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Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars
191–200 of 351 posts
Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars
#192Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They designed and built a custom welding machine _and_ a custom X-Ray machine for building tank domes in four weeks? Can any engineer speak to whether this is actually progress, or even necessary? It seems like every time something goes wrong, Elon "invents" a way to do it better. I'm old enough to remember rescue subs, battery swaps, brain implants that will cure autism, factories spitting out factories, solar shi…
I'm not in that area, but I struggle to find an analogue of a large pressurized tank on Earth where mass is the dominant cost factor. You might have equally big tanks on Earth, under equal pressures, but it will be more cost-effective to just increase the material used on the shell of the tank to solve your problems. Whereas in space, every kg that can theoretically be removed from the launch vehicle is worth investi…
>where mass is the dominant cost factor.
The compounding importance of mass is one factor here, but only half the story. The other half is how SpaceX' quick iterations and ability to retire vehicles early allows ample room to experiment and also to shave off safety factors.
In the more mundane aerospace engineering mass is quite important, but the manufacturing, servicing, longevity etc. are pretty important considerations too. A typical airplane is designed for manufacture of some 200 ... 2000 units and to remain in use for 1 ... 3 decades. This, together with the usual requirement for human flight ratings, ends up dictating rather high safety margins for designs.
Contrast that with SpaceX' vehicles which are supposed to perform a dozen unmanned flights each at most, and where one-way mission of a vehicle is a perfectly feasible strategy for testing while still making decent revenue.
Quick iterations get shit done in aerospace. Among historical examples, that's how MacCready's Gossamer Albatross[1] record-breaker came to be, where other teams failed.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacCready_Gossamer_Albatross
Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars
#194Humans are not biologically adapted to surviving on Mars, and for that reason, any settlement to Mars is bound to fail in the long term.
Well, humans are not biologically adapted to surviving outside of a cave of reasonably hot part of ancient Africa.
Yet people now manage to survive the winter in Europe just fine using technology.
Mars and space settlement in general can be seen as yet another - more challenging - extension of this long term progress.
Also possibly in the future one could upgrade people themselves to make living in space easier.
Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars
#195The pace of innovation here is absolutely ludicrous. They designed and built a custom welding machine _and_ a custom x-ray machine for building tank domes in four weeks ? They've gone from a production rate of one prototype in 8 months to one prototype every 2 weeks in less than a year. They doubled the size of their workforce in less than 48 hours. I'm gonna have to agree with the article author here: this is absolu…
They are definitely mad lads over at SpaceX and Tesla
Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars
#196Who da hell wants to go live there seriously??
Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can always leave. I'd presume that many of them are on-board in the first place because they're engaged by the idea.
Right, particularly, engineers who can build space stations definitely have other employment options.
An odd response! :)
If SpaceX didn't exist, how would they put food on the table?
Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Purpose is so hard to come by now because we all don't know what we want. When we do know, we're constantly unsure about it. This statement resonates deeply with me. Whenever I meet someone new or that I might be interested in dating I ask "What are you doing with your life?" or "What are you striving for?" and I find the extreme majority of people don't have an answer beyond "I just go to a job I don't really like…
Why do they have to? I have that drive, but my wife is perfectly happy with a calm, comfortable, stress-free life. And in fact it helps to bring me back down to Earth sometimes also. There's nothing wrong with wanting a life that free. In fact it's oftentimes admirable. Especially at times when I'm wound so tight I feel like I could pop. If you're choosing a partner based solely on whether they want to be the next El…
> Why do they have to?
Wow, I think you really misunderstood me. I'm not saying anyone has to do anything, I just said it's really inspiring to see people that are passionate, and are driven and motivated about something. And I want people like that in my life.
I'm not saying I want an Elon Musk for a partner, I'm saying it's inspiring, and I'm drawn to people that actually have a purpose and a reason to get out of bed, and they're striving for something. Maybe it's take a month off to ski tour around Mt. Logan this spring. Maybe it's sail around the Northwest passage, or maybe it's learning a new language. Maybe it's getting up early every day to do Yoga.
Anything, really.
I'm just saying I feel like a lot of people these days have nothing that they're striving for. They just go to work, and go home, and aren't even particularly happy about it. If you asked them what the point is they don't even have an answer. If you ask them what they will have achieved in 5 or 10 years, they have nothing. They're not even trying to do anything.
> Especially at times when I'm wound so tight I feel like I could pop.
It's a mistake to think that to be driven and passionate and motivated about something also means you have to be wound tightly. I've never spent time with anyone that is wound tightly, and I can't imagine how difficult that would be.
EDIT: Replying to your comment lower down - I absolutely DO NOT ever ask anyone what their plan to change the world is, and I never said anything like that above. I ask them what they're passionate about, and what they're striving towards. That doesn't have to be change the world.
Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. You could cover your above-ground pressurized habitat with blocks of ice. Or with a thick layer of dirt. But the subjective experience remains about the same as living underground.
There are a lot of people who live indoors almost 100% of the time in the winter in northern climates. A lot of the larger northern cities have underground walkways between buildings with subway access etc. No one wants to even walk across the street when it's 40 below. :) I expect that designs for 'permanently underground/inside' cities would need to include some high-ceiling park-like areas with some bright UV ligh…
> I expect that designs for 'permanently underground/inside' cities would need to include some high-ceiling park-like areas with some bright UV lights, and other considerations, but that sort of thing seems pretty doable.
Definitely doable. But then there's no longer any special appeal to living on Mars, as opposed to: living in rotating space habitats among the asteroids.
If we reformulate Musk's goal as being: "Create off-site backups of human civilization", then I think asteroid mining & space habitats have a better shot at bootstrapping this process than colonizing Mars.
Once we are leveled up this way in resources and technology, building settlements on Mars can be a side-effect of this outcome. Just like the burgeoning scientific outposts on Antarctica are a side-effect of our current civilization.
Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars
#200This is a spectacular gamble, however Musk has a track record and I think Superheavy/Starship will pay off with unpredictable dividends. But the elephant in the room that Musk appears to be ignoring is the life sciences side of things. Only 12 humans have sortied outside the Van Allen belts (which protect us from the deep space radiation environment). Nobody has spent more than 18 consecutive months in space or reduc…
One interesting idea I heard: Send starships in pairs. When in interplanetary coast attach each at the nose with a long (300+m) tether. Use RCS to start a spin. You can then simulate 1G the entire way.