are managed and expended, and that free market capitalism, unconstrained by a totalitarian political elite, is the best means to do this.

Detractors of capitalism tend to confuse free market capitalism with political capitalism—in part this is due to the fact that  America is not a capitalist system any longer: we are a mixed economy

The distinction is this: a market capitalist depends on producing high quality goods and selling these at a reasonable price, a market capitalist operates business in accord with the trader principal. A market capitalist depends on a satisfied customer base.

A political capitalist depends on political favor, on lobbying for favorable laws, on seeking means to off-set the expense of development with public funds, and on petitioning for laws which restrict competition, and law which shelters business from the consequence of wrong doing and liability.

In a free market success is achieved by a free, general, “democratic” vote—by the sales and the purchases of every individual who takes part in the economic life of the society. Whenever you buy one product rather than another, you are voting for the success of some manufacturer. And, in this type of voting, every man votes only on those matters which he is qualified to judge: on his own preferences, interests, and needs. No one has the power to decide for others or to substitute his judgment for theirs; no one has the power to appoint himself “the voice of the public” and to leave the public voiceless and disfranchised.

In mixed economy people have no recourse but protest in effort to influence political elites who are less responsive to the population than the lobbies of  the financially powerful.

The inability of people to grasp the distinction is understandable, but perhaps by design—billions of dollars are at stake and the power of government to pick winners and losers is profitable for both politicians and industry.

The only cure for corruption and abuse under political capitalism is to sever the connection that makes it possible, to remove the power of government to hand out favor and pick winners and losers—in short, the only cure is laissez-faire capitalism.

Factual discussion of this is omitted from political rhetoric.

The failure to recognize the critical distinction between market capitalists and political capitalists misleads people to lay the abuses of political capitalists at the feet of free market capitalists. People are misled to lobby political leaders to increase government intervention in business, and in the market, thus creating more of the abuses they abhor—the people have been smartly marched in the opposite direction of their intent, their desired goal, and their interests. 

Largely what exists at present in the mixed economies of the United States, and in most of the EU, is an environment created by, and which favors, political capitalists.


Convair Nexus Reference Links:

Convair Nexus LH₂/LO₂ SSTO

Nexus + Gas Core Nuclear Second Stage

Nexus Gas Core Nuclear SSTO
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Will-Erwin's avatar
I love the pose of the dude on the right. It captures how I feel about space exploration. All in all, well done! I like that you have a story behind the art.