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You can find reliable analysis of the SpaceX Mars plans. See the Common Sense Skeptic YouTube videos. Not a fan of Musk, but the skeptic gets into details about

You can find reliable analysis of the SpaceX Mars plans. See the Common Sense Skeptic YouTube videos. Not a fan of Musk, but the skeptic gets into details about the physics, logistics, and physiology problems that Musk glosses over. Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere, for one thing, so radiation is a big problem Musk already dismissed. We already know human bodies lose muscle and bone after just a few weeks in space. The rockets Musk has presented don't have room for the water and food needed for 100+ people. Many other issues. Not to mention terraforming is science fiction right now.

quickaskq 4y ago
I’ll give that video a watch, thanks for the rec. Yeah, getting to Mars as a human presents a whole load of problems, let alone living on Mars. Elon loves the self deprecating talking point of saying how terrible the journey will be, but I get the feeling it may be more than terrible, if may be simply infeasible. A Starship will have to be like a mini space station during the ~7 months it takes to get to Mars. From the Elon interviews I’ve listened to he describes it like packing many people into a single starship, but it may be only possible to house 5-10 given the amount of support they’ll need to and on Mars. Edit: I actually watched parts of those videos months ago and just watched some more. Good stuff, though sorry to say but fairly biased reporting with a lot of opinions and theories thrown in there. Nonetheless informative and entertaining, just… the YouTuber clearly has it out for Musk.
- gregjor 4y ago
  It works both ways. Musk frequently exaggerates, makes ridiculous claims, and offers fact-free promises. I don't take him at his word either.
JoshCole 4y ago
Would be really great to hear someone who isn't trying to build a brand around Elon Musk hatred dig into the details. For myself, I've grown very tired of CSS. It is clear he does a lot of research - which makes his tendency to lie about facts and photoshop his sources to hide the contradiction disturbing to me. https://littlebluena.substack.com/p/common-sense-skeptic-debunking-starlink https://littlebluena.substack.com/p/common-sense-skeptic-deb...
- gregjor 4y ago
  It's hard to refute the logistics issues CSS raises. Or the radiation and lack of gravity problems. Musk frequently changes his promises so it's hard to keep up. Full self-driving? Tesla semi? Hyperloop? Solar roof tiles (since you brought up lying and faking)? Musk deserves the critics he gets.
  - mlindner 4y ago
    There has never been long term studies on the effects of low gravity. On the radiation aspect, the radiation is not significant and simply increases your long term risk of cancer. It's not a show stopper by any means. It's also mostly mitigated with minimal shielding.
  - JoshCole 4y ago
    I agree that there are real logistical issues. that is why I really would love to hear someone more honest dig into the details. I think there are real logistical issues here. My problem is that I know that CSS just starts with a narrative and lies about facts as he moves through his narrative. I'd like to know the places where the planning fallacy is likely to be blinding people working on these problems. His estimate of Starlink projected costs is three orders of magnitude higher than reasonable estimates I've seen. You don't get three orders of magnitude off by accident. If someone asks you to estimate the cost of a car for example and its true cost is $10,000 and you guess $10,000,000 that is really surprising - so surprising that I find it be an error term, not a surprise term to correct on. I'd like to hear more from the people that guess $10,000, not someone whose error term is being maximized because surprising things are more engaging. This is actually material relevant to the question of his helping us to reason about these issues, because clearly funding for the travel ought to be up there as one of the single most important issues. But he's giving us three orders of magnitude of error in this central issue. Elon Musk claims one year and than it takes like five. Three orders of magnitude is different. Three orders of magnitude would be someone saying it takes one year, but then it takes 1000 years. The difference between "honest planning fallacy" and "making stuff up" seems kind of easy to discern to me. I don't know, maybe others disagree, but it doesn't feel so hard to tell the difference. I also hold very different standards for claims about the future than I do for claims about the present and past made after research on the subject. I don't consider people who don't claim to be prophets to be required to meet the always predicts the future successfully bar; it seems kind of silly to expect that. However, it does seem pretty important that someone reporting on say, the price of a service, to give an honest price after months of research - which CSS doesn't. I'd hold a different standard for CSS if these were off the cuff videos or sharing - more like tweets - because then getting some stuff off would be reasonable. But lying about stuff that is so easily verified and photoshopping evidence to preserve the lies? Just reeks malice to me. If he was actually honest - why does he try to hide the lies?
ActorNightly 4y ago
I think Musk's stance on Mars is that Space X tech is necessarily gonna be the thing that makes living there happen, but the idea is that humanity needs to spend resources to get there within its capability because every minute we don't sets us "backwards"
- gregjor 4y ago
  You don't need to interpret what Musk might mean. Musk publicly predicted people on Mars by 2025, then 2026, then 2029. He predicted a million people living on Mars by 2050. He has been specific, if not consistent. I don't see how humanity will go backward if we don't colonize Mars. That's the kind of thing a cult leader says. In the meantime Musk is squandering $44bn to buy Twitter just to show that he can.
  - ActorNightly 4y ago
    He didn't predict any of those. He said something that sounded like a prediction in an interview, and media outlets, knowing people like you will surely click on a clickbait anti-Musk article, picked it up and ran with it. Saying "I think this is possible in x years" is not the same thing as saying "Space X will deliver in x years"
    - gregjor 4y ago
      Fortunately it’s very easy to find almost everything Musk has said or tweeted. He has made multiple specific predictions. 2029 for humans on Mars and 2050 for a million people were indeed widely-reported and may have had clickbait titles, but they quote Musk’s public pronouncements and Tweets. You can read his statements as predictions or wishes. If Musk was just musing on his aspirations why has he repeatedly given specific dates? The people who were promised full self-driving Teslas and paid for that didn’t interpret specific delivery dates and promises of features as mere possibilities.
    - quickaskq 4y ago
      He never fully predicts or promises, but we all know the infamous Musk time, where he says one of his inventions will be ready “next year”. for the last 8 years Musk has been promising FSD and that it will be ready next year.
taf2 4y ago
Agreed with gravity and radiation issues but food water is solved by more rockets right so not really an issue?
mlindner 4y ago
Common Sense Sekptic is not reliable. He regularly makes up facts or distorts information to cause a complete misunderstanding of the subject. Many people have debunked his videos many times but some people continue to post his nonsense.

quickaskq 4y ago

I’ll give that video a watch, thanks for the rec. Yeah, getting to Mars as a human presents a whole load of problems, let alone living on Mars. Elon loves the self deprecating talking point of saying how terrible the journey will be, but I get the feeling it may be more than terrible, if may be simply infeasible. A Starship will have to be like a mini space station during the ~7 months it takes to get to Mars. From the Elon interviews I’ve listened to he describes it like packing many people into a single starship, but it may be only possible to house 5-10 given the amount of support they’ll need to and on Mars. Edit: I actually watched parts of those videos months ago and just watched some more. Good stuff, though sorry to say but fairly biased reporting with a lot of opinions and theories thrown in there. Nonetheless informative and entertaining, just… the YouTuber clearly has it out for Musk.

gregjor 4y ago
It works both ways. Musk frequently exaggerates, makes ridiculous claims, and offers fact-free promises. I don't take him at his word either.

JoshCole 4y ago

Would be really great to hear someone who isn't trying to build a brand around Elon Musk hatred dig into the details. For myself, I've grown very tired of CSS. It is clear he does a lot of research - which makes his tendency to lie about facts and photoshop his sources to hide the contradiction disturbing to me. https://littlebluena.substack.com/p/common-sense-skeptic-debunking-starlink https://littlebluena.substack.com/p/common-sense-skeptic-deb...

gregjor 4y ago
It's hard to refute the logistics issues CSS raises. Or the radiation and lack of gravity problems. Musk frequently changes his promises so it's hard to keep up. Full self-driving? Tesla semi? Hyperloop? Solar roof tiles (since you brought up lying and faking)? Musk deserves the critics he gets.
- mlindner 4y ago
  There has never been long term studies on the effects of low gravity. On the radiation aspect, the radiation is not significant and simply increases your long term risk of cancer. It's not a show stopper by any means. It's also mostly mitigated with minimal shielding.
- JoshCole 4y ago
  I agree that there are real logistical issues. that is why I really would love to hear someone more honest dig into the details. I think there are real logistical issues here. My problem is that I know that CSS just starts with a narrative and lies about facts as he moves through his narrative. I'd like to know the places where the planning fallacy is likely to be blinding people working on these problems. His estimate of Starlink projected costs is three orders of magnitude higher than reasonable estimates I've seen. You don't get three orders of magnitude off by accident. If someone asks you to estimate the cost of a car for example and its true cost is $10,000 and you guess $10,000,000 that is really surprising - so surprising that I find it be an error term, not a surprise term to correct on. I'd like to hear more from the people that guess $10,000, not someone whose error term is being maximized because surprising things are more engaging. This is actually material relevant to the question of his helping us to reason about these issues, because clearly funding for the travel ought to be up there as one of the single most important issues. But he's giving us three orders of magnitude of error in this central issue. Elon Musk claims one year and than it takes like five. Three orders of magnitude is different. Three orders of magnitude would be someone saying it takes one year, but then it takes 1000 years. The difference between "honest planning fallacy" and "making stuff up" seems kind of easy to discern to me. I don't know, maybe others disagree, but it doesn't feel so hard to tell the difference. I also hold very different standards for claims about the future than I do for claims about the present and past made after research on the subject. I don't consider people who don't claim to be prophets to be required to meet the always predicts the future successfully bar; it seems kind of silly to expect that. However, it does seem pretty important that someone reporting on say, the price of a service, to give an honest price after months of research - which CSS doesn't. I'd hold a different standard for CSS if these were off the cuff videos or sharing - more like tweets - because then getting some stuff off would be reasonable. But lying about stuff that is so easily verified and photoshopping evidence to preserve the lies? Just reeks malice to me. If he was actually honest - why does he try to hide the lies?

ActorNightly 4y ago

I think Musk's stance on Mars is that Space X tech is necessarily gonna be the thing that makes living there happen, but the idea is that humanity needs to spend resources to get there within its capability because every minute we don't sets us "backwards"

gregjor 4y ago
You don't need to interpret what Musk might mean. Musk publicly predicted people on Mars by 2025, then 2026, then 2029. He predicted a million people living on Mars by 2050. He has been specific, if not consistent. I don't see how humanity will go backward if we don't colonize Mars. That's the kind of thing a cult leader says. In the meantime Musk is squandering $44bn to buy Twitter just to show that he can.
- ActorNightly 4y ago
  He didn't predict any of those. He said something that sounded like a prediction in an interview, and media outlets, knowing people like you will surely click on a clickbait anti-Musk article, picked it up and ran with it. Saying "I think this is possible in x years" is not the same thing as saying "Space X will deliver in x years"
  - gregjor 4y ago
    Fortunately it’s very easy to find almost everything Musk has said or tweeted. He has made multiple specific predictions. 2029 for humans on Mars and 2050 for a million people were indeed widely-reported and may have had clickbait titles, but they quote Musk’s public pronouncements and Tweets. You can read his statements as predictions or wishes. If Musk was just musing on his aspirations why has he repeatedly given specific dates? The people who were promised full self-driving Teslas and paid for that didn’t interpret specific delivery dates and promises of features as mere possibilities.
  - quickaskq 4y ago
    He never fully predicts or promises, but we all know the infamous Musk time, where he says one of his inventions will be ready “next year”. for the last 8 years Musk has been promising FSD and that it will be ready next year.

taf2 4y ago

Agreed with gravity and radiation issues but food water is solved by more rockets right so not really an issue?

mlindner 4y ago

Common Sense Sekptic is not reliable. He regularly makes up facts or distorts information to cause a complete misunderstanding of the subject. Many people have debunked his videos many times but some people continue to post his nonsense.