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Sorry, this is such an absolutely absurd argument. What are minimal capital and time requirements to do this eggs in more than one basket thing? Not talking ab

Sorry, this is such an absolutely absurd argument. What are minimal capital and time requirements to do this eggs in more than one basket thing? Not talking about an orbiting space whatever but a real, sustainable ecology on another planet. The depth of our ignorance even about whole classes of basic science there, notwithstanding the number and scale of engineering problems to solve.... Is there any reality where this isn't minimum a century and thousands to millions of $T? For someone who believes this is the most urgent problem on which to spend capital and time, the most efficient target of advocacy energy has to be the US military which spends $700B a year, not the effing FAA and the relatively small scale projects of this one company- no matter how exciting and advanced they happen to be. Even making the case for this program, when one considers what could be done with even a fraction of that scale of capital deployed on this planet....Fusion energy itself is probably a $10T investment, orders of magnitude less in money and time. Space is cool but not for one femtosecond should anyone entertain any of this eggs in more than one basket nonsense.

systemvoltage 5y ago
This is a tiring argument of opportunity cost for Space Exploration. It has been discussed ad-nauseum on HN. It is not a zero sum game - we can explore space and simulatenously do the things that are immediately in need and urgent.
ctoth 5y ago
Almost as if he's thought about the thing he's devoted a good chunk of his life and wealth towards, here's Musk: “The point at which one says the goal is to make life multi-planetary, it means that we need to have a self-sustaining city on Mars,” Musk said. “That city has to survive if the resupply ships stop coming from Earth for any reason whatsoever. Doesn’t matter why. If those resupply ships stop coming, does the city die out or not? In order to make something self-sustaining, you can’t be missing anything. You must have all the ingredients. It can’t be like, well this thing is self-sustaining except for this one little thing that we don’t have. It can’t be. That’d be like saying, ‘Well, we went on this long sea voyage, and we had everything except vitamin C.’ OK, great. Now you’re going to get scurvy and die—and painfully, by the way. It’s going to suck. You’re going to die slowly and painfully for lack of vitamin C. So we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the vitamin C there on Mars. Then it’s like, OK, rough order of magnitude, what kind of tonnage do you need to make it self-sustaining? It’s probably not less than a million tons.” That’s not a precise number, of course. It’s a rough estimate. But Mars settlers will need vast quantities of stuff. The settlers will need to build an entire industrial base to mine the Red Planet, and there are many steps in mining. To make consumer products requires a huge infrastructure base to refine and shape materials. “I’ll probably be long dead before Mars becomes self-sustaining, but I’d like to at least be around to see a bunch of ships land on Mars,” Musk said. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/inside-elon-musks-plan-to-build-one-starship-a-week-and-settle-mars/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/inside-elon-musks-pl...

systemvoltage 5y ago

This is a tiring argument of opportunity cost for Space Exploration. It has been discussed ad-nauseum on HN. It is not a zero sum game - we can explore space and simulatenously do the things that are immediately in need and urgent.

ctoth 5y ago

Almost as if he's thought about the thing he's devoted a good chunk of his life and wealth towards, here's Musk: “The point at which one says the goal is to make life multi-planetary, it means that we need to have a self-sustaining city on Mars,” Musk said. “That city has to survive if the resupply ships stop coming from Earth for any reason whatsoever. Doesn’t matter why. If those resupply ships stop coming, does the city die out or not? In order to make something self-sustaining, you can’t be missing anything. You must have all the ingredients. It can’t be like, well this thing is self-sustaining except for this one little thing that we don’t have. It can’t be. That’d be like saying, ‘Well, we went on this long sea voyage, and we had everything except vitamin C.’ OK, great. Now you’re going to get scurvy and die—and painfully, by the way. It’s going to suck. You’re going to die slowly and painfully for lack of vitamin C. So we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the vitamin C there on Mars. Then it’s like, OK, rough order of magnitude, what kind of tonnage do you need to make it self-sustaining? It’s probably not less than a million tons.” That’s not a precise number, of course. It’s a rough estimate. But Mars settlers will need vast quantities of stuff. The settlers will need to build an entire industrial base to mine the Red Planet, and there are many steps in mining. To make consumer products requires a huge infrastructure base to refine and shape materials. “I’ll probably be long dead before Mars becomes self-sustaining, but I’d like to at least be around to see a bunch of ships land on Mars,” Musk said. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/inside-elon-musks-plan-to-build-one-starship-a-week-and-settle-mars/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/inside-elon-musks-pl...