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Hint: Starship cans are comically inadequate to support a martian colony. They might be just adequate to maintain a lunar outpost -- if they turn out to work at
by angiosperm 3y ago
Hint: Starship cans are comically inadequate to support a martian colony. They might be just adequate to maintain a lunar outpost -- if they turn out to work at all. We don't even know if humans can survive, long-term, in 0.3g; zero g, anyway, is right out. Life in centrifuges on Mars would be even less fun than in cans.
If some follow-on vehicle were ever developed adequate to support a martian colony, and lunar gravity were to turn out to suffice, getting any actual value return from such a vehicle is hard to imagine. You might try to use it to support automated mining of platinum-group metals from asteroids, but it is far from clear how that could be made to work out. That it seems possible in principle is usually not considered a sound basis for investment.
Musk certainly understands all of the above. He will cash out long before it is demonstrated to all be a pipe dream.
- Dylan16807 3y agoSupport a colony, as in bringing supplies? How could any rocket that can deliver several tons be inadequate for that?
- angiosperm 3y agoMaybe look into how many launches are needed to loft fuel to send just one can to Mars. And, how many passengers, realistically, fit in a can on a 9-month (note, not 6-month) trip, with supplies for the trip. Hint, not 100, and not 20. Hopefully the supplies needed to survive there are in other cans already there. Literally nothing there is worth exporting except maybe reality TV; not cans, and not even just engines taken off the cans. Never mind homesick colonists. Pressure suits for everybody on board might be crammed in, but more likely just two or three to use collecting more from cargo ships already landed.