241–246 of 246 posts
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He hinted during QA it was 5% of BFR development costs, and Elon said a "material" percentage, which for expense reporting usually means >= 5%. Dev costs were said to be $5billion, so that would be $250,000,000.
The questioner asked "is it more or less than 5%" -- I don't think they were confirming 5%, just repeating the number back (and Musk refused to say anything about the percentage at all).
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There's literally (yes, literally literally) nothing there on the Moon, and going there costs more than going to the Mariana Trench. No, it will not become more routine.
The Moon may be just a stepping stone to greater things. Maybe we "mine" on it, maybe we use it to more efficiently send things into orbit, maybe just tourism, who knows? You can't possibly know what possibilities there exist, right now. I think we're lucky that ancient mariners didn't listen to the people who told them "there's literally nothing, nothing, in the Great Water".
You're making a false and dishonest equivalency. Those mariners didn't know what was in the Great Water.
We absolutely do know to a huge degree of precision exactly what is on the Moon. (A whole bunch of nothing.)
We know more about the Moon than we know about the Mariana Trench. We've explored the Moon to death already.
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> on a once in a lifetime trip AFAIR, Burt Rutan said he wasn't that keen to watch Apollo-11 landing because he assumed it's soon going to be routine. So far it wasn't. But why do you think it will not become more routine - perhaps a lot more routine - this time? Surely one can't count on that - but we do can dream and we do can bring some of our dreams to reality, even though we aren't always good with predicting wh…
There's literally (yes, literally literally) nothing there on the Moon, and going there costs more than going to the Mariana Trench. No, it will not become more routine.
There's a massive, atmosphere-free, stable, terrestrial EM shielded platform for large, human-maintained telescopes, and gravity for the maintenance staff.
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The Moon may be just a stepping stone to greater things. Maybe we "mine" on it, maybe we use it to more efficiently send things into orbit, maybe just tourism, who knows? You can't possibly know what possibilities there exist, right now. I think we're lucky that ancient mariners didn't listen to the people who told them "there's literally nothing, nothing, in the Great Water".
> I think we're lucky that ancient mariners didn't listen to the people who told them "there's literally nothing, nothing, in the Great Water". You're making a false and dishonest equivalency. Those mariners didn't know what was in the Great Water. We absolutely do know to a huge degree of precision exactly what is on the Moon. (A whole bunch of nothing.) We know more about the Moon than we know about the Mariana Tre…
When I watched the NASA administrator meeting in which NASA plans for building a base on the moon were discussed, one of the reasons listed was also rooted in discovery. There are many challenges that such a base would face and it is better to solve them when the Earth is close and rescue is more reasonable than to go to Mars with those problems not yet understood and solved, since the time till return from Mars will be measured in months and years rather than days.
What makes you so stridently disagree that we have more things to learn while on the moon, when the experts disagree with you? Also, since they do, doesn't this also make his equivalence a very good one, rather than false? Certainly the argument that there is more yet to be discovered about the trench does not refute his claim, only serving to enhance the degree to which claiming there is nothing is not valid.
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Perhaps in terms of absolute expenditures, but unlikely anything like it in terms of bang for the buck.
You might reserve that evaluation for a century or two. Arguably, we're still cruising on the de Medicis' and Borgias' investments in the arts.