Elon Musk Says SpaceX Will Send People to Mars by 2025
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
And that's without people. Now add humans to that equation. Not easy.
I mean, we could barely refrigerate food 100~150 years ago and now we are developing technology to build habitats on another planet? How cool is that?
The response: "The important thing to understand about Elon is that he wants to retire on Mars". Deadpan serious.
Goals are dreams with a deadline.
You can criticize Musk for many things, but he really does believe that his goals are achievable, that he will achieve them, and that they are good investments.
The really important dreams are rarely good investments. I don't think anyone seriously believes the manned exploration of Mars will turn any profit. A true believer wouldn't care. There are people who would hand over a dozen winning lotto tickets for a chance to go to Mars. Musk faces that decision every day. That makes it difficult for me to believe tales of his madman/dreamer rhetoric.
And I'm not criticizing musk the person. I'm say that here is a disconnect between the public dreamer persona and the known actions of the physical person.
You can not put all your money into one mission and crash into mars. Its a multiyear effort of building a sustainable the needed infrastucture and technology.
Because of this approche Elon is different from others and its why he actually have a change of success.
I think this will be the most profitable enterprise mankind has ever seen. A earth full of mineral wealth untouched, available for whoever can lay their hands on. If spaceX was trading today I would buy its stock in a blink and hold on to it for the next 50 years.
The Gates and Zuckerbergs of this world are prepared to part their amassed fortunes, but only when they have no possible use for it (IE death)
Smart dreamers don't exit high school with that dream, make a hundred bucks at the drive-thru, and buy some rope and a few carabiners at the hardware store, see how high they can get that weekend, and repeat for decades. They re-invest their $100 until they can buy or commission the gear they need, gather experience on other mountains, and spend time learning about their target until they can make the climb.
Yes, you still need money to attempt something big. But that's really a small blocker given what it would actually take in terms of human effort to do some thing of that magnitude.
The right way to look at this is to see, if you would climb the mountain tomorrow if you had all that. The answer is obviously for most people 'no'. The real reason why most people do no climb a mountain is because it hard.
>>They re-invest their $100 until they can buy or commission the gear they need, gather experience on other mountains, and spend time learning about their target until they can make the climb.
Very true, plus they keep climbing a lot of smaller mountains.
Also, Musk's fortune is comes from the shares he owns of his own companies. Not sure it's a smart move to sell all those shares to invest the cash back in the same company.
As the article says one of the main reasons is to inspire people, but the current world is structured in a way that tells a lot of people that they are out, they won't ever be part of society in a meaningful way, they'll get some money to stay alive and sort of make it through life, but they will never be meaningful members of a community.
So in this kind of atmosphere seems very difficult to convince people to participate in any kind of common project for all of us.
For the best propaganda value (which I doubt Musk is concerned about at this moment)a member of the excluded economic caste should be sent abroad... but who knows how things will be different in 10 years.
The same is true for Mars. I am almost sure I am not going into space in the next 50 years. Yet it is of value to me that someone goes into space or lives on Mars during my life. I would really like to see news from Mars, how people are doing there, what they invent to make their life better there etc.
Putting this into money is what Mars One [1] project proposes. They plan to raise money by putting their project on TV, because almost everyone would like to see how someone else is doing on Mars, even if not helping directly or participating in the project.
I think the original idea goes from chapter "Might have been" of the "Machinery of freedom" book [2]. There David Friedman proposed the same idea, just the goal is less ambitious: Mars is substituted for Moon.
But who knows, the current world is young and we still don't know the direction it will take, maybe common projects come back in a meaningful way at some point.
He is trying to build a market for his services. He doesn't want to finance Mars himself. He want the public to get Nasa to pay for his company to send things/people into space. I'll believe his lofty intentions when I see a SpaceX-financed probe go to Mars, or the moon, or basically anywhere other than to fulfil a contract.
I think it inspires him, and many others, but working toward the many earthly problems that cause human suffering right now would also be pretty inspiring. Of course we should all tackle whichever issues are most interesting to us, but in this regard I'm more of a Gates fan.
He does have competition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources
Some pros to having a base on Mars could be families of miners can live "close by" miners (or those that operate and/or maintain the telepresence or self driving mining equipment, and possibly a place to do any sort of processing.
Also, there could be mining possibilities on Mars as well, and without all the environmental issues we'd have to consider on Earth.
The "all of the eggs in one basket" aspect is certainly one I can get behind, but I think there's monetary gain is probably a more powerful motivator to those that have the most influence.
As someone else in this thread mentioned, solving hunger disease, and violence doesn't really do anything to address most of the extinction-level threats.
It's not hospitable to humans and we as humans will need to create a vaccuum tube like city that if penetrated could kill all who lived in it.
This thought might be way off per seeing one movie, so I'd love to hear someone tell me otherwise..... like why inhabiting a inhospitable planet to humans is a good idea.
Musk has been interviewed before saying he wants at least one large group of people acting as a backup. It would be a shame if we stayed on Earth hoping to get the technology to make a place 100% hospital before leaving; who knows how long that would take and how much innovation we'd lose out on for not being bold.
It's hospitable to humans and mutants alike and it has a nice structure over the city, which is a security risk if penetrated to be honest.
This thought might be way off per seeing one movie, so I'd love to hear someone tell me otherwise..... like why inhabiting an enclosed city hospitable to humans isn't a good idea.
Maybe use conventional means to robotically transport the shelters, building materials, and other resources to Mars, and then the humans can be transported via NPP, which would save tons of air and food resources compared to an eight month conventional trip, and also be safer -- a much shorter time in space means much less risk of cosmic ray exposure, micrometeorites, equipment failures, medical emergencies, etc.
If we can overcome the safety issues and the political squeamishness of manufacturing and launching into orbit hundreds of small nuclear explosives, we can possess Mars. It just takes money and will.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket This one lets you at least 'aim' the fission fragments. It's dangerous and fast, thought you would like that.
But closed cycle is best: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket
We don't need or want 'Nukes in Space' just reactors and engines.
I can understand inspiration part but don't get how this help preventing human extinction. Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? I understand that trying to reach other planets can push forward technology to incredible levels but it would be more meaningful if this technology can find areas to resolve Earth's current problems.
Even if you are really into space exploration, developing a comet pusher would be infinitely more valuable.
They are mostly political problems rather than technologies.
The exception would be diseases, because a lot of that is the scientific challenge and research and development.
And they're all problems that plague our quality of living rather than posing any kind of existential risks. Nuclear war, asteroid strikes, and UFAI would qualify as existential risks.
Plus, by establishing a colony on Mars, you reduce the probability of extinction should something happens to Earth.
What makes you think technology pushed to incredible levels won't assist with Earth's current problems?
Several times on HN I have posed replies that consist of the snappy comment: "your logical fallacy is: " followed by a link. It doesn't usually go over well.
Yes, it would be wise to do those things. I mean, to do them as well: It's not one of the other. The "don't go to Mars, fix poverty" argument is something like Whataboutery or "Fallacy of relative privation"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci...
That's what my experience indicates, anyway ;)
Imagine if presidential debates had real-time scoring of what was being said. Politifact is great, but 24h delay makes it substantially less impactful.
"It's not one or the other"
To a large degree it is, as in "you cant have your cake and eat it".
But with the decent possibility of somebody like Donald Trump becoming President, I think the journey to Mars can't come soon enough.
Those are threats to individual human beings, not to mankind as a whole. A Great Plague or a (non-nuclear) world war here and there can wipe 1/3 of humanity, but for the species as a whole it's just an inconvenience: it can be compensated in a couple of generations, through our adaptable fertility rate.
There are dangers, mostly ecological, which can wipe out the whole species: nuclear winter, mega-volcanoes, meteors... (yes, most of them are about some form of climate change) The mitigation for those dangers is to have several separated ecosystems, not regrowing the population locally after a demographic setback.
A city on Mars would probably take centuries to turn into an independent ecosystem (including all of the mining, transforming and recycling of every material required, and the means to extend itself across the planet. Or even, maybe, terraforming). But a partially Earth-dependent Mars city is a very important milestone towards the big goal.
Finally, he doesn't say that all of our efforts should be dedicated to that single goal: he's quite involved in fixing Earthly problem, including energy, climate change and transportation. He's also vocal about how we should think very hard about the kind of IA we want to cohabit with.
Perhaps a terraforming project could be accomplished in a few thousand years, but for the most part this is all ridiculous pipe dream. We only have one planet.
As for asteroid mining, aren't metals available here on earth too, at a fraction of the cost? How about an R&D effort to make batteries and other technology out of easily-available metals here? Wouldn't that spending yield useful products much more cheaply than trying to get them from out there in the sky?
We have to stop reading science fiction and taking it as prophecy. The case for seeding our species on another planet makes no economic sense.
This "news" is from an interview Elon did in Hong Kong. It's actually one of the better and most interesting interviews of Elon because the host was pretty knowledgeable. Well worth a full view:
"Talk about space always seems to be hung on ambiguities of purpose and timing. I would like to close here by putting a stake in the sand at TED. I intend to lead that expedition. (Applause) It can be done in seven years with the right backing. Those who join me in making it happen will become a part of history and join other bold individuals from time past who, had they been here today, would have heartily approved." - Bill Stone (TED 2007)
EDIT: Adding quote
Perhaps "terraforming" Australia's outback or the Sahara desert so as to create a swell place to live would be a more worthwhile project than living in a oxygenated and lead lined prison on Mars?
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni...
Will it be a "simple" round trip? The real problem is what to when you're there. Is there a base station? I don't see that happen before 2025. Maybe on the moon, but not on Mars. Maybe a return trip to Mars by 2025 or 2030, but not staying there.
If that's the case then just making a couple of unmanned return flights to test that seems it would take a decade.
A one-way ticket to Mars is certainly doable with current tech but unless we're sending Donald Trump I fail to see how we as a planet could get behind that concept.
If it is a problem I was thinking people might wear well distributed weight suits most of the day? You could also sleep and spend time in a large centrifuge type structure.
Got some evidence for that surprising claim?
NASA is the only organization in the history of the world that has actually put people onto a reduced-gravity body.
Wouldn't it be more economical to try to save our planet first?
What you want to know is to protect our planet from becoming a death-trap for the human race.
The question is, what kind of scenarios you envisioned would threaten the condition of our environment, thus humanity?
It wouldn't surprise me if by doing all the necessary research and engineering to make a stable mars settlement possible we would make leaps toward a sustainable life here on earth too. After all you won't live there by wasting your resources.
Even if we went full green/sustainable that doesn't stop a nuclear war, big hunk of rock hitting us from space or Yellowstone going boomboom at some point.
Dinosaurs died out because they didn't have nuclear power plants or indoor greenhouses.
A major impact would still be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions... but putting a bunch of technocrats on mars isn't going to change that either.
Edit: upon further thought it would be prident to store frozen embryos on board with the associated equipment to use them to ensure genetic diversity.