141–150 of 273 posts
Congratulation to SpaceX. That being said, we should take a step back and stop drinking the Elon Musk Koolaid. This has been done flawlessly by Russian Soyouz hundreds of times over the last decades (with almost no failures). This has also been done with the Shuttle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Colonies don't subsist in isolation, they require trade to survive. See Jared Diamond's Collapse for the pop science version of what happened to a few isolated colonies (Greenland, Easter Island, etc) when trade stops.
Trade is required when the materials of subsistence cannot all be produced locally. A successful mars colony would need to have a plan to reach self-sufficiency through Martian plus asteroid resources.
Not at all. While there will be an economic and logistical incentive to reduce the dependence on imports from earth, it is not reasonable to expect the colony to fully duplicate the manufacturing capabilities of earth. There will be drugs, electronic components and human experts that will imported from earth for a very long time.
I believe a Martian colony would be successful when they achieve economic viability (import value lower than export value). This would happen well before they would reach actual self sufficiency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not necessarily true. The artic and Antarctic destroy structures over time. It's also dark for several months at a time.
No light for part of the year vs no air ever. Hmm, let me think about that one for a minute. I think settling Mars will and should happen, but anyone who doesn’t realise it will be thousands of times more expensive, risky and dependent on external support than eg Antarctica I think isn’t really grasping the difference in scale of the problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we all wait to start anything in Mars when it is too late for our planet, well... humans won’t be around anymore. Think about Mars as redundancy site for the human race.
But our "redundancy site" is awful for human life. Imagine if we just worked on fixing up the place we live on already that has air we can breathe, abundant liquid water, and isn't inundated with deadly radiation. We will need to leave Earth in 5 billion years when the sun goes red giant. 5 billion years is an INCREDIBLE amount of time. Things we do in 2019 will have zero influence on those times. It is much more lik…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Antartica is not a stepping stone to further and greater endeavors out into the cosmos It's more of a "dead end", cosmically speaking. This is why it doesn't have same interest or appeal. There are also other reasons. You can't learn about the possibility of life on other planets in Antartica, and seek to answer one of the greatest questions of all time: "are we alone?". You can't closely study another planet in Anta…
Antarctica is a great place to do science, and the majority of the activity at the US South Pole base is currently astronomy. Mars and the Moon will pass through that sort of phase before they might become actual colonies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Making rockets re-usable is a massive step forward and not about 'not regressing'.
I doesn't seem clear at this point whether re-usable will be significant for activities beyond earth orbit. Partly the excitement comes from being a workaround for humanities reluctance to spend money on space exploration. Believe what you want, but from what I can find this doesn't seem to be a significant part of what would e.g. make humanity interplanetary. At least not yet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Starship is supposed to carry a couple hundred passengers. That would be a few hundred ships all launching at once; while I share the enthusiasm I’m not sure that’s realistic due to the [lack of] economic incentives involved.
> That would be a few hundred ships all launching at once Yes, that's the plan as described by Elon! Maybe not "all at once" but over the course of some days/weeks, yes. > I’m not sure that’s realistic due to the [lack of] economic incentives involved Every Mars thread someone pops in to say this, but it simply isn't true. There are major economic incentives to go to Mars, and selling tickets is #1 of hundreds. There…
200k might be an ok ticket price for some, but you’re talking about the overlap of: (a) people who can afford 200k and (b) people willing to risk a possible one-way trip.
You’re talking about tickets as if this is space tourism: space tourism is a loop around the moon. We’re not going to have Mars “tourism” in the near future. These proposed hundreds of passengers are in for high-risk exploration.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We’re perfectly capable of building electronics that can run for many tens of years without issue… it’s just that such things don’t get built because that’s not profitable for manufacturers. If an organization like NASA puts in an order for computers or handheld devices specifically designed to not break for long stretches of time, it wouldn’t be a problem to fulfill said order.
This is why I have such little respect for billionaires who leave no long-lasting meaningful impact at all. Gates/Musk may be the only ones who appear to desire to have a many-generational-positive impact on Humanity. Every one else are just egos. Unless I am not aware of some of the greater things that ilk is doing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are underappreciating this in a big way. Prior to this, the USA did not have the capability to transport astronauts to orbit without working with Russia, and if Russia were to just decide no longer to cooperate for arbitrary diplomatic reasons, we'd be screwed. As you know, the shuttle program was halted some time ago and the vehicle was a total cow the whole time it was in service. So whereas this has be…
Also: From a market perspective, this gives agencies such as the ESA a choice about who to work with in order to launch manned flights. That's huge. It's a transition from no competition to competition, and a transition from technological stasis to forward activity. (Soyuz was first launched in the 1960s and we are still using it? It's kind of crazy.)
I'm sitting on my couch, just idly watching live footage of some people doing stuff 200 miles above me. Above the place I will spend the entirety of my life. Watching them do complicated things that, if we're lucky and don't destroy ourselves first, will ensure our species becomes multi-planetary. Maybe even space faring someday. Life is weird.
I watched Free Solo not long ago, yesterday I watched Falcon 9 launch then land flawlessly and today I watched Dragon 2 dock with the ISS. It's mind boggling how apt humans are to what should be impossible.