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SpaceX's stated goal is "occupy Mars". Being able to land and deploy solar panels at scale is essential to this goal. And Musk has learned the hard way not to

by btilly 7y ago

SpaceX's stated goal is "occupy Mars". Being able to land and deploy solar panels at scale is essential to this goal. And Musk has learned the hard way not to trust third party suppliers that he doesn't control. SpaceX's aspirational goal is to launch something Mars-wards in the 2022 window to identify where the base will be and have some resources. Then send several vehicles and a few people in 2025 to set up a mission. Primary on that mission is to deploy solar panels, and start making methane+oxygen from CO2, water and energy. This is both for a return trip and for people to breathe. Then in 2027 send the first trip that can make a return flight. (Those dates are set by the fact that the Earth and Mars come into a good conjunction for launching from one to the other every 26 months.) Musk says "aspirational". I think "crazy". But bump those by 2-5 years and it becomes barely plausible. And the end goal sounds less crazy now than it did 5 years ago. When it sounded less crazy than it was 11 years ago when we all were laughing at him. And if he succeeds, the Mars colony could come to be worth more to SpaceX than its satellite launch business. By a lot.

joering2 7y ago
Very interesting, but can you elaborate how we could benefit from colonizing Mars? Even more so - how could SpaceX be much more worth by being able to go to Mars, and how others wouldn't be able to achieve similar step sometime after them (depriving SpaceX from exclusivity of operation) Mars is much smaller than Earth with much more hostile environment. I heard some ideas of growing trees or putting air on Mars, but just to adjust a flow of a river on Earth could cost millions of dollars; if you add complexity to get it done on Mars I don't think a price tag could be even put on it. Visiting Mars - sure who wouldn't want it, but other than biologist and geologist, I doubt masses would want to migrate and live there, making SpaceX worth billions in process (that assuming somehow SpaceX would be given an exclusivity to park their rockets on Mars - a body to give such approval doesn't even exist and I doubt any single country can claim Mars' ownership)
- omnimus 7y ago
  You should ask Musk about that. I think he believes that we as humanity need backup plan if anything is to happen to Earth. Also he is probably megalomaniac and thats why he sets to grand goals. By the way i am pretty sure people who come to Mars in numbers will colonize it and it now it seems that United States will be the country that colonizes and claims Mars.
  - macspoofing 7y ago
    >By the way i am pretty sure people who come to Mars in numbers will colonize it I don't see people push for colonizing Antarctica, or the Canadian Arctic. Both places are far more friendly to humans than Mars ever will be. Mars is a dead-end. It may have a science station one day, but nothing more. Ever.
- dahfizz 7y ago
  NASA has already committed to a permanent moon colony. I think it's pretty inevitable that Mars colonies will become common. Humans love to explore and expand. So why wouldn't you want to get ahead of the curve? Maybe governments and eccentric billionaires start paying SpaceX for their services and expertise in Mars colonization. Maybe SpaceX makes tons of money selling vacations to Mars. Maybe musk names himself Lord emporer of the planet. Whatever is going to happen, musk wins for being so far ahead of everyone else.
  - shkkmo 7y ago
    > NASA has already committed to a permanent moon colony NASA's priorities get changed for it every 4-8 years and doesn't get given funding increases to compensate. I am very skeptical that we will see a permanent moon colony (run by NASA) in the foreseeable future. I would love to be proven wrong.
- btilly 7y ago
  Most people will not want to move to Mars, just as very few Europeans wanted to move to the New World in the 1500s. However while relatively few people want to move to Mars, it is a large absolute number. For example a few years ago when Mars One called for volunteers for a one way trip to Mars, they got 200,000 people volunteering. Even filtering for people whose education and skills would make them useful, they had a large number. One estimate that I saw said that a viable colony would require about 100,000 people to move over a century. And a person leaving Earth can reasonably spend their life savings to do so. The value proposition is essentially sell your house, use the money to move to Mars. SpaceX is planning to make the trip barely above cost. But don't forget. They will be landing on a planet where basic infrastructure, starting with energy, oxygen and tunnels, are provided by SpaceX. That's going to be billions per year. Of course it will be a long time before that colony is self-sustaining. But when it is, those infrastructure basics will be worth a lot. As for a second contender, developing a rocket that can compete with SpaceX takes over a decade, and many billions of dollars. And then when you try to travel to Mars, you're going to be landing on a place where the infrastructure is owned by SpaceX. Musk is likely to welcome the competition...and charge top dollar for fuel for a return trip. So you'll have to invest billions more. And once you've done so, you'll be competing against an established competitor who is charging thin margins. And you still won't be in that lucrative infrastructure business. As for who owns it legally...I believe that the people who live there will claim the land that they settle. And will create their own laws. They would mostly come from the USA where legal tradition resolves all property disputes in favor of squatter's rights. There will be room for all for a long time, but guess who the first and biggest squatters would be?
  - jacques_chester 7y ago
    I think everyone else would conclude that Musk is welcome to have the Mars monopoly. There's nothing there you can't get on Earth without the hassle of climbing out of a gravity well, schlepping across in front of a 24-hr supercharged X-ray machine, then climbing back down into another gravity well, then gathering whatever it is you felt is worth a hundred billion dollars of investment, waiting 2 years for the planets to align again, climbing back out of the gravity well you descended into, crossing the same X-ray moat, then finally returning to Earth and discovering some cheap bastard got it all from a mine in Australia.
vkou 7y ago
> And Musk has learned the hard way not to trust third party suppliers that he doesn't control. 1. Does he mine, refine and smelt his own iron and titanium ore, too? Where exactly does that buck stop? 2. Does SpaceX have a sudden pressing need for all the parts, and the debt obligations of SolarCity that have nothing to do with manufacturing solar panels (That is, 100% of the company?) SolarCity doesn't make any of their own panels, you know - they just install them on rooftops, and do financial engineering, and get bailed out by other people's money.
- btilly 7y ago
  As laid out in the article, at the time of the merger, Solar City was indeed trying to get into manufacturing solar panels. That it hasn't worked out doesn't mean that the attempt doesn't fit within SpaceX's goals. I'm sure that the Boring Company also has investments from SpaceX. As to mine, refine, etc, he has generally tried to go down to things that he can get off of mass markets. The thing he avoids is having a custom part only intended for him which he is dependent upon another company for.
  - vkou 7y ago
    And he chose to do this by lending money at way-below-market rates to a financial dumpster fire of a company that didn't, and still doesn't have any capacity or secret technical expertise to manufacture one component of his Mars plans, which are still decades in the future? All the while, knowing that the financials of SolarCity are worse then he publiclly claimed? Pardon me, but given the personal financial gain he had in the deal going through, this stinks so bad, you can smell it in Minsk. Speaking of which - given his penchant for over-promising, and spectacularly under-delivering, I feel like only a lunatic would choose to settle in a Mars colony ran by SpaceX. Also: > The thing he avoids is having a custom part only intended for him which he is dependent upon another company for. So, hold on. Was SolarCity supposed to be making custom parts for a Mars colony? Why would their expertise in doing financial engineering to sell people solar roofs be of any help in this endeavor? If they weren't going to be making custom parts, and they'd just be making off-the-shelf panels, why pick a supplier decades before he actually needs one? Solar panels aren't sheet metal, but they are as close as you can get to a commodity, these days - and will be even more so, decades from now.
gamblor956 7y ago
And if he succeeds, the Mars colony could come to be worth more to SpaceX than its satellite launch business. By a lot. While the concept of settling Mars is understandable from an academic perspective, what is the economic justification for claiming that Mars is valuable? Any Martian colony would require hundreds of billions of Earth investment just to become habitable for a few dozen people and there aren't any resources on Mars that could be excavated more cheaply there than on Earth.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  I've always liked the idea of a low-gravity forge: mixing metals on Earth is difficult because the heavier metals separate from the lighter metals due to gravity. This wouldn't happen in low-gravity situations, so you can truly make "space metals" that cannot be manufactured on Earth. However, this only calls for a LEO (low earth orbit) colony, not really a mars colony. Even then, shipping raw material up to LEO is still mindbogglingly expensive (let alone Mars). So no one has even attempted the experiment yet.
  - btilly 7y ago
    SpaceX's plans are to reduce the cost of a launch for their superheavy to $5 million per launch (assuming 100 launches with minimal maintenance). Each launch will be around 100,000 kg to LEO. That reduces the cost of transport to $50 per kg. That's expensive, but not ridiculous if we are able to get some good composites out of it.
  - adt2bt 7y ago
    Interesting. If we can manufacture rocket fuel and forge these 'space alloys' on Mars (or in LMO, low mars orbit), the transport cost to get those alloys to Earth could be theoretically much lower once you have a stable, relatively automated Mars base.
    - dragontamer 7y ago
      Why make a space forge on Low-Mars-orbit when we can make a space forge in Low Earth Orbit for far cheaper? That's the thing about all of this "Mars" discussion. There's almost nothing to be gained doing things on Mars instead of Earth.
inflatableDodo 7y ago
>SpaceX's stated goal is "occupy Mars". That does give them a fair amount of leeway when outsiders are trying to judge them on methods. Is also a hubris trap if not incredibly careful.
edoloughlin 7y ago
SpaceX's stated goal is "occupy Mars". Being able to land and deploy solar panels at scale is essential to this goal. And Musk has learned the hard way not to trust third party suppliers that he doesn't control That gave me the best laugh I've had all day. Bravo! Is SolarCity going to send installers to Mars in Teslas launched on top of a Falcon Heavy?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- aeternum 7y ago
  More likely on top of the Super Heavy + Starship, but yes. All of Musk's initiatives are centered around the Mars goal: Tesla: Transportation on Mars and power (battery-tech). SolarCity: Power on Mars Boring Company: Automated tunneling, important for building habitats, cheap radiation shielding. SpaceX: To get there
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Any person who goes to Mars in the next 30 years is going there to die. Full stop. The technology doesn't exist to keep them alive on the journey, and the technology to bring them home is decades farther out still. OTOH, going to the Moon and back is relatively easy, and that's where everybody will be focusing their energy when this Mars mania finally runs its course.
gameswithgo 7y ago
every industry on earth would be tangentially or directly related to building a mars colony. this is a nonsensical argument.
sbierwagen 7y ago
Seriously? Space solar is all multijunction, a totally different, far more expensive product than single-junction consumer cells. (Multiple junction cells have a higher conversion efficiency than single junction cells, so they're smaller and lighter, but they cost 10-100x more, since they're a low volume specialty product) Solar city, if it ever actually made solar panels, would never make multi-junction ones.

by btilly 7y ago

joering2 7y ago

Very interesting, but can you elaborate how we could benefit from colonizing Mars? Even more so - how could SpaceX be much more worth by being able to go to Mars, and how others wouldn't be able to achieve similar step sometime after them (depriving SpaceX from exclusivity of operation) Mars is much smaller than Earth with much more hostile environment. I heard some ideas of growing trees or putting air on Mars, but just to adjust a flow of a river on Earth could cost millions of dollars; if you add complexity to get it done on Mars I don't think a price tag could be even put on it. Visiting Mars - sure who wouldn't want it, but other than biologist and geologist, I doubt masses would want to migrate and live there, making SpaceX worth billions in process (that assuming somehow SpaceX would be given an exclusivity to park their rockets on Mars - a body to give such approval doesn't even exist and I doubt any single country can claim Mars' ownership)

omnimus 7y ago
You should ask Musk about that. I think he believes that we as humanity need backup plan if anything is to happen to Earth. Also he is probably megalomaniac and thats why he sets to grand goals. By the way i am pretty sure people who come to Mars in numbers will colonize it and it now it seems that United States will be the country that colonizes and claims Mars.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >By the way i am pretty sure people who come to Mars in numbers will colonize it I don't see people push for colonizing Antarctica, or the Canadian Arctic. Both places are far more friendly to humans than Mars ever will be. Mars is a dead-end. It may have a science station one day, but nothing more. Ever.
dahfizz 7y ago
NASA has already committed to a permanent moon colony. I think it's pretty inevitable that Mars colonies will become common. Humans love to explore and expand. So why wouldn't you want to get ahead of the curve? Maybe governments and eccentric billionaires start paying SpaceX for their services and expertise in Mars colonization. Maybe SpaceX makes tons of money selling vacations to Mars. Maybe musk names himself Lord emporer of the planet. Whatever is going to happen, musk wins for being so far ahead of everyone else.
- shkkmo 7y ago
  > NASA has already committed to a permanent moon colony NASA's priorities get changed for it every 4-8 years and doesn't get given funding increases to compensate. I am very skeptical that we will see a permanent moon colony (run by NASA) in the foreseeable future. I would love to be proven wrong.
btilly 7y ago
Most people will not want to move to Mars, just as very few Europeans wanted to move to the New World in the 1500s. However while relatively few people want to move to Mars, it is a large absolute number. For example a few years ago when Mars One called for volunteers for a one way trip to Mars, they got 200,000 people volunteering. Even filtering for people whose education and skills would make them useful, they had a large number. One estimate that I saw said that a viable colony would require about 100,000 people to move over a century. And a person leaving Earth can reasonably spend their life savings to do so. The value proposition is essentially sell your house, use the money to move to Mars. SpaceX is planning to make the trip barely above cost. But don't forget. They will be landing on a planet where basic infrastructure, starting with energy, oxygen and tunnels, are provided by SpaceX. That's going to be billions per year. Of course it will be a long time before that colony is self-sustaining. But when it is, those infrastructure basics will be worth a lot. As for a second contender, developing a rocket that can compete with SpaceX takes over a decade, and many billions of dollars. And then when you try to travel to Mars, you're going to be landing on a place where the infrastructure is owned by SpaceX. Musk is likely to welcome the competition...and charge top dollar for fuel for a return trip. So you'll have to invest billions more. And once you've done so, you'll be competing against an established competitor who is charging thin margins. And you still won't be in that lucrative infrastructure business. As for who owns it legally...I believe that the people who live there will claim the land that they settle. And will create their own laws. They would mostly come from the USA where legal tradition resolves all property disputes in favor of squatter's rights. There will be room for all for a long time, but guess who the first and biggest squatters would be?
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  I think everyone else would conclude that Musk is welcome to have the Mars monopoly. There's nothing there you can't get on Earth without the hassle of climbing out of a gravity well, schlepping across in front of a 24-hr supercharged X-ray machine, then climbing back down into another gravity well, then gathering whatever it is you felt is worth a hundred billion dollars of investment, waiting 2 years for the planets to align again, climbing back out of the gravity well you descended into, crossing the same X-ray moat, then finally returning to Earth and discovering some cheap bastard got it all from a mine in Australia.

vkou 7y ago

> And Musk has learned the hard way not to trust third party suppliers that he doesn't control. 1. Does he mine, refine and smelt his own iron and titanium ore, too? Where exactly does that buck stop? 2. Does SpaceX have a sudden pressing need for all the parts, and the debt obligations of SolarCity that have nothing to do with manufacturing solar panels (That is, 100% of the company?) SolarCity doesn't make any of their own panels, you know - they just install them on rooftops, and do financial engineering, and get bailed out by other people's money.

btilly 7y ago
As laid out in the article, at the time of the merger, Solar City was indeed trying to get into manufacturing solar panels. That it hasn't worked out doesn't mean that the attempt doesn't fit within SpaceX's goals. I'm sure that the Boring Company also has investments from SpaceX. As to mine, refine, etc, he has generally tried to go down to things that he can get off of mass markets. The thing he avoids is having a custom part only intended for him which he is dependent upon another company for.
- vkou 7y ago
  And he chose to do this by lending money at way-below-market rates to a financial dumpster fire of a company that didn't, and still doesn't have any capacity or secret technical expertise to manufacture one component of his Mars plans, which are still decades in the future? All the while, knowing that the financials of SolarCity are worse then he publiclly claimed? Pardon me, but given the personal financial gain he had in the deal going through, this stinks so bad, you can smell it in Minsk. Speaking of which - given his penchant for over-promising, and spectacularly under-delivering, I feel like only a lunatic would choose to settle in a Mars colony ran by SpaceX. Also: > The thing he avoids is having a custom part only intended for him which he is dependent upon another company for. So, hold on. Was SolarCity supposed to be making custom parts for a Mars colony? Why would their expertise in doing financial engineering to sell people solar roofs be of any help in this endeavor? If they weren't going to be making custom parts, and they'd just be making off-the-shelf panels, why pick a supplier decades before he actually needs one? Solar panels aren't sheet metal, but they are as close as you can get to a commodity, these days - and will be even more so, decades from now.

gamblor956 7y ago

And if he succeeds, the Mars colony could come to be worth more to SpaceX than its satellite launch business. By a lot. While the concept of settling Mars is understandable from an academic perspective, what is the economic justification for claiming that Mars is valuable? Any Martian colony would require hundreds of billions of Earth investment just to become habitable for a few dozen people and there aren't any resources on Mars that could be excavated more cheaply there than on Earth.

dragontamer 7y ago
I've always liked the idea of a low-gravity forge: mixing metals on Earth is difficult because the heavier metals separate from the lighter metals due to gravity. This wouldn't happen in low-gravity situations, so you can truly make "space metals" that cannot be manufactured on Earth. However, this only calls for a LEO (low earth orbit) colony, not really a mars colony. Even then, shipping raw material up to LEO is still mindbogglingly expensive (let alone Mars). So no one has even attempted the experiment yet.
- btilly 7y ago
  SpaceX's plans are to reduce the cost of a launch for their superheavy to $5 million per launch (assuming 100 launches with minimal maintenance). Each launch will be around 100,000 kg to LEO. That reduces the cost of transport to $50 per kg. That's expensive, but not ridiculous if we are able to get some good composites out of it.
- adt2bt 7y ago
  Interesting. If we can manufacture rocket fuel and forge these 'space alloys' on Mars (or in LMO, low mars orbit), the transport cost to get those alloys to Earth could be theoretically much lower once you have a stable, relatively automated Mars base.
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    Why make a space forge on Low-Mars-orbit when we can make a space forge in Low Earth Orbit for far cheaper? That's the thing about all of this "Mars" discussion. There's almost nothing to be gained doing things on Mars instead of Earth.

inflatableDodo 7y ago

>SpaceX's stated goal is "occupy Mars". That does give them a fair amount of leeway when outsiders are trying to judge them on methods. Is also a hubris trap if not incredibly careful.

edoloughlin 7y ago

SpaceX's stated goal is "occupy Mars". Being able to land and deploy solar panels at scale is essential to this goal. And Musk has learned the hard way not to trust third party suppliers that he doesn't control That gave me the best laugh I've had all day. Bravo! Is SolarCity going to send installers to Mars in Teslas launched on top of a Falcon Heavy?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
aeternum 7y ago
More likely on top of the Super Heavy + Starship, but yes. All of Musk's initiatives are centered around the Mars goal: Tesla: Transportation on Mars and power (battery-tech). SolarCity: Power on Mars Boring Company: Automated tunneling, important for building habitats, cheap radiation shielding. SpaceX: To get there

dreamcompiler 7y ago

Any person who goes to Mars in the next 30 years is going there to die. Full stop. The technology doesn't exist to keep them alive on the journey, and the technology to bring them home is decades farther out still. OTOH, going to the Moon and back is relatively easy, and that's where everybody will be focusing their energy when this Mars mania finally runs its course.

gameswithgo 7y ago

every industry on earth would be tangentially or directly related to building a mars colony. this is a nonsensical argument.

sbierwagen 7y ago

Seriously? Space solar is all multijunction, a totally different, far more expensive product than single-junction consumer cells. (Multiple junction cells have a higher conversion efficiency than single junction cells, so they're smaller and lighter, but they cost 10-100x more, since they're a low volume specialty product) Solar city, if it ever actually made solar panels, would never make multi-junction ones.