181–190 of 287 posts
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I think the idea is that by building the bus and announcing a schedule the rest will happen naturally.
The timeframes are pretty tight, so I hope there are companies already working on it. Anyone know?
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I suspect the ambitious timelines are political. Musk has repeatedly stated that others would need to work on a lot of the Mars colony infrastructure. SpaceX only appear to be working on the supporting infrastructure for flights (e.g. propellant plant). By telling the world that they'll be ready to fly in five years, they're making a statement that other organisations/companies that want to get involved with this eff…
That's a good point. This talk sends a pretty clear message to the market - we expect to be flying serious amounts of stuff to Mars in under 10 years, so if you want to start a business in the area, now is a good time. And the trick is, the more people he can convince of that, the better chances we have the Mars colony will happen.
I expect we'll see them spinning back up on the immediate future. :)
SpaceX is building the BFR and launch facilities, but who is going to build all the equipment and gear required to live there - who is building the cargo?
He's stated previously (can't remember where) that building all that is someone else's problem (opportunity).
Great presentation, only thing I'm worried about is human flight in these things. I mean what happens if this thing is 1% off on the landing? Does the whole thing topple over and blow up into a million pieces? Additionally with the entire flight being automated, what happens if the software gets taken over in space and they just drop it like a rock onto a city? The damage would be catastrophic. We need Elon to invest…
OTOH, what if terrorists gain access to that system?...
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> 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.
Early airlines are the closest comparison, and as design flaws and bad practice killed off crews and destroyed vehicles, they were regulated to heck and back and are better for it.
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I'd rather he put his time into building and designing than rehearsing speeches.
He's a CEO - he doesn't build and design, he has people build and design for him. He owns an entire company of builders and designers. Giving speeches is more appropriate for his actual job.
He knows more about the rocket then probably anybody else.
He said that he spends about 80% of his SpaceX time as and engineer.
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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 heat shield ablates for Mars trips but not Earth trips (not sure why). I suppose the reentry speed on mars is much higher, since it happens at the end of an interplanetary trip.
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The same who that believed their timeline for when they would have a human certified rocket?
I suspect the ambitious timelines are political. Musk has repeatedly stated that others would need to work on a lot of the Mars colony infrastructure. SpaceX only appear to be working on the supporting infrastructure for flights (e.g. propellant plant). By telling the world that they'll be ready to fly in five years, they're making a statement that other organisations/companies that want to get involved with this eff…
I wish the government gave them tens of billions of dollars instead of the military. Even NASA's progress is laughable compared to SpaceX, and NASA gets $18 billion a year.
The successful projects are usually not the expensive once. Compare the cost of Commercial Cargo (1&2) and Commercial Crew to SLS/Orion is truly eye opening.