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Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]
- Rezo 10y agoSpaceX Interplanetary Transport System: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA
- sandis 10y ago"The video appears to show SpaceX's new rocket — the BFR, or "Big Fucking Rocket" — as well as the company's interplanetary spaceship — the BFS, or "Big Fucking Spaceship.""
- Gravityloss 10y agoI prefer the Big Friendly Rocket interpretation. :)
- mparlane 10y agoSpaceX refer to it as Big Falcon Rocket
- hoorayimhelping 10y ago28 million pounds of thrust is 4 times what the Saturn V was capable of.
- Gravityloss 10y agoUnconventional design. The rocket looks very large and they mention 120 million newtons takeoff thrust so the weight is about 10 million kg, 3 times Saturn V size. The first stage lands back on launch stool, the tanker stage is put on top of it and it launches again. This implies a relatively fast turnaround. Both the second stage and the tanker seem to have complete heat shields and stub wings and ability to re-enter either Mars or Earth. So all parts 1) big 2) landable and 3) short turnaround time This would imply they will launch them a lot, so they're really ramping up the traffic to Mars, not just a few missions? I don't understand the 100 000 km/h which is 30 km/s speed for the Mars cruise. Would be really hard to achieve with chemical propulsion. With 4 km/s exhaust velocity and delta vee of say 20 km/s you get a required mass ratio of e^(20/4) which is 150. And they lug the upper stage engines all the way, and there's heatshield and wings. Impossible. Also the 200 kW electrical power advertised is puny for electrical propulsion. With an ISP of 1000 (exhaust 10 km/s) you get an 20 Newtons of thrust [correction from 200N], which is nothing for their ship size. If they only have ten tons of mass, then it takes 200 days to accelerate to full speed. Typically you might need 10 to 20 km/s speed for Mars. Their plan does not compute for me. EDIT: So it can work if they only go for 10 km/s.
- pinewurst 10y agoSpeed to Mars though is really relative speed along whatever orbit (Hohmann transfer or the moral equivalent) that you choose. Only in SF stories do we have fully powered propulsion to Mars. I am very curious what the selected family of orbits is, and even more importantly how long & how much life support for the large passenger number.
- twoodfin 10y agoYeah, transit time & payload mass seem to be the major missing numbers in a video that wasn't shy about including them.
- exDM69 10y ago> I am very curious what the selected family of orbits is ... There's not much leeway, it's going to be something close to a Hohmann transfer, with the aphelion ahead of and above Mars to get to a hyperbolic capture orbit with the periareion deep in the atmosphere for (almost) direct re-entry. This kind of orbits can be solved for arbitrary departure date and time of flight using a Lambert's problem solver and numerical optimization. Not a particularly difficult problem by modern standards. Pure Hohmann transfer to another planet will result in inevitable collision due to relative velocity, but it's useful for lower bound estimates. Another alternative for recurring Mars intercept is is the "Aldrin cycler" (after Buzz Aldrin) which is a free return trajectory but that is difficult when the goal is to land and take off again. There are lots of possibilities for lower energy transfers but most of them are out of question when life support is required for humans on board.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoWhy do they launch the passengers first? Passengers eat and shit and breathe while they wait. They're also liable to be more upset if their mission is aborted, due to a failed tanker launch, while they're in orbit.
- tempestn 10y agoIf they do, I assume because it's easier to transfer fuel than passengers.
- yincrash 10y agoI believe his answer in the QA was that you would launch an empty rocket first, and once that rocket is fueled, a 2nd rocket with passengers would launch and transfer to the fueled rocket, and then the new passenger-empty rocket would be in orbit to be fueled for the next trip.
- Nashhhh 10y agoIn the Q&A part he addresses this. I think they showed passengers first for the video just for stylistic purposes. He said he thinks you'd probably be launching spaceships and begin fueling between trips (26 months), keeping them parked in orbit, and then passengers would go up last before the trip and board fully fuled ships. I think it's a detail that's not determined yet. Watch the video.
- shkkmo 10y agoIn the QA he clarifies that they are unsure about refueling time, it might be that they launch a vehicle, refuel it, and then launch another vehicle with passengers, then transfer those passengers to the refueled vehicle. It depends on refueling time.
- Symmetry 10y agoMy reaction, after thinking about this for a bit, is more "This is going to be everything the Shuttle was supposed to be!" than anything to do with getting people to Mars. That's all, of course, predicated on getting the turnaround for this thing fast and cheap. With orbital refueling I wonder how much one of these could land on the Moon?
- astazangasta 10y agoThe phallic imagery is so overpowering. I also like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtBy_ppG4hY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtBy_ppG4hY In case it's not clear, I hate this "multiplanetary species" garbage.
- rozap 10y agoSometimes a rocket is just a rocket.
- verandaguy 10y agoWhat's your point?
- astazangasta 10y agoI wrote a long essay about this that I have yet to publish, but my basic point is this: 1. Mars is a fucking desert. There is no air, water or life. 2. Venus is covered in CO2 clouds and sulfuric acid rain. Metal melts on its surface. We are not going to live in space. To even WANT to live in space is an absurd fantasy that is in violent conflict with the reality of space as an airless, inhospitable, largely resourceless wasteland that requires enormous effort to travel through and survive in. Why, then, does Musk insist we need to live in space? I think this is simply an update of our previous desire for an afterlife or a heaven. Since we are no longer willing to fantasize and organize around the Kingdom of Heaven, we've turned space into the Kingdom of Heaven, despite the fact that it has very few actual heavenly qualities.
- jgoewert 10y agoSo, are you saying that us as humans need to quit trying to get off this rock and get back to extincting ourselves here?
- leojg 10y agoBecause we are a migrant species... and because of this: http://www.greatdreams.com/asteroid-map.jpg http://www.greatdreams.com/asteroid-map.jpg All those nice dots are potentially dangerous asteroids :) And also, to prove we can.
- lucb1e 10y ago"Livestream starting soon". Does anyone know what time they're starting? (And please use a numeric timezone, I'm not a walking timezone database.)
- xur17 10y agoIt was supposed to start at 1:30PM CST [0], but it sounds like it is delayed [1] a few minutes [2]. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=1%3A30+cst https://www.google.com/search?q=1%3A30+cst [1] https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/780835809696092161 https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/780835809696092161 [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/780838839644483586 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/780838839644483586
- lucb1e 10y ago> CST sigh Central standard time I'm guessing, so mid-US I guess "central" and "standard" mean here, so I'm guesstimating GMT-7. That would put it around 8:30 GMT.
- mattmanser 10y agoGoogle "1:30pm CST". It shows it in your local time.
- lucb1e 10y agoYet if we'd just use GMT+/-x nobody would have to look up anything.
- BurningFrog 10y agoHas anyone written a Chrome plugin that does this yet?
- BurningFrog 10y agoThis seems close to what I want: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/local-time-automatic-time/jkmnfhflkgcekodgohnkcmecndbghigp?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/local-time-automat...
- davidw 10y agoThis is so pleasant to see after being bombarded with US presidential politics. Science, hope and progress!
- Red_Tarsius 10y agoAgree. I watched my first and last presidential debate yesterday, they raised no relevant solutions. I'm so giddy, what a better way than to spend such historical date with my fellow HN users!
- rtkwe 10y agoThe whole process is kind of built against showing any solid plans until as late as possible. It's hard to argue against the nebulous idea of 'create more jobs' other than 'that's not an actual plan'. Once your opponent provides a solid plan you get all sorts of new ways to attack it like cost (especially cost). Another reason to not put out a detailed plan is that the actual bills/regulations you can get in office are going to look pretty different than what the base of $PARTY would like to see because you have to actually get it passed, but then you're not delivering on the promises and no one likes to hear 'we knew the proposal was ambitious and impractical to get passed but we told you we would to get your vote'.
- nathancahill 10y agoThe second reason is the correct one. Downvoters, tell me why I'm wrong?
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoWhat about going to a different planet makes you think we won't just be taking those same problems with us? The earth isn't the problem - The problem is the human brain. We aren't genetically capable of processing the world we have built. Expect there to be Trump IV vs Clinton IV 2117 hosted live on Mars if we haven't made significant improvements in human engineering.
- 10y ago
- artursapek 10y agoGod, my lifetime would be so boring if it wasn't for people like Elon.
- traviswingo 10y agoI second that!
- a_thro_away 10y agoOMG; he says is going to build it, exactly like his demo. As a youth I received a brand new Matt Mason for birthday; it has been a very, very long time.
- astazangasta 10y agoIn this case, it's pretty clearly not just a rocket. Both Bezos and Musk admit that this is their fantasy from when they were boys. We're never going to live on mars, this is entirely about mythological projection. The phallus is central to the purpose of this endeavor.
- Rezo 10y agoPeople who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
- astazangasta 10y agoDoing what, blowing up rockets? Shipping goods to LEO like people have been doing for literally decades? Mars has no atmosphere. Who is going to solve that niggling issue to being a multiplanetary species? Who's even close? Musk is not "doing it".
- sfeng 10y ago1,258 people currently live at the McMurdo research station on the South Pole. The record high temperature there is still well below freezing. Humans would not be able to survive there _except_ we have invented ways of keeping them alive using housing and clothing technology.
- wott 10y agoThat's not even remotely comparable. McMurdo is not self-sufficient by any measure. People do not live their life there either. (Oh, and they can breath outside. A minor detail.)
- sfeng 10y agoWhat is the part you think is impossible? The part where they live in big atmosphere-filled domes? The part where they grow crops in a similar situation? What part of creating a way for people to live on Mars is outside the capability of our technology and imagination?
- mvrilo 10y ago"Waiting for everyone to reach their seats and get settled. Starting in 5 to 10." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/780838839644483586 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/780838839644483586
- dom96 10y agoThank you for posting this. Have been excited about this all week!
- nappy-doo 10y agoIt looks from the videos that the boosters return to land using strictly thrust from the rocket. Can someone explain why it's done that way and a parachute isn't used for at least part of the descent? Seems like an awful waste of fuel.
- sfeng 10y agoThe answer is the same as why the Falcon 9 uses propulsive landing. Parachutes are heavy, and generally require a water landing which seriously damages the booster (not to mention requires a recovery operation). The vast majority of the weight in these spacecraft is fuel, so when it's time for it to return to the pad it requires a comparatively small amount of fuel (as most of the weight has been burnt up). The fuel itself is also a tiny percentage of the total cost of the craft, at interplanetary scale $10k for a little extra fuel is nothing.
- jessriedel 10y ago> SpaceX experimented with using parachutes in the past (mainly for their Falcon 1 vehicles), but parachutes are poorly suited to this application, as extreme speeds and loads cause them to shred. Parachutes large enough to recover the stage are also quite heavy, a weight which could be used for fuel for a propulsive landing and for primary mission assurance. Parachutes also cannot be steered. > Essentially, this becomes a problem of people overestimating the amount of fuel required to bring the stage back, underestimating the weight of the parachute system (which would be in the hundreds of kilograms at least), and underestimating the fragility and controllability of a parachute system. https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/faq/reusability https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/wiki/faq/reusability
- extrapickles 10y agoParachutes put large loads on the structure when opening and don't have much precision in choosing a landing site.
- rtkwe 10y agoPart of it is that there's not a good middle area for them to work. F9 has to use rockets at the beginning for the boost back burn in space and would need to use it again around landing because parachutes aren't gentle or controlled/precise enough for a landing on land or a barge.
- TheShadowRunner 10y agoSomeone more knowledgeable then me can probably answer this, but under ITAR, can SpaceX contract a Mars launch with another nation on friendly terms with the USA?
- extrapickles 10y agoSpaceX can buy an off the self launch from someone. They are prohibited from giving them any rocket tech or anything else that falls under ITAR (quite a few things). As far as ITAR is concerned there are no friendly nations (there are a few that have reduced paperwork needs, but still fall under ITAR).
- marvindanig 10y agoCan't believe we're in that moment here.
- dsabanin 10y agoWhat are we going to do on Mars? Live in a plastic box? Send in a bunch of slaves to mine minerals in insufferable conditions? I don't get it.
- codeulike 10y agoWatch the end of the video. I think he intends to terraform it. Edit: looks like he's aiming for a city of 1m people in the short term, Terraforming in the long term.
- dsabanin 10y agoWe can't solve simplest problems on Earth (like re-capturing CO2 for example), but believe we'll be able to terraform a planet to which we haven't even been able to send a human yet?
- sfeng 10y agoGiven hundreds (or thousands) of years, yes.
- dsabanin 10y agoYeah, I don't argue it can't be done in thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of years. I'm just saying it's probably unwise to focus and spend time and money on this right now. We probably won't even make it to that day. It's better to learn to live on Earth responsibly and then maybe, once we've learned our lessons, start looking further.
- 91bananas 10y agoBut it seems you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. I heard this guy Tesla was involved in a car company that was trying to make an nice electric car that produces no emissions. A noble pursuit in the direction you suggested, living here on Earth more responsibly. But then it turns out that those cars have huge costs in other areas. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=tesla+lithium+mine+pollution https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... Not sure what to make of any of it. We keep trying and digging bigger holes it seems.
- ryanSrich 10y agoHm. It either hasn't started yet or its not working for me. I just see the logo and hear music.
- bsdetector 10y agoWe won't really be an interplanetary species until we can get back from Mars. Imagine being colonists on Mars without the ability to be totally self-sustaining without technology and supplies from Earth and nuclear war breaks out. It's going to be a long time before any Mars colony can survive on its own.
- nickparker 10y agoGetting back is actually much easier, and we won't send anyone until there's a return ship ready for them on the ground. Mars escape velocity is ~5 km/s compared to 11 km/s for Earth, so right off the bat it takes half as much delta-v to get off Mars. The numbers get even more attractive when you consider that Mars's atmosphere is so thin you can use vacuum-optimized engines on the surface. It's a near-certainty that the second stage of ITS will be able to launch fully fueled from the Martian surface and return to Earth orbit, and possibly Earth's surface, without any refueling on the way.
- bsdetector 10y agoWhat I meant is, until Mars is self-sustaining and eventually capable of recolonizing Earth. Colonists rocketing back to a nuclear wasteland or planet infected with super-viruses won't protect us from extinction. And it's much easier and cheaper just to have underground bunkers than to bring a few people back from Mars on a rocket right after some disaster.
- nickparker 10y agoCivilization isn't the human species, it's a higher level and far more fragile thing. If a small fraction of civilization survived a global disaster in bunkers, it's very possible they would regress during the aftermath and never achieve a global society like ours again. A self sustaining civilization on Mars guarantees not just our survival in the Darwin sense, but our continued technological advancement and expansion.
- InclinedPlane 10y agoThis is a limited line of thinking. Eventually humans who are capable of living in a self-sustained colony on Mars will also be able to live anywhere. In space using asteroidal/cometary resources, for example. On the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, etc. The jump between being able to live on Earth and then Mars is actually much greater than the jump between being able to live on Mars and anywhere. At that point humanity no longer would be planet bound. We'll be building cities that house billions of people in, say, the Earth-Sun L4/L5 lagrange points, or wherever we feel like it.
- macawfish 10y agoelon musk debuts his foray into electronic music
- beardicus 10y agoIs SpaceX trying to simulate the long, tedious trip to Mars with this scheduling delay and "endless space" intro graphic?
- rtkwe 10y agoPeople are still filling in the seats. There's a reddit live thread that's gathering some of the tweets from people there. https://www.reddit.com/live/xnrdv28vxfi2 https://www.reddit.com/live/xnrdv28vxfi2
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dasmoth 10y agoWhile this remains a paper rocket for now, its engine (which looks to be a pretty big deal in its own right) was test-fired for the first time yesterday: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/780275236922994688
- ygra 10y agoA scale model of the engine. It's not full-size yet.
- dasmoth 10y agoAre you certain of that? It's mentioned in a few places (including Wikipedia), but I've not seen any SpaceX sources saying this was a sub-scale test article. On the contrary, we've heard Elon say that because of the very high chamber pressure, you can get the thrust they're looking for out of an engine about the size of a Merlin. And while it's hard to be 100% sure, from the pictures I've seen the unit tested at the weekend looks kind-of Merlin sized. Not conclusive, of course, but likewise I've not yet seen any hard evidence to support the idea that it is sub-scale.
- ygra 10y agoAdmittedly, I was going by Wikipedia and r/SpaceX. The latter tended to imply that the source was conversations with employees, but I don't know of a quotable source either. So might in fact be wrong. Elon tweeting something that might imply the same size of the engine, albeit with a qualifier (»Chamber pressure is almost 3X Merlin, so engine is about the same size for a given area ratio«). Naïvely dividing booster diameter by the number of engines across the diameter yields 1.2 m for Merlin 1D and 1.7 m for Raptor (although the ITS seems to have a bit of space around the center cluster since only those gimbal).
- tux1968 10y agoIt's full size they just use 27+ of them on the heavy lift version of their rocket, and 40+ on the proposed rocket for lifting the Mars ships off of Earth.
- anexprogrammer 10y agoI'd really like to see us taking space seriously. While I'm still here. One of my earliest strong memories was the last moon landing. This was followed by years of "Tomorrow's World" and "Horizon" telling us about the Moon bases, Mars bases and orbital platforms that would soon follow. We got Skylab and some very interesting probes. I'm a tiny bit disappointed in that. We were meant to be en route to Starfleet Command and global cooperation (which always seemed a big ask as we were at the height of the cold war). However, I can't help thinking if we do become a multiplanetary species before resolving the issues of this one a few things are just a matter of time. That some politician claims we don't need to care about emissions as we now have a spare, so he's going to build loads of new coal. That Esso wants to know if there's oil. That we have an interplanetary falling out (OK that's probably a while away). That we start littering and buggering up the rest of the solar system.
- maerF0x0 10y agoThis brings up a good point. Why mars first? Why not a moon colony first?
- cbau 10y agoMusk just addressed this. Mars has an atmosphere of CO2 and Nitrogen, so we can grow plants, a day length similar to Earth's (24.5 hours), and is larger.
- maerF0x0 10y agooh ok, i'm 30 mins behind live.
- dogma1138 10y agoMars has no magnetic field so you get cooked with radiation. Mars' soil contains tons of perchlorate at levels which are very toxic to humans. TBH Venus seems like a better candidate for long term terraforming. You can build floating complexes in it's upper atmosphere, and it has enough oxygen and water locked in it's atmosphere and we might be able to fix the rotation and the density of the atmosphere in one go by using the atmosphere to speed up the rotation of Venus. While both of these are quite "far fetched" technically, as far as terraforming goes we aren't any closer to terraforming mars than Venus, and at least for Venus we don't need to figure out how to give it a magnetic field.
- jimjimjim 10y agoHope! To be honest I don't think it matters if mars will be any better but at least it's progress. and in a totalitarian sort of way, which would be better for the human race, getting off this rock or having the world upgrade from an iphone 11 to an iphone 12?
- twoodfin 10y agoIf everyone in the world could afford an iPhone 12, that would be a net gain dwarfing anything we'd get from a Martian colony. It would also imply a world economy that could easily support the development of such a colony. It's not an either/or.
- justrossthings 10y agoRequired reading: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Mars-Trilogy-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0553560735 https://www.amazon.com/Red-Mars-Trilogy-Stanley-Robinson/dp/...
- kchoudhu 10y agoI just finished reading these books for what seems like the millionth time, and Mr. Musk hasn't even begun to answer the questions they raise. What is the legal structure going to be on the 1MM person colony? Who gets to go? What are the transplants allowed to do there? Who rules? Who do the rulers answer to? Are we going to Terraform Mars? If yes, under whose auspices and with what restrictions? FTR: this is Elon Musk's show and I don't trust his ability to keep his pet project from turning into a corporate dystopia. Edited to add: Guys, I'm not against Mars exploration and colonization at scale -- I just want us to put our best foot forward. That means not rushing the process, and doing it in a democratic and non-chaotic manner.
- elevensies 10y agoDoes Mars colonisation increase the chances of Earth becoming (more of) a corporate dystopia? If not, then if there is a chance of a Mars colony which supports your values what are you losing by the attempt? [edit: this is awkwardly phrased ... it is like a free roulette shot, it may or may not pay off, but if it's "free" the net value is positive.] And I also think if colonisation ever was big enough to absorb a significant (i.e. 5%+) portion of Earth gross product (i.e. the sum of GDPs) then it could also improve life on Earth by improving the effective ROI of the capital deployed elsewhere.
- kchoudhu 10y agoThe scenario in which the bet does not pay off results in 1 million people and their descendants being stuck in a terrible situation, with distance making aid or relief impossible at scale. This is something that could be mitigated by making sure that the first planet we colonize isn't some kind of unregulated fief belonging to the first person who threw enough cash at the problem of getting people to Mars. Which is a long way of saying that I may not be one of them, but I sure as hell will feel sorry for them.
- ravenstine 10y agoI have a better idea: Let's focus all the money and effort we would spend on getting to Mars and living on its wasteland, and use it to understand the human mind and digitize it into a realm not individually constrained by physics? I actually think that may be a more realistic and practical goal, and our quality of lives could be much better. I mean, what do we really get from living somewhere like Mars? A storage compartment for excess humans? To what end? What will happen to it when we cure aging? The idea of terraforming Mars cracks me up. Maybe when Musk completes his hyperloop will also be when I start taking him more seriously.
- BurningFrog 10y agoHumanity can work on more than one project. We're 7 billion people.
- BlackjackCF 10y agoI agree! We could be working on projects to improve the ecosystem of Earth, exploring the oceans, and exploring space. We have the bandwidth to do so. We just need more people who are motivated to do it and make a change.
- ravenstine 10y agoThat point is not in dispute. What I think would be better than spending the amount of effort and time to get to Mars, which I am unconvinced solves our long term problems in any way, would be to better pool those resources into solving the root issues that afflict humanity like aging, pathogens, degenerative diseases, the need for so much food, the pollution we create, and the resources we consume. Working towards changing the human into something better, whether it be through improving our own hardware(biology) or bringing us into a digital realm(cognition). If we don't do that sooner, we're more likely to continue to suffer from the problems we are inevitably facing and end up, as I said earlier, turning planets into mere storage compartments. We can certainly do multiple things at once, but resources are not infinite, and I don't think all avenues of spending those resources make sense.
- 10y ago
- MrBra 10y agoWitnessing the future, chill bumps!
- codeulike 10y agoThe Mars colonial fleet would depart en-masse - about 1000 ships
- grkvlt 10y ago> As of 17 September 2016, there have been 310 manned spaceflights [...] 8 of which were sub-orbital [1] There have been 302 manned orbital launches according to [1] and from adding up the successful launches in [2] there seem to have been a total of 5057 orbital launches so far, in the 70 or so years of spaceflight. Apparently the Mars fleet needs from 3 to 5 tanker launches per manned craft, so this program will require between 4000 and 6000 orbital launches, so around 5000 - which is about the same number as the total number of (successful) human rocket launches to date! Looking at the table in [2] we can see that the best success rates for manned launch systems are 97% for both Soyuz and the Space Shuttle. using this as a worst-case estimate, out of those 5000 launches we can expect 150 to fail. Assuming one in five are crewed, with 100 crew per vehicle, that means 3000 deaths over the life of the program. I guess that we can expect improvements in reliability with a program this size, and using a mass-produced vehicle which is re-usable is not something we have safety data for in the space-flight arena yet. You would hopefully expect reliability and safety to improve, getting towards the standards of modern aircraft, or at least experimental aircraft or military systems perhaps. But even three nines (99.9%, or one failure per 1000 lanches) is still multiple orders of magnitude better than we can achieve with spaceflight right now, so SpaceX are setting a pretty tough goal for themselves here. Still, I really do hope they succeed, and it will be exciting to watch them try... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights [2] http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/logsum.html http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/logsum.html
- nickik 10y ago> Assuming one in five are crewed, with 100 crew per vehicle, that means 3000 deaths over the life of the program. A failure in the rocket does not mean everybody dies. There is a launch abort system for that. Musk has confirmed this after the presentation.
- devy 10y agoCan someone with expertise to compare Musk's plan vs. Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan proposed in the early 90s?
- elsonrodriguez 10y agoThe biggest similarity I see is given away by the Methane/Oxygen engine. This means he's aiming at generating fuel on Mars. The biggest difference is the emphasis on reusable craft. I'll post something more in depth once I watch the whole video (or some rocket-head will beat me to it).
- nickik 10y agoMusk defiantly knows about the Mars Direct and he has ideas from it in his presentation. Mars Direct did not do any refiling in orbit, but rather does multible direct launches. That allows them to use smaller rockets. Zubrin worked under the assumption that the best he could get was a modified version of Shuttle (pretty similar to SLS actually). Mars Direct assumed a rocket with a normal upper stage that then deployed its payload to mars.SpaceX makes the spaceship itself the 2nd stage. Mars direct leaves large the hab behind and does a direct fly back with the MAV. In the SpaceX plan you fly back with the hole ship, this gives you the same comforts in both directions. Mars Direct assumes continually new HABs, MAVs and rockets to be built to keep up the exploration or base building. Its a very good plan if you have a space agency that has a budget every years and wants to continue doing what they are doing. The SpaceX plan want to massively decrease price and thus makes more extrem choices such as re-usability to not waste anything. Basically, SpaceX makes a spacetruck that can transport a lot for cheap. Mars Direct aims to deliver what you need for long exploration in the simplest way. Both are great plans.
- elsonrodriguez 10y agoWatched the video finally and I think this is a good explanation. Mars Direct is all about the cheapest, simplest way for a state-sponsored space agency to send 4 people at a time to Mars, with a slow build up towards permanent settlement via increasingly concurrent missions. SpaceX is trying to start a permanent settlement within the first 5 or so missions, with the first few hundred people being uber-qualified astronauts, and everyone thereafter being whoever can put up $200k for a trip, potentially one-way. It's like a fusion of Mars Direct and the very plans Zubrin was opposed to (Elon acknowledged this by making a reference to "Battlestar Galactica", which Zubrin used many times as a pejorative in The Case for Mars). The only reason the multiple in-orbit refuelings and re-usable rockets makes sense is the ridiculous scale (100 people per trip) and the ultimate goal (Mars Trips for anyone who wants to go).
- mikeash 10y agoSome of the comments here make me think of crabs in a pot pulling down the ones who try to climb out. Nobody's making you participate in this venture. If you don't like it, then you're free to go do whatever it is you do like. You might think Musk could better direct his efforts and resources elsewhere, but most other billionaires don't do anything all that interesting, they just invest their money in mundane stuff, outsource jobs, build hotels, run for President, etc. So why are you upset with this one and not all those others?
- brey 10y agoThere's a phrase I'm fond of: The man who says it can't be done needs to get out of the way of the man who's doing it.
- ythl 10y agoAt least in my case, I see trying to start a Mars colony as a death trap. It's the illusion of carrying on the human race, but it's really just dooming a bunch of pioneers to a grim fate in an extremely hostile environment. I think making a south pole colony would be hard enough, let alone a Mars one.
- Osiris 10y agoWhy should your opinion dictate what other people try to accomplish?
- ythl 10y agoI'm not saying "don't try", I'm just saying "I think what you are attempting is foolish and that you are just going to kill a bunch of people", that's all. I can express an opinion about a potentially deadly venture, can't I?
- Osiris 10y agoI wasn't suggesting that you cannot have an opinion. It's a perfectly valid opinion. I was implying that as a society we have a tendency to impose our opinions on others through laws and social pressure.
- 40acres 10y agoI'm surprised Elon has not improved his public speaking abilities.
- giarc 10y agoHe is likely very efficient with his time. Improving public speaking skills is not an efficient use of his time for someone in his position.
- davidw 10y agoSo maybe hire someone to fill in the 'set pieces' of the talk, that he could go back and forth with? As much as I think what he's doing is amazingly cool, it's kind of painful to watch.
- microtherion 10y agoSince his "position" involves advocating for a whole bunch of literal and figurative moon shots, investing in public speaking skills is a HIGHLY efficient use of his time.
- giarc 10y agoAnd yet there are two companies that live stream product launches and get lots of media attention. Apple and Tesla/SpaceX. So I would say his public speaking skills don't matter to the crowd of engineers and geeks. Maybe, just maybe the product speaks louder than the words?
- intrasight 10y agoI totally agree. The first couple of times I heard him speak, I was like "get some skills". But now I can filter out the stutters and delays. And the payoff is huge - the guy is totally brilliant and inspirational. I can see why his employees give it 150%.
- BinaryIdiot 10y agoSeems significantly better than his earlier works. His talks feel genuine since they don't appear to be rehearsed and he's not exactly a smooth talker. In my opinion anyway.
- Animats 10y agoGreat video. Is the plan really a one-way trip?
- iamcreasy 10y agoNo, the spaceships will be coming back. If somebody wants to come back they can hop in any of the returning spaceships. Elon doesn't want Mars to be graveyard of spaceships.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jpm_sd 10y agoI'd like to see humans establish self-sustaining colonies in the Gobi Desert, the Laurentian Plateau, and the equatorial Pacific first. All much easier environments.
- exhilaration 10y agoHell, even underwater is an easier environment.
- elliotec 10y agoThats simply not the point. We went to the moon. That was not an easy thing to do. We developed nuclear weapons, which was certainly more difficult than establishing a colony in the Gobi desert. See the excerpt of the JFK moon speech from above. "we choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
- wyager 10y agoThat would have none of the advantages of a Mars colony.
- rtpg 10y agowhat are the advantages of a Mars colony? It's not like we'll be shipping things back to Earth. I'm for exploration and all that but there's a pretty good point. Figuring out how to make the desert habitable on this planet is a pretty good test run for the Real Deal.
- _audakel 10y agocool part starts at about 31m:30s from the end of the clip
- whothunkdit 10y agoSeems great for all the basic research it will require. But I'm unsure about the morality of it. I think the drive to expand and discover new things is perhaps a direct cause of the deeper problems we have on Earth. Would humanity be better off just becoming a sustainable population of monks? Or are we morally equivalent to a virus, reduced to survival of the fittest and always seeking out the next host to reap?
- freehunter 10y agoDoes it really matter? I mean honestly... until we discover other life out there, nothing we do matters one little bit as long as we stay alive. We owe it to the future of our species to diversify as much as possible. Even if we go green and save the planet, our planet will end anyway. Accidents, asteroids, etc. Something will get the planet, it will. But even if we go farm out every other planet and make it barren and even if we mined every ounce of every other planet in our galaxy... if we're the only life in the area, or the only life in the universe, it doesn't matter one bit. We could blow up every single other planet and it wouldn't hurt us at all, because we can't live there. So the only thing that makes sense is to keep living like we are the only life in the universe, all the while trying to figure out if that's true or not. Mars isn't alive. Venus isn't alive. The moon isn't alive. It's not "reaping" a "host" any more than me painting the walls of my house is. It doesn't make one lick of difference. There's nothing immoral about spreading to other lifeless planets.
- johnfjacobi 10y ago> the only thing that makes sense is to keep living like we are the only life in the universe uh...we aren't.
- freehunter 10y agoProve it, with actual hard evidence. Show me real, actual, living life that exists right now. Until then, it's hypothetical and it would be insane to put our species at risk of extinction if there is the possibility that we're the only life in the universe.
- MarcScott 10y agoWe set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon! ...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.
- elliotec 10y ago- President John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962 http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm
- jfolkins 10y agoJohn F. Kennedy Moon Speech - Rice Stadium https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuW4oGKzVKc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuW4oGKzVKc
- aaron695 10y agoI'm finding this quotations without referencing the source or using quotes a real annoying trend on HN atm. It's a form of in-joke/group which is very Reddit and is used to get upvotes because everyone loves being in with the cool kids. But not everyone has read or watched every classic and knows every famous person of countries X speeches, hence why you attribute the source or even just the speaker, fictional or not.
- drcross 10y agoAs much as I love everything about what Elon is doing I wish there was a way to remove all the "um"s and "eh"s from his diction.
- jpindar 10y agoI think its kind of encouraging to see that you don't have to be a great public speaker to get people to listen to you, as long as you are able to accomplish things off the stage.
- damaru 10y agoTalk about going on Mars, Can't get proper light for the conference...
- abrkn 10y ago"We can put a man on Mars, but ..."
- davidw 10y agoJeez, they should have done some vetting of the people asking questions. Some of these are horrible and a waste of time.
- andars 10y agoSeriously. "My question is if I can give you this gift!"
- hmate9 10y agoMy thought exactly. Seems like 90% of the people in the audience trolls.
- daeken 10y agoYeah, all questions should've gone into a queue for review as the talk was going on. I had to shut off the Q&A; this was just cringeworthy.
- brianobush 10y agoyeah, some made me cringe.
- enraged_camel 10y agoYeah, the guy who said he was at Burning Man and wondered how we would deal with human shit on Mars made me cringe.
- XJOKOLAT 10y agoHave to admit, I laughed my ass off at: "Hey Elon, I've got my electric bus parked outside. Want to take a look?" Elon/team deserved much better.
- giarc 10y agoI wish someone would have screened these people asking questions for personal/commercial interests.
- amgin3 10y agoThey really need to screen people for the Q/A. Half these people are idiots just trying to promote their own BS and trying to tell stupid irrelevant stories.
- iplaw 10y agoSo I was at Burning Man ... shit, shit, shit.
- 40acres 10y agoElon mentioned that there is no physical frontier left to explore on Earth, what about deep water exploration?
- mAritz 10y agoI think he meant that you can go anywhere physically on earth, if you want to. You can go to deep water. That doesn't mean we've been everywhere in deep water, or even on land.
- hmate9 10y agoI think he meant places that are potentially habitable.
- yolesaber 10y agoUnderwater colonies are more viable and habitable than mars.
- artursapek 10y agoHis goal is to make our species multi-planetary.
- goatlover 10y agoIf exploration is the goal, wouldn't you get a lot more bang for your buck with a swarm of robots and probes around and on Mars? Sending people is very expensive in contrast.
- elsonrodriguez 10y agoReading a NOAA report about Hawaii's weather is much cheaper than going there, yet people still go. A total waste, I say.
- imron 10y agoHave a look at the end of the video presentation when they open the cabin and look out on Mars. Two of 'people' in the shot are not wearing any sort of helmet or suit and appear to be humanoid robots.
- dudus 10y agoWatching live the announcement and presentation by Elon on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YxNYiyALg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YxNYiyALg Where the hell did they get this audience from? Is this hosted on a frat house with some academic invites? There's a dude jokingly saying that burning man felt like mars with a lot of shit and no water, there's a guy plugging his comic book, there's a guy making a joke on how we should send Michael Cera to Mars, a girl complaining about Space X not hiring people from other countries, a girl asking to go on stage and give him a kiss, a guy that identified himself as a local idiot that I'm pretty sure is completely drunk, .... There are some good questions too, but I just can't understand it. Elon just went on stage and delivered a plan so ambitious you couldn't even imagine. I have thousands of questions, and astonished these people couldn't think of anything else.
- pearlsteinj 10y agoHe's doing a great job of only looking a little bit uncomfortable with the questions. Seriously this Q&A is incredibly odd.
- giarc 10y agoI have an electric bus in the parking lot.........
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mxfh 10y agoIt's super weird, also that refueling question: People have to wait weeks in space to just get refueled? Why not send 4-5 tankers (supposedly reusable) up first and then refuel almost instantly? That thing seems really low scale/budget.
- elevensies 10y agoThe goal is to maximize re-use in order to minimize cost, for a tanker to fuel a tanker in orbit you'd need two tankers. So 1 booster + 1 transporter + 1 tanker, vs. 1 booster + 1 transporter + 2 tankers. If the trip takes 100 days, adding 3 weeks is 20% longer, and you might get it 20% cheaper by saving one spacecraft ... I can see it going either way.
- phodo 10y agoThe quality of the Q&A seems grossly sub-par compared to the incredible quality of the vision / content / presentation.
- tw04 10y agoThis Q&A is painful... it's a combination of people shamelessly plugging their own products (Funny or Die you just lost a viewer with that stunt) and people who sound like they may be (literally) mentally unstable. There are scattered in somewhat normal questions... but not by anyone I would consider qualified to even be asking questions.
- aws_ls 10y ago>and people who sound like they may be (literally) mentally unstable I wonder what kind of people accompanied Columbus and other explorers on their ships. If you also noticed there was one woman questioner, who wanted to kiss Elon Musk. Perhaps that's the kind who would take such risks, to be the first crew. So I didn't mind those questions so much. By and large the crowd was very excited - thunderous applause several times.
- sssparkkk 10y agoI'm not sure whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that Elon's presentation ends with requests to throw comics onto the stage and ask him to allow receiving a good luck kiss from a girl in the audience. To be honest I think it's a really bad fit to have these kind of questions during such an event; but hey, because of them I'm pretty sure this is all really honest and not at all orchestrated... Which is good, I suppose.
- beloch 10y agoThis new launch vehicle has a realistic chance of getting people and materials to Mars in sufficient quantities to build an outpost. I'd like to hear more about how they plan to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars though. There are some pretty big challenges to overcome, such as the relative lack of Nitrogen. A colony is going to have to grow plants but, to do that on Mars, we're going to need a way of fixing Nitrogen for those plants from an Atmosphere where it's just not very plentiful. Please note that this isn't an argument against going to Mars now. There's a lot we can learn by building an outpost on Mars that is supported heavily by Earth, including how to build a self-supporting Mars colony. I'm just asking what the current state-of-the-art opinion is on the challenges of building a self-supporting Mars colony.
- Debugreality 10y agoI noticed Musk tentatively mention nuclear - I think that's because it will be the only logical way to generate enough power to support a city in such an inhospitable climate. There is going to be a huge and ongoing energy need just to survive. Unless we build a battery/solar panel factory there is no way solar is going to cut it.
- novalis78 10y agoSadly - but it just tells you that he is acutely aware of the public opinion aspect of his vision. Nuclear - especially a firm grasp and experience in Thorium reactors - would be a perfect energy solution for all industrial processes on Mars. One can only hope that a massive project as the one he is proposing here will lead to a renaissance in thinking big - colonial in its ambition - and with it in challenging the Unenlightened modern anti-nuclear phobia.
- InclinedPlane 10y agoMars has plenty of Nitrogen, it's in the atmosphere (2% of it). That may be at low pressure, but once you have a few hundred tonnes of industrial equipment on Mars you can start doing things like fractional distillation of the atmosphere, and then you're just pumping Nitrogen out of the atmosphere and using it for whatever you want. 2% of a very low pressure may not seem like much but in total that's about half a trillion tonnes, or half a million cubic kilometers of Nitrogen. It'll be a very long time before that resource is depleted. Additionally, Mars has nitrates, which can be mined and exploited.
- Esau 10y agoYup, time to move to other planets - the virus has almost killed its current host.
- giarc 10y agoI've never listened/watched the Q/A session from any of his talks, are the questions from the audience usually better?
- nickik 10y agoYes. Far better. Usually it seems to by mostly journalists. This is conference everybody can go to, and it seems the people who really wanted to ask questions were not the space nerds. To compensate he made a Q&A with journalist right after, he answered some great questions that the community was already wildly speculating about, I don't have a very good link, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/54j2y4/rspacex_official_mars_architecture/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/54j2y4/rspacex_offi...
- savagej 10y agotroll
- ravenstine 10y agoWhat makes you think I'm trolling? I like the idea of space travel as much as the next person; I just remain unconvinced that colonizing Mars or even deep space really solves any existential problems for humanity beyond... providing more space. There's nothing radical about not believing that space travel is an answer to anything in and of itself. Apparently there's something deeply wrong for not agreeing with Elon Musk, yet nobody has stepped up to say anything except "troll". Seriously now, what's troll-like about thinking that there's more promise in improving the human being than in colonizing Mars? If anything, diverting resources to improving the human hardware might get us to Mars faster. Granted, I'm not sure I'd want to go there, but something like Mars could become much more like visiting a national park once you don't have to worry about things like oxygen, radiation, extreme temperatures, etc.
- savagej 10y agoNo one cares what you think about space travel or world priorities. That's why you are a troll.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sctb 10y agoPlease stop posting like this. We ask that you comment civilly and substantively or not at all.
- castis 10y agoColonizing Mars (and/or humanity leaving the planet in general) does solve 1 existential problem. We have no reason to believe this planet is exempt from further mass extinctions. We are hard-wired to preserve our own existence and this is a step in assuring that.
- 10y ago
- norea-armozel 10y agoMy greatest fear is that space will become the playground for the rich and powerful where the rest of humankind is left to suffer on an overpopulated, polluted Earth. We as a society can't live on the kindness of individuals to achieve a better future and that goes double for leaning on SpaceX and Elon Musk. They are a for profit venture and that means unless you're rich enough to pay your way then you have to pay with labor which may or may not be pleasant. I know it seems silly to imagine the future like that but the way the rich and powerful have been running the world so far I can't see them giving a flip when they can have safe, sanitary habitats in space which separate them from the existential threats on Earth. At that point they could just say "fuck it" and cut the rest of humankind off from space easily with threats of asteroid bombardments or worse.
- ythl 10y agoDon't worry. If anything, space will become the graveyard for the rich and powerful once they realize how poorly the human body fares in high-radiation, low gravity environments.
- gkya 10y agoOh, at last, a bit of reality... I'm sad that maybe we'll have to watch hundreds of people die for a completely unrealistic endeavor, and they'll never have a grave for their loving ones to visit.
- boznz 10y agoReality check. EVERYONE who signs up to this will know the very real risks involved.
- Ericson2314 10y agoToo risky for the rich en masse at first. If they do go will be like the blandest suburb.
- orky56 10y agoI imagine we'll initially have the working class inhabit non-Earth places such as the moon, Mars, etc. Once the risk of the frontier is mitigated, we'll have a gentrification of sorts where the working class is pushed back to Earth and the upper class take the non-Earth areas back over. People with the means will work remotely from a different planet, companies with the profits will gravitate towards sexier places, and governments will hope to colonize other areas.
- opiuse 10y agoDoes anyone know what the music is during the first 20 minutes?
- ChampCrawDaddy 10y agoLooks like it's made in-house. The tracks they use for webcast intros are apparently collectively known as Spacex FM. I like it. It reminds me of the Eve Online soundtrack.
- MrZongle2 10y agoEnjoyed Elon's presentation. The Q&A, however, seemed to be straight from a second-rate Comic-Con panel. Clearly, we've already identified some of the folks who should be left on Earth.
- mtgx 10y agoI missed most of the livestream. Why did they just close it? I thought it was possible to simply go back on it. Did they not want people to do that before editing it first?
- robertocarlos 10y agoI created an account just to post this. The Q&A was the worst Q&A I have ever seen. Truly awful. I usually am a pretty calm person but watching that made my blood boil. This venture could well be one of the most important things to happen to humanity, and those were the questions that people asked. The questions were awful at all levels. Featured self promotion, ignorance and plain stupidity. I just needed to get this out there. Seriously, what the actual f.
- sabertoothed 10y ago"I was at burning man. Blah blah blah. And where do we put all the shit on Mars?" Sorry, please? That is the best question you can come up with? I stopped watching after this.
- epidemian 10y agoAbsolutely. I was watching it live and couldn't believe how bad that Q&A section was. Felt bad for Musk standing there, having to somehow respond politely to all that stupidity.
- shkkmo 10y agoI thought Musk did a great job at salvaging the lower brow questions. > Send Michael Sera to mars because we don't want him back >> Elon talks about the importance of offering return trips > Where do we put the shit on mars with no water >> Elon talks about how the critical shortage is power, not water. > Are you thinking about interstellar travel >> Creating a colony on mars creates the incentives to spur us to create the dramatic improvements in space travel that will one day give rise to interplanetary travel While I understand the frustration, including the general public in this discussion in critical to build the support and good will needed for this project to succeed. We need more people to be willing to address questions like this. The only time I felt bad for Musk was when that girl asked him if she could take him upstairs and give him a kiss. He mumbled something like "I don't have that here" and moved on.
- nojvek 10y agoThis is why I think the Tesla brand will be much stronger than bmw or Audi. They are the new Apple who are thinking different.
- novalis78 10y agoExpect a job application as soon as I receive my Greencard, Elon :-)
- banach 10y agoFinally, colonization without genocide. Maybe humanity is making progress after all?
- daveheq 10y agoWhy are we thinking about going to other planets when we can't even take care of our own? How many industry leaders see planets as merely resources to be exploited like they do people?
- cs702 10y agoTo the US Federal Government: PLEASE. FUND. THIS. Loan the money to SpaceX, or partner with private investors, or increase NASA's budget and have NASA pay for it. Just make it happen. Even if this project fails, the benefits from having a lot of smart people trying to get to and establish a colony on Mars will pay dividends for a long time. Please make it happen!
- hmate9 10y agoIf I recall correctly Elon said they have the money. That the project is costing them <5% of SpaceX.
- jandrese 10y agoThe 5% of SpaceX was what they're willing to put into the project, but that only covers a few million of the tens of billions this project needs. I wouldn't look to the Public sector for funding this. Governments have grown increasingly hostile to long term projects. Just ask NASA how much fun it is to have senators constantly threaten to cut your funding and the need to build things in an incredibly inefficient (expensive) way just to keep Congress happy. Plus you get all sorts of curveballs as administrations come and go and want to juggle the priorities. As a government project this would just be an endless money pit and if it ever got off of the ground it would be decades late and severely cut back in scope.
- DrNuke 10y agoMiserable sods are not an exception in the human history but, until now, doers have always had the last laugh. Steps may be faster without them but, you know, the higher the target, the more substantial the effort to get rid of miserable sods. It must be noted that it often happened that miserable sods' arguments helped improve the process overall, so I'm pretty sure SpaceX is taking note of the most intelligent arguments over here to improve their products.
- mtrn 10y agoImpressive. I just wished some engineers could take at least a single day off to regenerate - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YxNYiyALg&feature=youtu.be&t=1h22m51s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YxNYiyALg&feature=youtu.be... - especially when they are on a world changing mission.
- nixos 10y agoDid he talk about the future land ownership/governmentship of his colony? Will it be a personal dictatorship of Elon? Unlike Earth, once you're there, there's nowhere to go without his blessing. You can't just "move next door". And knowing how "locked down" his Tesla cars are, it'll be interesting to see how he'll deal with a rebellious colony.
- ChampCrawDaddy 10y agoHey if you pay for the research and development, equipment, transportation, construction, and deal with the myriad of other problems that come with living on another planet I'm sure you'd be free to make your own rules. You make it sound like Elon owes us something already.
- nixos 10y agoHe doesn't. But that doesn't mean that I'm comfortable with potential dictatorships like that.
- lallysingh 10y agoIt doesn't have to be a dictatorship if you already control who gets on the planet.
- kirrent 10y agoHe didn't, but the outer space treaty would make any claim to ownership of land invalid. In the past he's discussed direct democracy as a preferred form of governance for smaller colonies with all/most laws having sunset provisions requiring them to be debated/voted upon on renewal.
- nixos 10y agoThe Outer Space treaty doesn't prevent one from owning property in space. But that's not the main issue. The main issue is that until another company opens up shop on Mars, you literally have nowhere to go, and the colony will be dependent on earth for quite some time. What will happen if Elon doesn't like what they're doing and threatens to withhold supplies? rockets? Internet?
- jotato 10y agoAny reason why you couldn't put a tanker in geo-sync orbit connected to a very (very) long fuel pipe somewhere on earth? The idea being you can pump fuel up instead of launching it? Kind of like a space elevator for fuel! :)
- Voloskaya 10y agoProbably the same reason we can't build a space elevator :)
- jotato 10y agoIn didnt say it would be easy, but neither is sending 100 people to mars. I'm not engineer, but wouldn't a pipe be easier to build than an elevator?
- Pinckney 10y agoThe problem with space elevators is that the cable (or the pipe, as you propose) needs to be able to hold itself together. Imagine taking a 4000 km long elevator cable and holding it up by one end: it would snap under its own weight instantly. That's about what your cable material needs to be able to take. The weight of the car is trivial in comparison.
- jotato 10y agoDoes it have to support its entire weight? At some point, won't the pipe have enough centrifugal force that would be supporting it?
- azernik 10y agoThe uppermost parts of the pipe (up past GEO) would; that's why it doesn't fall down. However, unless your pipe is strong enough, it'll rip in two, and the part above GEO would fly away and the part below will fall down.
- Your_Creator 10y agoForgive me but I love this stuff, thinking about how much quantum mechanics has taught us about the universe makes me absolutely giddy. I haven't even watched this yet and I can tell you this: To achieve multi-planetary status, we need to make ourselves less fragile than we currently tend to be. What I mean by that is that if we devoted half as much time, money and resources as we do to wage endless wars and collectively shifted our focus to medical advancements such as the technology we need to keep ourselves alive in the hostile environments we'll encounter in space, our astronauts very likely could be traveling in self contained, iron man-like suits by now. Aside from that, we may have to upgrade our own physiology so; We NEED nanotech that can repair us, keep us healthy and help us adapt OURSELVES to new environments that have enough of the proper elements. Can you imagine being able to Evolve On Demand so that you can breathe a different atmosphere and derive whatever your body needed from it? I can. If relativity holds then planets that are either bigger or moving faster might have a very different local space-time from what we're used to, so imagine if jet lag was so severe it hospitalized you. We need artificial intelligence capable of both supervised and unsupervised learning to run and monitor our environments, our medical conditions - both physical and mental. The 'quantified self movement' actually has a very, very useful purpose here. We need to be able to repair a ship while it's in space. We need to be able to repair an environmental suit while standing or perhaps trapped in a volcano that ejects molten Dihydrogen Monoxide on Titan. We need real, functioning, scanning, recording, data-analyzing Tricorders. Yes, if if weren't obvious by now, I AM a total Star Trek nerd and if we want to explore space, we need those mobile forensic labs that will allow us to truly see the universe and ALL of its wonderful colors. I could go on, but then someones' R&D department is gonna have to pay me.
- zerooneinfinity 10y agoI wish there was local groups or meetups with people to talk about and maybe even potentially contribute to this effort. I kind of feel this way in general about science. I'd love to go somewhere after work and experiment in labs.
- elliotec 10y agoStart it!
- mulcahey 10y agoThat's part of how SpceX started. Tom Muelller, SpaceX employee number 1 and current VP of propulsion was part of a liquid fueled rocket club and was building what became the Merlin engine in a garage. Elon came by and asked if he wanted to start a rocket company.
- banach 10y agoThe SpaceXes of the age of colonization, such as the East India Company, used to sell shares to fund their voyages. I was a bit surprised not to hear Musk mention this as a funding option, since he just delivered the greatest Kickstarter pitch of all time...
- ChampCrawDaddy 10y agoHis plans are unprecedented and complex and investors are notoriously short sighted. If he IPO'd, people would be demanding instant profits even though SpaceX is operating under a different kind of timeline.
- hyperion2010 10y agoThe various * Companies weren't exactly going into uninhabited areas, they were calling at ports that had been involved in global sea trade for many centuries albeit at a slightly lower volume. Despite this there were still a series of disastrous bubbles due to speculation on the various * Companies [0]. 0. https://ericrossacademic.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/mapping-the-mercantilist-world-economy/ https://ericrossacademic.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/mapping-th...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- novalis78 10y agoLol - me too, that's when I thought of Marscoin.org
- pjscott 10y agoSpaceX has raised quite a bit of money from private investors with long time horizons, so that option definitely hasn't escaped their notice.
- ender7 10y agoI'm all for colonizing Mars, but is it possible to do large-scale terraforming of the surface without a magnetosphere to protect it?
- iamcreasy 10y agoHe briefly mentioned about creating artificial magnetic poles to shield the Mars city from radiation. No details though. Maybe we could have learned about it the Q&A session was a little better.
- hyperion2010 10y agoI was thinking about this the other day, and the best solution that I came up with was to hit Mars with Ceres in hopes that the collision will be sufficient to restart geological activity on Mars. Sure we have to wait a while for things to cool down again and coalesce, but it seems a much more feasible solution than living in bubbles or trying to create an artificial magnetosphere.
- snuxoll 10y agoWonder if a nuclear bomb "The Core"-style would work? (Yes, I realize this is a shittt sci-fi movie, but if you are taking about smashing a dwarf planet into mars to generate a huge explosion it doesn't sound too out of the realm of workable.)
- imron 10y agoMusk has already considered this: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-plans-to-drop-nuclear-bombs-above-mars-to-give-it-two-new-suns-so-it-can-keep-warm-a6679736.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/elo...
- _rpd 10y agoZubrin and McKay seem to think so ... Technological Requirements for Terraforming Mars http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm
- hinkley 10y agoA number of years ago, around or shortly after the time I read the Mars Trilogy, I remember seeing an article about how the three largest populations of high altitude humans (Peru, Nepal, Ethiopia) all use a different biological process to deal with the effects of hypoxia. The lower the pressure, the safer the structure, so one imagines you could have a colony where many of the workers from these three population groups, nature taking its course and we end up with legitimate Martians. People who could live in cheap structures or deep canyons with no suits for generations before the rest of us.
- gauto 10y agoIt's really starting to feel like we "live in the future" more and more everyday. The stuff we used to dream about as kids is becoming reality. Amid all the doom and gloom that seems to pervade the news cycle, stories like this are so refreshing. Simply amazing. It seems like in the longer term, it would be more efficient to take a shuttle to orbit, and then dock with at a space station to get on the interplanetary ship. Cruise ships and military ships use this method in places where docking is infeasible. It would be a much higher initial cost, however. Six months on ship isn't so bad. Six months is the length of a WESTPAC, though you get to leave the ship periodically. I think the longest we went without docking was a month, and the guys in the submarines often go for even longer stretches.
- craigds 10y agoWhat's a WESTPAC? Googling it only finds the Australian bank for the first three pages.
- gauto 10y agoYeah, that wasn't clear at all. I should have just said "deployment on Navy ship". If you are curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expeditionary_Strike_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expeditionary_Strike_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_expeditionary_unit#The_MEU_Cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_expeditionary_unit#The_...
- edem 10y agoIf you are interested there is an article series on Wait but Why here: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-m... about Elon Musk and his goals with SpaceX (and much more).
- JabavuAdams 10y agoI love the "questions, not essays" shut-down. It's not rude, but it quashes this tendency people have to try and impress rather than to ask a question. Next time I'm giving a talk: one question per person (want to ask more, go to end of line), and ask your damn question.
- EdSharkey 10y agoI think Musk must be a founding member of the Human Admiration Society. He's so positive on the achievements, adventures, survival of our species. And, he's on the watch too, warning us about possible looming threats like extinction events or AI run amok. I want to join Musk's society! Let's keep humankind going!
- syntex 10y agoI wonder what would be people's daily routine on mars. How colony with of thousands people will be organised? Would they have as much freedom as we have on earth, or the whole colony needs to be organized from bottom to top as the anthill colony.
- InclinedPlane 10y agoBootstrapping the local infrastructure. Think of it like a game. You start off with a lathe and a CNC mill and some 3D printers and a bunch of other stuff. You now need to grow crops on Mars. You need to refine Iron ore and produce high quality steel. You need to manufacture plastics, glass, concrete. You need to mine water ice to make water. You need to use electrolysis to make Hydrogen to feed the Sabatier reactor that makes Oxygen/Methane from the atmosphere. You need to explore, you need to maintain and expand the habitat, you need to facilitate future flights to make them as easy as possible and to build capacity for offloading passengers and equipment smoothly and quickly. And then you need to figure out how to use locally produced steel, aluminum, concrete, glass, plastics, etc. to build more machine tools, to build more habitats, to build more farms, more life support equipment, etc. How would you build a backup generator system that ran on LOX/Methane using local machine tools and locally produced materials, for example? How would you build high pressure gas containers for life support systems in habitats using the same? All of this is like The Martian times a million. It'll be go-go-go every day, because the amount of work remaining will basically be infinite for your entire life. Once you "solve" one "problem", once you advance the state of Martian industry, agriculture, technology, etc. by one step, you're really just opening up the problem space further. The kind of people who will do best in this environment and those who are extremely capable, self-reliant, inventive, goal oriented people (basically workaholics). They could have plenty of freedom, but if you're not 100% dedicated to working to build and advance the colony you probably won't get along with the rest of the colonists. If you don't obviously bring something valuable to the table (which doesn't need to be industrial/technological/agricultural elbow grease, and could easily be things like being a musician, artist, reporter, chef, even a poet, etc.) you'll probably have a bad time. But on the plus side, if you are a very results-oriented, goal oriented person, you'll likely have a lot of freedom. You'll be able to build, experiment, "hack", and explore to your heart's content. For the most part you'll be able to have your pick of interesting problems from day to day, you'll be immersed in a sea of experts in various technologies, all of them eager for apprentices to come learn and help. And at the end of the day (well, years anyway) you'll be able to look back and say "I built that, and that, and that, and that" for values of "that" equal to significant parts of the local industry and ecosystem. Imagine being part of the team of people who built the first structures to house the first Martian forests. Imagine having your name stamped in the side of the first iron foundry or steel mill on Mars. Imagine having your hand prints in the concrete of the first habitat built using local materials on Mars. That's what being a colonist will be like. It'll be some of the toughest work, but also the most rewarding.
- syntex 10y agoThe sociological difficulty is as big as technical one. He hired one of the best engineers available to solve technical problems. Probably the same work should be done on the sociological part of the project. Otherwise, we may see bad events unfolding on mars. Would be interesting to see open source project taking sociological issues as target.
- dba7dba 10y ago45:25 Elon says he will leave detailed technical questions to QA after his presentation. Lol. His presentation was far more technical than any of the questions. I think I would prefer more presentation from him than any QA.
- jandrese 10y agoMaybe next time they won't invite burnt out stoners for the QA?
- encoderer 10y agoI expect the "no children" rule to apply for roughly 9.25 months. What then I wonder?
- thght 10y agoI might be wrong, but I expect Elon Musk to become one of the most exceptional hero's of our times. No other billionaire is creating sustainable businesses like Tesla and Power Wall for the good of as many people as possible. He risks pretty much all he has for his ultimate dream to enable humans to start exploring the universe, and by doing so preventing the looming extinction of our species. The amount of talent and power this guy has while being so humble is just very rare. As soon as I can afford a Tesla I will definitely buy one, not only because it's a great car, but even more to support these kind of people.
- stevebmark 10y agoI don't mean to nitpick but is Elon always this bad of a presenter? He sounds sickly and hungover and unpracticed. A strange performance for probably one of the most important ventures in recent human history.
- iamcreasy 10y agoQuote from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12592996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12592996 "I think its kind of encouraging to see that you don't have to be a great public speaker to get people to listen to you, as long as you are able to accomplish things off the stage."
- Hondor 10y agoSounding sickly and unpracticed might be a problem in a high school speech contest but here he still gave an engaging talk that clearly a lot of people enjoyed listening to. So it wasn't bad. Just an unconventional style. Try listening to political speeches from half a century ago and see how offensively arrogant they sound, or Chinese speeches today. Fashions change and it's not bad as long as people enjoy it.
- callmeatroll 10y agoThis is either: A) the most revolutionary venture of this century B) the largest Ponzi scheme ever
- zik 10y agoNot sure how it could be seen as a Ponzi scheme. By definition a Ponzi scheme has to return money from its later investors to earlier investors and I don't see anything like that here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme
- JMCQ87 10y agoI don't see how B) would work in this case. However, it could also simply be a huge pile of money getting burned, with a few useful innovations made along the way. I would venture to say that is the most likely outcome, actually, although I prefer A) to happen, of course.
- wwarner 10y agoI'm skeptical for two reasons. Living on Mars won't be like living in California at all. And two, building a colony there will be very, very, even catastrophically costly, so yes it will hurt everyone else who chooses not to participate. There are only so many platinum mines. Resources should be focused here. Think about it: how much water and air have left Earth to date? A miniscule amount, all due to space exploration. This project would change that, and for the worse.
- beau26 10y ago>Earth Loses 50,000 Tonnes of Mass Every Year. According to some calculations, the Earth is losing 50,000 tonnes of mass every single year, even though an extra 40,000 tonnes of space dust converge onto the Earth's gravity well, it's still losing weight. scitechdaily.com/earth-loses-50000-tonnes-of-mass-every-year/
- wwarner 10y ago10 tons lost a year. Point taken, and very interesting. But it's still small compared to 100 tons of cargo going to Mars 1000 times to build a new civilization on an uninhabitable planet.
- dredmorbius 10y agoA statistic I've run across recently is that up to 1/4 of all of Earth's original endowment of water has boiled off into space, as dissociated hydrogen. Earth has been through a lot, it turns out.
- boznz 10y agoBetter get the popcorn out for this thread...
- shurcooL 10y agoDid anyone else notice the title of the presentation PDF [0]? It is: NINA_5_ FINAL_draft_MarsTalkRevised_v4_17_nm_112716 copy 12 I just thought that was an interesting bit of meta information. Looks like they're not using VCS for it, hehe. http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars_presentation.pdf http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars_presentation.p...
- JMCQ87 10y agoThat actually gives a neat amateur-ish impression. ^^
- watermoose 10y agoI'm incredibly excited about this. I would actually like to hear more about what happens on Mars: the steps to generate oxygen, food, energy, water, and the fuel for the return trip. What are the various ways that Mars could be terraformed, and what are the ethical and practical considerations? I know that this comes on the heels of an unfortunate accident, but I'm in the camp that accidents and mistakes can lead to better process with less risk, and sometimes simpler solutions. And, I'd like to invest in SpaceX. Whether it's in stocks or bonds, I just want to help.
- mixermf 10y ago"The argument [for building a civilization on Mars] that I actually find most compelling is that it would be an incredible adventure. I think it would be the most inspiring thing that I can possibly imagine. And life needs to be more than just solving problems every day. You need to wakeup and be excited about the future, and be inspired, and want to live." -- Elon Musk (1 hour 31 minutes)
- jimmcslim 10y agoI thought the plans might include a Mars-Earth cycler [1] but possibly that's a science-fiction pipedream for the near future? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler
- malanj 10y agoHe actually talk about this in the Q&A. Filed under possible "future optimisation". They didnt think it'll add that much in practise.
- partycoder 10y agoDue to a lower atmospheric pressure (0.087 psi compared to Earth's 14.69 psi), water in mars begins to boil at 10 degrees Celsius, or 50 Fahrenheit. Gravity in Mars is 3.7 m/s², compared to 9.8 m/s². In a way, it's convenient since it would take less effort to reach Martian escape velocity. Mars does not have a magnetosphere, and therefore little protection from radiation. The technology to induce a planetary magnetosphere does not exist. If Mars does form an atmosphere, it can be lost to space during increased solar activity. What I think is that our best chance is to send robots to prepare an habitat for the first manned visits.
- jandrese 10y agoAll that says to me is underground living. Hydroponic gardens with artificial light (powered by the solar panels on the surface). We would absolutely need to start designing and testing prototype colonies on Earth first. Probably in old mineshafts. The only similar experiment I can remember is the two attempts at Biodome, and they were both failures. There is a lot we don't know about making a self sustaining sealed habitat.
- suyash 10y agoWe should not be colonizing foreign lands instead making our own planet better in all sense. Elon Musk and company are well known for big promises, I'm still waiting for 35K Tesla that was supposed to come out last year.
- intrasight 10y agoI've considered the question before, and I considered it again while watching this - would I go? I've decided that I would, if given the opportunity. I'm an engineer. I'm in excellent physical health. I have a family, but they are at a point where they can get along without me. But then I consider that there are or will be hundreds of thousands of others who are in the same situation and also wish to join the queue.
- kumarski 10y agoI wrote a brief blog post on some of the major challenges to get this going. Musk's hesitancy to a deadline is great. :) It makes sense, hard to predict the future. http://engineersf.com/12-reasons-spacex-wont-fly-a-manned-mission-to-mars-by-2030-2/ http://engineersf.com/12-reasons-spacex-wont-fly-a-manned-mi... There's a ton of cool problems lurking around the corner. I hope humanity backs the public part of this public-private partnership. 1. Cargo Capacity — Scaling is Hard. 2. Proper Maintenance — Accessibility is Important 3. MTBF Expectations are too high. 4. Jet Fuel is Corrosive and Methalox engines are a tough design proposition. 5. Cosmic Radiation — Impedes human interoperability. 6. Solar Panels —Mars Dust Storms impede sunlight. 7. Living Module — 7 month duration for a living module. 8. Microbial Realities — We rely on microbes to live. 9. Parachute Design — Size vs. Thrust vs. Jettisoning Fuel 10. Electronic Protection — Shielding is Resource/Weight Intensive. 11. Eye Sight — Your ability to see diminishes in space and we don’t quite know how this works fully. (This one is huge) 12. Muscle Loss- you lose muscle mass as you stay longer in space. To give some context around how difficult it is to build mega engineering projects in the hey day of innovation, just think about Steel. There's over 3K different types of steel and 70%+ were invented in the last 20 years. Timing, sequence, funding, and focus are going to be such a huge part of this. 5,8,11,12 are really tough. I think the other ones are solvable in some way right now, but will take some configuration/tinkering/experimentation for sure. Plenty of engineers are motivated to work on this kind of thing though, so that's a good signal.
- oxymoron 10y agoSeems like SpaceX agrees with you on the difficulties with the fuel tank, with Musk calling that the single hardest part. Rather cool that they've already made progress on that though!
- Symmetry 10y agoIt looks like SpaceX is choosing a high delta-v trajectory specifically to reduce the danger of 5, 11, and 12. Particularly muscle, bone, and eyesight loss would be a big problem on a Hohmann tranfer orbit to Mars but not on the trajectory SpaceX is proposing. 8 is silly since nowhere people live is going to be microbe free but the long term health effects of Mars gravity are still utterly unknown and that's something we need to get a hold on.
- bluebeard 10y agoParaphrasing: "I see two paths for the human species, extinction event or multi-planetary species." Then Elon shows the picture of the O2 tank: "and this is the size of the payload we could deliver to anywhere on Earth in 45 minutes, please fund us." Well played Musk, well played.
- AlgorithmicTime 10y agoFill it with Marines and the DoD will buy it.
- randomsearch 10y agoCan we start again here, please. How has this announcement and Elon's dream in general excited or inspired you? Any ideas for how the plan could be developed, improved, augmented?
- orky56 10y agoThe exciting part is going from science fiction to a feasible path of reality. A path filled with milestones that I can experience, learn about, and continuously be filled with wonder.
- randomsearch 10y agoI really like the thought of looking back at the end of my life and saying "what did my generation achieve?" And one of the answers being "Mars" will make me very happy, even if only to congratulate those in my cohort who made a difference.
- btcboss 10y agoYUGE INTRO
- orky56 10y agoI'm excited with Musk's grand vision. However I want to know why this can't happen even sooner. Here's a breakdown of what was discussed that may lead to a faster timeline: 1) Funding: Current SpaceX resources are tied up in creating the basic infrastructure that will lead to interplanetary travel. SpaceX is still private leading to Musk prioritizing these awesome ventures but still tied to revenue from contracts and limited funding. Going public will destroy the vision but give him the cash reserves to pull in the timeline. 2) Competition: NASA, other government space organization, and the private sector have or will have plans for interplanetary travel. Healthy competition often leads to more innovation and constant motivation. At the same time, it leads to competition for shared resources such as... 3) Talent: Musk mentioned in the Q&A that he can only hire green cards and up. The international talent pool is and will remain untapped unless something drastic changes. Assuming this talent goes to the competition and capitalizes into the positive effects, then it will be worth it. Unfortunately, we have yet to see another private sector company like SpaceX push the envelope as much so I'm not as hopeful that someone has the ability to utilize talent like Musk has. At the same time, SpaceX is known to drive employees into the ground. 7 days a week, tough hours, and impossible timelines is not sustainable for employees. The allure of SpaceX, similar to gaming, keeps talented individuals in line to get a shot at working for SpaceX. As mentioned due to the limited talent due to immigration issues, SpaceX may run into the talent shortage sooner than later. 4) Non-Transport Issues: Transportation is necessary but not sufficient for interplanetary travel & habitation. We don't have a SpaceX/Musk for the other non-transportation related issues. The political/cultural/international issues will be big and then there's terraforming and everything involved with that. Musk may get ahead of schedule but these other issues may push the timeline further and further out. 5) Public Interest: Space travel is not as sexy as it used to be for the public as compared to the Moon landing with the backdrop of the Cold War and arms race. Yes, this is not using direct public funding (if/until NASA decides to pitch in) but the public needs to make this objective be top of mind for it to become a reality. Musk and the science enthusiasts will not be enough. We need to develop a few "X Prize" equivalents for the non-science community to progress on the non-transport issues and show why it matters for the rest of the world.
- lallysingh 10y agoFor #1: he could sell a minority share publicly. I think a lot of people could see a successful spacex make quite a bit of money on the current plan. For #2: We'll see about that. Mars has sat there for a long time, and nobody else has done much about it. By the time others get interested because of (a) SpaceX showing that it can be done (b) Popular interest due to SpaceX's work, SpaceX may be too far ahead for anyone else to help (outside of being customers). For #3: Agreed. I think this may naturally occur as the company stabilizes a bit and the "living on the razor's edge" feeling dissipates. At some point they'll focus more on getting it right then meeting deadlines. For #4: You can control political/cultural/international issues on mars by controlling who gets on the ship from earth. For #5: a bit of hero worship for the future marstronaughts will do plenty, I think. There's a lot of innate interest in whoever becomes the first human to step foot on another planet.
- nikolkahot 10y agoString transportation system to move people into already built Ekotehnoparke in Belarus. This is also the project of the century. you can manage to become an investor, if desired. Read more about the project here: https://goo.gl/BnClp6 https://goo.gl/BnClp6
- nikolkahot 10y agoString transportation system to move people into already built Ekotehnoparke in Belarus. This is also the project of the century. you can manage to become an investor, if desired. Read more about the project here: https://goo.gl/BnClp6 https://goo.gl/BnClp6
- oli5679 10y agoElon's Simpsons episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM
- simonh 10y agoI'd expect the first rocket, or several rockets to actually stay on Mars at least for a while. 1. It means you have somewhere to live and even if you set up habitats it acts as a fallback habitat. 2. You'll need a return to Earth option if things go potato shaped. 3. It can manufacture fuel in advance for future visiting ships so acts as a backup to their Sabatier reactor and other important systems. 4. Once you have several, you can afford to risk using one to travel to other parts of Mars and back to get science from other biome... er.. I mean prospect for resources. I wonder if these will be capable of operating automatically. It would be nice to be able to prove out the system by sending an automated cargo only mission there and back, or maybe with a skeleton crew. It's fascinating that they're aiming to go directly to this without any less ambitious manned vehicles and missions first.
- grecy 10y ago> I wonder if these will be capable of operating automatically They have said many times the F9 lands itself completely autonomously, because when it's happening on Mars the signal delay will be too great for them to do anything from Earth anyway. Given that, I'm going to take the leap and say the whole thing will be autonomous. I also think it makes sense so you don't need trained "pilots". You can pack the thing with 100 people that have no clue.
- simonh 10y agoI'm thinking about things like operation of the Sabatier reactor, refueling operations, inspection and cleaning of the engines prior to re-launch from Mars? There's an awful lot more to a round-trip mission that just automated launch and landing.
- grecy 10y agoAll of those things for a modern airliner used to require humans all the time, then as we got better at it, humans are used less and less in the loop. Refueling is an easy autonomous one. Eventually you'd only need to inspect and clean the engine every x flights, etc. and maybe you just do that each time it's back on Earth.
- staticelf 10y agoElon Musk is clearly the greatest man in my lifetime. What he does and has done for the world is insane. I really admire him for his work and sacrifices. I really wish him to succeed and if he asked me to donate money I would.
- danilocesar 10y agoOMFG. I guess that mr Musk won't have any problems in finding manpower to execute his plans. HN is full of experienced deep space and terraforming specialists. =)
- jlebrech 10y agoElon needs to build this first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbase
- XCSme 10y agoMusk for President! Make Mars great again! :D ... (sorry)
- k__ 10y agoCost of a medium sized house? I see Red Faction happening here.
- jandrese 10y agoFor what it is worth, his costs look outrageously low to me. We don't even know what we don't know on building manned interplanetary reusable spacecraft and making indefinite term extra-planetary habitats. Musk's promises that they'll travel in comfort sounds too close to what the Jamestown colony residents were promised. Life on Mars is going to be a hardscrabble existence where you have to solve problems that you don't have on Earth. Probably a mostly subterranean existence. Musk's video seemed to imply that people would terraform Mars, but we aren't even close to attempting that yet. We can't even keep the atmosphere of Earth in balance. Elon Musk's biggest problem may be that he was born 100 years too early.
- sickbeard 10y agoI'm not convinced there's some urgent need to be multiplanetary in 6 years. There's so much we can do to make this planet better and it is by far the best planet in our solar system.
- erikb 10y agoSince I've read more about Elon Musk I'm not sure any more that he really is the person who will bring humankind one step further. However, I really like that slogan "making humans a multiplanetary species". It really hits the spot for me. Something I also want to work towards.
- LeanderK 10y agoi was wondering if we want to permanently inhabit mars, can we create an magnetic field to reduce radiation? Can they be scaled down to a local one just spanning the habitat?
- DiabloD3 10y agoAfter having read all several trillion comments in this, I can summarize: everyone shits on Elon because he's doing new shit, and they either misunderstand the gravity (ha ha) of the situation or are just salty as fuck, and almost everyone here in the HN community is essentially repeating this ad infinium. In short, King Elon for World Emperor 2016.
- oli5679 10y agoWhy is the plan to start off with so many fragile, resource-greedy people before the planet is improved? Wouldn't it be better to send a robot factory capable of building more robot factories using materials available on Mars and minimal operating oversight (possibly combined with some plants and bacteria)? People could possibly move there much later after we've mastered the really complicated mining, geoengineering and farming problems needed to sustain people there.
- tim333 10y agoWhile it would be good fun going to Mars you wonder if we want to concrete over a fair portion, ship 1000s of people over and change the climate a opposed to preserving it as it is.
- tdaltonc 10y agoHe can have Mars. I want Ceries. Mars will be nothing more then a research station for 500 years. Ceries and the space stations at L1-5 will be economic powerhouses before 2100.
- z3t4 10y agoIf you are going to have a gigantic ship able to carry a hundred people there will be exponential costs. And 90% of the cost would be getting it into orbit. And then there will be maintenance costs. I think it would be better to just launch many small and cheap ships, then just leave them in space or let them crash into mars after dropping cargo by parachute with some air cushions. They could be carried into low orbit by a jet airplane, then use "dumb" rockets like water under high pressure in cheap lightweight tanks. And heat it up to vapor temperature using then sun.
- ommunist 10y agoWell, technically its a one-way ticket, right? And no FRS is going to check your spendings in outer space, right? I'd like to see whether this guy has some vested interest in VR. Just paranoid.
- icc97 10y agoJust a minor mention for the novel use of a ? in the URL, amused me at least. http://www.spacex.com/Mars http://www.spacex.com/Mars?
- perilunar 10y ago1000 comments! Is that a record?
- Pinckney 10y agoThe Brexit thread broke 2500. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167
- nikolkahot 10y agoString transportation system to move people on Earth already built in Ekotehnoparke in Belarus. Travel speed of 500 km / h. The project is implemented through equity crowdfunding. Shares in the project are sold cheaper by 100 times. Read more about the project here: https://goo.gl/BnClp6 https://goo.gl/BnClp6
- ben49 10y agoOne Race the human Race,We all have the same origin ,last I checked it was 2016, I abhor those who play the race card and more so theSHEEPLE who feel that"I DOHAVE SOME PART AND SHAMEON ME.WE THE PEOPLE.