Elon Musk Proposes Spaceship That Can Send 100 People To Mars In 80 Days (theverge.com) 497
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Today, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Mars vehicle -- the spaceship his company plans to build to transport the first colonists to Mars. It will have a diameter of 17 meters. The plan is to send about 100 people per trip, though Musk wants to ultimately take 200 or more per flight to make the cost cheaper per person. The trip can take as little as 80 days or as many as 150 depending on the year. The hope is that the transport time will be only 30 days "in the more distant future." The rocket booster will have a diameter of 12 meters and the stack height will be 122 meters. The spaceship should hold a cargo of up to 450 tons depending on how many refills can be done with the tanker. As rumored, the Mars vehicle will be reusable and the spaceship will refuel in orbit. The trip will work like this: First, the spaceship will launch out of Pad 39A, which is under development right now at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. At liftoff, the booster will have 127,800 kilonewtons of thrust, or 28,730,000 pounds of thrust. Then, the spaceship and booster separate. The spaceship heads to orbit, while the booster heads back to Earth, coming back within about 20 minutes. Back on Earth, the booster lands on a launch mount and a propellant tanker is loaded onto the booster. The entire unit -- now filled with fuel -- lifts off again. It joins with the spaceship, which is then refueled in orbit. The propellant tankers will go up anywhere from three to five times to fill the tanks of the spaceship. The spaceship finally departs for Mars. To make the trip more attractive for its crew members, Musk promises that it'll be "really fun" with zero-G games, movies, cabins, games, a restaurant. Once it reaches Mars, the vehicle will land on the surface, using its rocket engines to lower itself gently down to the ground. The spaceship's passengers will use the vehicle, as well as cargo and hardware that's already been shipped over to Mars, to set up a long-term colony. At the rate of 20 to 50 total Mars trips, it will take anywhere from 40 to 100 years to achieve a fully self-sustaining civilization with one million people on Mars, says Musk.
Missing (Score:5, Interesting)
He's missing the part where you get a bunch of people to send you money for the fake chance to die on Mars. Where is his reality show that will fund everything?
http://www.mars-one.com/
No return trips? (Score:4, Interesting)
No word in the article about return trips to Earth. For a small pioneer colony that makes total sense to me, but when you talk about setting up a 1-million strong kind of colony, or even just the minimum of 4,000 (40 flights with 100 folk on board) you'll have to consider return trips as well. Cannibalizing your own space ships doesn't sound like too good an idea for that (though staying in orbit at both Earth and Mars, does).
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No need for return trips when all the passengers are killed by radiation on the flight out.
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Re:No return trips? (Score:5, Informative)
During the question and answer period after his announcement he said that if someone got there and changed their minds, they could return on the return trip of the spaceship. The intention is to reuse the ships so the will be coming back to be refitted and relaunched to be used again.
He also stated that one of the qualifications to go is that you have to be able to answer YES to the question, are you prepared to die - he expects it to be VERY dangerous.
I respect his ambition and his vision.
Re:No return trips? (Score:5, Funny)
Instead of the ambition to send people in giant ships to Mars, how about the ambition to fix the God damned space ships he's got now that regularly fail to get into LEO?
Good idea! You should call up Musk and suggest that to him, I bet he never thought of that.
Internet commenters save the day again!
Re:No return trips? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't call one launch failure "regularly". If you want to be specific, he also had one "pre-launch test" failure. So two failures on the Falcon 9. Not bad for 28 launches, considering the rate they're improving.
I don't understand the hate lately. It's as though the astroturfing on SpaceX has kicked up recently. At least they have a vision.
Pushing boundaries (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right. A 7.2% failure rate is horrible. (The Delta IV has a 3% failure rate, the Atlas V only 1.5% and the Ariane V a 2.3% rate. Only the Proton is worse, at 13% but that's since 1965.)
Not to come off as an apologist but my opinion when it comes to rockets is that if one isn't blowing some of them up then they probably aren't trying to push any technological or economic boundaries. I would actually be disappointed in them if they weren't experiencing some setbacks because that would mean they weren't trying as hard as they could. Rockets are complicated and there are a lot of things that can go wrong. They push the limits of our engineering capabilities. If you don't step over the line from time to time your pace of learning is going to be slow because you don't know where our limits are anymore. Doing the same safe already proven things everyone else has done will result in slow or no progress.
Rockets always can fail (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't push technological or economic boundaries with other people's $50M satellites.
Yes you do. There is always a risk of failure when you put something on a rocket. Anyone who promises they can do it with 100% reliability is either lying or delusional. The satellite owners knew that when they signed the launch contract. You make contingency plans in case the rocket blows up and get insurance. If the risk of blowing up is higher more money should change hands but nothing fundamentally changes about the risks. There is no launch system with a perfect success rate and more than a hand full of launches nor is there likely to be one any time soon.
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world."
Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
Re:No return trips? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're comparing the last ten years of a programme that had 30 years of development with the first ten years of a different one. How is that useful?
Re:No return trips? (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm sure that blah, blah, blah is the phrase they use in SpaceX's boardroom to describe their problems.
I'm sure it is the phrase they use to describe the bullshit that typically comes out of internet commenters.
Re:No return trips? (Score:5, Insightful)
I respect his ambition and his vision.
Instead of the ambition to send people in giant ships to Mars, how about the ambition to fix the God damned space ships he's got now that regularly fail to get into LEO?
If he's half the genius you are, with even a tenth of the success rate - it's possible he's thought of that. He may even, what's that word? Planned it.
Real life - it'll get you every time. I guess that's why it's an anathema to you, that and ever checking your facts.
As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps."
Re:No return trips? (Score:5, Funny)
As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps."
Now I don't feel so bad about my 4,672-step IKEA bookshelf.
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NASA will never sign on to suicide missions
Ever heard of Apollo 11? Yeah, that was pretty much a suicide mission. Nixon had several speeches prepared to deliver to the nation covering the myriad of possibilities for failure. Everything from a crash, to failed lunar rendezvous, to simple lost comms.
Our first lunar mission had a very real chance of being a suicide mission. The first martian mission will not be any different.
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All trips are return.. optionally.
Each ship that goes to mars will have to return to earth - after having being refueled on Mars. This is relatively easy thanks to the supercooled methane/oxygen engines, as CO2+H2O availability on Mars. Elon quipped that the return trip is free - since the ship has to come back anyway.
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when you talk about setting up a 1-million strong kind of colony, [...] you'll have to consider return trips as well
You missed subtext: we're sending all the lawyers and nobody wants them to return. ;)
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20-50 trips * 100-200+ people = 1 000 000?
The summary is bad. Each trip is 200+ ships, not just one. The ships are supposed to gather in big fleets in orbit waiting for an optimal transfer window, and then all leave at once for reasons of orbital mechanics and safety.
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So 200+ ships at billions of dollars each? Yeah, that's gonna happen.
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So 200+ ships at billions of dollars each?
I know this is Slashdot, where no one even reads the linked article(s), but... would it kill people to do a little research before mocking? If you're going to mock, at least mock a claim that they actually made.
The ships - if they ever get built at all - will not cost billions of dollars each. SpaceX believes they can get the unit cost for each stage down to around $200 million. It also intends to reuse all three stages many times: ~10 for the colony ship, ~100 for the refueling tanker, and ~1000 for the bo
Antarctica (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he's being a bit optimistic. Living conditions in Mars are closest to Antarctica on earth, and if you read about life in McMurdo Station it isn't pleasant. Additionally you can read about the large amount of supplies that are required every year to keep the base going.
We will get to Mars eventually, maybe even sooner than some people think, but a permanent colony is more than 30 years away.
Re:Antarctica (Score:5, Insightful)
Progress advances non-linearly, and fastest when someone with a vision leads.
Antarctic Bases Different (Score:5, Insightful)
Additionally you can read about the large amount of supplies that are required every year to keep the base going.
True but that is because nobody on an antarctic base spends their time trying to grow things (unless that is part of their science project). If you have everyone on the base dedicating all their time to growing food, finding resources, making repairs etc. you will probably need far fewer resources to support the base. This is impractical in Antarctica because it is cheaper to ship the food there than to support even more people living there who try to grow food themselves.
However I do agree that this proposal seems rather optimistic but the task is so amazingly hard that I expect that any Mars colonization mission will always appear overly optimistic until one actually succeeds.
Re:Antarctic Bases Different (Score:5, Informative)
Actually they do:
Hydroponics in Antarctica is as unique as the continent itself. The extreme environmental conditions found here make the process of growing food a formidable challenge. Four months of solid daylight, four months of total darkness, and unpredictable winds and temperature changes present a unique growing situation. One cannot simply build a glasshouse, set up a system, and expect tasty produce to grow!
The McMurdo
The McMurdo "Bucket" Hydroponics
However, at McMurdo Station on Ross Island (and to a much lesser degree at the South Pole Station), successful harvests are achieved on a daily basis. The 649 square foot greenhouse at McMurdo can generate a monthly average 250 lbs of produce during peak cycles. Varieties include lettuce greens, spinach, arugula, chard, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and herbs. The harvest is ample enough to provide a winter community of up to 230 people a salad once every 4 days, plus lots of fresh herbs, veggies, and fruit for the galley chefs to incorporate into their menus. During summer, however, community population can reach numbers of over 1000 people. During this time, the greenhouse simply acts as a supplement to the fresh food flown into the base from New Zealand. One of the greatest year-round benefits, however, is the fact that the greenhouse is the only source of lush, live plants, colorful flowers, and warm, humid air. Many community members frequent this environment for this reason alone!
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Re:Antarctic Bases Different (Score:5, Funny)
Better to dream big than not at all (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're going to Mars at all anyway messing around with just a few people means certain death for all. With enough people you have redundancy in skill and ability, a lot of pure manual labor on tap if required, and lots more of a drive to make the community continue. In think the timeframe is pretty realistic to be honest and the goal not very out of reach. Think of where we were technologically forty years ago, across many fields of science...
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But the question still remains: If you can build a colony on Mars, why not build a colony on the Moon? It has all the same cache of living under a dome to protect you from vacuum and radiation, doesn't take nearly as long to get there, and is close enough to earth that it's actually feasible have an evacuation plan. Also, you don't have to worry about sand storms gunking up your solar panels, and you get more annual insolation, generally, due to the closer orbit.
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Re:Better to dream big than not at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the Moon is only a bit closer in terms of energy, and still too far away to evacuate anything more than a modest outpost unless you have a nice, slow, orderly catastrophe that allows you months or years to evacuate. You also have to deal with razor-sharp moon dust that, without the benefit of weathering, will make short work of moving parts and formerly airtight seals.
Mars also has far more accessible and abundant resources - a massive ice cap, potentially useful amounts of subsurface water, and all the CO2 you could want delivered to your doorstep. That and greenhouses can give you most of the raw materials needed to build and grow a colony, both in terms of biomass, and carbon and cellulose-based building materials - nanocellulose for example is translucent and airtight, with a strength comparable to aluminum, and can be produced from woody biomass with purely mechanical processing.
As for solar, the insolation on the Moon is more intense, but you'd need pretty huge batteries to hold you through the nights - they are almost fifteen Earth-days long after all. While Mars days are only 40 minutes longer than Earth's, conveniently within the range that most people's circadian rhythms can adapt to.
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Umm, is that supposed to be a joke? Or have you just never actually paid much attention to the moon?
The monthly cycle of the phases of the moon are the result of it's month-long day-night cycle. The part of the moon that's bright is in daylight, the part that's dark is in night, and just like Earth the day-night cycle sweeps across the entire planet. The "dark side of the moon" is poetic license for the side that faces permanently away from Earth, not unlike calling Africa "the dark continent" - referrin
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The closest would be the death zone close to the summit of Everest or K2 (without the stunning views). Once in the death zone, you start dying and keep dying until you come back down the slope.
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Well, maybe. If you were living in an Antarctica whose most violent winds were barely as strong as a light breeze, and had the benefit of incorporating free vacuum-thermos grade insulation into all of your structures and garments.. That super-thin atmosphere has it's advantages after all - "air temperature" is more of a theoretical concept, and in practice you need only guard against radiant thermal losses and conduction into the ground.
To another world in 80 days? (Score:2)
Time Dilation (Score:2)
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Yes, it sounds like Musk is more a fan of Jules Verne than Copernicus or Kepler. 80 days will take a lot of energy.
"really fun" with zero-G games (Score:5, Funny)
The games start out as zero-G laser tag, with the winners moving on to a grueling regimen of real-time strategy games...
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1Million People (Score:2)
Doing some maths... sending 200 people per trip, and 50 trips, means 10k people sent there. Assuming half are women, and each woman has 5 children, there'd then be 35k people. Assume every 20 years each new generation also has 5 children. It'd take 80 years for the population to reach a population of 977k, minus those who died in those 80 years. That said, why would a million people be needed or even desirable? Large numbers of manual laborers won't be required due to the large amount of advanced machinery
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That's a bad idea for genetic diversity. If you want to maximize organic growth you should send an all-female crew and a huge sperm bank that they can choose from.
I find this idea rather distasteful, however. It is unfair to the men who want to go to Mars, and is using women just as baby factories instead of qualified workers.
But besides moral problems, it is also very inefficient. There is no point in sending a crew to Mars that will be busy taking care of newborns in a very hostile environment. Much bette
Re:1Million People (Score:4, Funny)
Muffley:Well, I, I would hate to have to decide...who stays up and...who goes down.
Dr. Strangelove: Well, that would not be necessary, Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross-section of necessary skills. Of course, it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. Ha, ha. But ah, with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present Gross National Product within say, twenty years.
Muffley: But look here doctor, wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief-stricken and anguished that they'd, well, envy the dead and not want to go on living?
Dr. Strangelove: No, sir...excuse me...When they go down into the mine, everyone would still be alive. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead! [involuntarily gives the Nazi salute and forces it down with his other hand]Ahhh!
Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Russian Ambassador: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
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I'd agree that large numbers of colonists would be problematic. There is no way to generate income, because Mars has no industry, no supply chai
Re:1Million People (Score:5, Interesting)
Meh, limited trade with Earth is certainly in the cards; the question of "how limited" depends on a lot of factors, but particularly their return launch costs. Even simple "Martian rock", sold as collectables or decorative stone, in small quantities could fetch tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram. Collectables markets and luxury goods markets ("Oh, the foyer in your palace is granite from Tuscany? How quaint - my foyer is from Mars") are very real things. But one order of magnitude difference in return prices equates to multiple orders of magnitude difference in the size of the market. Likewise, what exactly is available will also affect the value. A brittle sandstone for example isn't going to get the same market for the same price as big chunks of agate. We don't know what all will be found on Mars, but the presence of hydrothermal systems is encouraging; they're associated with quartz, calcite, chalcedony (agate, onyx, etc), zeolites, opal, etc. The jewelry market would be excellent to be able to break into, in terms of the scale versus what they pay per kilogram.
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No, the rovers have not been gem prospecting. But the data that they've recovered would be useful for doing so. There's a lot of heavy hydrothermal veining near curiosity for example (primarily gypsum, but it's a good start!). What I wouldn't give to be there with a rover with good range...
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Doing some maths... sending 200 people per trip, and 50 trips, means 10k people sent there. Assuming half are women, and each woman has 5 children...
It's a bad summary; there is no breeding required to make the numbers work. I watched Musk's talk, and it's really 50 fleets not 50 ships. Groups of about 200 ships will leave at about the same time for reasons of orbital mechanics and safety.
[50 fleets] * [200 ships per fleet] * [100 people per ship] = [1 million people]
Either way, the larger problem is figuring out how to move enough equipment and supplies to keep the colonists alive; it's doubtful that even one million people is anywhere close to enoug
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Either way, the larger problem is figuring out how to move enough equipment and supplies to keep the colonists alive; it's doubtful that even one million people is anywhere close to enough to produce a self-sustaining ultra-high-tech society in a super-hostile environment as Musk envisions.
I suspect there may be some trade elements to the plan. No one says there won't be other traffic to Mars (and beyond).
Having just finished reading about the early years of European voyages to Australia I can see similarities - except that the Europeans were more naive about the risks and less concerned about the worst case scenarios. Come to think of it - all the early "explorers", whalers, seal hunters etc endured harsh conditions and high loss rates - but their enterprises were not for naught. Mars and be
Re:1Million People (Score:5, Insightful)
Sending even 100 people is pointless unless it's been proven that a handful of people can survive there. .
Sending a handful of people, and 1 of them passes away due to whatever, you've lost 20% of your workforce, and significant skills, which is likely to destroy the sustainability of your colony.
What's missing (Score:2)
I wish this effort all the best, but I think we're going to find that life without stable ecosystems or a magnetosphere is not going to be easy. We take much for granted here on Earth, and though the technology may allow us to land some people there, I predict that living healthy lives with a stable local food supply is going to take a lot more than the rocket scientists are counting on. Biochemistry and ecology have vastly more complex open systems to deal with, but that's what we come from.
Better send a
Re:What's missing (Score:4, Insightful)
While I see your point I believe that there are bigger issues to solve first. The technology is easy compared to many of the non-technological issues that caused colonization efforts to fail before. Take as examples many failed colonies from the age of sail to more recent efforts to create new nations on artificial structures like islands or "floating cities". What caused many of them to fail were not technology but issues like people having disputes over property rights, people not doing their "fair share" of the work to maintain the colony, how crimes are dealt with, taxation disputes, and so forth.
These "soft science" problems in fields like psychology, economics, law, and so forth are (to me at least) bigger questions than "hard science" problems like building a big enough rocket, being able to grow veggies, or creating enough oxygen for people to breathe.
I've thought about how these issues might be solved and considered writing a story basically proposing solutions. You propose sending robots to Mars first to build things for the colonists. What I have to ask is, who owns what the robots build? That might not seem like a big problem at first but for the people on Mars it might be a matter of who lives and dies. I can just imagine a person hoarding valuable items, or even valuable data, and causing problems. Valuable data like how to repair an important item can be a means to declare ownership of something. If one of these robots sent to Mars to build things for the colonists breaks then what? Can a person on Mars then declare ownership of the robot, and therefore anything it builds in the future, by repairing it? Would ownership have to be shared in some way and in what proportion?
I believe that solving the problems on how to live on Mars is more than just what biochemistry and ecology can answer. We can send robots but we'll also have to send lawyers.
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A magnetosphere is rather premature, don't you think? We'd need to build an atmosphere first - and if we can accomplish that in less than several thousand years, then, maintaining it against the slow loss to the solar wind should be child's play.
Meanwhile, building and maintaining long-term artificial ecosystems should provide a great deal of knowledge that will be useful as we navigate the drastic climate changes Earth will likely be undergoing over the next few centuries. As yet, we've only seriously a
Trip to mars in 80 days, huh? (Score:2)
Money, money, money (Score:3)
Let's assume that with a decent design, efficient management and commercial flair the cost of a Mars mission is about the same - per journey: take-off to landing.
Let's also assume that for every populated launch, there is another that just carries supplies. The cost for 100 people to the red planet is about $1Bn - $10m per head. Now, I am sure there are plenty of people who would pay that amount. There are also many more that we (as the occupants of Earth) would be willing to raise the capital to send them - whether they want to go or not.
But to sustain $20Bn or more investment for 40 - 100 years before you have a viable colony needs more financing than one single internet outfit can provide - there are only so many millionaires who would be willing to walk away from their lives here on Earth. That kind of investment would only come from a nation or a religion.
It would also seem likely that some time after Musk got his operation running, there would be other operators entering the game. They would be setting up alternative colonies, for their own reasons and with their own goals in mind. It occurs to me that for a competing group, the simplest, least risky and cheapest route would be to NOT start up themselves, but to infiltrate or take over Musk's operation and then gain control of the colony (either by force, commercial shenanigans on Earth or indoctrination of the colonists) once it became self-sufficient.
The Moon is first (Score:2)
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Unfortunately, the problems are considerably more difficult, and the transportation costs almost as high. All the moon buys you is faster transit times, which is only relevant if your need for help can wait for several days.
The moon is interesting primarily as a fuel, and perhaps eventually construction base, conveniently near (energetically) Earth orbit. And perhaps as a location for major radio telescopes on the far side, nicely shielded from Earth's radio noise. Mars is practically Earthlike in compar
Think of the Hardship! (Score:3)
I was thinking of booking myself on this. But even though I'll be getting the chance to stand on another planet, the trip sounds really boring. 80 days without access to a good restaurant and the latest Hollywood blockbuster? Who's going to put themselves through that kind of hardship?
"really fun".... (Score:3)
Somebody clearly has lost his marbles.
Phileas Fogg (Score:3)
Phileas Fogg to sign up for the 80 day trip to Mars.
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Nah, he just didn't mention fine print in the release form where you certify that you understand that your DNA will be denatured by interplanetary radiation and in fact that it's an integral part of the experience you're seeking.
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Buzz Aldrin worked out the easiest way to get to Mars in a reasonable timeframe but that's quite a few months of getting zapped.
Despite all the silly bits the Japanese Anime from a few years ago "Planetes" explored the issue well. With a thriving moon colony, a lot of activity in orbit and all the technology to enable that there was still the situation where older
Re:Let's Get One Thing Fixed... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's try to solve the exploding rocket issue first before we start sending people to Mars, kk, Elon?
That is not the best strategy. It is better to push forward, take risks, and fail fast. You learn more from your failures than from your successes.
Look at North Korea, a poor impoverished country that has made huge strides by developing in fast cycles without worrying too much about failures. Their first rockets either blew up on the launch pad or shortly after liftoff. The world laughed. Yet they were ready to try again just a month or two later. That one blew up too, but it went further. Now, a few years later, they can put satellites in orbit, and they will soon have the technology for ICBMs that can reach North America. Nobody is laughing anymore.
Re:Let's Get One Thing Fixed... (Score:4, Funny)
Their first rockets either blew up on the launch pad or shortly after liftoff. The world laughed. Yet they were ready to try again just a month or two later. That one blew up too, but it went further. Now, a few years later, they can put satellites in orbit,
That all sounds familiar. I think Monty Python foreshadowed a conversation between Kim Jong-il and his son:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Let's Get One Thing Fixed... (Score:2)
Re:Let's Get One Thing Fixed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair enough. But I don't think we want to adopt their policy of facing a firing squad for failure.
There is no evidence whatsoever that NK has done that. That is just Western propaganda. They have deliberately chosen a "fail fast" strategy, and that doesn't work if you shoot your best engineers. Sure, Kim shoots people for political disloyalty, but that is an entirely different thing.
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There is no evidence whatsoever that NK has done that. That is just Western propaganda.
It is? I must have missed it. I thought it was just something from a bad movie plot.
When is the last time any sovereign state leader has routinely executed people for failure?
Or any propaganda has said so?
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NK imprisons the condemned and up to three generations of their direct family members,
How do you know? Do you have first hand knowledge, or are you just regurgitating the propaganda that your government has been spoon feeding you? Most of these stories come from defectors who have a strong incentive to lie and embellish. If everything defectors said was true, there would have been a WMD in every Iraqi backyard.
subjecting them to hard labor for life for political disloyalty.
Engineering errors are not "political disloyalty". There is no evidence that NK punishes people for honest mistakes.
So are we... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So are we... (Score:4, Insightful)
They're going on Ark B.
Bankers (Score:5, Funny)
What about bankers?
Unregulated, they will be able to make Mars the most prosperous place in the galaxy by trading the assets there between themselves for ever increasing amounts of money. The freedom to create new complex derivative schemes without pesky oversight, will eliminate risk from the Mars economy, heralding a new dawn of prosperity and growth in the value of the assets that presently lie dormant there. New forms of high frequency trading will further boost liquidity, increasing investment and economic stability.
Before you know it, Mars will go from a worthless planet full of rocks, to one where those same rocks are worth trillions, and all without a single rock needing to be overturned. That, my friend, is the sort of true innovation that has built the West into the current powerhouse it is.
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No, no, you misunderstand. The purpose is to get them off of Earth, where they can't do any more damage. To that end, I would propose that the first mission include the entire United States Senate. As much as I'd like to start with the House, they won't fit, but we can divide them up across subsequent missions.....
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It won't work...we can't build ships that fast :(
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No, we want to fill a barren, nearly oxygen-free planet with politicians, to beta test the technology. Then, we want to fill the universe with everyone else.
Re: So are we... (Score:5, Insightful)
Such nonsense. Do you think Mars is "habitable"? Even global warming + nuclear war wouldn't make Earth as uninhabitable as Mars is.
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I would send the British monarchy, only because I think they are a giant waste of my tax money.
Then you are uninformed, because getting rid of them would COST you money, to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds.
If you don't know why, you should learn, because you're completely wrong.
Re: So are we... (Score:4, Insightful)
But their absence would not mean no tourist dollars. Tourists don't avoid Versailles because the French got rid of their monarchy.
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But their absence would not mean no tourist dollars. Tourists don't avoid Versailles because the French got rid of their monarchy.
No, but their absence would mean no income from their lands, which goes to the British people, not them.
Go ahead, cut them off, learn something in the process how you'd have to raise taxes to cover the loss of income as they get their lands back.
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where do i go to waste my money on this dopey scheme
Winner of the 2016 Broken Logic Award! and runner up for Moron of the Century.
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finally musk has lost all his marbles.
Not really. This is nothing new. Elon doesn't have a filter between his brain and his mouth. He thinks out loud. He spews a constant stream of idea and opinions. But he has made enough of his crazy ideas actually work that it would be foolish to dismiss anything he says.
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So basically, like Donald Trump, but with better follow-through?
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Potatoes.
Have you not read the book or seen the movie?
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Unfortunately, to do that you'll probably need to either bombard the planet with asteroids rich in atmospheric components, or build massive soil-processing infrastructure to release them into the air - Earth's atmosphere masses about 5x10^18kg, and even with Mars's having 1/4 the surface area to cover, 10^18 kg still amounts to 2.5 million kg of air for every person currently on Earth. You're going to need some serious infrastructure to deliver that kind of tonnage, and Earth is a long way away.
Aerobraking Would Not Work Well With Mars (Score:2, Informative)
Then there is the a
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http://www.x-plane.com/adventures/mars.html
It can be used to roughly look at aerobraking and other things in Mars air. Even turning is a challenge.
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The problem is that people are squishy and don't stay perfectly still, so you have to constantly make small course corrections.
That is nonsense. By the law of conservation of momentum, people moving around inside the ship cannot meaningfully alter the course of the ship as a whole during free-fall. During engine burns, the minute shifts in the vessel's centre of mass caused by people's movements will be easily compensated for by the powerful engines - especially since those people will probably be strapped into seats for safety reasons, anyway.
Then there is the aerobraking! At sea level Mars has 0.6% the pressure of Earth. This is why they crash probes into Mars instead of trying to land them. Parachutes won't work...
While Mars' atmosphere is indeed too thin to actually land using only parachutes, it is p
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but its not science and it won't advance us.
How so? It's exploring a new planet! We have many hypothesis on how humans can colonize Mars (if it's possible). This is proving one of those hypothesis.
Furthermore, it advances the human race by making it an interplanetary species. Which is in the title of Musk's presentation. Being an interplanetary species makes humans harder to become extinct, and prevents our progress from being lost during a global crisis.
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How much wealth are we talking about? If it's enough, I'll be happy to build a "spacecraft" powered by a state of the art ANFO engine, put you in it and "launch" it. I'll need the money up front, of course.
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Not the best approach (Score:2)
As with anything huge, it's better to aim for the higher goal so that if you fail you've still accomplished something worthwhile. If they try and fail at this, Moon will be a piece of cake. Another issue with Moon is that you can't make fuel there. That's kinda bad, because it means you have to take enough with you.
Re:Cool, but how does that help anything? (Score:5, Informative)
There's not much water on the moon, and no CO2 - but plenty of both on Mars. Add power and you can make methane fuel for the return trip (and for refueling trips further out). Plus you need water for drinking & hydroponics, oxygen for breathing, CO2 for your greenhouse, hydrogen for fuel cells - much harder to be self-sustaining for any long term on the moon.
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Despite how Elon phrased it, "water" isn't abundant on Mars. Rock-hard, gritty, perchlorate-contaminated, hexavalent chromium-contaminated clay-brine permafrost ? Yes. "Water"? No.
Mining isn't an easy thing even here on Earth - a maintenance-prone task that runs through lots of consumables - let alone on Mars where you have to choose between horrible throughput for remote operation, or local operation with astronomical local labour costs. A number of Mars in-situ proposals have outright done away wit
Re:Cool, but how does that help anything? (Score:4, Interesting)
In terms of mining, I'm curious about mineral concentrations on Mars. On Earth billions of years of geologic, hydrologic and biologic processes have concentrated minerals for us to mine. What about a geologically dead world like Mars? Same thing with people talking about asteroid mining. Yes, there's millions of tons of platinum on that there asteroid. There's an atom of it over there, an atom over there, an atom over there...
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Mars is an easier place to build a base than the Moon. You send the people to Mars, they build the infrastructure and refuel the ship, then they send the ship back. Meanwhile, they start producing drinkable water, breathable air, and food, all things that can theoretically be done there. When the next people show up, the ground has been broken, and the second wave can get started helping out, while the first wave start pumping the fuel (from the system they built the first time round) into the ship to get i
Making a base on the moon is dangerous (Score:3)
Making a base on the moon is dangerous, it could lead to many problems. For example, people might start sending their nuclear waste there which could lead to them exploding and taking the moon off orbit. Or people of Earth could start taking advantage of people on the moon until the latter get pissed and start throwing rocks to the earth.
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If you're not onboard with SpaceX's not-at-all-secret long-term strategy, you shouldn't invest in SpaceX.
Defintions (Score:2)
Why people?
Because you don't have a colony without people, by definition.
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Is he going to use to keep 100 people confined in a restricted space for 80 days from tearing out each others throats?
Go to Mars? Easy. Live with other people for 12 weeks? That's hard.
This only works on submarines since the sailors all want to go home one day but ad it stands Mars is a one way, survival of the fittest voyage.
So you didn't have to strain yourself to think of an Earth-side example where this worked. I imagine it'll work for a Mars voyage for similar reasons.
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This only works on submarines since the sailors all want to go home one day but ad it stands Mars is a one way, survival of the fittest voyage.
You're not a fan of history are you? Or basic research? Hint: much of this planet is populated by people who either moved there - or their ancestors did (some of whom were sailors who didn't want to go home - that's why they got on the ship). And if you had been able to read original source you'd know that: return trips should be possible; no one said it was going to be a prison colony (trade?).
Re:H20 (Score:4, Informative)
Mars has icecaps estimated to contain about 3 million cubic km of water ice, roughly 1/3 as much water as exists as liquid fresh water on Earth. There may also be useful amounts of subsurface liquid water - that's one of those as yet unresolved features we've found tantalizing hints about.
It also has copious amounts of almost laboratory-pure CO2 freely delivered everywhere on the planet. Between the two, you've got most of the bulk ingredients necessary to build biomass.