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In this case, it's pretty clearly not just a rocket. Both Bezos and Musk admit that this is their fantasy from when they were boys. We're never going to live on mars, this is entirely about mythological projection. The phallus is central to the purpose of this endeavor.
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
We won't really be an interplanetary species until we can get back from Mars. Imagine being colonists on Mars without the ability to be totally self-sustaining without technology and supplies from Earth and nuclear war breaks out. It's going to be a long time before any Mars colony can survive on its own.
Mars escape velocity is ~5 km/s compared to 11 km/s for Earth, so right off the bat it takes half as much delta-v to get off Mars. The numbers get even more attractive when you consider that Mars's atmosphere is so thin you can use vacuum-optimized engines on the surface.
It's a near-certainty that the second stage of ITS will be able to launch fully fueled from the Martian surface and return to Earth orbit, and possibly Earth's surface, without any refueling on the way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your point?
I wrote a long essay about this that I have yet to publish, but my basic point is this: 1. Mars is a fucking desert. There is no air, water or life. 2. Venus is covered in CO2 clouds and sulfuric acid rain. Metal melts on its surface. We are not going to live in space. To even WANT to live in space is an absurd fantasy that is in violent conflict with the reality of space as an airless, inhospitable, largely resource…
This is so pleasant to see after being bombarded with US presidential politics. Science, hope and progress!
What about going to a different planet makes you think we won't just be taking those same problems with us? The earth isn't the problem - The problem is the human brain. We aren't genetically capable of processing the world we have built. Expect there to be Trump IV vs Clinton IV 2117 hosted live on Mars if we haven't made significant improvements in human engineering.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but you seem to be saying "Let's not be excited about colonizing another planet-- life will be just as depressing there."
It's more like unless we are conscientious about what dependencies we include, we will have the same headaches with bloat using python as we have using ruby. And if the environment change is going to cost a very large amount, it would be prudent to see if any improvements can be made locally first as a form of low hanging fruit.
Is SpaceX trying to simulate the long, tedious trip to Mars with this scheduling delay and "endless space" intro graphic?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your point?
I wrote a long essay about this that I have yet to publish, but my basic point is this: 1. Mars is a fucking desert. There is no air, water or life. 2. Venus is covered in CO2 clouds and sulfuric acid rain. Metal melts on its surface. We are not going to live in space. To even WANT to live in space is an absurd fantasy that is in violent conflict with the reality of space as an airless, inhospitable, largely resource…
We won't really be an interplanetary species until we can get back from Mars. Imagine being colonists on Mars without the ability to be totally self-sustaining without technology and supplies from Earth and nuclear war breaks out. It's going to be a long time before any Mars colony can survive on its own.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about going to a different planet makes you think we won't just be taking those same problems with us? The earth isn't the problem - The problem is the human brain. We aren't genetically capable of processing the world we have built. Expect there to be Trump IV vs Clinton IV 2117 hosted live on Mars if we haven't made significant improvements in human engineering.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but you seem to be saying "Let's not be excited about colonizing another planet-- life will be just as depressing there."
Think about it this way. What if there was an uninhabited island out in the Pacific that was hard to get to. What makes it worth trying to get to? There isn't anything any more special there than here. In fact from all we've seen so far it's much less special. Same goes for Mars.
What is the value in being "multi-planetary?" I mean the idea that this is a hedge against some existential threat to humanity is silly. Mars is more hostile to human life TODAY than earth would be after a massive ELE asteroid - and the likelihood of an ELE asteroid is actually higher for Mars as it does not have a stable barrier atmosphere as good as Earth's - meteorites are more frequent as a result.
So best case scenario is that we have a group of people who put 75% of their time into just surviving because there is no atmosphere or biome to support them. On top of that these people have the same biological makeup - including cognitive limits, biases etc...as the rest of us on earth so even if they sorted everything out, tribalism and the rest of our hardwired heuristics would just make them behave like the rest of us.
The better approach is to start engineering our faults out using data to make us better, more resilient processors of information and discovery. Improve humanity and everything is easier.
What are we going to do on Mars? Live in a plastic box? Send in a bunch of slaves to mine minerals in insufferable conditions? I don't get it.
Edit: looks like he's aiming for a city of 1m people in the short term, Terraforming in the long term.