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A probe based on nuclear pulse propulsion could do it in around 50 years, with today's technology. It's not that we can't do it fast (within one average human l
by uwuemu 5y ago
A probe based on nuclear pulse propulsion could do it in around 50 years, with today's technology. It's not that we can't do it fast (within one average human lifespan), it's that the project would be very expensive and something like Nasa has a relatively tight budget.
I mean we, as humanity, have to have an eccentric billionaire start a Martian fire (SpaceX Starship) under our lazy asses to even start to think about getting to Mars in a reasonable timeframe and in reasonable numbers (to start a colony). We are not funding making our species multiplanetary for the last few decades because we were too lazy, how can anyone expect us sending anything to the closest star (other than the sun)... You can't.
- semi-extrinsic 5y agoMaybe an unpopular opinion, but Musk is just plain wrong when he thinks there is any urgency to Mars exploration (or it's just vicarious arguments because rockets are cool). Basically, the tech you need to make a Mars colony truly self sufficient is something like a compact fusion powerplant. Before we have that, no point in worrying about using Mars as a "backup plan", because if Earth was screwed, Mars would have a couple of years to live at most. And obviously it would be vastly better for humanity if Musk spent money on zero-emission large scale energy production, than on rockets.
- mavhc 5y agoHe should really thing about making a company to do solar, and maybe an Electric Car company that outsells every other USA EV company 10:1
- politician 5y agoThis is hopeful negativism. - They don't need fusion. A StarShip can deposit hundreds of solar panels and put them on the ground. No, dust isn't an issue because they'll bring a roomba. No, this isn't a joke, NASA martian probes' solar panels were cleaned by a light Martian breeze. - They will be able to become self-sufficient rapidly. They're not going to send 1M tons of cargo to Mars without a deployment plan. SpaceX and Tesla have already demonstrated effective vertically integrated supply chains and manufacturing. They have the institutional knowledge to mine raw materials and build factories that build complex parts. - There are plenty of other Earth-bound governments and billionaires that could devote funds to zero-emission large scale energy production projects. Musk, his companies and assets amount to a very small fraction of the global economy. Your ire is misdirected: your anger about the situation is properly directed at the rule of corrupt imbeciles and their questionable resource allocation decisions (Netflix, coal, etc.) here on Earth rather than one team of folks who seem extraordinarily mission driven and effective.
- samatman 5y agoMars has dust storms which last months or years, it has no ionosphere, and that dust contains enough perchlorates to poison anything we could eat, including us. Ok, that sentence went somewhere odd at the end but, it's true. A large asteroid has only one of these problems, by virtue of not coming with any atmosphere, ionic or otherwise. I kinda hope Elon is bluffing and actually plans to head to the Belt. I've penciled it out and and he'd have to be insane not to. Surely he has pencils as well.
- spookthesunset 5y agoThe Martian dust storms are pretty tame. Nothing like portrayed in the movies. The atmosphere is 1% of what it is here on earth. So while it is a “storm” it isn’t like a tropical force hurricane or anything. More like a very minor annoyance that deposits a bit more Martian dust on your stuff over time.
- eternalban 5y agoWhat's the story on navigating in the belt? Approach specific target from above or reasonably safe to traverse it and explore?
- ethbr0 5y agoIsn't long term zero-g pretty hostile to our biology?
- moffkalast 5y agoThere is an inherent urgency in all of his plans, mainly because he wants to see it done within his lifetime. He's got 40 years left tops, but more like 20 during which he could still theoretically do anything significant in. Rockets take decades to develop.
- ncmncm 5y agoThe urgency is because you can fool enough people only so long before they catch on and recognize what they are being sold.
- oceanplexian 5y ago> Musk is just plain wrong when he thinks there is any urgency to Mars exploration (or it's just vicarious arguments because rockets are cool). Mars might not be sustainable in our lifetime but in a century or two? I think it's within the realm of possibility. As for the urgency, the last two years has demonstrated the exact opposite to me. Modern civilization is a hop, skip, and a jump away from instability and disaster. When you say that we should instead spend resources on large zero-emissions energy production, well, we've had Nuclear Fission for half a century. The reason we didn't use it to prevent Climate Change is 90% political, not technical, another problem that having a self-sustaining colony, outside the sphere of Earth's influence, would solve.
- ethbr0 5y ago> The reason we didn't use [Nuclear Fission] to prevent Climate Change is 90% political, not technical Eh. The physics and proliferation risk are pretty intertwined. Who's to say we would have been better off with greater historical nuclear weapon proliferation risk but lower climate risk? We know the path we chose, limited global use of fission power, mostly avoided nuclear weapons proliferation, and did avoid nuclear exchanges. So it's provably a successful (or probably successful) path. Whether an alternative would have gotten the same outcome?
- monkeywork 5y ago>We know the path we chose, limited global use of fission power, mostly avoided nuclear weapons proliferation, and did avoid nuclear exchanges. So it's provably a successful (or probably successful) path. Only if you value the lack of nuclear exchanges over the impacts of climate change. Which one of the two is more likely to cause a mass extinction type issue on the planet, one puts the control in the hands of people and the other the forces of nature.
- ethbr0 5y agoI'd say I do. Climate change is colossal in problem magnitude, but temporally slow and distributed in impact. Nuclear weapons are terrifying fast and centralized in impact. Unfortunately, our civilization is also mostly centralized. Cities, ports, highly productive land : total land area. If you're talking persistent radioactive effects for a decade+, it doesn't take many to severely cripple the world. As an example, a 100kt weapon (or smaller dirty) could knock a port out of action. Now look at a list of ports [0] and imagine what would happen if one or more of them dropped off the global trade grid for multiple years. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_container_ports https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_container_po...
- s1artibartfast 5y ago>And obviously it would be vastly better for humanity if Musk spent money on zero-emission large scale energy production, than on rockets. Classic zero sum thinking. Spacex doesn't cost money, it makes it. How much money do you think Musk put into it? The answer is ~100 million seed. It is now worth 35,000 million. How far do you think that 100m would go to develop fusion. The ITER project alone costs 65,000 million.
- ncmncm 5y agoWhile US gov't put in $billions. But who kept ownership? Mars hype turns out to be good for drawing money out of governments. ITER is a dead end, no matter what, so not a useful data point.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago>While US gov't put in $billions. There is a difference between buying something and putting in money. If I buy a cheeseburger, I can't say I "put in" $5 to McDonalds and should have some ownership. If I pay my contract plumber to fix my toilet, I don't own their business either. I think you will be hard-pressed to find any substantial examples where the US gov wasn't buying something from SpaceX.
- ncmncm 5y agoMcDonald's won't go bankrupt if you elect not to get the large fries. SpaceX would have gone bankrupt several times if NASA hadn't kicked in at a crucial moment.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoSo they deserve equity for being a critical customer? I still don't follow the logic.
- ncmncm 5y agoYou won't.
- brimble 5y agoThe Mars backup plan seems kinda dumb to me because Mars is worse as is than all but the very worst post-apocalyptic Earth scenarios. Just build bunkers here and staff them in shifts. Much cheaper. Your remaining threats for which Mars would be better than "ruined" Earth are something like a grey goo event, or an asteroid so large that it liquefies much of the crust (killing everyone in all your bunkers). So, a fair bit bigger than the one that killed the Dinosaurs. I am very interested in watching people try to colonize Mars, but find the "backup for Earth" argument ridiculous, especially if presented as something urgent.
- alsaaro 5y agoOne conceivable reason to colonize Mars is real estate. Perhaps in the near future life extension technology will become common place, people may continue to have kids, but natural deaths may be rare; the human population will increase exponentially and need somewhere to live and something to do -- terraforming Mars in exchange for property may be reasonable.
- ufmace 5y agoI don't think that a compact fusion powerplant specifically is needed. But I do agree that a truly self-sufficient Martian colony (I.E. able to exist for more than a few years without ships coming from Earth) would need a gargantuan level of infrastructure to have even a small chance of being viable. From a standpoint of reducing emissions on Earth, it would be cool to see Elon Musk's best take on how to build a practical fusion generator though. I've heard of a few potential paths that could lead to net power much faster and cheaper than ITER. Supposedly superconducting magnets have gotten considerably better since ITER was proposed, and since power output in a tokamak reactor is something like the third or fourth power of the magnet strength IIRC, there's potential for a newer and smaller reactor design to outdo it in both timeline and cost.
- ncmncm 5y agoIt is not possible to conceive of a path that would not lead to net power before ITER. ITER has no intention of generating so much as a milliwatt, ever.
- politician 5y agoThe only humans who will be utilizing space in earnest are the Martians. Terrans will be confined to their local space with overwatch on the Moon.
- dsign 5y ago> ... overwatch on the Moon. I'm pretty sure not even that.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoGoing to Mars seems pretty useless to me at this time. It’s a super hostile environment and we don’t have the technology yet to have a self sustaining base there. Give it a few decades and progress in robotics will make a Mars base much easier. There is plenty of work to be done on Earth. We have to solve clean energy production and in general reduce pollution. These are massive technological challenges that deserve massive funding.
- Drainik 5y agoDid you know NASA only get 0.36% of the US Federal budget? Everything else gets "massive funding".
- throwaway1777 5y agoMakes sense though because earth is a dump and extremely corrupt. Even if you were able to substantially decrease military funding (the usual scapegoat) without massively changing the world order we still probably wouldn’t spend more on nasa, we would spend it on healthcare, infrastructure, economic bailouts, education, green tech, etc.
- moffkalast 5y agoTbf, it'll also take us a few decades to get human Mars transit figured out so sounds like we're on schedule.
- oceanplexian 5y agoIt sounds like a very chicken or egg problem to me, who's to say that progress in robotics doesn't come from trying to establish a base on Mars? Progress is often times non-linear, I mean here we using computers and communication technology based on Integrated Circuits technology furthered by the Apollo program; say we never went to the moon, computing technology and Moore's law might have been set back a decade or two.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoI am not against Mars but I just think it’s premature. Build up robotics for a while and Mars will be much easier. There is no rush to become a multi planetary species. There is no credible threat of a big asteroid or volcano in the next decades. All threats we may be facing are self made. My favorite moonshot project would be to create robotics that can clean up the environment and handle recycling. Having the technology to pick up dog poop and plastic bags in an efficient and affordable manner or separating recycling items would be a huge technological challenge that would create a ton of spin-off opportunities including a base on Mars. Or clean up the pacific garbage patch with robots.
- seventytwo 5y agoThe best thing we could do for space exploration is to figure out terrestrial fusion.
- chrisco255 5y agoWhy is it weird that a private corporation is doing space exploration & technology? Most of the biggest sailing expeditions were undertaken by private individuals and companies (although often under the funding of a royal family). Locomotives and airplanes were also created and perfected by private individuals / companies. The 1950s-2000s NASA model for space exploration was unusual in its centralized approach.
- ethbr0 5y agoThere's an argument to be made that some of the current largest market cap companies in the world are analogous to royal families, in terms of centralization of capital vs freedom of decision making.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoThe notable difference is that they don't have a monopoly on violence
- qwytw 5y agoMost premodern states (at least) in Europe didn't really have a monopoly on violence in the strict sense either. Kings were constrained by a variety of laws and customs which they couldn't easily change without triggering violent opposition and had to co-opt the local elites (who usually acted as independent actors) whenever they wanted to impose their will outside of the area they directly controlled. Even an 'absolute' ruler like Louis XVI had very limited direct power compared to many modern governments.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoFair enough, it seems that you are primarily attacking the word Monopoly. What if we were to soften the claim to dominance. Rulers always maintained power based on their ability to resist violence from within and without. Economic leverage only existed as long as one could protect themselves from violent opposition. A trade embargo meant nothing if the opposition can seize your assets and production by force. In today's world, mega corporations have no defense if a government actor decides to use force against them. This utter defenselessness against violence is the main difference between a modern corporation and a feudal actor.
- monkeywork 5y agoDo you have any suggested reading about: "A probe based on nuclear pulse propulsion could do it in around 50 years, with today's technology." I was always under the impression that these vast distances were basically entire unreachable in several human lifetimes.
- Tepix 5y agoWe do in fact have another billionaire, Yuri Millner, to push humanity towards the goal of reaching other stars with his "Breakthrough Starshot" initiative.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoAs far as I know this would be cell phone sized with no way of slowing down. It would cross entire solar systems within a few hours.
- Tepix 5y agoThere's no way to slow down, true. Let's see... Neptune's orbital diameter 8.3 light hours. At 10% c (speed of light) you would need 83 hours. Yes, insane speed, yet hopefully enough time to take quite a few pictures. Also the plan is not to send a single "disc", but many (thousands?). Together they could potentially provide a treasure trove of data from within the alien solar system.
- ziggus 5y ago"...with today's technology..." So we have the ability today to move 50K tons of parts into orbit, and come up with vast quantities of helium-3?