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Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

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Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#71

Post by mindslight »

rbanffy wrote: post #64
ramidarigaz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance for humanity against disaster is a small ROI? Not trying to offend, but how do you define ROI of a colony on Mars?

The odds of extinction within the next 50 years are still low. A self-sufficient Moon colony would cover most of the disaster scenarios adequately while being a lot cheaper to build than a Mars colony. Besides, having a self-sufficient lunar colony would probably make building a Mars colony much cheaper. On the Moon, solar energy is abundant (close to the Sun, no atmosphere) and so are the metals used in spacecraft c…

So, I'm not that guy, and really trying not to be that guy, but wouldn't it be fair to summarize your general point as: "That's no moon. It's a space station." ? (mainly mentioning it because it could be taken for an inspirational saying in this context)

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#72

Post by rbanffy »

troymc wrote: post #17
rbanffy wrote: post #5

Mars is a very harsh environment - and it's very far from Earth (6 months best case with current propulsion technology). I'd suggest a permanent base on the Moon as a useful first step - it has some water, abundant energy, plenty of Aluminum, Magnesium, Titanium and a lack of atmosphere that makes metallurgy easy. Radiation is worse than Mars, but, in both cases, buried housing structures make sense and the Moon's lo…

The Aldrin cycler requires fuel to keep it going around the sun (with periodic flybys of Earth and Mars). In principle, each Earth flyby is used to rotate the orbit so that it goes to Mars, but the problem with the Aldrin cycler is that the required flyby distance is too close to Earth: it's smaller than Earth's radius! As a result, rocket fuel is required to give it the required extra kick. But there are other Earth…

Thanks! I never did the math on the Aldrin cycler. Can you give more details for the journal-challenged?

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#74

Post by joering2 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #62
maeon3 wrote: post #25

The future of space travel is mining the asteroid belt and war preparation, anything else is just farting around, without the unobtanium or the fear of death to drive us, there is no reason to leave earth for more than a quick trip. If Elon Musk wants a base on mars, have him start putting missile silos up there, there will be a McDonalds up there in 30 years instead of some decrepit shack with a few science projects…

Space is just a place. All that it takes is people who want to go there and the technology to do so being within their grasp. As technology advances and people grow wealthier colonization of space will become possible, and then it will happen. And once there are people living in space then the entire equation changes again, because once there is an economy in space there will be more reasons to go than just adventure…

2100?? having those things in 2100 would mean we humans all are incredibly lazy. You already have 3D printers. Automation too. Why you need to wait 88 more years?

Given what happened in last 30 years, I would rather say in 2100 you will be able to scan yourself into a readable file and shoot it across the solar system all the way to the Mars, and print yourself out anew (printing algorithm would catch and get a rid of all cancers you caught and aging too).

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#75

Post by InclinedPlane »

joering2 wrote: post #74
InclinedPlane wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space is just a place. All that it takes is people who want to go there and the technology to do so being within their grasp. As technology advances and people grow wealthier colonization of space will become possible, and then it will happen. And once there are people living in space then the entire equation changes again, because once there is an economy in space there will be more reasons to go than just adventure…

2100?? having those things in 2100 would mean we humans all are incredibly lazy. You already have 3D printers. Automation too. Why you need to wait 88 more years? Given what happened in last 30 years, I would rather say in 2100 you will be able to scan yourself into a readable file and shoot it across the solar system all the way to the Mars, and print yourself out anew (printing algorithm would catch and get a rid o…

Indeed, I was trying to be conservative with my assumptions.

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#76

Post by yew »

philwelch wrote: post #56
pjscott wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that just a fancy rhetorical flourish, or do you actually expect "living unsustainably" to potentially cause our extinction? If so, I would be interested in hearing a mechanism.

By definition, if you cannot live sustainably, you cannot sustainably live. Though sustainability, more or less, is about sustaining current populations and quality of life; most failures of sustainability won't extinct the human race, they'll just kill a lot of people off and deprive us of the massive amounts of energy needed to maintain our present quality of life.

If the definition of sustainability that you are using is "sustainably living" then it isn't [insert ideas associated with the sustainability movement here]. Not automatically, anyway.

If all we care about is continuing to live (excepting the limitations imposed by entropy) then continuously importing resources from somewhere else is a perfectly valid solution. For that matter, no amount of efficiency will ever eliminate the necessity of importing resources.

Pushing that necessity into the future is probably a good idea, of course. Continuing to live is not all I care about. But mature space infrastructure would positively contribute to doing just that, even if a colony on Mars might not in and of itself.

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#77

Post by InclinedPlane »

ars wrote: post #43
ceejayoz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, an asteroid could wipe out humanity with pretty minimal warning. There's something major to be said for at least a small self-sustaining colony somewhere else.

> Right now, an asteroid could wipe out humanity with pretty minimal warning That isn't true. There are no asteroids big enough to do that, that we haven't seen. The asteroid risk is a regional one, not a global one.

Asteroids yes, comets not so much. A long period comet could hit the Earth with a warning time of only a few years, and could easily be large enough to destroy human civilization.

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#78

Post by Cushman »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #48
Cushman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No human being has ever settled in a place which was not previously the habitat of a billion years of successful organic life-- and we have failed to settle in a number of places which are. To think of Mars as just the new New World is a romantic idea, but there is no basis for the comparison. Populating another world will be the most significant undertaking of humanity by orders of magnitude; to assume it can be don…

We're smart. We live almost entirely in structures and cities that are very remote from the idyllic world you describe. When was the last time you saw your food grow? There are technological hurdles to living on Mars, but not much we already don't know how to handle. Food, water, air - that's the minimum, and thats not all that hard given raw materials and energy, which is abundant on Mars.

...really? How many cities run on recycled air produced from rocks? On recycled water from melted permafrost? With 100% solar power? Eating entirely food grown using the same? With the risk that if any ine of those things fails, everyone living there will certainly die?

To this you compare the fact that I eat cows fed grass from a hundred miles away, brought to me using energy we literally just dug out of the ground? That I drink water piped from a giant lake all of halfway across the county?

If anything, you support my point: what passes for "remote" and "inhospitable" on Earth is unbelievably luxurious by the standard of anywhere else. Even Death Valley gets rain. Even Antarctica has oxygen. Talk to me about your plans for a self-sustaining colony in one of those places, and then we can talk about how many times -- how many orders of magnitude -- harder and more expensive it will be to do the same thing on Mars.

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#79

Post by rbanffy »

ramidarigaz wrote: post #22
rbanffy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An expedition to Mars would cost a lot more, with a much smaller expected ROI. I too would love the idea of going to Mars, but, in order to build a sustainable colony, you'd need to put in place a whole lot of infrastructure to make interplanetary travel cheaper. And, right now, it's not even feasible.

Insurance for humanity against disaster is a small ROI? Not trying to offend, but how do you define ROI of a colony on Mars?

> Insurance for humanity against disaster is a small ROI?

A self-sufficient colony on the Moon would be efficient insurance against most disasters I can imagine and much easier to build. A colony on Mars offers negligible benefit over one on the Moon for the purpose you mention.

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#80

Post by ars »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #77
ars wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now, an asteroid could wipe out humanity with pretty minimal warning That isn't true. There are no asteroids big enough to do that, that we haven't seen. The asteroid risk is a regional one, not a global one.

Asteroids yes, comets not so much. A long period comet could hit the Earth with a warning time of only a few years, and could easily be large enough to destroy human civilization.

Asteroids can be large - up to 1000 km, but comets are much smaller - up to 40km.

According to http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=20000&#38... a 40km comet impacting the earth would destroy entire countries.

But on the other side of the earth, while it would be noticed, it would not kill anyone and it would not cause severe damage.

So deadly? Yes. but humanity destroying? No.

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