It's going to cost billions to reach Mars, and more billions to develop things to a "good enough" point to actually make the round trip feasible - and so far, at least to my knowledge, we've found nothing of enough value to make trips there economically viable for a for-profit corporation.
Sure, they'll get government contracts, but that doesn't pay for the first trip there (which appears will be entirely on their own/investors dime).
There aren't massive gold or platinum deposits we've found - and even if there were, surely it would be difficult to extract and recover due to mass.
I firmly believe Musk is totally willing to bankrupt his company (and himself) to achieve his goal of landing on Mars, but are his investors? What about Boeing and Lockheed Martin (ULA)?
At least with a government landing on Mars, you can expect science to be conducted. What does a for-profit company do there, when there's not much to make a profit from?
What's the end-game here? We land and say "we did it!"... then what?
NASA is a government scientific research entity, and has no obligation to turn a profit. SpaceX and ULA do.
If SpaceX can show they are have a very capable platform for heavy lifting before anyone else they can retain that position for a long time. Moon bases, Hubble replacements, long term space stations all need heavy launch capabilities. SpaceX wants to sell them their premier service.
Although, wouldn't building a moon base first make more sense? Walk before you can run, sort of thing? Or even Venus, since it's closer.
It would seem so, yes.
> What about Boeing and Lockheed Martin (ULA)?
Doubtful. Their motivation is to earn profit. Elon's motivation is his "pioneerism" (the doctrine behind the act of pioneering).
> At least with a government landing on Mars, you can expect science to be conducted.
It's been 44 years since humans physically conducted science on another body. Robots are great for "doing science" that's planned out in advance, humans are great for "doing science" ad-hoc.
> What does a for-profit company do there, when there's not much to make a profit from?
I just don't see SpaceX as a for-profit company when its leader unabashedly says that profiteering would ruin his vision for SpaceX. The fact that people keep throwing money at them just underscores the human (and, yes, corporate) drive to stand behind him.
> What's the end-game here? We land and say "we did it!"... then what?
That's the most wonderful thing of all. We don't know what would happen next. To quote Richard Feynman (emphasis added): "Some people say, 'How can you live without knowing?' I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know."
(Of course in the process of landing a million people on Mars, he'll need to balance the books to make it financially sustainable. I do have some questions about how he'll do that, but can envision a handful of ways to make it work. The actual value, however, is almost entirely off-book.)
Financially:
(1) It's a wonderful tech demo and brand builder to attract customers who want to buy a ride to LEO on a very reliable rocket.
(2) To get to mars without a national-sized budget, they need to make the entire project stack cheaper and more reliable than ever before, which helps them sell rides to LEO cheaper than the competition.
(3) What's the end-game here? We land and say "we did it!"... then what?
Musk says he is dead serious about a permanent colony on Mars as insurance against human extinction on Earth. There's no end game - it's the beginning of life spreading from the Earth.
Secondly, it's worth noting that "billions" isn't as big of a number as you'd think in the context of modern capital markets. PwC published a paper recently that estimated there'd be $100 trillion in so-called assets under management (AuM) by 2020. (http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2014/pwc-global-asse...) The market capitalization of Amazon _today_ is $400 billion.
Theoretically, SpaceX could easily raise all the money it needs and more. I don't know how practical that would be, or even if that's their plan at all. But the salient point here is that there's a _ridiculous_ amount of global capital up for grabs. This ain't the 1950s or 1980s. The rise of the third-world and the pace of global trade has created an almost unfathomable amount of wealth. Even if the markets crash tomorrow and it's cut in half, it's still unfathomable from the perspective of 20 or 30 years ago.
I remember reading an Economist article in the late 1990s (maybe early oughts) that showed using historical data that wealth tended to grow exponentially. (I haven't been able to track it down.) The point of the article was that wealth inequality will naturally increase dramatically because for any time span those with more wealth will accumulate even more wealth, proportionally, then someone poorer. The gap will naturally widen without forced redistribution.
Ignore issues about wealth inequality for a moment and think about what that phenomenon means for the amount of global capital available for investment. All that capital needs to be _invested_ somewhere. Even if appetite for risk never changes, it means the amount of capital available for the most risky ventures will grow dramatically. But perhaps as capital growth outpaces investment opportunities, appetite for risk will increase.
My point being, the practicality of a privately-funded Mars venture is likely to become more practical by the year. So even if it's starry-eyed today, it might not be in 5 or 10 years.
You're aware that SpaceX runs on a lot of corporate welfare, with SpaceX only existing because of NASA's COTS and Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts to the tune of $5b[1] and an undisclosed amount from NY state[2].
Both companies are alike and fairly dependent on the federal government, Boeing less so considering their large aircraft market. The wonderful thing about capitalism is you don't have to arbitrarily pick the "good" from the "bad." You have them compete and ideally good things come from competition. Frankly, I'm thrilled to have Boeing keeping Elon honest, and vice versa. This is the system working here.
On a more personal note, I think the CTS-100 is a beautiful spacecraft and would love to see it fly in 2018. Boeing can impress if they want to. I also love the fact that my kid is going to grow up in a world with many manned spacecraft by various organizations with various goals, not just the LEO-only shuttle I grew up with. I was just telling my wife about I'd love our son to see a manned rocket launch and realized that this 'sometime in the future' trip to Cape Canaveral is only a year or two away. Same with the first SLS test launch. 2018 is going to be an incredible year for manned space programs. It blows my mind how much grousing there is on the internet regarding the US's position in space. A few years without a manned program is such a tiny price to pay for all this change and innovation. This is an incredible time to be alive for space fans. I think we're going to look back at this period with a certain level of amazement the same way my parent's generation must have seen the initial space race.
[1] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...
[2] http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/23/my-love-hate-relationshi...
He isn't though. He's just posturing for PR purposes.
I mean, do we have any evidence that Boeing has a serious Mars program? How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results?[1]
As far as I'm concerned, this is the same thing as traditional car companies "vowing" to beat Tesla: it's just PR, backed by perhaps showing off concept cars in car shows.
[1]I meant launches that are specifically aiming for Mars.
You do know you're talking about Boeing here, right? They had somewhere around 300 launches with close to perfect success rate.
How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results?
S-1C Program (Saturn V Rocket First Stage): 12 successful launches, 0 failures.
IUS Program (Booster for interplanetary probes from Space Shuttle): 24 launches, 3 failures (2 Boeing's fault, 1 the space shuttle exploded).
Delta II: 153 Launches, 2 Failures.
Delta III: 3 Launches, 2 Failures.
Delta IV: 33 Launches, 1 Failure.
I mean, do we have any evidence that Boeing has a serious Mars program?
What about re-usable?
I see why ULA lost their contract, Musk cut their knee caps off.
[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/recove...
[2] https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/13/ula-unveils-its-future...
I meant launches that are specifically aiming for Mars.
Musk revealed his roadmap to Mars. Why haven't we heard about Boeing's?
SpaceX still doesn't have a launch vehicle in production capable of getting humans to Mars, unlike Boeing.
From [0]: "Senator Orrin Hatch made sure the new rocket used solid boosters, manufactured in his state. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby insisted that Marshall Space Flight Center design and test the rocket. Florida Senator Bill Nelson brought home billions of dollars to Kennedy Space Center to “modernize” its launch facilities."
Yuck.
ITS, on the other hand, is claimed to cost ~$10 billion, and begin putting people on Mars (in lots larger than half a dozen, mind you) sometime in the 2020s. Yeah, it's ambitious. They've missed other ambitious deadlines.
I personally feel, subjectively of course, that SpaceX is more ambitious and "hungry" to go to Mars than Boeing is. But that's just my gut feeling, and I have no data to back that feeling up.
[0]: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/how-i-learned-to-stop...
I can't tell if you actually want answers but boeing has a fairly successful satellite deployment piece of the company.
$7,500 on a $75,000 car is not a large enough subsidy to "run" Tesla. It's incentive for energy efficiency and all cars manufactures get it.
Moreover SpaceX does not get any "welfare" in any form. They have a contract job via the government's Commercial Space program.
He is talking about the separate $5 billion corporate subsidy.
Falcon 1 and Merlin, Kestrel and Draco engines were funded with private capital; SpaceX was a space-faring company before NASA money got involved. COTS money went into developing the Falcon 9, and amounted to $278 million.
They did get a bunch of cash from NASA for launching crew to the ISS aboard Dragon v2: $2.6 billion. NASA also gave money to Boeing for their CST-100: $4.2 billion.
> Tesla only existing because of generous federal subsidies on electric cars and other handouts
The bulk of Tesla's cash comes from sales, stocks and bond sales - incentives from the government take the form of tax credits, or state agencies offering their own incentives because they are themselves competing to hitch a ride on Elon's business ventures. And who can blame them! Boeing gets considerable subsidies and tax credits as well, as do other car manufacturers and defense contractors, let's not suggest Tesla is alone here.
Also, Tesla was saved from near death by Daimler AG in early 2009, not by a "handout". In 2010, they received a low-interest loan from the government of $465 million, which they repaid in 2013 (the first automaker to repay their portion of the $8 billion loaned out).
Boeing makes less than a third of its revenue from defense and space spending, and yet has still received far more money through federal cost-plus contracts than SpaceX has received from all its revenue sources combined.
I don't think it's fair to characterize them as apples and apples here. Boeing keeps Elon honest by putting crew on ISS, or launching something to Mars, not by lobbying congress to slow Elon down with government red tape for matters that didn't pertain to the government to begin with. That's Boeing/Lockheed (ULS) using its position as one of the largest government defense and space contractors to keep their seat at the grown-ups table.
That said, the CST-100 Starliner is quite a good looking craft that evokes memories of the Apollo program, but I personally like the sleek and swooping curves of Dragon V2 - plus the whole "lands on its legs" thing they've got going on for it. :)
Photos of both can be seen here: http://www.americaspace.com/?p=73778
There's many 10 and 15 year old fully functional geostationary telecom satellites out there in orbit (Boeing 702 bus, etc) in "production" use with the world's largest satellite telecommunications companies. That's a track record SpaceX can't lay claim to just yet.
Yea? Why, because we have almost completely fucked up our home planet and will have to abandon it in few years. And we are happy, because we can see the associated fireworks?
Don't get me wrong. I like the progress with the space stuff. But I just don't like the idea just because of that everything else is sunshine and rainbows...It is not. And it is not really a great time to be alive. It is an extremely boring time to be alive. Imagine that you were living in a time period when electricity was invented. When radio waves were invented. Can you imagine how people felt when they saw the first cinema? When they heard voices that came across the town? When they saw the first locomotive? When they saw the first airplane? Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive.
Those were incredible times to be alive...
How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning? Justin Beiber and Hilariy Clinton? How many great inventions of our times will they read with excitement? Elon Musks Hyper loop?
No. I really don't think so. So yea. We are living in incredibly boring times....
EDIT: This comment is not relavant anymore since the parent comment has been edited to include "time to be alive for space fans.."...
> Those were incredible times to be alive...
No such time existed. Its not like "the past" all happened at once, or even in one lifetime.
> How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning?
Probably lots, many of which we're overlooking because of either excessive familiarity (in terms of art) or insufficient perspective to appreciate impact (in terms of science and technological inventions.)
Lots of the people of the past we read about and hold up today, whether in artistic or technical fields, weren't recognized in their own time. Our time is, likely, no better at recognizing those among us who will be viewed as notable in the future.
Yes, we did. I don't know that we will have to abandon it, but we do know that human civilization is on the precipice of change, largely in part due to our relentless pace of technological process and reduction in global inequality. Setting aside income and wealth distribution on an individual level, most technology available to humans is more broadly available to humans across the globe than at any time in history. We failed to improve away from fossil fuels for largely economic reasons, and have caused irreparable damage to our ecosystem as result. That doesn't mean we haven't done incredible things along the way, and it doesn't mean that human civilization is going to come to an end, it simply means that it will change.
> Imagine that you were living in a time period when electricity was invented.
There is the rub. Electricity wasn't invented, it was discovered. From the conventionally excepted discovery of electricity to the invention of devices which can be used to generate and distribute electricity, development of modern infrastructure and advances, and the most recent experimental batteries (and if you don't think batteries are experimental, take a good look at Samsung's recent failures), we have been on a 2500 year journey (the first documented history of electrical phenomen was the triboelectric effect, and documented in amber by ancient greeks) to get where we are.
We have vastly improved our understanding of how electricity works, but we haven't yet mastered it. We probably will never stop finding new and interesting ways to capture new forms of energy with the express goal of generating electricity, and it is almost certain that we haven't begun to imagine the different ways it can be used.
Along the way, we have used electricity to improve virtually every aspect of human life.
> Can you imagine how people felt when they saw the first cinema?
Yes, approximately. It suspect it felt as amazing and futuristic as the first time I connected to a BBS. It probably felt approximately the same way it did when I got my first internet connection, and decoupled my ability to learn from my (at the time) poor financial circumstances.
> When they heard voices that came across the town?
Yes, because I remember the first time I had a video call with my girlfriend when I was on a business trip.
> When they saw the first locomotive?
Yes, because I watched with glee as the Challenger shuttle took off, and then confusion and sadness when the Challenger accident unfolded in videos played on the news (I was 8 at the time).
> Imagine that you were living in a time when all the great people that we learned about in the history classes were alive.
Education in the sciences and the arts is more accessible than at any time in human history, in large part due to the advent of the internet. Think of all of the great people who will emerge over the next few generations!
> How many great people, how many great writers, how many great singers and poets of the current times do you imagine students after fifty years will be learning?
Has it occurred to you that the reason that we don't know all of the great minds and great artists that have emerged in the last century largely because the glut of invention, ingenuity and art has drowned our ability to single out greatness?
The great contemporary achievement is not that we have somehow failed to live up to our potential and there are no longer great people, it is that we have reduced the barrier to achievement so dramatically that almost anyone simply needs to try to have the opportunity to succeed in the way that only a select few were able to in the past.
In what era could the child of a refugee grown to build one of the greatest technology empires we have seen? Steve Jobs is and will be one of our contemporary greats; his story of building Apple, being pushed out, building a new empire, and triumphantly returning to control of Apple and leading it into a golden age is quite literally legendary (seriously, it's an amazing story, even overlooking Jobs behaviour, personality, and all the dramatic license that my summary takes! Do you really believe that it was 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae or is it just a beter story when you leave out the Thespians and Thebans?). In what era could the child of an upper middle class family build an means of connecting more than one billion people each day? Mark Zuckerberg is and will be one of our contemporary greats.
If Elon Musk achieves even a fraction of his dreams, he will be renowned in history as one of the most important contemporary great people. Whoever gets the credit for colonizing Mars may go down in history as the reason there still is a human species, depending on how the next century plays out :)
If you think we live in boring times, you would do yourself a service by taking some time out to explore what happened to your sense of wonder, and maybe try living without the modern conveniences invented in the last 30-100 years, even for a week.
Reduction in global inequality? I don't know what you mean.
>Electricity wasn't invented, it was discovered.
Agreed. My mistake. I don't know what the point is with the rest of that section. I was suggesting that the invention of ways to convert electricity to other forms of energy should have looked like magic at that time. With steam engines, at least you can see what is driving the wheel. But when a motor gets driven by just a wire connected to it or a bulb lighting up should have felt like magic at the time....
>I suspect it felt as amazing and futuristic as the first time I connected to a BBS.
I doubt. Once you have electricity carrying signals, it does not seem much more exciting that signals can be used transfer different kinds of data. So all the wonder of Internet does not feel so wonderful that way. It is just a scaled up telephone exchange...nothing more.
> Yes, because I remember the first time I had a video call with my girlfriend when I was on a business trip.
Same thing...
>Yes, because I watched with glee as the Challenger shuttle took off...
People freaked out when they first saw an automobile. No one freaked off when they saw a rocket lifted off. If you want to evoke the same kind of wonder today, I am afraid nothing short of antigravity will do.
> Education in the sciences and the arts is more accessible than at any time in human history, in large part due to the advent of the internet.
Accessible, yes. But the true workhorses of Internet are Porn and Advertising. You say that we have more access to science and arts more than ever. But we also have access to any kind of sick porn, and guess what our new generation of kids are hooked up on? Internet have opened multitudes of new channels to feed never ending Ads that inject insecurities into their minds and make them feel inadequate and make them buy buy and buy more and more stuff that they don't really need.
>Think of all of the great people who will emerge over the next few generations!
Ha ha. From where? From bowels of your smartphone, where their heads are buried? I would be surprised if the future generations will be able to hold a proper conversation face to face without the help of their smartphones to cue them in the right time to start speaking...
> ingenuity and art has drowned our ability to single out greatness?
You mean, there is greatness everywhere? I don't get you. Single out greatness?
> Steve Jobs is and will be one of our contemporary greats; > Mark Zuckerberg is and will be one of our contemporary greats.
Oh my. No comments for this one.
>Whoever gets the credit for colonizing Mars may go down in history as the reason there still is a human species...
No. Going and colonizing Mars or any other world is a short term solution. It is like paying one credit card bill with another credit card. The real solution is to stop/reduce spending when you are short on cash. In this case, that would be to learn to co-exist peacefully without waging the never ending fights/wars for resources, and learn to limit our extravagance so that our home does not go up in flames. And do that without turning the whole lot of human population to complete imbecils.
>do yourself a service by taking some time out to explore what happened to your sense of wonder..
My sense of wonder is just fine. It is just that my imagination hasn't been so dried up that I cannot imagine something more wonderful than a rocket taking off.....
Contrast the distribution of available technology across the globe throughout history. While there are still pockets of people stuck between the neolithic and bronze age, for the most part, more people have access to more technology than ever before.
Economic disparity is enormous, but the general quality of life for those not living in societies in active war zones, or for societies that don't have despots or leaders that are deliberately withholding technology and resources ('lost tribes' that are not lost, simply xenophobic, or nations like North Korea where state inflicted poverty and restricted access to technology is a means of control).
> comments dismissive of my sense of wonder (several comments)
I disagree, but then again, my experiences are subjective ;)
> Accessible, yes. But the true workhorses of Internet are Porn and Advertising.
Yes, you are correct. I don't agree with your assertion that there is a new generation of kids hooked on porn, but I could be convinced if you shared links to peer reviewed studies.
I agree with you on advertising, but then again, we only had two decades of experience with a connected culture, and we haven't even achieved 'hyper-connectivity' in the sense that everyone is connected, all the time. Time will tell if the advertisers win, but there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle. Humans are addicted to connection (in the human sense), and the first generation of connected adults are proving to be more discerning and aware of privacy than people expected when it comes to using technology to connect to other people.
> Dismissive comments about examples of greatness
If you don't think Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are examples of greatness, how about:
Physicists
- Stephen Hawking
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Richard Feynman
- Banksy
- Photographers Steve McCurry (Afghan Girl, an iconic photo), Nick Ut (photo from Vietnam war)
- Richard Serra
- Vik Muniz
Each notable for their contributions on the front of research and practical application as opposed to specific technologies
- Benoit Mandelbrot
- Ron Rivest
- Adi Shamir
- Len Adelman
- Alan Turing
- Edsger Dijkstra
> Going and colonizing Mars or any other world is a short term solution.
No, it's not. A short term solution would be doubling down and investing in building facilities that meet modern atmospheric expectations and attempting to survive as we burn the rest of the world down around us. A short term solution would be attempting to stifle the economic progress of undeveloped countries as they ride the fossil fuel train to something like economic equivalency instead of investing in and being the early adopters that drive down the cost of environmentally alternatives such that other countries can modernize themselves.
Another short term solution would be to trigger a set of EMPs in orbit that would knock out the last 100 years of technological development and force us to build technologies that don't rely on the ready availability of fossil fuels while we reacquire our current level of sophistication.
Going to another planet, and learning how to survive there, including how to properly manage and keep an environment pristine and survivable in a sustainable fashion (a core requirement to survive in a hostile environment) is most certainly not a short term solution.
> It is just that my imagination hasn't been so dried up that I cannot imagine something more wonderful than a rocket taking off.....
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.” ― Terry Pratchett (oh, also, another contemporary great person!)
>Going to another planet, and learning how to survive there, including how to properly manage and keep an environment pristine and survivable in a sustainable fashion...
We are not able to keep ourselves from completely ruining the environment here on earth. That we would be able to "learn to keep the environment on mars or what ever world pristine and survivable in a sustainable fashion" is just wishful thinking.
What I think is that the short sightedness we have, as a species will be our doom. And worse, our core system of existence, require people to be more and more short sighted.
So, as much as we might not like it, unless we, as a species, learn to cultivate sustainable habits, we are going to be selected against in this race to become a space faring species. We just might end up going to Mars or a couple of other worlds. But that would buy us some time, but that is about it be it.
It is <whatever adjective> time to be alive that you choose it to be. The fact that you aren't teary eyed with joy about today's endeavors just tells me that you've got a laundry list of historical achievements you want to make before you croak it. Oh, what, you expect all that striving and effort from the rest of us?
Spend your precious time contributing (beyond tossing out criticism), try to sing the praises of good things when you get the chance, and you might not be filled with regret in your later years.
No. Any fool can sing praises. But instead, try to criticise and question every one of those supposedly good thing that gets thrown in your way. Or else you might not have a later year at all...
The reason we are in this mess in the first place, is that there were too many to sing praises and too few to look beyond the immediate future, and all those voices that did look beyond the immediate future and warned about it, were overwhelmed, and were looked down as you now look down on me and my comment...
Griping, by itself, is repulsive. Getting grumpier because others are turned off by you doesn't help. In my opinion, rather than doubling down on the grouchiness, the best thing you can do is flip the script; turn off the complaints and retort with leadership or ideas on how you'd improve things.
I doubt you're as skeptical and questioning as you think you are, though. You use lots of hyperbolic language which makes me think you've bought into a lot of hype.
There's no profit in doubling-down!