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Elon Musk Wants to Put Man on Mars in '12 to 15 Years'
- ck2 14y agoPlausible but the timetable is too soon, maybe 2050. I mean it's possible by then the USA still doesn't have healthcare as a right, but the top 2% will always be able to do such trips as a lark (and write it off on their taxes?) however there will have to be a revolutionary leap in a powersource. Personally I think the idea of hobbyists having their own bots on the moon by 2025 is more realistic and interesting.
- wslh 14y agoDo you mean that we need an Elon Musk for health care? I think so.
- pyre 14y agoThe health care system is so complex that where would you even begin? With car and/or space, you can just throw money at building something to compete, but it would be difficult to disrupt health care by starting a new insurance company or hospital.
- kiba 14y agoI mean it's possible by then the USA still doesn't have healthcare as a right I don't care about healthcare being a right. It's a meaningless gesture when we're talking about the most screwed up system of healthcare to ever evolve. But I do care about healthcare improving to the point that everyone can afford it and everyone will survive. We need a Henry Ford, an Elon Musk, or anybody who's ambitious enough to transform the world's healthcare systems from mediocre to an unprecedented level of quality, scale, and cheapness. Then you can slap "healthcare is a right" because it doesn't really take much to care for sick human beings anymore.
- jwoah12 14y agoMaybe not a Henry Ford, unless we want Jews excluded from the system.
- CodeCube 14y agoI'm already training for what it's going to be like - http://www.eveonline.com/ http://www.eveonline.com/
- Sodaware 14y agoThe common sense part of me says this is far too optimistic. After all, we haven't put people on the moon in nearly 40 years. However, the hopeful part of me thinks it's possible. In 10 years SpaceX has gone from nothing to launching capsules into space and docking them with a space station. Even it it takes 40 years, it's good to have someone pushing things forward. I really hope I live to see the first human walk on Mars.
- danielweber 14y agoIn 1961 we hadn't been to the Moon in forever. There are a lot of risks. NASA's attitude to human spaceflight has been to move into a state of permanently studying the risks. If Musk is going to face the risks, he may be able to pull it off. SpaceX really needs to start launching some rotating craft.
- colmvp 14y ago“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” - attributed to Bill Gates.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago2025 is 13 years from now. With any luck SpaceX will have proven its heavy lift launcher within the next year and its manned capsule within the next few years. More so, they are poised to rake in billions of dollars in profits from commercial satellite launches and NASA contracts in the next decade alone. Combine that capability plus R&D money and you have a potent mix. Getting to Mars isn't actually that difficult, we already have a lot of the technical details worked out. The biggest element that adds cost and complexity is launch, which is precisely where SpaceX excels.
- Pfhreak 14y agoI would imagine the most complex element is landing on Mars safely at low Gs, or even travelling for years in a spaceship moving through a hostile environment. Getting stuff into orbit seems easier to me.
- ef4 14y agoI bet that they not only do it, but do it at a price lower than the current unmanned rover mission.
- rwhitman 14y agoI'd think its much more likely we'd be sending people to Mars on a regular basis if we found out there is something valuable there. If space tourism was sufficient to foot the bill for space travel, we'd be sending school field trips to the moon by now.
- danielweber 14y agoThe people who colonize Mars probably won't make a profit off of it. It will be consumption spending, like funding a yachting team. If it ever turns out to be profitable in a pure economic sense, it will take a long time for that to happen. Yet they will still do it joyfully.
- spking 14y agoThe people who first colonize it will probably spend decades building the atmosphere and heating it up (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming#Mars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming#Mars)
- mladenkovacevic 14y agoI've got a hunch this is why Curiosity is equipped with a high-tech geology kit.. "If we find traces of life, wonderful! But if we find large quantities of easily retrievable oil, precious metals or rare-earth minerals? We're in business!"
- rwhitman 14y agoExactly. The race to the moon was justified by national security, but really there isn't much economic incentive to explore Mars... yet. NASA needs to find good reasons to keep going back.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoI think traces of life become the biggest obstacle to a manned mission. The "preserve mars" crowd will form overnight.
- Julianhearn 14y agoIt wont happen. Spacex will just spend alk the government's money then say oops. We missed the target date, can we have more money.
- jlgreco 14y agoSpaceX's contract is unique among contractors in that they are responsible for overruns. Now, you could say they will change their mind when they run out of money, but frankly I would respond by pointing out that Elon really doesn't seem to be in it for the money, but rather despite the money.
- powerslave12r 14y agoI recall in one of the interviews he said he <inexact quote, summarized> "I do appreciate money and it is needed to invest in ventures, but I personally I'm not in it for the money. I can already buy everything I could want." EDIT: I am just supporting parent post's claim that "but frankly I would respond by pointing out that Elon really doesn't seem to be in it for the money, but rather despite the money."
- dkokelley 14y agoThat would imply that in his personal life he does not need or want more money, since he is already incredibly wealthy. However, personal wealth will not be enough to fund SpaceX indefinitely. The system needs to be balanced.
- jlgreco 14y agoSpaceX has been profitable since 2007. http://www.spacex.com/usa.php http://www.spacex.com/usa.php
- jlgreco 14y agoI know the article isn't really the main attraction here, but what is up with this? "He also laughs that the biggest payload on the Dragon Capsule that flew a mission to the International Space Station was a wheel of cheese." I am pretty certain that capsule was stuffed. Didn't it take them days to unload it? Is this just a terribly worded sentence saying that the previous load was cheese?
- danielweber 14y agoThere was a test launch of the Dragon capsule that had the cheese on it. That was December 2010. http://www.space.com/15799-spacex-dragon-capsule-fun-facts.html http://www.space.com/15799-spacex-dragon-capsule-fun-facts.h...
- jlgreco 14y agoYeah, that sentence makes it sound like they are saying they only brought cheese to the ISS though.
- danielweber 14y agoI got the feeling that the segment with Musk was filmed a year or two ago, despite the new stuff from the MSL landing. They talk about SpaceX accomplishing the feat of taking a man-safe craft into orbit and back to Earth, which would refer to the (unmanned) cheese mission, when SpaceX has since done the bigger feat of docking with the ISS.
- jlgreco 14y agoAaah, that makes sense. I retract my complaint.
- gnarbarian 14y agoI like to think it was a Skyrim joke.
- elorant 14y agoUnless we invent a much faster engine, traveling to and back from Mars is practically impossible. In the 16 months it takes to get there and return the amount of radiation that will be received from humans could pose significant health risks. It's not surprising that NASA's plans about a manned mission to Mars talk about a one way trip and building some kind of habitat there where they will stay permanently.
- apendleton 14y agoIt has long been Musk's contention that going to Mars would mean moving there, at least initially. He places less value on the return trip than NASA seems to.
- MrMember 14y agoYeah, unless something changes in the time it takes us to put a manned mission together it's pretty much a given that the first trip will be one way only. It greatly simplifies things not having to worry about how to get back.
- DavidSJ 14y agoAstronauts spend 6+ months at a time on the space station, without protection from the Earth's atmosphere. I'm told the magnetosphere is only helpful against solar flares, not cosmic rays, and you can shield against solar flares with a storm shelter on the vehicle. Also, you can do a one way trip in 6 months if you're willing to spend a bit more fuel. So 12 months total in space. A trip to Mars today, given our present state of knowledge, would be safer than Apollo was given our knowledge at the time.
- zenon 14y agoWe have invented it, it's just that there are some political (and PR) obstacles to developing and using it: http://www.islandone.org/Propulsion/ProjectOrion.html http://www.islandone.org/Propulsion/ProjectOrion.html "Our motto was 'Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970'", recalls Dyson. Orion would have been more akin to the rocket ships of science fiction than to the cramped capsules of Gagarin and Glenn. One hundred and fifty people could have lived aboard in relative comfort; the useful payload would have been measured in thousands of tons. Orion would have been built like a battleship, with no need for the excruciating weight-saving measures adopted by chemically-propelled spacecraft.
- andy_herbert 14y agoAn extremely noble goal, but I'd say it was unlikely for a reason not mentioned in the article, but heavily implied: this would be a one-way trip. Whilst creating and maintaining a Mars base would be one of humanity's crowning achievements, I don't the proposed journey would pass the moral and ethical objections from the general public.
- gyom 14y agoMany would have ethical objections, but I think a lot of sane people would volunteer to be the first person on Mars even if it was understood to be a one-way mission.
- saraid216 14y agoI would certainly go, but I don't have the qualifications to be a first expedition team member. =/
- dinkumthinkum 14y agoWould you really? I see all these people say they would volunteer, but I have my doubts. The novelty of being on Mars would wear off in a couple years and the isolation and so forth ... I just don't buy that there are really many people willing to do that.
- Goronmon 14y agoI just don't buy that there are really many people willing to do that. You don't need many, you just need enough.
- saraid216 14y agoI'm not really interested in some new adventurous experience. I'd like to help build something like a new colony on Mars, even if it's far down the line and all I'm really doing is taking care of the first steps of on-the-ground planning. It's a claim that has the safety of there not actually being any plan or need for me to prove my claim. But for what it's worth, I've also taken the same attitude towards startups I'm impressed by. It's not really about me and what I want, so much as there's this big thing that I want to happen and if I can shovel some dirt and bring us a step closer, I'm in.
- EternalFury 14y agoI think Elon should get a car on the road first.
- apendleton 14y agoDelivery of the Model S started in June.
- Cushman 14y agoI hate to be that guy, again, but I still feel like I haven't seen a very clear explanation of why this is a good idea. It'd be a great tourism experience, but what's the ultimate value to humanity? Especially in light of Curiosity, why is it assumed that the logical next step after sending a robotic lab is to send a person, rather than sending a few dozen more robots? For a fraction of the cost of sustaining human life on another planet, we could construct a huge automated research complex capable of doing everything a human would want to do -- even golf -- and that would be valuable research toward developing the fully-autonomous robotic scientists which are definitely the only way we're going to have real long-term exploration of the outer solar system and beyond. Basically, I can understand why someone might want to go to Mars, but I'm not sure why someone else would want to send them.
- sktrdie 14y agoConsider the frailty of our planet. The speck of dust that it is compared to the depths of the universe. If we don't start colonizing other planets, and gain the experience on how to do so, we'll essentially become extinct quite rapidly. Forget the robots. We need the experience in sending actual humans there. This has to happen sooner or later if we want to ensure that our race lives on, after our planet becomes inhabitable. With all this in mind, it's better to do this sooner rather than later. And why not start in 12-15 years? I hope you can see the value now.
- draggnar 14y agoThe experience is not only necessary for survival, but also will lead to new opportunities. Once there is a market for interplanetary transport, experience will lead to innovations that we can't think of today. One huge example that is already being explored is asteroid mining. Add the business case to the point you made about our species becoming more resilient by turning multi-planetary, and there the case for Mars is strong.
- acomar 14y ago> It'd be a great tourism experience, but what's the ultimate value to humanity? Survival. We will go extinct at some point if we stay on Earth. The more spread out we are, the less likely any single catastrophe is to wipe out the entire race. In the more near term... Do we really need more motivation than "because it's there"?
- epscylonb 14y ago"If you look at something like a Boeing 747 -- that's over a quarter of a billion dollars, buying a 747," he said. "You need two of them for a round trip. But nobody is paying half a billion dollars to fly from L.A. to London. It's a few thousand dollars, and that's because you reuse that aircraft multiple times, you use it thousands of times." Airlines have always been subsidised by taxpayers, in fact air travel has never been super profitable even with the subsidies.
- macspoofing 14y agoSubsidies to the tune of half a billion dollars per passenger per trip?
- epscylonb 14y agoProbably not that high, but you may be surprised. http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001001.html http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001001.html
- Kilimanjaro 14y agoGiven the choice of an automated flying car or a trip to mars, I pick the former.
- jeiting 14y agoIts called an airplane. http://www.aopa.org/learntofly/ http://www.aopa.org/learntofly/
- sktrdie 14y agoI would personally rather see something like a space habitat before colonizing Mars. If we can artificially replicate Earth's environment in space, then we're set, we could drift through space when our solar system becomes too hot and ensure our race can live on . We wouldn't need planets anymore. So, instead of having to adapt to Mars' conditions (low gravity and little atmosphere), we would build something capable of sustaining life as we know it. Much more valuable if you ask me. But still, going to Mars is great science and will give us very valuable experience.
- ceejayoz 14y ago> If we can artificially replicate Earth's environment in space, then we're set, we could drift through space when our solar system becomes too hot and ensure our race can live on . We wouldn't need planets anymore. That's a few billion years off, so let's do the easier one first. Plenty of time to learn space habitats (and presumably a few billion years from now they'll seem pretty quaint).
- geuis 14y agoTo everyone who asks questions like, "Why send people when robots are better/cheaper" and "Isn't it too dangerous", I would reply, "Stay here". It is only a recent phenomenon in human history, in the last few hundred years, that all the places in the world are known. For hundreds of thousands of years, there have always been new lands and oceans for our kind to explore. Indeed, until the last ~20k years, we all existed in a near constant wandering state. Thats how we survived, and the lifestyle is still practiced today, albeit only in very tiny numbers in remote places. Even with civilized life, i.e. villages, towns, and cities, for thousands of years people have jumped on ships or made years-long treks across oceans and continents to build new lives. Some of this was the desire to be free, or it was forced, or it was from desperation, or it was simply to explore. Simply because we almost all live in a vastly interconnected world now doesn't mean that any of those reasons have disappeared, or that the kinds of people willing to take such risks have died out. We're still here, if latent, amongst the masses. Many of us spend our youth traveling the world, climbing the next mountain. Many others lose themselves in vast game worlds where we can, for short times, satisfy the need to explore and build new lives. Some games such as WoW, Eve Online, Secondlife, and Civilization are so popular in part of because of these desires and needs. So when you ask, "Why?", I say "Why not?". You are free to stay here. I want to go see what's out there.
- ungerik 14y agoResources on Earth are limited, space has unlimited resources. So if we want to have abundance for all humans we must expand into space. It's that simple. And we can't bring everything back to Earth, so some have to leave Earth to enjoy those space resources. I have written a little bit more about that in this blog post: http://pioneersfestival.com/2012/04/contemporary-space-pioneers/ http://pioneersfestival.com/2012/04/contemporary-space-pione...
- j_baker 14y agoPerhaps this is pedantic of me, but the article is mistitled. Musk is sending someone to the moon in 12-15 years. They're not going to have someone on the moon in 12-15 years. This makes a difference because I'm assuming the trip to Mars won't be short.
- ceejayoz 14y agoMars Curiosity took 8 months travel time.
- kruh 14y agoIt's really cute how you guys think this is even remotely possible. Heard about peak {oil, coal, gas, phosphorous, rare earths, iron} and AGW? It'll make his and your dreams short-lived. Sorry!
- ceejayoz 14y agoNone of those are expected to have any sort of effect by 2015 that'd prevent SpaceX from launching a rocket.
- FrojoS 14y agoOh boy, the greatest adventure ever and 95% percent of the world's engineers have to watch -and all they can do is root and hope, because they are not american citizens. Heck, if only there was a new Operation Paperclip [1], people would sign up to become "Nazis". [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip