Any hints on how this is going to change civilisation, for non-space nerds?
Because of this, trying to meaningfully predict the future is not possible. You're looking at a incomparably large revolutionary leap being made overnight. Up until now costs have made any significant scale space project a complete non-starter. If Starship succeeds, then costs will instantly become almost entirely irrelevant. Space colonization, industry, tourism, mining, and so all become completely viable - instantly. Really, everything becomes viable. Space just becomes another domain for casual exploration, exploitation, and expansion.
I think this is why everybody is waiting before adapting. So many industries are simply impossible to even toy with, without Starship. And while it seems ever more imminent, there is of course still the possibility that it somehow ultimately proves unviable, or perhaps it only sends that bottle of water down to $300, which would still be a great leap forward, but probably not far enough ahead to really open the door to space, just yet.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...
A similar dynamic happened with railroads. It's hard to predict just how much change this could cause!
Similarly, here we so far have less than 1000 people - or so - who flew to space in their lifetime, over last 60+ years. We're going to see it changing in a few years, less than 10, and to see the growth of a whole new industry, which routinely builds stuff for space - be it spaceport-specific equipment, or some hardware for spacecrafts, or hardware intended to work in space. Also we're going to have more professional occupations - hardware designers and hardware manufacturers on Earth, operators of space assets, like fueling stations, orbital stations, constellations, scientific laboratories - manned and automatic - and some orbital manufacturing facilities. And also we'll see professions related closely to the Moon in a few years - since it's going to be cheaper to fly to the Moon, more people are going to go there working on exploration and resource utilization, for lunar and orbital infrastructure.
So in our minds today we have "everything anybody does is of course on Earth" with some quite small exceptions for those who flies to orbital stations, or for short tourist flights above the atmosphere (so far, I believe, we never had even 25 people at the same time above 100 km) - and there are, of course, many people on Earth who work exclusively to support such space-bound activities, but it's still more of exception. We'll soon get to the state "some remarkable number of people are working in space, in many different locations and on many different projects", and on Earth a rather large industry supports their activities, just like we have industries supporting sea transportation or automotive industry. We'll get used to add this new dimension into our considerations, our plans, we'll see more opportunities pursued in this area, more attention paid to space - significantly more.
Space will become another (much more) routine part of life.
Drop the cost like this and entirely new industries are possible and brand new never considered doors open.
-Asteroid / Moon mining
-Overally, being capable of going to space with more than just miniscule science-oriented payloads. FYI, ISS has cost us over a 100 billion dollars. When Starship hauls its worth in volume in one launch with just just methane and maintenance costs, it's a whole new space age.
Apart from proof of concept I just don’t see any practical reason to colonise mars.
First: how awful would you consider a world-wide apocalypse to be, where the human race is effectively ended? Let’s call it massively, enormously bad. How likely is it that that happens? Well, probably incredibly small, but not zero. Multiply the two together and you’ve got a weighting for how much we should care and prepare. In this case, the incredibly small probability is likely balanced by the enormous awfulness - meaning some level of reasonable preparation for existence beyond Earth makes rational sense.
Second: think a thousand years into the future. Do you imagine that humans will be still only on earth, or will we have reached out and explored further - beyond our planet, beyond our solar system? If you can imagine any version of ‘beyond Earth’ - then Starship and Mars might represent the first baby steps needed to ultimately achieve that outcome.
The bigger benefit is how it gets the ball rolling on development of all the technologies associated with keeping humans alive and thriving in space and on the surfaces of other bodies in a way that the moon can’t.
The problem with the moon is that its distance. It’s convenient, which means that doing anything there isn’t much of a commitment and thus, can be canceled and forgotten about on a whim. It also means that there’s not much pressure to make human presences there self-sustaining — worst case scenario, another rocket full of supplies and/or personnel is only a week away.
A presence on Mars on the other hand by nature has to be something less frivolous. You have to plan to be there a long time no matter what, and from the moment the first crew’s boots touch the ground they’re going to be pouring themselves into becoming self-sustainable. The nations and companies behind the project can’t so conveniently pull the plug. Once it’s there, everybody involved is in it for the long haul and the longer it exists and more it grows the harder it is to back out of.
So I guess more than anything, out of the destinations that are being seriously considered by NASA, SpaceX, etc, Mars is the best at providing some kind of insurance against stagnancy and malaise in the crewed space program like we saw from the late 70s through 2010 or so.
Another global airborne pandemic, but this time with a much higher fatality rate?
I mean, isn't the whole vision that rather comfortable and fast ride, like in an airliner, but the duration of a cruise? Without all that quarantine shit?
Do you expect the masses to mars movers to be left alone unattended after reaching their destination, no maintenance, except under BSL-4 conditions, for being ready to go back?
Or the passengers showered and scrubbed in airlocks with antiseptic foam, ultraviolet light, and whatnot else, while their clothing is being 'recycled'?
The airlocks probably will be there, but the rest? One could probably argue that it all won't matter, like it mostly doesn't in Antarctica, because air too dry and cold, etc.
But can you be sure?
A useful asteroid mining base might eventually let you expand into the Oort cloud and then colonize the rest of the galaxy assuming they could be 100% self sufficient and didn’t need solar power. But even here the hard bits are 99% technology we could develop on earth for other things like fusion power.
And that is just one apocalypse variant. Nuclear holocaust. Antimatter bombs. Possibly even a massive gamma ray burst, are all safe from Mars even if they might kill everyone on Earth.
Our species took an incredible amount of time to evolve, likely long enough to not re-appear in this solar system if lost. Which is a very weird point for me feeling that I have to argue for lol
Elon often talks about how exploration is exciting and inspirational and a prerequisite for future interstellar travel, and that works better as a justification to go to Mars, IMO. Also, while those disasters might not completely wipe out humans on Earth, they could reverse centuries or millennia of progress and delay further space exploration for hundreds or thousands of years if we don't do it now while we have the chance.
From what I understand, for a nuke war, it is still _possible_ it will take out everyone considering the nuclear winter it will cause. In my thinking a redundant colony is worth even saving us having to play existential Russian Roulette with one loaded.
More esoteric: Commercial space stations. Space vacations. Moon base. Humans on Mars, and maybe even beyond. More and better space telescopes. Maybe some space based manufacturing. Eventually asteroid mining.
This bias doesn’t reflect the reality of technological revolutions but is very common. Be mindful of this.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
- Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
- Darryl Zanuck, executive at 20th Century Fox, 1946
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
- Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
“Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the Internet’s continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”
- Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, 1995
“Apple is already dead.”
- Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft CTO, 1997
“None of that sounds like a big impact on the lives of most people, who are already living in areas well covered by cellphone networks and will never afford to travel to space.”
- hackernews user rick2b in 2023
SpaceX could probably do suborbital hops on just the StarShip second stage for less per seat than what Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin do now, but I don't know if that is a market they want to get into. They haven't shown interest in it in the past.
That's pessimistic. Starship is targeting a significantly reduced cost per launch than Dragon + Falcon 9. Made possible by drastically reduced refurbishment, dramatically increased launch cadence, and full reusability (Falcon 9 second stage and Dragon trunk are both expended), among many other things. And it could carry a lot more than 100 passengers.
It's certainly possible that it won't meet its goals, but I wouldn't call that stance "optimistic".
I'm not seeing how starlink will change that in a big way. Except where there is no fiber at all, or no choice of good ISPs. And as backup. That's convenient, of course.
So, like, a majority of the world?
Each solar panel produces a shade, which can be used to put a radiator into, and between the solar panel and the radiator we can put some specific amount of heat-producing computation units.