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SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

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Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#121

Post by staticelf »

evanlivingston wrote: post #107
staticelf wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With increased technology comes more liberties for all. With your kind of thinking we would still live in caves because why work on anything unless we solve all our social issues first? Progress is not made by politicians, it is made by engineers. If you want clean water for all humans, you should be supportive of discovering new stuff. For example, for humans to survive in hostile environments on other planets we ne…

You make two very, very large claims that require a deep dive to support. >With increased technology comes more liberties for all. ...uhm. What? How? Examples? a line of thought? Gimme something here. >Progress is not made by politicians, it is made by engineers. Again, what? That's an overwhelmingly naive and narrow view of the world. JFK helped expedite aerospace research, as well as the NASA administrators who did…

Sure.

> ...uhm. What? How? Examples? a line of thought? Gimme something here.

Electricity, internet, radio, engines, cameras, etc.

> JFK helped expedite aerospace research, as well as the NASA administrators who didn't do any engineering work but kept the agency running on track? They get no credit in the 'progress'?

You're just enforcing my point, this is people who understand that we need technological progress in order for us to move forward as a society. Of course they are part of the progress, they help enable the progress to go faster.

> Again, I would be most excited about a future where the _primary_ goal of the progress is the reduction of inequality.

It is my belief that this will never happen, at least not untill we have progressed so far that everyones needs are met. Until then, there is no real incentive for people to reduce inequality. Just look at history, we've never been able to do this so far so there is no reason to belive that we suddently change our behavior.

I am defining progress as a lot of things, it can be the discovery of something new but it can also be an invention that benefits just a small number of people. In the long run, most new inventions will benefit everyone.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#122

Post by nickik »

toolbox wrote: post #48

One big limitation that was glossed over in the presentation is radiation exposure. The only time it came up was the mention of a 'solar storm shelter'. The radiation exposure during the Martian transit would be much greater than the same time spent on the ISS, somewhere on the order of 200mSv [0] (the composition of this radiation also contains significantly greater proportions of heavy-ion radiation, which appears…

He does not talk about this so much because its not the fundamental show stopper.

We know enough to get started and we will have to figure the rest as we go along.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#123

Post by the8472 »

hacker_9 wrote: post #110
the8472 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no worse than dropping an airplane on a city

An airplane goes roughly 500km/h. Elons rocket was going 20000km/h - so I think it's about 40x worse actually. Not to mention a rocket goes straight down so none of that speed is lost.

> Elons rocket was going 20000km/h

In space. I don't think it would survive that in the lower atmosphere. And a lot of danger comes from the fuel, not the kinetic energy.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#124

Post by pm »

piquadrat wrote: post #92
pm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I would love a spaceport in my backyard, seeing as we just hosted the International Astronautical Congress too.

The International Astronautical Congress doesn't come with multiple sonic booms per day.

Sure, but when we say the backyard, we're probably talking further inland than the capital city.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#125

Post by nickik »

modeless wrote: post #20
ajmurmann wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a little disappointed he didn't give any timeline at all on that not even a aspirational one. I also assume it's gonna be really expensive due to frequent heat shield replacement. I wouldn't be surprised if it never became economically viable. Too few passengers and too high cost.

He said the heat shield ablates for Mars trips but not Earth trips (not sure why). If so then propellant should be the only important consumable. Of course this level of reusability and reliability has never been achieved before, but the whole thing depends on it.

The shield ablates on Mars trips because the ship is using the atmosphere to slow itself down, it will pass threw many times and bleed of speed.

On earth you just need to survive, the speed is primarily reduced with the engines.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#126

Post by staticelf »

evanlivingston wrote: post #111
staticelf wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is very easy to forget that high-tech engineer is a species that only thrives in politically stable countries. I disagree, a lot of nations became stable because of engineering solutions in the first place and also more scientifically literate. There is a ton of examples of this. The first telescope, as an example, thanks to Hans Lippershey and Galileo Galilei showed that the earth wasn't flat and removed some p…

> Scientific discoveries and technological innovation is the only thing that push a society forward. No, man, that's simply not true. That's an incredibly technocratic view of the world. Using the U.S. as an example, the (belated) end of slavery in the U.S. didn't come about from a scientific discovery or a technological innovation. Technics played a part in the exacerbation of the issues, but it was politics, cultur…

I think it is true though. I am a bit of a technocrat.

Just ask the people that have a fulltime job but still cannot afford a place to live if slavery has ended. But sure, politics can change some things but in the end it doesn't change much.

To add to my point, politics may alter how we live but it doesn't bring anything new into the world. If we want to progress, we need to solve issues and take away the need for people to do stuff we don't want them to do. If you had todays farming equipment for example, there would never had been any slaves because one machine can do the job of hundreds of slaves. The machine doesn't have to be fed and managed, the machine doesn't fight back.

I believe we can solve any such problem with technological advancement and thus our money should be heavily invested there.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#127

Post by namelost »

nickik wrote: post #119
kensai wrote: post #109

The plan is good and modestly aggressive time-wise. But he has to be careful. Even a single high-profile disaster with human loss or precious cargo will put the whole endeavor at risk.

> Even a single high-profile disaster with human loss or precious cargo will put the whole endeavor at risk. Why? This is not a government bureaucracy. People die in many places in private business. As long the company has high level of assurance that they will not get sued or regulated, I don't see how a failure could collapse the whole endeavor.

In the US, the value of someone's life depends on their citizenship, so they can perhaps get around this problem by only crewing their rocket with non-Americans.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#128

Post by nickik »

ciconia wrote: post #60

Just like everybody else I'm really blown away by what SpaceX does, but at the same time I think the question begs to be asked: Has humanity already given up on earth as a home? Is the future really about planets as disposable habitats?

I never understand this question. The hole point is to become a space fairing multi planetary species.

Having a civilization that can use resources from space will help earth as well.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#129

Post by nickik »

boznz wrote: post #23

Tell me again, why has NASA budgeted $30 billion for SLS?

Because the goal of government action is not to efficiently achieve a goal, but rather build a political coalition capable of capturing and defending budget requests.

The SLS specifically was designed to build a coalition between NASA centers who were involved with the SpaceShuttle, a group of large influential companies who produce the core components for the Shuttle and the SLS and a group of senators who are well located to defend these private and NASA jobs in their state.

Together the bureaucracy, business and the political can enforce this utterly foolish project to continue. This goes for both SLS and Orion, two of the biggest pork projects in US space history.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#130

Post by bluthru »

nickik wrote: post #113
Osmium wrote: post #11

Honestly, Elon's presentations are some of the most impressive, inspiring I've ever seen. And the way he just stumbles out words and sentences that are completely revolutionary... casually dropping these absurd, incredible statements. I find it incredible. If anyone else was saying this, was showing these graphics, you'd think it was just wish fulfillment; a fantasy. And I'm sure their timeline is a bit aggressive. B…

Usually I agree about his presentation. However this one was quite a bit worse then most of them. The slides were not in sync confusing the audience. Not knowing when to clap, made it really uncomfortable. He seemed to just drop stuff randomly without a narrative thread. When he showed the BFR/ITS for the first time, he had a much clear threwline, even while rambling in between.

I don't get the sense that Elon values rehearsal time, but someone should convince him that it's really important.
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