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Wait, a colony on Mars by 2050 that doesn't need to be resupplied from Earth? ...lol no. Strong, strong disagree that there will be any kind of "colony" on Mar

Wait, a colony on Mars by 2050 that doesn't need to be resupplied from Earth? ...lol no. Strong, strong disagree that there will be any kind of "colony" on Mars by 2050, and my prediction is that we won't even have our first manned mission to Mars this century. We haven't been back to the Moon in 50 years. We haven't left LEO in 50 years. Surely we would need to build a colony on the Moon first, as a trial for building a colony somewhere that's three orders of magnitude farther away. We are nowhere close to doing this.

ravi-delia 5y ago
I absolutely agree that we won't have a colony on Mars by 2050, but I think you vastly overestimate the difficulty of just traveling to Mars if you're judging based on the Moon. Political will? Perhaps, but I think the best way to think of it is that it was possible to go to the Moon on technology from 50 years ago. Modern rockets are far, far better.
abruzzi 5y ago
Yeah, this one was hard to buy, unless there are a lot of billionaires that want to live in houses the size of a college dorm room. The cost to get to mars, and to live on Mars seems to me to be absolutely prohibitive at this point. A number of the other observations also seemed to be a stretch. I'm not sure AI will have the level of impact he expects in less than 30 years. the death of the local store and getting any product delivered in an hour or less seems way too optimistic when you consider all the small rural towns in the US that can't even get decent broadband today.
- DennisP 5y ago
  "At this point" sure, but it's not happening at all unless SpaceX succeeds with Starship at scale, which means fully, rapidly reusable and building at least a hundred of them per year, which gets launch costs to LEO down to about $50/kg. Starting with that, SpaceX would send at least a hundred Starships to Mars with every launch window, each able to carry over a hundred tons of cargo. Price per passenger depends on how many you can safely pack in and maybe Musk is being overoptimistic on that, but he's shooting for half a million dollars.
bryanlarsen 5y ago
The author never specified that the colony would be self-sufficient by 2050. Elon Musk is planning on sending a Starship along with 100 tons of cargo to Mars in September 2022. He'll probably miss that window and send it October 2024 instead. Musk also plans on building 50 Starships per year.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    So he'll actually wind up build 10 a year. Boo Hoo.
throwaway2048 5y ago
not that I really disagree with your point, but orders of magnitude of distance are a poor measure of the kind of effort it takes to get places in space. Almost all of the energy and effort is spent on getting things off of the earth to begin with, everything after that point is comparatively easy, especially if you are willing to take a long time doing it. The major problem with a Mars mission is that the constraints of getting things into orbit are so oppressive, its hard to send enough supplies and equipment to orbit, due to the exponential explosion of the rocket equation.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  No, the problem is the amount of resources you need to send to make sure the project survives. So you send hundreds and hundreds of tons of stuff. You need tens or hundreds of thousands of tons of stuff to have any hope of making a colony that can survive for a few years, never mind become self-sustaining. Multiple spare parts for every single thing, food, water, machinery, power sources... the list is almost endless. Until there's hard information about what's possible on Mars - exactly what does and doesn't grow, how the seasons really work, how to deal with ecological issues, how to deal with waste, and on and on - you don't even know what you need to send. There are also the political and psychological problems of keeping relatively small numbers of people in a relatively small space with relatively poor privacy and no natural resources. It's basically going to be the most expensive and least fun picnic in history.
  - DennisP 5y ago
    Musk is talking about sending at least a thousand Starships to Mars. Each can carry over a hundred tons.
JulianMorrison 5y ago
> We haven't been back to the Moon ...because until basically now, the tech for doing so was an immensely expensive, one shot, disposable rocket, which could only carry a return vehicle, one lander and a small crew. As a result, the only use for moon missions was (1) to do trivial kinds of science such as could be done with the very limited kinds of instruments that could be carried, and (2) for national bragging rights. With the science done, with the missions becoming routine and boring, the only entity that could afford to go stopped spending its money. This is all right on the cusp of changing.
yupper32 5y ago
> my prediction is that we won't even have our first manned mission to Mars this century. Well that's a wacky prediction. What makes you think that? We haven't been back to the Moon in 50 years, sure, but we've barely been trying until recently. We're very close to having vehicles that can get to the Moon and Mars.
- dmitrybrant 5y ago
  My prediction is much less wacky than predicting a colony by 2050. I think everyone overestimates the public interest and "excitement" over going to Mars. The reason we haven't been back to the Moon in 50 years is that the public lost interest after the ~third or fourth launch, and stopped tuning in to the broadcasts. With ever-improving VR technology, I'd predict that more and more people would be satisfied enough with a VR experience of Mars, and be done with it. The need to physically "go" to a place and claim it for yourself will be a thing of the past.
  - yupper32 5y ago
    I'm definitely not saying we'll have a colony by 2050. I just think 80 years is a massive amount of time and we'll have feet on Mars by then, which is what my comment was specifically referencing.
betwixthewires 5y ago
These things don't happen naturally, they don't progress at some rate. They happen because people decide to do them, and then do them. Humans haven't been to the moon in 50 years because nobody has decided to go in 50 years. Right now there's a man with more resources than almost any man on earth and he has dedicated his life to ensuring that people go to mars and live there. He is so to used on it that he has focused on creating novel technology just for the purpose, and demonstrated that technology. It is going to happen. In space, distance doesn't really matter, gravity wells matter. Going to mars is not much different than going to the moon. You don't really need a trial, the people are stuck there no matter how far away it is.
- snek_case 5y ago
  The plan is for SpaceX to send 3 uncrewed launches to Mars (with equipment and supplies) before sending people. I think that if they succeed with Starship, they can very much do it. And IMO, the more SpaceX progresses, the more people will get excited about space and investment money will be thrown at space technology. I invested some money in Rocket Lab, because they are a public company and the next best thing after SpaceX IMO.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Excitement cannot overcome a lack of exploitable natural resources at the destination.
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      Nation-state scale science programs notwithstanding, I think the possibility of independent sovereignty will be the main draw of going to Mars, if/when independent survival is technologically (and economically, in the local scope) feasible. There are absolutely exploitable resources there; they are just irrelevant to an Earth-centric economy because of the prohibitive cost of hauling them out of Mars' gravity well and down to Earth. But if you've gone to Mars to be independent there, Earth's economy will become similarly irrelevant to you.
unchocked 5y ago
Autarky on Mars, sure now. But now, the richest man in the world is existentially dedicated to building 1,000 Starships to build a city on Mars and I'm pretty sure he's going to pull it off. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1461235511511633922 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1461235511511633922 ... the second richest man in the world is existentially dedicated to building the a city in Earth orbit.

ravi-delia 5y ago

I absolutely agree that we won't have a colony on Mars by 2050, but I think you vastly overestimate the difficulty of just traveling to Mars if you're judging based on the Moon. Political will? Perhaps, but I think the best way to think of it is that it was possible to go to the Moon on technology from 50 years ago. Modern rockets are far, far better.

abruzzi 5y ago

Yeah, this one was hard to buy, unless there are a lot of billionaires that want to live in houses the size of a college dorm room. The cost to get to mars, and to live on Mars seems to me to be absolutely prohibitive at this point. A number of the other observations also seemed to be a stretch. I'm not sure AI will have the level of impact he expects in less than 30 years. the death of the local store and getting any product delivered in an hour or less seems way too optimistic when you consider all the small rural towns in the US that can't even get decent broadband today.

DennisP 5y ago
"At this point" sure, but it's not happening at all unless SpaceX succeeds with Starship at scale, which means fully, rapidly reusable and building at least a hundred of them per year, which gets launch costs to LEO down to about $50/kg. Starting with that, SpaceX would send at least a hundred Starships to Mars with every launch window, each able to carry over a hundred tons of cargo. Price per passenger depends on how many you can safely pack in and maybe Musk is being overoptimistic on that, but he's shooting for half a million dollars.

bryanlarsen 5y ago

The author never specified that the colony would be self-sufficient by 2050. Elon Musk is planning on sending a Starship along with 100 tons of cargo to Mars in September 2022. He'll probably miss that window and send it October 2024 instead. Musk also plans on building 50 Starships per year.

anonporridge 5y ago
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  So he'll actually wind up build 10 a year. Boo Hoo.

throwaway2048 5y ago

not that I really disagree with your point, but orders of magnitude of distance are a poor measure of the kind of effort it takes to get places in space. Almost all of the energy and effort is spent on getting things off of the earth to begin with, everything after that point is comparatively easy, especially if you are willing to take a long time doing it. The major problem with a Mars mission is that the constraints of getting things into orbit are so oppressive, its hard to send enough supplies and equipment to orbit, due to the exponential explosion of the rocket equation.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
No, the problem is the amount of resources you need to send to make sure the project survives. So you send hundreds and hundreds of tons of stuff. You need tens or hundreds of thousands of tons of stuff to have any hope of making a colony that can survive for a few years, never mind become self-sustaining. Multiple spare parts for every single thing, food, water, machinery, power sources... the list is almost endless. Until there's hard information about what's possible on Mars - exactly what does and doesn't grow, how the seasons really work, how to deal with ecological issues, how to deal with waste, and on and on - you don't even know what you need to send. There are also the political and psychological problems of keeping relatively small numbers of people in a relatively small space with relatively poor privacy and no natural resources. It's basically going to be the most expensive and least fun picnic in history.
- DennisP 5y ago
  Musk is talking about sending at least a thousand Starships to Mars. Each can carry over a hundred tons.

JulianMorrison 5y ago

> We haven't been back to the Moon ...because until basically now, the tech for doing so was an immensely expensive, one shot, disposable rocket, which could only carry a return vehicle, one lander and a small crew. As a result, the only use for moon missions was (1) to do trivial kinds of science such as could be done with the very limited kinds of instruments that could be carried, and (2) for national bragging rights. With the science done, with the missions becoming routine and boring, the only entity that could afford to go stopped spending its money. This is all right on the cusp of changing.

yupper32 5y ago

> my prediction is that we won't even have our first manned mission to Mars this century. Well that's a wacky prediction. What makes you think that? We haven't been back to the Moon in 50 years, sure, but we've barely been trying until recently. We're very close to having vehicles that can get to the Moon and Mars.

dmitrybrant 5y ago
My prediction is much less wacky than predicting a colony by 2050. I think everyone overestimates the public interest and "excitement" over going to Mars. The reason we haven't been back to the Moon in 50 years is that the public lost interest after the ~third or fourth launch, and stopped tuning in to the broadcasts. With ever-improving VR technology, I'd predict that more and more people would be satisfied enough with a VR experience of Mars, and be done with it. The need to physically "go" to a place and claim it for yourself will be a thing of the past.
- yupper32 5y ago
  I'm definitely not saying we'll have a colony by 2050. I just think 80 years is a massive amount of time and we'll have feet on Mars by then, which is what my comment was specifically referencing.

betwixthewires 5y ago

These things don't happen naturally, they don't progress at some rate. They happen because people decide to do them, and then do them. Humans haven't been to the moon in 50 years because nobody has decided to go in 50 years. Right now there's a man with more resources than almost any man on earth and he has dedicated his life to ensuring that people go to mars and live there. He is so to used on it that he has focused on creating novel technology just for the purpose, and demonstrated that technology. It is going to happen. In space, distance doesn't really matter, gravity wells matter. Going to mars is not much different than going to the moon. You don't really need a trial, the people are stuck there no matter how far away it is.

snek_case 5y ago
The plan is for SpaceX to send 3 uncrewed launches to Mars (with equipment and supplies) before sending people. I think that if they succeed with Starship, they can very much do it. And IMO, the more SpaceX progresses, the more people will get excited about space and investment money will be thrown at space technology. I invested some money in Rocket Lab, because they are a public company and the next best thing after SpaceX IMO.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Excitement cannot overcome a lack of exploitable natural resources at the destination.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    Nation-state scale science programs notwithstanding, I think the possibility of independent sovereignty will be the main draw of going to Mars, if/when independent survival is technologically (and economically, in the local scope) feasible. There are absolutely exploitable resources there; they are just irrelevant to an Earth-centric economy because of the prohibitive cost of hauling them out of Mars' gravity well and down to Earth. But if you've gone to Mars to be independent there, Earth's economy will become similarly irrelevant to you.

unchocked 5y ago

Autarky on Mars, sure now. But now, the richest man in the world is existentially dedicated to building 1,000 Starships to build a city on Mars and I'm pretty sure he's going to pull it off. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1461235511511633922 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1461235511511633922 ... the second richest man in the world is existentially dedicated to building the a city in Earth orbit.