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SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]
- kristianp 9y agoFrom http://www.spacex.com/mars http://www.spacex.com/mars
- curiousgal 9y agoMusk's public speaking skills (the stutters) give me hope as a non native English speaker.
- sidcool 9y agoI think his speaking style, although not something most business people would want to emulate, has a tone of earnestness, humility and honesty. I would be wary of a brilliant orator..
- stretchwithme 9y agoI think he was pretty tired, definitely more than I've seen in most other videos. I hope he sleeps pretty soundly tonight (this afternoon in Aus).
- puranjay 9y agoConsidering that he is often compared to Steve Jobs in terms of his impact and innovation, I find it endearing that he doesn't have any of Jobs' glibness Makes him feel more authentic. Like an engineer talking about his stuff, not a marketing guy
- MertsA 9y agoThat seemed really out of place for Elon. Compared to last year's speech and many other interviews he sounded impaired quite frankly. I guess that's what chronic sleep deprivation will do to a man.
- NamTaf 9y agoDeeply regretting not going to IAC since it's in Australia this year. A colleague went under his own money and he's had a great time, as well as several of my uni mates who are there due to working in the industry. I'm enjoying this, it's basically laying out goals that he's essentially saying 'hold us to this'.
- elefanten 9y agoHe did note the 2022 launch plan as "aspirational" but I agree that this is a significant public proclamation. Exciting.
- martin_bech 9y agoThis is thinking big..
- mark_element 9y agoHighlights for me: Started ordering stuff for the mars ship now, started facilities construction, possibly hitting a first launch in 2022 and a second launch window in 2024. An extremely aggressive and impressive timeline.
- ajmurmann 9y agoEven if they miss 2022 the next window at 2024 is still incredible. Who would have seriously believed we'd fly something of that size to Mars by that time and have a manned mission two years later?!
- ChelloYello 9y agoThe same who that believed their timeline for when they would have a human certified rocket?
- nicktelford 9y agoI suspect the ambitious timelines are political. Musk has repeatedly stated that others would need to work on a lot of the Mars colony infrastructure. SpaceX only appear to be working on the supporting infrastructure for flights (e.g. propellant plant). By telling the world that they'll be ready to fly in five years, they're making a statement that other organisations/companies that want to get involved with this effort need to start working on developing the other parts right now. If the schedule ends up being more like 2028 for the first flight, they stand a much better chance at flying the right stuff there.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThat's a good point. This talk sends a pretty clear message to the market - we expect to be flying serious amounts of stuff to Mars in under 10 years, so if you want to start a business in the area, now is a good time. And the trick is, the more people he can convince of that, the better chances we have the Mars colony will happen.
- modeless 9y agoWow, can they really make BFR reliable enough to replace long distance airline routes? And how would propellant cost compare with jet fuel? Anywhere on Earth in an hour does sound extremely appealing; better than Concorde, with bonus zero gravity (going to need a lot of barf bags though).
- ajmurmann 9y agoI was a little disappointed he didn't give any timeline at all on that not even a aspirational one. I also assume it's gonna be really expensive due to frequent heat shield replacement. I wouldn't be surprised if it never became economically viable. Too few passengers and too high cost.
- stretchwithme 9y agoI imagine they can fit 400 passengers though. No need for those cabins or even a need to give passengers drinks.
- perilunar 9y agoFor 30 minute trips you barely even need toilets.
- Osmium 9y agoHonestly, Elon's presentations are some of the most impressive, inspiring I've ever seen. And the way he just stumbles out words and sentences that are completely revolutionary... casually dropping these absurd, incredible statements. I find it incredible. If anyone else was saying this, was showing these graphics, you'd think it was just wish fulfillment; a fantasy. And I'm sure their timeline is a bit aggressive. But I fully believe the SpaceX team can do this. This has made me feel inspired for the future almost more than anything else has in recent memory. (For context, and to the doubters, I've been following SpaceX for a long time, through their many failures, and they've already revolutionized the space industry. They have a drive and a vision and they're just going for it. This isn't about profits for them, it's about pushing humanity forwards -- and if that sounds grand, it's because it is.)
- Diederich 9y ago"You want to be inspired by things. You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great. That's what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It's about believing in the future and believing the future will be better than the past. And I can't think of anything more exciting than being out there among the stars. "
- losteric 9y agoWe need people like this running for office. Not Elon specifically, politics would only get in his way, but inspiring yet pragmatic visionaries... willing to make mistakes, challenge common beliefs, and build the future.
- Diederich 9y agoFor sure. The problem....the ancient problem...is that the kinds of mental makeup that would be very good at running large organizations tend to also not WANT to do such things.
- spike021 9y agoHis presentation style usually seems to be pretty raw, in a good way. It's not as crisp/polished as Jobs' presentations were, or in fact others. As in, it's not as marketable. It's doesn't seem like it's been a style of preparation for a pure sales/marketing kind of pitch. Kind of interesting, in my opinion.
- boznz 9y agoNothing on Moon Base Alpha except a picture. Would be nice to have a timeline for this (maybe the gap years where Mars transit is too long?)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- neuronexmachina 9y agoI get the impression Elon's stance is, "If somebody else wants to build a Moon Base, you're welcome to buy launches from us. Here's how you'd do it." Elon himself pretty much just cares about Mars.
- Diederich 9y agoI agree. Part of me thinks that the whole moon base thing was a pitch to legislators/NASA.
- tsaprailis 9y agoI think this is a nod to ESA who has stated they want to build a base on the moon: http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Ministerial_Council_2016/Moon_Village http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Ministerial_Council_2016/Moon_Vi... Elon's message: "Here's the rocket, it costs this much, go build it". Basically trying to find more ways to monetize BFR.
- perilunar 9y agoSpaceX is building the BFR and launch facilities, but who is going to build all the equipment and gear required to live there - who is building the cargo?
- agildehaus 9y agoI think the idea is that by building the bus and announcing a schedule the rest will happen naturally.
- andrewwharton 9y agoHe's stated previously (can't remember where) that building all that is someone else's problem (opportunity).
- TeMPOraL 9y agoLast year's talk, for starters. I think he mentioned it other times, too.
- grondilu 9y agoLiterally not his business.
- Diederich 9y agoHe finally made it clear what this is about: feeling good about the future. The other reasons to go to Mars that he has mentioned before are (arguably) valid. This man might be the most inspirational voice in our lifetime.
- tbabb 9y agoBack of the envelope calculation for the price of an Earth-to-Earth ticket: Musk's stated goal is $500k/ticket to Mars. It's a shorter trip, so perhaps ~5x as many passengers in the same volume (i.e. 500 total; cf. a380 which seats 850). It takes five (?) orbital refuel trips for the martian journey, but we'd need none of those. Depending on how much less than a full tank the passenger vehicle needs (payload could be smaller; the ship would also not reach fully orbital velocity), the fuel cost would be between 1/5 and 1/10 the Mars fuel cost. So that would bring the cost down to between $10 and $20k/ticket, within reach of business travelers. If maximum the number of flight cycles per vehicle is greater for Earth-to-Earth trips than for Mars, then that could further reduce the ticket cost. It's unclear to me which direction that number would go-- Earth's atmosphere is much thicker on re-entry, though the velocities will be much lower than an interplanetary re-entry. Since aerodynamic drag goes as the cube of velocity but only linearly with density, I'm guessing the speed would matter far more. That would imply much better lifetime on Earth. So if the E2E fuselage gets (conservatively) only 2x as many flight cycles as a Mars trip, that could bring down the per-seat cost to $5k-- now getting close to the cost of an ordinary international ticket. Of course this is all assuming that Musk's baseline of $500k to Mars is reasonable. Would be curious to hear from some rocket engineers about these guesses at the numbers/efficiency. Not accounted for is amortized development cost for E2E-only vehicles, as well as all the infrastructure and ground support at the destinations. Edit: If you wanted to be less conservative, you could pack in 1000 people instead of 500 (0.5x ticket price multiplier), or use a different source for the Mars ticket price (0.4x), which would bring it to $1k.
- neuronexmachina 9y agoIn general, I think the only part which is supposed to need regular replacing is the ablative heatshield. Regarding Earth vs Mars reentry, he said the following during the talk (my quick transcription follows): "You're going in, you're going very quickly, 7.5 km/s. For Mars, there will be some ablation of the heat shield. So, it's just like a brake pad wearing away. It is a multi-use heatshield, but unlike for Earth operations it's coming in hot enough that you will see some wear of the heatshield."
- cryptoz 9y ago
- boznz 9y agoTell me again, why has NASA budgeted $30 billion for SLS?
- nickik 9y agoBecause the goal of government action is not to efficiently achieve a goal, but rather build a political coalition capable of capturing and defending budget requests. The SLS specifically was designed to build a coalition between NASA centers who were involved with the SpaceShuttle, a group of large influential companies who produce the core components for the Shuttle and the SLS and a group of senators who are well located to defend these private and NASA jobs in their state. Together the bureaucracy, business and the political can enforce this utterly foolish project to continue. This goes for both SLS and Orion, two of the biggest pork projects in US space history.
- ChelloYello 9y agoLook, you can't complain about government inefficiency like you can complain about corporate inefficiency because you are granted real power over the government by way of the constitution. If you don't want the space agency to be controlled by corporations not owned by Musk you can do something about it via the many channels that exist for that explicit purpose.
- nickik 9y agoFirst of all I'm not american. Second, the US was not created democratically. With a corporation I can just not use their product, they don't get my money and beyond that I don't really care what goals they have in space. > If you don't want the space agency to be controlled by corporations not owned by Musk you can do something about it via the many channels that exist for that explicit purpose. Like what channels? Writing a congressmen? You vote every couple of years on a small group of people and those people are responsible for lots of things, not just space. So when you vote space is a small priority and most people care more about other issues. NASA needs to given more independence and change the process of NASA budgeting. ESA does a lot better in many ways because they have a longer planning cycles. NASA should use more competitive contracting like they did for Commercial Crew and Commercial Cargo. These changes require evolutionary and sometimes revolutionary change and this is happening a little in NASA now. The Shuttle group has already lost out, the SLS is defensive effort. The best thing we can do is point out how bad the current system is and oppose the pork projects. Moral outrage compared with workable efficient solutions that save money have the ability to potentially form alternative coalition.
- ajmurmann 9y agoSo what's the carbon footprint of one of these launches? Did I understand correctly that we can make the fuel by taking CO2 from the atmosphere? That would make the footprint negative, would it? That seems to good to be true.
- neuronexmachina 9y agoIn all likelihood the carbon footprint of spectators going to watch the launch would be at least an order of magnitude higher than the launch itself.
- perilunar 9y agoNot negative, since you are creating just as much CO2 burning the CH4 as you removed in the first place. Carbon neutral though.
- tbabb 9y agoI suppose some of it would be lost to the vacuum of space, though it would have to be an impressively large space transport market for that to start making a global difference. Also weird to think about the long-term implications of Earth's resources leaving Earth permanently/irrecoverably.
- schwarrrtz 9y agoCarbon neutral assuming you are creating the CH4 using atmospheric CO2. On Earth I suspect that most CH4 comes from natural gas. On Mars it would be carbon neutral - but that's actually a bad thing, assuming that your goal is to increase the atmospheric density on Mars.
- perilunar 9y agoYes, that was the assumption of the parent question. I expect that initially all the fuel for Earth launches will be sourced from natural gas, but if they start doing regular sub-orbital passenger flights they'd have to convert to renewable energy + atmospheric CO2, otherwise they'd just (partially) undo the work Tesla is doing.
- audeyisaacs 9y agoMusk's speaking is always a little awkward (in an endearing way), but did he seem significantly more nervous/emotionally affected than usual in the first part of this speech? It seemed that way to me, curious if anyone else interpreted it like that. He calms down when he starts talking about risk and it being the anniversary of a launch. edit: Good and fun presentation regardless! edit2: Thoughts: - Maybe he feels in over his head. The timing when he relaxed seemed to coincide with talking about a previous experience that might have felt overwhelming at the time but paid off. - Maybe he typically takes beta blockers or something for speeches and take them until late this time (the talk did start late) - Maybe it's just random. Any spacex watchers have thoughts on cause? edit3: Definitely not a diss. Love Elon/SpaceX/the vision.
- tbabb 9y agoHe did seem way more nervous than usual.
- gremlinsinc 9y agoI think it's weighing on him.. I think he'd like to move/iterate faster.. and the costs/stress of doing what he's doing when MANY keep saying 'Can't BE DONE' ... well.. to persevere through that.. takes some real strength of character and determination...but it's still stressful. I think you can hear that in his voice. I bet he's tired as fuck.
- extrapickles 9y agoI saw that. The talk was on the 9th anniversary of their first successful launch, which basically made SpaceX possible.
- rybosome 9y agoI wondered if I was really noticing that or if I was projecting my own fear of public speaking on him.
- andrewtbham 9y agohe told a few jokes that bombed. tough crowd.
- legohead 9y agoConsidering Earth-to-Earth, can the BFR launch through most weather scenarios?
- greglindahl 9y agoAll rockets (during launch) are more sensitive to lightning strikes than planes. That's a given: the exhaust plume conducts electricity. Compared to F9, BFR is fatter and would have less trouble with high-altitude winds at launch. Now landing weather, that's another thing.
- Tepix 9y agoYou could just delay a flight by 4 hours and still arrive 5 hours earlier than if you had taken the airplane...
- iamcreasy 9y agoThis talk was surreal.
- toolbox 9y agoOne big limitation that was glossed over in the presentation is radiation exposure. The only time it came up was the mention of a 'solar storm shelter'. The radiation exposure during the Martian transit would be much greater than the same time spent on the ISS, somewhere on the order of 200mSv [0] (the composition of this radiation also contains significantly greater proportions of heavy-ion radiation, which appears to be more damaging, so this may need to be adjusted upwards). According to the wonderful xkcd chart [1], this would be in the 'probably no radiation sickness, but certainly not good for you' territory. I would love to know what their plans are, since shielding is heavy. [2] seems to suggest electromagnetic deflection as viable (which would be insanely cool, and could probably reuse SpaceX's cryogenics work for superconductors). Also, a quick search didn't turn up much on the anisotropy of interplanetary radiation, but I wonder how much a reduction would be achieved by angling the crewless area of the ship towards the solar wind (which I think Musk had touched on in an earlier talk). [0]: http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ASC/DATA/bibliography/ICRC2005/usa-mewaldt-RA-abs1-sh35-oral.pdf http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ASC/DATA/bibliography/ICRC200... [1]: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ [2]: https://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~d76205x/research/shielding/docs/spillantini_00.pdf https://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~d76205x/research/shieldin... EDIT: Of course these sorts of talks are really exciting! This is just one more in a laundry list of crazy-cool engineering problems that have to be/are being solved.
- krastanov 9y agoHe has stated a couple of times that the radiation will be there and it will have the same lifetime cancer risk increase as smoking. It seems the plan is to just live with the increased cancer risk.
- grondilu 9y agoZubrin once joked that if you send a heavy smoker to mars without any cigarette, you actually reduce his risk of dying of cancer.
- nickik 9y agoHe does not talk about this so much because its not the fundamental show stopper. We know enough to get started and we will have to figure the rest as we go along.
- karterk 9y agoAn update from Elon on the pricing[1]: > Fly to most places on Earth in under 30 mins and anywhere in under 60. Cost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy in an aircraft. Forgot to mention that. [1]: https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/
- Diederich 9y agoI imagine you can gain a lot of efficiencies with this approach. Just guessing here: 1. You can't leave your seat. Very high seat density. 2. No restrooms. 3. No food or any other services. 4. Very few (if any) cabin staff. 5. Fully automated flight; perhaps no pilot. 6. More reliable flight schedule; only a small bit of earth's weather on either side of the flight matters. Personally, I'd put up with a lot if the whole flight was <40 minutes. On the other hand, the vomit. So much vomit. :(
- grondilu 9y ago> 5. Fully automated flight; perhaps no pilot. Almost certainly no pilot.
- Diederich 9y agoI agree; I can, however, imagine some kind of on-flight technician. Maybe.
- bluthru 9y agoTechnician / EMT
- Diederich 9y agoZero G but very short term EMT...a high tech hospital is always close by the landing point. Cool stuff.
- anotheryou 9y ago
- ciconia 9y agoJust like everybody else I'm really blown away by what SpaceX does, but at the same time I think the question begs to be asked: Has humanity already given up on earth as a home? Is the future really about planets as disposable habitats?
- perilunar 9y agoNo. Even Elon hasn't given up on Earth — why do you think he's running Tesla?
- varjag 9y agoAnd the Boring Company… doesn't get any more earthy than this.
- dillchen 9y agoIf you were in Europe in the Age of Discovery, would you have said that about coming over to the Americas?
- hacker_9 9y agoGiven up? We have no choice in the matter. And remember Mars is a dust bowl, where you can't even go outside without a helmet on. Earth is as good as it gets.
- Tepix 9y agoWhat makes you think so? Are our efforts of colonizing space a detriment to our efforts to keep earth habitable?
- joselreyes 9y agoRemember the goal is a multiplanetary species. Earth is a part of the multiple planets.
- briga 9y agoConsidering how long it will take to get a proper bioshpere on Mars, which will only work IF we can teraform Mars properly, I dont think we'll be able to abandon Earth any time soon. I think the Mars colony will be something more like our base in Antarctica--a place for scientists, but not somewhere anyone would want to live permanently.
- dcsommer 9y agoI wonder what the greenhouse gas emissions will be like for the Earth-to-Earth trips. Ironic that the display showed a snow-capped mountain after the E2E animation.
- 323454 9y agoEarth-bound BFR flights could be net zero emissions if SpaceX uses solar energy to generate methane from atmospheric carbon dioxide, as Musk discussed in the talk.
- dwaltrip 9y agoHow much does that cost, compared to existing methane sources? I imagine that is only viable if it is comparable in cost.
- jk563 9y agoIt's the default Mac background that I assume they were running the presentation off of.
- imaginenore 9y agoHe addressed this. You can make methane from CO2 and water, so it can be carbon-neutral.
- hacker_9 9y agoGreat presentation, only thing I'm worried about is human flight in these things. I mean what happens if this thing is 1% off on the landing? Does the whole thing topple over and blow up into a million pieces? Additionally with the entire flight being automated, what happens if the software gets taken over in space and they just drop it like a rock onto a city? The damage would be catastrophic. We need Elon to invest in city wide force field technology too it would seem.
- the8472 9y agono worse than dropping an airplane on a city
- hacker_9 9y agoAn airplane goes roughly 500km/h. Elons rocket was going 20000km/h - so I think it's about 40x worse actually. Not to mention a rocket goes straight down so none of that speed is lost.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoAs brutal as it may sound, I'd expect the BFR to have a remotely activated self-destruct system. OTOH, what if terrorists gain access to that system?...
- MertsA 9y agoWell yeah, it's a rocket, it's going to have range safety. The space shuttle had range safety as well.
- grondilu 9y agoThis plan sounds much more sensible than most of what I've heard from Musk before. Especially the intercontinental transport part. That is a real business use-case, potentially very lucrative. I also suspect that could get quite a few more billionaires excited (after all they spend a lot of time in private jets and I'm sure they'd like to cut that time off) which could help raising more investment. I don't believe there is much to do on mars or the moon, not much that would make economical sense anyway. But intercontinental transport? That could work.
- nicktelford 9y agoGiven his aspiration to sell it for prices comparable to economy airline tickets, I feel like the outlay of building the facilities at each end will eat up a lot of the profits. It's a neat idea, but I don't see this funding the Mars colony ambitions, at least not in the short term. If they can get that infrastructure heavily subsidised, then perhaps it's a different story. That said, I can't see many cities that would be willing to invest in this, except perhaps the ultra-rich ones, like Dubai. Imagine getting this built for New York or London. I can't. Edit: I don't mean to sound so negative; I actually think the rest of the talk was super positive in that it feels realistic - it's just the inter-continental travel bit that gave me pause.
- grondilu 9y ago> It's a neat idea, but I don't see this funding the Mars colony ambitions, at least not in the short term. I think you misunderstood him. Musk doesn't plan on founding a mars colony. He plans on giving a solid business plan for a big, fully reusable rocket capable of transporting hundreds of people. He believes transportation is the main obstacle to people building a city on mars.
- alexnewman 9y agoIf I am flying a rocket plane and my normal landing site has bad weather what does the rocket do? Maybe they can have robot boats all around the world to catch them!
- ascorbic 9y agoIf it's a half hour trip it'll not be hard to predict bad weather before you take off.
- michelb 9y agoLoving this..Big visions, some may work, some not. Inspiring..Going against odds, this is what humanity should stand for. These are the real 'moonshots'. Would love to see these kinds of big picture roadmaps in other areas/industries. It's a shame so much of our possible progress is politicised.
- Banthum 9y agoRegarding these suborbital flights, is there any way for an adversary to know that the flight isn't actually an ICBM?
- Tuna-Fish 9y agoNo more than there is currently a way to know that a passenger plane headed for your city isn't also carrying a thermonuclear bomb.
- tsaprailis 9y agoSo the key takeaway for me today compared to 1 year ago, is that Elon has put a lot of thought on how to make this plan economically viable compared to just the vision last year. Multiple potential streams of revenue: - Government/intragovernment contracts to cleanup space debris. - Government/Private satellite launches. - Earth to earth transportation which Elon announced on Instagram that the cost would be comparable to an economy fare. https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BZnVfWxgdLe/ - Transporting gear for ESA's moon base plan http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Ministerial_Council_2016/Moon_Village http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Ministerial_Council_2016/Moon_Vi.... - Transporting Government/Private equipment to Mars. This is very much a realistic business approach compared to last year's vision presentation.
- nickik 9y agoI think the key is that this rocket will replace the F9/FH/Dragon architecture rather then being a separate line of development.
- igravious 9y agoIt's key, and it's clever design. Basically space shuttle next edition with the booster on the bottom rather than it being strapped to the side of it and where the booster is reusable. It's a two-part vehicle: booster/shuttle. The original space shuttle had a 40% vehicular failure rate. The SpaceX Shuttle need to have commercial airline rates of failure and reusability. That's a big step up. You know the way we still have 80 column terminals because punch cards had 80 units? The decisions SpaceX make now are going to become space-faring standards for decades if not centuries to come.
- nickik 9y agoThe Shuttle just made the mistake to not be a fully two stage system, it was a strange hybrid. SpaceX also figured out that vertical landing had many advantages compared to a plane.
- 9y ago
- kensai 9y agoThe plan is good and modestly aggressive time-wise. But he has to be careful. Even a single high-profile disaster with human loss or precious cargo will put the whole endeavor at risk.
- nickik 9y ago> Even a single high-profile disaster with human loss or precious cargo will put the whole endeavor at risk. Why? This is not a government bureaucracy. People die in many places in private business. As long the company has high level of assurance that they will not get sued or regulated, I don't see how a failure could collapse the whole endeavor.
- namelost 9y agoIn the US, the value of someone's life depends on their citizenship, so they can perhaps get around this problem by only crewing their rocket with non-Americans.
- nickik 9y agoDon't Americans die in coal mines? Don't Americans die on construction cites. Don't pilots die in air travel accidents?
- ChelloYello 9y agoNobody said Americans don't die too, just that the US values American lives much above other human lives. For really obvious illustrations of this fact see for instance the Irak war (pick one), or migrant deaths along the US - Mexico border.
- andygates 9y agoEarly airlines are the closest comparison, and as design flaws and bad practice killed off crews and destroyed vehicles, they were regulated to heck and back and are better for it.
- xHopen 9y agoThank you Elon
- Asdfbla 9y agoMaking life multiplanetary seems like one of the least important issues of our times to me: either we figure out how to make life on earth sustainable in the medium term (next 50-100 years) or we do not have enough time to become multiplanetary anyway (since that will take centuries, and we will likely never leave the solar system anyway). So it seems a bit premature to concern yourself with interplanetary ambitions before we are even sure if we can maintain our own planet (which is, and will remain for an extremely long time, the only place for autonomous life in space that humanity has). Then again, maybe I'm nitpicking since it's not like Musk demands the whole world to commit its resources to his ideas. If he wants to play around with adventurous Mars trips that's fine. Edit: Of course I'm also aware that Musk is still using his money better than many other wealthy people, so more power to him. This comment was mostly about space exploration vs. sustainable life on earth, all other things being equal.
- DavidSJ 9y agoWe may always face existential risks. We now know of some concerning the next 50-100 years, but in 100 years we may know of different ones. Planetary redundancy conceivably aids our chances with those risks as well, so is a project best begun now, whatever the lead time. I don't want us always just solving the present crisis. We should think about the distant future too.
- Asdfbla 9y agoMaybe you're right, but I'm thinking more along the lines of "autonomous life outside of earth is impossible in the foreseeable future, so optimizing for existential crises that threaten life on earth is pointless". The only thing we can avoid is that we ourselves destroy earth. Basically, if an asteroid hits us or something it's over anyway.
- DavidSJ 9y agoI think you may be overestimating the lead time to establish a self-sustaining colony. With the will, resources, expertise, and some luck, I think it could theoretically be done inside of 40 years. More likely it'll take quite a bit longer. But we don't need to be talking centuries.
- internetionals 9y agoThe earth-to-earth idea is nice, and whilst it would be an improvement, I expect the travelling time to be the biggest obstacle. You have to gather the people, check them in and clear them during internation flights. Then you have to load everybody on a boat, ship them to the platform X miles into sea, unload them, take them up the big tower, letting them board and settle and depending on how predicatable this is, wait for clearance to take off. Now is the short flight. And afterwards we can do the entire thing in reverse. Some things might be a bit more optimized, like perform customs, safety instructions etc during the boat trip. But the entire trip from arriving at the sea/space-port until leaving it at the destination would probably be making this a diminishing returns and only really interesting for the extremely long flights.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThat's a good way to explain Amdahl's law to people: no matter if you travel by plane or by rocket, you don't save that much time if you still have to deal with the TSA.
- Androider 9y agoLet's optimize it a bit: - Get everybody on a boat in NYC harbor with ferry level security (i.e. not much) - As the boat is travelling to the platform, perform the more thorough check in, any security scans, etc. Everyone simultaneously straps down in their seats, last minute toilet runs etc. - Slot the passenger capsule into the rocket like a cartridge and take-off immediately at arrival. Plot twist: the capsule was on the boat. Passengers might not even get to see the rocket.
- internetionals 9y agoI like the whole cartridge idea and that would surely help get the human component out of the whole thing. If this were to happen I would imagine it to not be a capsule, but simply entire rows of chairs. The main killer would still be the whole transit between the harbor and the rocket, but this could probably shave about half an hour.
- icc97 9y ago
- awiesenhofer 9y ago"Collecting underpants." So many good jokes. Too bad it was such a though crowd...
- Tharkun 9y agoThey didn't even chuckle when he said the working name was BFR ... did none of them get it? Pff.
- imaginenore 9y agoI wish the government gave them tens of billions of dollars instead of the military. Even NASA's progress is laughable compared to SpaceX, and NASA gets $18 billion a year.
- nickik 9y agoThe NASA budget is already pretty large compared to the rest of the world, the problem is just that NASA has devolved into very inefficient organisation that is in a political lock. They could do a huge amount with $18 billion, but a lot of it is bound up in pork projects. The successful projects are usually not the expensive once. Compare the cost of Commercial Cargo (1&2) and Commercial Crew to SLS/Orion is truly eye opening.
- nanomoose 9y agoMaking human life multiplanetary. I'd rather we spent effort finding the life already on other planets (as well?).
- icc97 9y agoUmm was I the only one too assume that BFR meant Big Feckin' Rocket? Oh, no, I see waitbutwhy has a piece on it [0] I disappointingly see F is for Falcon, but still I really like the lack of marketing in the name. Plus I like the parallel with Roald Dahl's BFG. [0]: https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/spacexs-big-fking-rocket-the-full-story.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/spacexs-big-fking-rocket-the-...
- jcriddle4 9y agoI was under the impression that for quite a few people, possibly including the people at SpaceX, the 'F' doesn't stand for Falcon or Friendly or Fantastic or ...
- Goose90053 9y agoThis is not new. Cisco made a big router (BFR) and also a huge router (HFR). Among their designers, the 'F' did not stand for 'fast'.
- AmIFirstToThink 9y agoI think humanity is not ready to be multi-planetary. Time or distances or conditions are not on humanity's side. Even humanity is not on humanity's side. I think the dreams of being multi-planetary are similar to buying doomsday bunkers in New Zealand. I see it as a desire to escape the problems of earth. I would ask a question to Anjum Choudhary, "If there is a colony on Mars, and your ideology got hold of major countries on Earth, would you try to convert those on Mars?". I think the answer, undoubtedly would be yes. Humanity has much to resolve on earth, if we go multi-planetary before we reconcile then all we would end up doing is make our problems multi-planetary. Unless few people escape earth and destroy earth so that there won't be anyone following them. Equivalent to you first going into a safe bunker and then nuking the world, wait out the nuclear fallout to emerge. But then you would be pure evil. I don't know if they have thought this through. On the scale of centuries, not quarter ends, all they are doing is working for those with higher rate of reproduction.
- greedo 9y agoUmm, interesting take. There are some good sci-fi series that explore the idea of religious groups expanding via space colonies. Heck, even the KSR Mars series discusses this. Living in fear of Islam (or LDS, or Branch Davidians) is a foolish way to evaluate a scientific/societal exploration project.
- AmIFirstToThink 9y agoIt would be foolish to think humans would be different because they happen to be in space. Yeah, the first ones to look at earth from outer space had an mind altering experience. I am sure the few who flew in first airplanes had similar story to tell, but now we complain about service while flying. We would just get used to being in space, and keep doing what we do best, be humans and have conflict. I want earth treated right, people on earth treated right, space escape will only bring out worst from people.
- DesiLurker 9y agoI think this is perfect time for humanity to start efforts in that direction. IMO international gridlock may work out to our advantage. what I am afraid is having a single global superpower (likely china) emerge and control the fate of humanity with an iron fist. BTW for next few decades the dream of being fully self sufficient mars colony is just that, a dream. Any billionaire would have to be out of their mind to leave perfectly good 'empire' on earth to live life of a commoner on mars/colony. Secondly, I know I am speculating but IMO the reason Elon want to do this now may have something to do with emergence of singularity. I think he wants to have backup BEFORE we create artificial superintelligence which by median of estimates of AI researcher is to be believed around 2045.