They were the first to achieve re-usability of the first stage of an orbital class rocket, the first to prove out supersonic retro-propulsion and the first private company to re-fly a spacecraft (the Dragon Capsule). Given that, it seems like they should be given the benefit of the doubt when they say they are going to do something.
Getting into Mars is solvable technological problem. Colonizing Mars is more economical and sociological problem than technological problem.
Everyday living in high-tech place where everything is safety critical (like in a nuclear submarine or ISS) is extremely expensive. Productivity would have to be beyond everything that has ever existed for that becoming possibility.
If Elon Musk can crack Mars colonization economy, he has also invented something that can be used to drop F-35 fighter, nuclear submarine and aircraft carrier maintenance costs to level where they are negligible.
There is always counterarguments that are based on post-scarcity economy. I accept that argument. But we get faster into Mars if we first develop post-scarcity economy here on earth first. Then those who want to leave just move there. Those who want to go Mars now are thinking it wrong.
--- EDIT:
In case I didn't make myself clear, I believe that Musk can get into Mars in his lifetime. There can be small research station and we can explore little.
But it will be a money sink. We will do some research and then leave and probably it takes another 50 years until someone visits in person again.
All the science fiction thing humans have achieved, microchips, computers, mobile phones, commercial air travel increase productivity and there is massive demand for them. Combined R&D over decades can be trillions and it's profitable. Interplanetary space travel is going nowhere fast because there is no profit motive. Getting into orbit is profitable business and that's what SpaceX is doing.
Name that fallacy?
I think that's the core of the objections. At least mine, anyway.
If that stuff is really a problem, start a colony in Antarctica. It'd be much easier to achieve livable conditions there than Mars, and your life support won't be tens of millions of miles away.
Antarctica: breathable air, much warmer than Mars, more insolation, low light-speed lag, water.
Mid-ocean: much much warmer than Mars, high pressure, low light-speed lag, lots of water. No breathable atmosphere but some oxygen can be extracted.
Emi Koussi: hugely warmer than Mars, breathable atmosphere (at 10K feet), no significant water, low light-speed lag.
Build your domes in each of those locations, run them for ten years: then you have real data, plus emergency evac.
But people don't want to live there for a long time. They won't want to live on Mars for a long time either.
Unfortunate typo there.
This is so very true. We can do it for Science, and for fun, but not much else.
For SpaceX, there are people who will spend $500k or $200k on a ticket to go to Mars. If SpaceX can get us there for less than that, there's profit there too. There are enough people for moving there alone to be a profitable venture.
Many billionaires on Earth are now spending their fortunes investing in ways to make profits in space. Don't bet against them.
However, things change when speaking of an economically self-sustaining base; and eventually a base theoretically capable of full-self sustenance (not dying in case there was a transport disruption or Earth itself suffered a disaster). This simplifies the funding discussion to start up costs and r.o.i.
In that case, humanitarian-utilitarian arguments such as expanding the Human civilization to other planets (Musk's call for making life multiplanetary), backing up life, etc. also start making a little more sense (if the colony isn't self-sustaining all of those points are moot).
Is that feasible? Certainly not today, but perhaps in 50 years?
I mean, a civilization doesn't actually need that much to sustain itself. The basic needs are (a) energy, and (b) materials. Obviously Mars receives Solar power (about 45% as much as Earth per m^2), and it has materials (all basic industrial elements are present in the crust).
The question is, can we start an industry on Mars that is efficient enough today such that the cost of producing and maintain infrastructure (solar panels, mining equipment) is lower than the output from the products? If your solar panel gives 10MJ during it's lifetime, you need to use at most 10MJ (used in mining and manufacturing) to produce it. That's an engineering analysis, and I'm it will be eventually feasible. It also improves with economies of scale.
This is in my opinion the wrong question, and the answer is unequivocally no. People will not go to mars to make their fortune, at least initially, they will go for research, for glory and because they can. In centuries to come the answer will be yes, but not on any reasonable timescale. People will move there anyway.
I agree that maybe a handful might go there because they can. But very soon you need to start producing enough to at least keep yourself alive. So much that I believe we ought to start developing those technologies (which takes time) before other steps.
We can probably fabricate regolith-lookalikes on Earth and start doing basic chemical and industrial engineering for pretty cheap, much cheaper than the billions you need for a mission.
However consider this. He's discussing replacing a good chunk of the airline industry. Per https://aviationbenefits.org/economic-growth/value-to-the-ec... the airline industry is worth around $600 billion per year. Suppose that he captures $100 billion of that. With about $10 billion profit per year.
He's just paid for the Mars colony 5 times over. And he WASN'T planning on colonizing Mars as a charity!
It only sounds crazy. The numbers actually can add up.
Colonising mars will be a money sink in the way that colonising the new world was - many will die, some will get rich eventually, the original investors will lose everything.
I expect that part may be an attempt to not get their hopes up. One of the things I learned as a child was that if someone told you something that you really wanted to be true, and you believed it, then when it turned out to not be true you felt really really horrible. So instead you disbelieve it, and when it turns out to not be true you feel satisfied that you knew it wasn't true. If it turns out to be true after all, then you are surprised (in a good way) and excited because its a great thing. Of the choices, disbelieving gives a better future emotional outcome.
That said, the older version of me has come to appreciate people who are sincere even if they aren't able to deliver on their promises. Elon is pushing the edge of space travel at a rate that is much more exciting than NASA and other governments were. As a result I can cheer him on in the hopes he will be successful without becoming so invested in that success that it would crush me if it didn't come to pass. As a kid I really believed NASA when they said we'd have a lunar colony in 2001 after the lunar landing in 1969, and their inability to come close to delivering was really painful[1].
The launch of Falcon Heavy is going to be a significant milestone for SpaceX. If they can pull it off, they will have proven they can tame the complexity of adding rockets in parallel to tune their mass fraction to space. No one has done that yet. And if they can recover a second stage, and do so in a way that they can re-use its engines at least, it will demonstrate that the economics of such an effort can be managed as well.
High hopes, realistic expectations.
[1] Yes, I know that if they had kept their funding they would have made better strides, and yes I know that isn't there fault. But neither reality mitigated the impact of NASA essentially "giving up" on the moon.
However, emotions aside, disbelief slows actions and hinders cooperation. I would rather my feelings be hurt then face the actual barriers disbelief provides.
My default reaction is disbelief (I'd prefer skepticism) especially when someone is trying to sell something because that's their whole goal, they are selling you something.
Not to mention, if you are a US citizen you're already supporting him whether you want to or not through government funding.
Depends. Is that `someone` the future employee or investor that would otherwise have played a critical role in the company achieving this task?
My point is that disbelief can stop the right person from taking the right action the company needs.
It's the difference between the George Hotzes of the world and the people who actually do the boring hard work to push through obstacles and make things happen. A George Hotz is a person who doesn't know what they don't know, and therefore gets their inspired, genius projects completely derailed by trivially avoidable, trivially predictable stumbling blocks, because of their overconfidence and lack of intellectual maturity. A not-George Hotz is someone who is probably a lot more boring to watch on YouTube, but is equally inspired and passionate. They obsess over potential obstacles far more than they talk about how awesome their project is going to be when it's done, and how confident they are in its success.
It's the difference between saying, "Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars, wouldn't that be cool?" and "you're going to be living on Mars someday, better get ready". It's also the difference between saying, "self-driving cars would be great, let's try to make that happen" vs. "I'm not going to buy another car until I can get a self-driving one, that's how sure I am that this is imminent".
Really it's the difference between underpromising and overdelivering vs. overpromising and underdelivering. The people who are the most enthusiastic and vocally certain about the inevitability of these things in the near future are more of a threat to making those things happen than the people who are cautiously optimistic but skeptical about them.
IMO that's the reason to be skeptical- just to be realistic and to help the general population set their expectations appropriately. Nothing to do with bracing yourself for an emotional letdown. If overenthusiastic Mars/self-driving cars/AI people are vocal enough to convince the media and the general population about the near-term revolutionary inevitability of these things, then after a few years of those things not happening, the public will flip in the opposite direction. Then voila, no more tax breaks or research funding or other public support for those things, and they go from "might happen in my lifetime" to "will never happen in my lifetime" in reality, not just perception. Right now if you want to work on autonomous vehicles and know your stuff, then maybe there's a job or a grant for you someplace. If public opinion flips to "these people have been saying this stuff is just around the corner for 20 years, this has all been a waste of time and money", then boom, no more government assistance, no more venture capital, no more big companies spending lots of money on R&D for this stuff.
1) he became spaceX lead because no serious engineer would join beside the team he assembled
2) falcon1 failed 3 times, 4th attempt was their last one before folding
I'm not fond of everything Musk, but he achieved something deep and qualitative.
Also, even if the end smelled like fund-me marketing, the first half was genuinely simple and factual (of course considering it's hindsight).
Not saying what SpaceX achieved isn't impressive, it just needs some context.
Attaining orbit required 20 times the energy that spaceship one's flight did - it's why landing airplanes is trivial, and landing rockets is so hard.
* re-usability of the first stage of an
orbital class rocket,
* the first to prove out supersonic retro-propulsion
* and the first private company to re-fly a
spacecraft (the Dragon Capsule).
With luck, next month they will be the first company ever to launch and recover a rocket with 27 engines in the first stage.
They are also the first company to launch two rockets into orbit in a single weekend.
So at what point would SpaceX's achievements become "impressive" for you without having to add context?
>> * the first to prove out supersonic retro-propulsion
> Here the key is supersonic retro-propulsion. They really were the first people to light up a rocket engine facing the 'wrong' way of a supersonic spacecraft. NASA's interplanetary systems have all used parachutes to get into the sub-sonic regime before firing retro-rockets. Neither retro-propulsion in orbit (nominally a vacuum) or on the Moon count as supersonic.
All retropulsive landings are rockets facing the "wrong" way. That's true on Mars, the Moon, or Earth.
By the semantics of your argument, neither does the Falcon 9 experience supersonic retropulsive landing, since the only time it fires at supersonic speeds is in the near vacuum state of the upper atmosphere. The descent down to Earth is a guided free-fall and the last step happens at subsonic speeds.
On Mars, terminal velocity for a probe is supersonic, so the parachute stage is required to reach subsonic speeds. It basically replaces the guided free-fall of the Falcon 9 rocket, and make things harder, not easier. It should be pointed out that the full process of landing on Mars involves an insane Rube Goldberg contraption of heat shield, parachutes, retropulsive rockets, airbags, and sometimes a skyscrane. Claiming that what SpaceX is doing is a harder problem than this is simply wrong.
Finally, the Delta Clipper did pretty much exactly what the Falcon 9 did, and so did Blue Origin with their New Shepard rocket. So the concept in its near entirety was well-known for a while.
> They are also the first company to launch two rockets into orbit in a single weekend.
Not from the same launchpad. Many organizations have launched rockets nearly back-to-back, some even from the same launchpad.
> So at what point would SpaceX's achievements become "impressive" for you without having to add context?
Not really what was being argued here. Certainly, what SpaceX has done is impressive with or without context. But the claim that they are magically beyond everyone else is just wrong. Looking at their achievements in context shows their limitations, and that they are not exactly the "first to X" where X is something someone else has long figured out but the poster is unaware.
Besides, everything SpaceX has done is sustainable in the sense that it helps them make money, either commercially or through a government contract. There's no commercial market for Mars, and a government contract would have to be so large large enough I doubt there would be enough political support.
There is a saying "Nullius in verba" (On the word of no one). Take nobody's word, take their proof. It is a founding principle in science and engineering. It isn't that we should give them the benefit of the doubt, we should give NO ONE the benefit of the doubt.
> I don't understand why people are so quick to dismiss SpaceX's ambitions as unrealistic.
We're taught to be extremely skeptical in the scientific community, and I'd say that the rocket community is more skeptical than the general engineering community.
Another factor, is that their prices are not as low as they advertise. And then there is the amount of re-usability they expect. I'm not saying it is impossible, it is just ambitious. So the community is more in a "we'll wait and see. But we are watching very closely".
Here is just a small list:
- What food will people eat on Mars?
- What space suits will they all use?
- Who will train all the astronauts to go there?
- Who will build the habitats?
- Who is building the equipment to make fuel on mars? How much will this cost?
This is far from a fully researched plan. Look, I really hope it happens and I'm seriously rooting for SpaceX, but there is much more to figure out and plan to make this a reality.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/23/16188658/elon-musk-reveal...
That is not a Mars rated space suit for living and working on Mars. Not even NASA has one ready yet. (They are working on it though)
That being said you would have to bootstrap something to get to that point but step one we have to get to Mars before we can even think about those things. That is what musk is trying to do even though it is nearsighted if you think about the long term.
It really doesn't matter how brilliant he is or how successful he is with SpaceX's plans. No amount of human brilliance can circumvent the fact that mars has 38% of Earth's gravity.
I fear that this will prove an insurmountable barrier. If living in that environment renders you unable to survive in Earth gravity due to the strain on your heart, and it will take hundreds of years to make Mars be like Earth, who is going to want to live in that land of barren nothing for centuries, unable to visit the lush homeworld?
When they land the first two BFRs on Mars, I think we will see enough people willing and have the means to build a colony. Until then, it would be hard to get people to commit the needed capital.
Private industry sits on a tremendous amount liquid wealth. And because of income inequality, it's actually principally controlled by a relatively small number of people.
In other words, not only is private industry capable of financing a Mars mission, the reality is that private financing may be the _only_ realistic option.
For any skeptic wondering how Musk is able to "sucker" so many investors, this is why--there's just a god-awful amount of private money looking for even the most meager gains.
Note that the Federal Reserve's QE2 amounted to only $2 trillion, less than 1% of global financial assets. If you think quantitative easing has led to an asset bubble, think again. Or rather, think bigger. Whatever you think, just realize that we're living in a brave new word with wealth beyond what anybody can scarcely imagine even today. Few people, if any, understand either the possibilities or systemic risks. The magnitude of things, and the speed with which it evolved, is mind boggling.
SpaceX odds for going to Mars are, however, better than anyone else's.
So far SpaceX delivers, and unlike every other player out there, going to Mars is their core mission. So yes they odds are much better than anyone else's, even if by the virtue of none remotely competent pursuing it at all.
Otherwise sending a drone to plant a plaque on Mars has certainly been possible for SpaceX for some years now.
NASA, for example, has done that multiple times.
So why exactly are SpaceX odds better (@ succeeding)?
That rocket landing to the platform flying backwards looks awesome but I don't think it significantly increases their odds for Mars flight. Will they fly there backwards with a similar platform waiting?
As for what SpaceX (and OrbitalATK) does better, look at the cost of ISS cargo deliveries, and then read about the history of Constellation and Ares.