9 ms·

Elon Musk Says SpaceX Will Send People to Mars by 2025

121 points by lumberjack 11y ago

stuart78 11y ago
At first I was thinking of posting a joke about missed timelines, but then I remembered that nobody else is setting audacious public goals quite in the way that Musk does. So instead of a joke, I'll tip my hat to that and hope its true.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  Well, c'mon, space is hard, very hard. Extra-orbital space a lot harder. And interplanetary space almost unthinkably hard. And that's without people. Now add humans to that equation. Not easy. I mean, we could barely refrigerate food 100~150 years ago and now we are developing technology to build habitats on another planet? How cool is that?
yummybear 11y ago
"and thinks that his company will send somebody to Mars by 2025" - the title makes it seems like he makes a public promise/commitment.
bbayer 11y ago
> Regardless of who gets there first, Musk thinks it's vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction, and also to inspire people. I can understand inspiration part but don't get how this help preventing human extinction. Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? I understand that trying to reach other planets can push forward technology to incredible levels but it would be more meaningful if this technology can find areas to resolve Earth's current problems.
- kelseyfrancis 11y ago
  And if we completely address hunger, poverty, disease, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, sectarian violence, economic inequality, etc. but then an asteroid or comet causes our extinction?
  - seiji 11y ago
    Yeah, it's like focusing on writing 100% test coverage for all code you use so your company is more reliable while ignoring all your code is stored on just one 10 year old HD that could fail at any moment (or fire, flood, cloverfield, etc).
  - rhino369 11y ago
    If you are worried about that, why not build a biodome in the antarctic instead. Or build millions of greenhouse farms to survive impact winter. Even if you are really into space exploration, developing a comet pusher would be infinitely more valuable.
    - skorgu 11y ago
      At least for the comet pusher, the tech needed to put a non-trivial number of humans on Mars has a ton of overlap with the tech needed to divert potential impacts.
- kiba 11y ago
  I can understand inspiration part but don't get how this help preventing human extinction. Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? I understand that trying to reach other planets can push forward technology to incredible levels but it would be more meaningful if this technology can find areas to resolve Earth's current problems. They are mostly political problems rather than technologies. The exception would be diseases, because a lot of that is the scientific challenge and research and development. And they're all problems that plague our quality of living rather than posing any kind of existential risks. Nuclear war, asteroid strikes, and UFAI would qualify as existential risks. Plus, by establishing a colony on Mars, you reduce the probability of extinction should something happens to Earth.
- agildehaus 11y ago
  There are very real astronomical and human-caused events that could wipe us out here on Earth. Becoming multi-planetary makes extinction much less probable. What makes you think technology pushed to incredible levels won't assist with Earth's current problems?
- SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
  > Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? Several times on HN I have posed replies that consist of the snappy comment: "your logical fallacy is: " followed by a link. It doesn't usually go over well. Yes, it would be wise to do those things. I mean, to do them as well: It's not one of the other. The "don't go to Mars, fix poverty" argument is something like Whataboutery or "Fallacy of relative privation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/156-relative-privation http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci...
  - noam87 11y ago
    I wonder... do we have the knowhow to build `logical_fallacy_bot` and deploy it to the general Internet yet?
    - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
      Your logical fallacy is: Just because we can doesn't mean we should. That's what my experience indicates, anyway ;)
    - ziszis 11y ago
      I love this idea. Alongside factual_error_bot it would completely transform political discourse. Imagine if presidential debates had real-time scoring of what was being said. Politifact is great, but 24h delay makes it substantially less impactful.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
        People already use bots to harass their opponents on twitter, etc. It's not a good thing. This sounds good for a short while, but think through how misguided or malicious people would use it.
    - gradys 11y ago
      Do you know of any data sets of examples of logical fallacies?
- clessg 11y ago
  Well, Musk has also been working on climate change. I think that counts as an existential threat. But with the decent possibility of somebody like Donald Trump becoming President, I think the journey to Mars can't come soon enough.
- fab13n 11y ago
  > hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? Those are threats to individual human beings, not to mankind as a whole. A Great Plague or a (non-nuclear) world war here and there can wipe 1/3 of humanity, but for the species as a whole it's just an inconvenience: it can be compensated in a couple of generations, through our adaptable fertility rate. There are dangers, mostly ecological, which can wipe out the whole species: nuclear winter, mega-volcanoes, meteors... (yes, most of them are about some form of climate change) The mitigation for those dangers is to have several separated ecosystems, not regrowing the population locally after a demographic setback. A city on Mars would probably take centuries to turn into an independent ecosystem (including all of the mining, transforming and recycling of every material required, and the means to extend itself across the planet. Or even, maybe, terraforming). But a partially Earth-dependent Mars city is a very important milestone towards the big goal. Finally, he doesn't say that all of our efforts should be dedicated to that single goal: he's quite involved in fixing Earthly problem, including energy, climate change and transportation. He's also vocal about how we should think very hard about the kind of IA we want to cohabit with.
  - jeremyjh 11y ago
    You don't just need an ecosystem or contained biosphere. You also need an industrialized civilization that can fully support itself, producing everything used to operate that ecosystem, and everything needed to send rockets into space - which is the very tip of an enormous technological pyramid built on the backs of many, many people. So you need an ecosystem big enough to support that, which might have a realistic lower bounded size of as many as a hundred million people. Perhaps a terraforming project could be accomplished in a few thousand years, but for the most part this is all ridiculous pipe dream. We only have one planet.
- alejohausner 11y ago
  I agree. It's astronomically expensive to set up humans on the moon, and much more so on another planet. Think of the much much more productive ways that money could be spent here at the bottom of the gravity well. As for asteroid mining, aren't metals available here on earth too, at a fraction of the cost? How about an R&D effort to make batteries and other technology out of easily-available metals here? Wouldn't that spending yield useful products much more cheaply than trying to get them from out there in the sky? We have to stop reading science fiction and taking it as prophecy. The case for seeding our species on another planet makes no economic sense.
jstoiko 11y ago
> Musk thinks it's vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction Wouldn't it be more economical to try to save our planet first?
- kiba 11y ago
  Our planet don't need saving. It survived for billion of years just fine. What you want to know is to protect our planet from becoming a death-trap for the human race. The question is, what kind of scenarios you envisioned would threaten the condition of our environment, thus humanity?
- mbernstein 11y ago
  Why can't we concurrently work towards solutions to multiple existential threats at once? It seems like if we only focus on the threats we're aware of, one will likely hit us and wipe the species out.
- krisoft 11y ago
  Earth, this hunk of material orbiting the sun, doesn't need saving. It's also unlikely that anything would scratch it's life bearing capacity too. Life has weathered big mass extinction events. It looks quite resilient. So I assume by saving earth you mean saving earth's ability to sustain human society. It's a great goal! So how we do that? What's the plan with asteroids for example? It wouldn't surprise me if by doing all the necessary research and engineering to make a stable mars settlement possible we would make leaps toward a sustainable life here on earth too. After all you won't live there by wasting your resources.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Yes because we can only do one at once. Even if we went full green/sustainable that doesn't stop a nuclear war, big hunk of rock hitting us from space or Yellowstone going boomboom at some point.
  - Pinckney 11y ago
    I've always found that human extinction argument rather dubious. The main mechanisms of extinction in those cases are atmospheric dust and fallout. If we can maintain a closed ecosystem on Mars, we can do it underground, for a fraction of the cost, much less danger, and with a crew that rotates. Dinosaurs died out because they didn't have nuclear power plants or indoor greenhouses. A major impact would still be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions... but putting a bunch of technocrats on mars isn't going to change that either.
agp2572 11y ago
People before have given word that they plan to lead the expedition to space and have given timeline of seven years since this TED talk in 2007. So far no expedition to Moon has happened led by this speaker https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_space/transcript?language=en#t-976000 https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_... "Talk about space always seems to be hung on ambiguities of purpose and timing. I would like to close here by putting a stake in the sand at TED. I intend to lead that expedition. (Applause) It can be done in seven years with the right backing. Those who join me in making it happen will become a part of history and join other bold individuals from time past who, had they been here today, would have heartily approved." - Bill Stone (TED 2007) EDIT: Adding quote
- nradov 11y ago
  Bill Stone is a skilled engineer but anyone who knew about him from scuba diving circles wouldn't have taken that seriously. He is infamous for over promising, under delivering, and taking excessive unnecessary risks. So not really comparable to Elon Musk in any meaningful way.
  - marvin 11y ago
    Not to mention that there still isn't a cheap launch vehicle available that's cheap enough for lunar exploration to be feasible for a private initiative. SpaceX themselves could probably send a probe to the Moon soon if they wanted to; the Falcon 9 is likely a lot cheaper than what SpaceX charge their customers.
tejohnso 11y ago
>vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction, and also to inspire people. I think it inspires him, and many others, but working toward the many earthly problems that cause human suffering right now would also be pretty inspiring. Of course we should all tackle whichever issues are most interesting to us, but in this regard I'm more of a Gates fan.
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  You can have both, in my opinion. A huge Mars colonization project would yield tremendous technological spinoffs, not to mention employment for thousands of scientists and engineers, a national sense of purpose, a lot more research spending into disease and immunity (imagine the medical risks of being cooped up in a closed system with 50 other people for months at a time).
  - fidget 11y ago
    Given how, you know, polio is still a thing, it seems to be the whole distribution area that we're struggling the most with, and less the raw scientific aspects.
- epimetheus 11y ago
  I'm personally convinced his long term, possibly unspoken, goal is mining asteroids. Getting a foothold on Mars seems like a logical, and necessary next step after SpaceX. He does have competition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources
  - Pinckney 11y ago
    Why Mars? If all you want to do is mine asteroids, what sense is there in clawing your way out of a deep gravity well, only to jump down to the bottom of another one? Why not Ceres or Hygiea or Vesta or any of the other minor solar system bodies?
    - 11y ago
sbardle 11y ago
It's not going to happen by then. Musk is trying to provoke a greater interest in space exploration. He has done the same for electric cars. This may lead to greater public funding for NASA, and more private investment for things like SpaceX. So I never take Musk's timing statements literally, but his hype-mode is an intrinsic part of him realising his vision, sooner or later that is.
- carapat_virulat 11y ago
  It seems very hard to get people involved in a project like that in the current world, there is no common enemy to unite us and even if it's possible most people feel that they won't be a part of it in any meaningful sense. And I doubt that Trickle-down-technology is going to be enough to get people interested. But who knows, the current world is young and we still don't know the direction it will take, maybe common projects come back in a meaningful way at some point.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  >> Musk is trying to provoke a greater interest in space exploration. He is trying to build a market for his services. He doesn't want to finance Mars himself. He want the public to get Nasa to pay for his company to send things/people into space. I'll believe his lofty intentions when I see a SpaceX-financed probe go to Mars, or the moon, or basically anywhere other than to fulfil a contract.
return0 11y ago
There has been a shift of public opinion since the space age. People dont just want to avoid extinction, they want to live forever.
pond_lilly 11y ago
Why are these empty promises still taken seriously by supposedly intelligent audiences like HN? Elon Musk wants to have cancer ridden hospice on Mars, fine. But do not call it a "colony".
dingdingdang 11y ago
How about starting with a sustainable moonbase.
- Symmetry 11y ago
  I'm a fan of moonbases myself but there are reasons why Mars might be easier. An atmosphere and a ~24 hour day make heat management less of an issue and solar power easier to do. Plus there's all this carbon floating around in the air you can work with. The Moon's big advantages are that it's close and it's easier to get up and down its gravity well. I think that makes it better for a non-self-sustaining. base but probably worse otherwise.
rogeryu 11y ago
Sending people to Mars, and then what? Will it be a "simple" round trip? The real problem is what to when you're there. Is there a base station? I don't see that happen before 2025. Maybe on the moon, but not on Mars. Maybe a return trip to Mars by 2025 or 2030, but not staying there.
- alkonaut 11y ago
  Any round trip to Mars would require making the return fuel on site, correct? If that's the case then just making a couple of unmanned return flights to test that seems it would take a decade. A one-way ticket to Mars is certainly doable with current tech but unless we're sending Donald Trump I fail to see how we as a planet could get behind that concept.
carapat_virulat 11y ago
I can't take seriously any Mars project that sends people without robots paving our way there first. It sounds like romantic marketing with no real long-term expectation. As the article says one of the main reasons is to inspire people, but the current world is structured in a way that tells a lot of people that they are out, they won't ever be part of society in a meaningful way, they'll get some money to stay alive and sort of make it through life, but they will never be meaningful members of a community. So in this kind of atmosphere seems very difficult to convince people to participate in any kind of common project for all of us.
- marvin 11y ago
  SpaceX hasn't made any public statements yet on how they are planning to send humans to Mars, but you can be pretty sure that robots will be a big part of it. Lots of SpaceX people are big fans of Mars Direct and similar plans.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - jmnicolas 11y ago
    They didn't state that said humans were coming back too ;-)
- cryoshon 11y ago
  I agree entirely. I would venture to say that sending people without sending robots to pave the way is dangerous and irresponsible, as it denies whoever arrives to Mars a welcoming mat / basic resources which might help with survival. For the best propaganda value (which I doubt Musk is concerned about at this moment)a member of the excluded economic caste should be sent abroad... but who knows how things will be different in 10 years.
- mrfusion 11y ago
  I just don't think robots are that advanced. Look at he last darpa challenge. They could barely Open doors or climb ladders.
kaonashi 11y ago
Not by any private actor, governments are just better at this kind of thing.
blisterpeanuts 11y ago
In my opinion, the end game for getting to Mars quickly and economically has to be nuclear pulse propulsion[1]. With this approach, which was technologically feasible back in the 1950s-60s when it was first being studied, you could get to Mars in a couple of weeks. Maybe use conventional means to robotically transport the shelters, building materials, and other resources to Mars, and then the humans can be transported via NPP, which would save tons of air and food resources compared to an eight month conventional trip, and also be safer -- a much shorter time in space means much less risk of cosmic ray exposure, micrometeorites, equipment failures, medical emergencies, etc. If we can overcome the safety issues and the political squeamishness of manufacturing and launching into orbit hundreds of small nuclear explosives, we can possess Mars. It just takes money and will. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Probably best to not have hundreds of nuclear explosives orbiting us.
- tdy721 11y ago
  So you managed to get some Nuclear material to space? Please don't just burn it up in a chain reaction. We can do better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket This one lets you at least 'aim' the fission fragments. It's dangerous and fast, thought you would like that. But closed cycle is best: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket We don't need or want 'Nukes in Space' just reactors and engines.
- Symmetry 11y ago
  The problem is that the pusher plate is so heavy that you really want to launch that off planet under its own power to make it worthwhile and that would generate some fallout. There are things you can do to minimize that but it would still be as bad as an open air thermonuclear bomb test like Castle Bravo. The nuclear powers conducted lots of those but they do kill an expected 100 people each given some assumptions about the danger of low radiation doses. On the other hand nuclear-thermal, nuclear-electric, and solar-electric are all fine ways of getting to Mars faster.
parasubvert 11y ago
A colleague of mine at Pivotal had previously interviewed with Elon for a position at Tesla. He asked the recruiting coordinator: "what's he like? What does he look for in an interview?" The response: "The important thing to understand about Elon is that he wants to retire on Mars". Deadpan serious. Goals are dreams with a deadline.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  I have trouble reconciling Musk's stated goals and his current decisions, his daily status as a billionaire. Someone who truly believes in the dream should be shovelling all of their cash into that dream. At this point he should be selling his home to personally finance the first launches aimed at Mars. So either he doesn't really believe, or he is on a conveniently circuitous route that requires him to first gather untold riches to himself. By now I would expect him to at least setup a substantial trust (17B?) payable only to Mars exploration efforts.
  - nickff 11y ago
    There was a point after founding SpaceX and Tesla when Musk put all of his money into the companies; he had to borrow money from friends to make rent. This was just after SpaceX had blown up its third rocket, with no money left for another try, while Tesla was losing money hand over fist because the roadster was selling at a loss. You can criticize Musk for many things, but he really does believe that his goals are achievable, that he will achieve them, and that they are good investments.
    - sandworm101 11y ago
      >>> ...and that they are good investments. The really important dreams are rarely good investments. I don't think anyone seriously believes the manned exploration of Mars will turn any profit. A true believer wouldn't care. There are people who would hand over a dozen winning lotto tickets for a chance to go to Mars. Musk faces that decision every day. That makes it difficult for me to believe tales of his madman/dreamer rhetoric. And I'm not criticizing musk the person. I'm say that here is a disconnect between the public dreamer persona and the known actions of the physical person.
LargeCompanies 11y ago
After watching the movie, "The Martian," I wondered why anyone would want to live there... at least the first 1,000s of people. It's not hospitable to humans and we as humans will need to create a vaccuum tube like city that if penetrated could kill all who lived in it. This thought might be way off per seeing one movie, so I'd love to hear someone tell me otherwise..... like why inhabiting a inhospitable planet to humans is a good idea.
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  The big thing is to get people off world, learn and innovate to make it easier. Ultimately you want at least one backup plan for the human race so if we all die due to who knows what (giant asteroid, gamma ray burst, yellow stone going off, etc) the human race can live on. Musk has been interviewed before saying he wants at least one large group of people acting as a backup. It would be a shame if we stayed on Earth hoping to get the technology to make a place 100% hospital before leaving; who knows how long that would take and how much innovation we'd lose out on for not being bold.
- jeremyjh 11y ago
  It would probably be thrilling for a couple of weeks, if you knew you were going back to Earth after that. There are definitely some people who would love to dive into the challenge of building a marginally comfortable existence there. For most people it would be wretched misery. Philip K. Dick explores this a little bit in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
- Keyframe 11y ago
  After watching the movie, "Total Recall" (first one) I wondered why anyone wouldn't want to live there... at least the first 1,000s of people. It's hospitable to humans and mutants alike and it has a nice structure over the city, which is a security risk if penetrated to be honest. This thought might be way off per seeing one movie, so I'd love to hear someone tell me otherwise..... like why inhabiting an enclosed city hospitable to humans isn't a good idea.
mrfusion 11y ago
I've been wondering if we're going to have problems with Mars 30% gravity. I don't think we know at all yet? If it is a problem I was thinking people might wear well distributed weight suits most of the day? You could also sleep and spend time in a large centrifuge type structure.
- nickff 11y ago
  NASA (in their infinite wisdom) have neglected reduced-gravity research entirely. For an organization that claims to be in favor of manned space exploration, they display little interest in its primary challenges.
  - robotresearcher 11y ago
    > NASA (in their infinite wisdom) have neglected reduced-gravity research entirely. Got some evidence for that surprising claim? NASA is the only organization in the history of the world that has actually put people onto a reduced-gravity body.
- Symmetry 11y ago
  Anything you can offset with weight suits you could also offset with more exercise. There are still physiological problems that that won't help with. I'd guess that 30% plus exercise would be enough but we don't know for sure.
SCAQTony 11y ago
Presuming one does not care about the problems of low gravity and what cosmic radiation can due to your eyes, body and brain. That you're okay with the antarctic cold 24/7 (Actually a year on Mars is 2-years long so perhaps it's 14-days for a single week) and that living in a surrounding vacuum with no water or life whatsoever with lots of dust and dust storms seem like solitude, then Mars is just the place for you! Perhaps "terraforming" Australia's outback or the Sahara desert so as to create a swell place to live would be a more worthwhile project than living in a oxygenated and lead lined prison on Mars?
- EwanG 11y ago
  Funny thing about that - I suspect doing either of those would be 10x harder than terraforming Mars. Why? Because there are no Martians to complain about the ecological havoc your changes are making, or to complain that you are depriving them of their livelihood, or possibly destroying culturally significant land forms. I can only imagine the ecological impact reporting that would have to be done in Australia, and I imagine the countries that own the Sahara have their own equivalent.
sixQuarks 11y ago
I love how these "news" organizations take snippets and off-the-cuff comments from interviews and make it seem like Elon Musk has announced something. This "news" is from an interview Elon did in Hong Kong. It's actually one of the better and most interesting interviews of Elon because the host was pretty knowledgeable. Well worth a full view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiRLGpm5CiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiRLGpm5CiY
cdiamand 11y ago
I found the 'Wait But Why' articles on Musk and his mars ambitions to be pretty illuminating. They go in depth on why he wants to go to mars and also some proposed ideas for colonization. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni...
- loganu 11y ago
  I didn't particularly love the last one, on Musk's "secret sauce," but the rest of the Musk series was absolutely fantastic. You could give it to someone that has never seen a car or rocket, and by the end of it they'd understand the majority of the energy, auto, and space industries.
diyseguy 11y ago
I think it's interesting that SpaceX is in Redmond and Redmond can be linguistically morphed into 'Red World.'

121 points by lumberjack 11y ago

At first I was thinking of posting a joke about missed timelines, but then I remembered that nobody else is setting audacious public goals quite in the way that Musk does. So instead of a joke, I'll tip my hat to that and hope its true.

rebootthesystem 11y ago
Well, c'mon, space is hard, very hard. Extra-orbital space a lot harder. And interplanetary space almost unthinkably hard. And that's without people. Now add humans to that equation. Not easy. I mean, we could barely refrigerate food 100~150 years ago and now we are developing technology to build habitats on another planet? How cool is that?

yummybear 11y ago

"and thinks that his company will send somebody to Mars by 2025" - the title makes it seems like he makes a public promise/commitment.

bbayer 11y ago

> Regardless of who gets there first, Musk thinks it's vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction, and also to inspire people. I can understand inspiration part but don't get how this help preventing human extinction. Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? I understand that trying to reach other planets can push forward technology to incredible levels but it would be more meaningful if this technology can find areas to resolve Earth's current problems.

kelseyfrancis 11y ago
And if we completely address hunger, poverty, disease, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, sectarian violence, economic inequality, etc. but then an asteroid or comet causes our extinction?
- seiji 11y ago
  Yeah, it's like focusing on writing 100% test coverage for all code you use so your company is more reliable while ignoring all your code is stored on just one 10 year old HD that could fail at any moment (or fire, flood, cloverfield, etc).
- rhino369 11y ago
  If you are worried about that, why not build a biodome in the antarctic instead. Or build millions of greenhouse farms to survive impact winter. Even if you are really into space exploration, developing a comet pusher would be infinitely more valuable.
  - skorgu 11y ago
    At least for the comet pusher, the tech needed to put a non-trivial number of humans on Mars has a ton of overlap with the tech needed to divert potential impacts.
kiba 11y ago
I can understand inspiration part but don't get how this help preventing human extinction. Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? I understand that trying to reach other planets can push forward technology to incredible levels but it would be more meaningful if this technology can find areas to resolve Earth's current problems. They are mostly political problems rather than technologies. The exception would be diseases, because a lot of that is the scientific challenge and research and development. And they're all problems that plague our quality of living rather than posing any kind of existential risks. Nuclear war, asteroid strikes, and UFAI would qualify as existential risks. Plus, by establishing a colony on Mars, you reduce the probability of extinction should something happens to Earth.
agildehaus 11y ago
There are very real astronomical and human-caused events that could wipe us out here on Earth. Becoming multi-planetary makes extinction much less probable. What makes you think technology pushed to incredible levels won't assist with Earth's current problems?
SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
> Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? Several times on HN I have posed replies that consist of the snappy comment: "your logical fallacy is: " followed by a link. It doesn't usually go over well. Yes, it would be wise to do those things. I mean, to do them as well: It's not one of the other. The "don't go to Mars, fix poverty" argument is something like Whataboutery or "Fallacy of relative privation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/156-relative-privation http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci...
- noam87 11y ago
  I wonder... do we have the knowhow to build `logical_fallacy_bot` and deploy it to the general Internet yet?
  - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
    Your logical fallacy is: Just because we can doesn't mean we should. That's what my experience indicates, anyway ;)
  - ziszis 11y ago
    I love this idea. Alongside factual_error_bot it would completely transform political discourse. Imagine if presidential debates had real-time scoring of what was being said. Politifact is great, but 24h delay makes it substantially less impactful.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
      People already use bots to harass their opponents on twitter, etc. It's not a good thing. This sounds good for a short while, but think through how misguided or malicious people would use it.
  - gradys 11y ago
    Do you know of any data sets of examples of logical fallacies?
clessg 11y ago
Well, Musk has also been working on climate change. I think that counts as an existential threat. But with the decent possibility of somebody like Donald Trump becoming President, I think the journey to Mars can't come soon enough.
fab13n 11y ago
> hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? Those are threats to individual human beings, not to mankind as a whole. A Great Plague or a (non-nuclear) world war here and there can wipe 1/3 of humanity, but for the species as a whole it's just an inconvenience: it can be compensated in a couple of generations, through our adaptable fertility rate. There are dangers, mostly ecological, which can wipe out the whole species: nuclear winter, mega-volcanoes, meteors... (yes, most of them are about some form of climate change) The mitigation for those dangers is to have several separated ecosystems, not regrowing the population locally after a demographic setback. A city on Mars would probably take centuries to turn into an independent ecosystem (including all of the mining, transforming and recycling of every material required, and the means to extend itself across the planet. Or even, maybe, terraforming). But a partially Earth-dependent Mars city is a very important milestone towards the big goal. Finally, he doesn't say that all of our efforts should be dedicated to that single goal: he's quite involved in fixing Earthly problem, including energy, climate change and transportation. He's also vocal about how we should think very hard about the kind of IA we want to cohabit with.
- jeremyjh 11y ago
  You don't just need an ecosystem or contained biosphere. You also need an industrialized civilization that can fully support itself, producing everything used to operate that ecosystem, and everything needed to send rockets into space - which is the very tip of an enormous technological pyramid built on the backs of many, many people. So you need an ecosystem big enough to support that, which might have a realistic lower bounded size of as many as a hundred million people. Perhaps a terraforming project could be accomplished in a few thousand years, but for the most part this is all ridiculous pipe dream. We only have one planet.
alejohausner 11y ago
I agree. It's astronomically expensive to set up humans on the moon, and much more so on another planet. Think of the much much more productive ways that money could be spent here at the bottom of the gravity well. As for asteroid mining, aren't metals available here on earth too, at a fraction of the cost? How about an R&D effort to make batteries and other technology out of easily-available metals here? Wouldn't that spending yield useful products much more cheaply than trying to get them from out there in the sky? We have to stop reading science fiction and taking it as prophecy. The case for seeding our species on another planet makes no economic sense.

jstoiko 11y ago

> Musk thinks it's vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction Wouldn't it be more economical to try to save our planet first?

kiba 11y ago
Our planet don't need saving. It survived for billion of years just fine. What you want to know is to protect our planet from becoming a death-trap for the human race. The question is, what kind of scenarios you envisioned would threaten the condition of our environment, thus humanity?
mbernstein 11y ago
Why can't we concurrently work towards solutions to multiple existential threats at once? It seems like if we only focus on the threats we're aware of, one will likely hit us and wipe the species out.
krisoft 11y ago
Earth, this hunk of material orbiting the sun, doesn't need saving. It's also unlikely that anything would scratch it's life bearing capacity too. Life has weathered big mass extinction events. It looks quite resilient. So I assume by saving earth you mean saving earth's ability to sustain human society. It's a great goal! So how we do that? What's the plan with asteroids for example? It wouldn't surprise me if by doing all the necessary research and engineering to make a stable mars settlement possible we would make leaps toward a sustainable life here on earth too. After all you won't live there by wasting your resources.
noir_lord 11y ago
Yes because we can only do one at once. Even if we went full green/sustainable that doesn't stop a nuclear war, big hunk of rock hitting us from space or Yellowstone going boomboom at some point.
- Pinckney 11y ago
  I've always found that human extinction argument rather dubious. The main mechanisms of extinction in those cases are atmospheric dust and fallout. If we can maintain a closed ecosystem on Mars, we can do it underground, for a fraction of the cost, much less danger, and with a crew that rotates. Dinosaurs died out because they didn't have nuclear power plants or indoor greenhouses. A major impact would still be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions... but putting a bunch of technocrats on mars isn't going to change that either.

agp2572 11y ago

People before have given word that they plan to lead the expedition to space and have given timeline of seven years since this TED talk in 2007. So far no expedition to Moon has happened led by this speaker https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_space/transcript?language=en#t-976000 https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_... "Talk about space always seems to be hung on ambiguities of purpose and timing. I would like to close here by putting a stake in the sand at TED. I intend to lead that expedition. (Applause) It can be done in seven years with the right backing. Those who join me in making it happen will become a part of history and join other bold individuals from time past who, had they been here today, would have heartily approved." - Bill Stone (TED 2007) EDIT: Adding quote

nradov 11y ago
Bill Stone is a skilled engineer but anyone who knew about him from scuba diving circles wouldn't have taken that seriously. He is infamous for over promising, under delivering, and taking excessive unnecessary risks. So not really comparable to Elon Musk in any meaningful way.
- marvin 11y ago
  Not to mention that there still isn't a cheap launch vehicle available that's cheap enough for lunar exploration to be feasible for a private initiative. SpaceX themselves could probably send a probe to the Moon soon if they wanted to; the Falcon 9 is likely a lot cheaper than what SpaceX charge their customers.

tejohnso 11y ago

>vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction, and also to inspire people. I think it inspires him, and many others, but working toward the many earthly problems that cause human suffering right now would also be pretty inspiring. Of course we should all tackle whichever issues are most interesting to us, but in this regard I'm more of a Gates fan.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago
You can have both, in my opinion. A huge Mars colonization project would yield tremendous technological spinoffs, not to mention employment for thousands of scientists and engineers, a national sense of purpose, a lot more research spending into disease and immunity (imagine the medical risks of being cooped up in a closed system with 50 other people for months at a time).
- fidget 11y ago
  Given how, you know, polio is still a thing, it seems to be the whole distribution area that we're struggling the most with, and less the raw scientific aspects.
epimetheus 11y ago
I'm personally convinced his long term, possibly unspoken, goal is mining asteroids. Getting a foothold on Mars seems like a logical, and necessary next step after SpaceX. He does have competition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources
- Pinckney 11y ago
  Why Mars? If all you want to do is mine asteroids, what sense is there in clawing your way out of a deep gravity well, only to jump down to the bottom of another one? Why not Ceres or Hygiea or Vesta or any of the other minor solar system bodies?
  - 11y ago

sbardle 11y ago

It's not going to happen by then. Musk is trying to provoke a greater interest in space exploration. He has done the same for electric cars. This may lead to greater public funding for NASA, and more private investment for things like SpaceX. So I never take Musk's timing statements literally, but his hype-mode is an intrinsic part of him realising his vision, sooner or later that is.

carapat_virulat 11y ago
It seems very hard to get people involved in a project like that in the current world, there is no common enemy to unite us and even if it's possible most people feel that they won't be a part of it in any meaningful sense. And I doubt that Trickle-down-technology is going to be enough to get people interested. But who knows, the current world is young and we still don't know the direction it will take, maybe common projects come back in a meaningful way at some point.
sandworm101 11y ago
>> Musk is trying to provoke a greater interest in space exploration. He is trying to build a market for his services. He doesn't want to finance Mars himself. He want the public to get Nasa to pay for his company to send things/people into space. I'll believe his lofty intentions when I see a SpaceX-financed probe go to Mars, or the moon, or basically anywhere other than to fulfil a contract.

return0 11y ago

There has been a shift of public opinion since the space age. People dont just want to avoid extinction, they want to live forever.

pond_lilly 11y ago

Why are these empty promises still taken seriously by supposedly intelligent audiences like HN? Elon Musk wants to have cancer ridden hospice on Mars, fine. But do not call it a "colony".

dingdingdang 11y ago

How about starting with a sustainable moonbase.

Symmetry 11y ago
I'm a fan of moonbases myself but there are reasons why Mars might be easier. An atmosphere and a ~24 hour day make heat management less of an issue and solar power easier to do. Plus there's all this carbon floating around in the air you can work with. The Moon's big advantages are that it's close and it's easier to get up and down its gravity well. I think that makes it better for a non-self-sustaining. base but probably worse otherwise.

rogeryu 11y ago

Sending people to Mars, and then what? Will it be a "simple" round trip? The real problem is what to when you're there. Is there a base station? I don't see that happen before 2025. Maybe on the moon, but not on Mars. Maybe a return trip to Mars by 2025 or 2030, but not staying there.

alkonaut 11y ago
Any round trip to Mars would require making the return fuel on site, correct? If that's the case then just making a couple of unmanned return flights to test that seems it would take a decade. A one-way ticket to Mars is certainly doable with current tech but unless we're sending Donald Trump I fail to see how we as a planet could get behind that concept.

carapat_virulat 11y ago

I can't take seriously any Mars project that sends people without robots paving our way there first. It sounds like romantic marketing with no real long-term expectation. As the article says one of the main reasons is to inspire people, but the current world is structured in a way that tells a lot of people that they are out, they won't ever be part of society in a meaningful way, they'll get some money to stay alive and sort of make it through life, but they will never be meaningful members of a community. So in this kind of atmosphere seems very difficult to convince people to participate in any kind of common project for all of us.

marvin 11y ago
SpaceX hasn't made any public statements yet on how they are planning to send humans to Mars, but you can be pretty sure that robots will be a big part of it. Lots of SpaceX people are big fans of Mars Direct and similar plans.
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- jmnicolas 11y ago
  They didn't state that said humans were coming back too ;-)
cryoshon 11y ago
I agree entirely. I would venture to say that sending people without sending robots to pave the way is dangerous and irresponsible, as it denies whoever arrives to Mars a welcoming mat / basic resources which might help with survival. For the best propaganda value (which I doubt Musk is concerned about at this moment)a member of the excluded economic caste should be sent abroad... but who knows how things will be different in 10 years.
mrfusion 11y ago
I just don't think robots are that advanced. Look at he last darpa challenge. They could barely Open doors or climb ladders.

kaonashi 11y ago

Not by any private actor, governments are just better at this kind of thing.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago

In my opinion, the end game for getting to Mars quickly and economically has to be nuclear pulse propulsion[1]. With this approach, which was technologically feasible back in the 1950s-60s when it was first being studied, you could get to Mars in a couple of weeks. Maybe use conventional means to robotically transport the shelters, building materials, and other resources to Mars, and then the humans can be transported via NPP, which would save tons of air and food resources compared to an eight month conventional trip, and also be safer -- a much shorter time in space means much less risk of cosmic ray exposure, micrometeorites, equipment failures, medical emergencies, etc. If we can overcome the safety issues and the political squeamishness of manufacturing and launching into orbit hundreds of small nuclear explosives, we can possess Mars. It just takes money and will. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion

jsprogrammer 11y ago
Probably best to not have hundreds of nuclear explosives orbiting us.
tdy721 11y ago
So you managed to get some Nuclear material to space? Please don't just burn it up in a chain reaction. We can do better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket This one lets you at least 'aim' the fission fragments. It's dangerous and fast, thought you would like that. But closed cycle is best: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket We don't need or want 'Nukes in Space' just reactors and engines.
Symmetry 11y ago
The problem is that the pusher plate is so heavy that you really want to launch that off planet under its own power to make it worthwhile and that would generate some fallout. There are things you can do to minimize that but it would still be as bad as an open air thermonuclear bomb test like Castle Bravo. The nuclear powers conducted lots of those but they do kill an expected 100 people each given some assumptions about the danger of low radiation doses. On the other hand nuclear-thermal, nuclear-electric, and solar-electric are all fine ways of getting to Mars faster.

parasubvert 11y ago

A colleague of mine at Pivotal had previously interviewed with Elon for a position at Tesla. He asked the recruiting coordinator: "what's he like? What does he look for in an interview?" The response: "The important thing to understand about Elon is that he wants to retire on Mars". Deadpan serious. Goals are dreams with a deadline.

sandworm101 11y ago
I have trouble reconciling Musk's stated goals and his current decisions, his daily status as a billionaire. Someone who truly believes in the dream should be shovelling all of their cash into that dream. At this point he should be selling his home to personally finance the first launches aimed at Mars. So either he doesn't really believe, or he is on a conveniently circuitous route that requires him to first gather untold riches to himself. By now I would expect him to at least setup a substantial trust (17B?) payable only to Mars exploration efforts.
- nickff 11y ago
  There was a point after founding SpaceX and Tesla when Musk put all of his money into the companies; he had to borrow money from friends to make rent. This was just after SpaceX had blown up its third rocket, with no money left for another try, while Tesla was losing money hand over fist because the roadster was selling at a loss. You can criticize Musk for many things, but he really does believe that his goals are achievable, that he will achieve them, and that they are good investments.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    >>> ...and that they are good investments. The really important dreams are rarely good investments. I don't think anyone seriously believes the manned exploration of Mars will turn any profit. A true believer wouldn't care. There are people who would hand over a dozen winning lotto tickets for a chance to go to Mars. Musk faces that decision every day. That makes it difficult for me to believe tales of his madman/dreamer rhetoric. And I'm not criticizing musk the person. I'm say that here is a disconnect between the public dreamer persona and the known actions of the physical person.

LargeCompanies 11y ago

After watching the movie, "The Martian," I wondered why anyone would want to live there... at least the first 1,000s of people. It's not hospitable to humans and we as humans will need to create a vaccuum tube like city that if penetrated could kill all who lived in it. This thought might be way off per seeing one movie, so I'd love to hear someone tell me otherwise..... like why inhabiting a inhospitable planet to humans is a good idea.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago
The big thing is to get people off world, learn and innovate to make it easier. Ultimately you want at least one backup plan for the human race so if we all die due to who knows what (giant asteroid, gamma ray burst, yellow stone going off, etc) the human race can live on. Musk has been interviewed before saying he wants at least one large group of people acting as a backup. It would be a shame if we stayed on Earth hoping to get the technology to make a place 100% hospital before leaving; who knows how long that would take and how much innovation we'd lose out on for not being bold.
jeremyjh 11y ago
It would probably be thrilling for a couple of weeks, if you knew you were going back to Earth after that. There are definitely some people who would love to dive into the challenge of building a marginally comfortable existence there. For most people it would be wretched misery. Philip K. Dick explores this a little bit in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
Keyframe 11y ago
After watching the movie, "Total Recall" (first one) I wondered why anyone wouldn't want to live there... at least the first 1,000s of people. It's hospitable to humans and mutants alike and it has a nice structure over the city, which is a security risk if penetrated to be honest. This thought might be way off per seeing one movie, so I'd love to hear someone tell me otherwise..... like why inhabiting an enclosed city hospitable to humans isn't a good idea.

mrfusion 11y ago

I've been wondering if we're going to have problems with Mars 30% gravity. I don't think we know at all yet? If it is a problem I was thinking people might wear well distributed weight suits most of the day? You could also sleep and spend time in a large centrifuge type structure.

nickff 11y ago
NASA (in their infinite wisdom) have neglected reduced-gravity research entirely. For an organization that claims to be in favor of manned space exploration, they display little interest in its primary challenges.
- robotresearcher 11y ago
  > NASA (in their infinite wisdom) have neglected reduced-gravity research entirely. Got some evidence for that surprising claim? NASA is the only organization in the history of the world that has actually put people onto a reduced-gravity body.
Symmetry 11y ago
Anything you can offset with weight suits you could also offset with more exercise. There are still physiological problems that that won't help with. I'd guess that 30% plus exercise would be enough but we don't know for sure.

SCAQTony 11y ago

Presuming one does not care about the problems of low gravity and what cosmic radiation can due to your eyes, body and brain. That you're okay with the antarctic cold 24/7 (Actually a year on Mars is 2-years long so perhaps it's 14-days for a single week) and that living in a surrounding vacuum with no water or life whatsoever with lots of dust and dust storms seem like solitude, then Mars is just the place for you! Perhaps "terraforming" Australia's outback or the Sahara desert so as to create a swell place to live would be a more worthwhile project than living in a oxygenated and lead lined prison on Mars?

EwanG 11y ago
Funny thing about that - I suspect doing either of those would be 10x harder than terraforming Mars. Why? Because there are no Martians to complain about the ecological havoc your changes are making, or to complain that you are depriving them of their livelihood, or possibly destroying culturally significant land forms. I can only imagine the ecological impact reporting that would have to be done in Australia, and I imagine the countries that own the Sahara have their own equivalent.

sixQuarks 11y ago

I love how these "news" organizations take snippets and off-the-cuff comments from interviews and make it seem like Elon Musk has announced something. This "news" is from an interview Elon did in Hong Kong. It's actually one of the better and most interesting interviews of Elon because the host was pretty knowledgeable. Well worth a full view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiRLGpm5CiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiRLGpm5CiY

cdiamand 11y ago

I found the 'Wait But Why' articles on Musk and his mars ambitions to be pretty illuminating. They go in depth on why he wants to go to mars and also some proposed ideas for colonization. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni...

loganu 11y ago
I didn't particularly love the last one, on Musk's "secret sauce," but the rest of the Musk series was absolutely fantastic. You could give it to someone that has never seen a car or rocket, and by the end of it they'd understand the majority of the energy, auto, and space industries.

diyseguy 11y ago

I think it's interesting that SpaceX is in Redmond and Redmond can be linguistically morphed into 'Red World.'