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Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

arstechnica.com

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Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#221

Post by baking »

cstross wrote: post #181

This 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…

I'm not sure how big of a gamble that is. If he gets Starship into orbit he can start getting serious revenue from Starlink. Then he needs to transfer fuel in orbit to send cargo to the moon and mars. At that point he can send people and the return trip after two years will basically be free because some Starships will be returning to Earth anyway. I'm pretty sure he can get enough guinea pigs to commit to a 2-year trip. Then you iterate on the next batch of guinea pigs. Maybe he sends retirees who don't have that much life expectancy anyways.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#222

Post by [deleted] »

m4rtink wrote: post #187
nixpulvis wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to elaborate. I suspect any reasons you'll come up with are all still less urgent than the needs of our Earth. I've heard the argument about learning to control the climate through taraforming (or whatever you want to call it), but I'm completely unconvinced that is an efficient method. I'd be willing to be convinced otherwise, but I'm very skeptical.

Once even a minuscule fraction of the resources of the Solar System become available you can solve all terrestrial problems once and for all. Space & Solar System is big and has a lot of resources, much much more than what is available in on a terrestrial planet.

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#224

Post by avmich »

widowlark wrote: post #104
hef19898 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't, plain and simple. So either it is propaganda or dilution or hybris. Probably a combination of all three.

People say he doesn't over and over - but he beats expectations over and over. Hmm.

Once working on an important project (and the work went round the clock), Sergei Korolev ordered people to literally wake him up at night if some serious questions or problems surfaced up. His team took that literally, and Korolev was woken up a few times at night. Later he said "you seem to conspired to not let me get some sleep", but nobody was fired[1], and the team still adjusted to a balance between importance of problem visibility and importance of getting rest.

Sorry for no references, writing from memory :) .

[1] Firing in Korolev's team was a whole 'nother story entirely. For example, Korolev used to fire people in the morning only to require them to work extra hard in the same afternoon. The team got used to this feature. In reality, nobody wanted to be fired - people saw the importance of their work.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#225

Post by virgilp »

missosoup wrote: post #136
CydeWeys wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really helping them that they have some of the most motivated employees on Earth. Their people absolutely believe in this vision of colonizing Mars just as much as Elon Musk does. (Hell, I do too, I just don't work there.) Meanwhile I'm working at an advertising company.

> Meanwhile I'm working at an advertising company. That's a funny way to spell Google.

Or Facebook. Or heck, even Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe if you're in the "wrong" department. I bet even some Apple employees might occasionally feel they work at an advertising company.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#226

Post by TeMPOraL »

dexen wrote: post #71
Ajedi32 wrote: post #56

The 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 designed and built a custom welding machine _and_ a custom x-ray machine for building tank domes in four weeks? That's feasible due to the requirements being narrow and specific, and also well understood by a team close to the team building those machines. Contrast that with expensive & slow-to-build machines available on the general market, where the requirements are broad, under-specified, and always shifting…

Perhaps it's a demonstration that the market should have more tools as composable building blocks, rather than turn-key solutions.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#227

Post by smarri »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #195
Ajedi32 wrote: post #56

The 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

Absolute turbo geezers

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#229

Post by weregiraffe »

schaefer wrote: post #121

A Linguistic Beef: The word "Starship" means specifically that the ship is capable of traveling between stars. At a minimum, it should travel from it's home star to the nearest neighboring star. What we're talking about here are "Spaceships". -- The only way I can lighten up and enjoy the name Starship in this context is to assume it's being used ironically... like someone who's named their cat "Dog".

>The word "Starship" means specifically that the ship is capable of traveling between stars.

Well, it would be capable. Just very-very slow.

Re: Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars

#230

Post by ralusek »

nixpulvis wrote: post #145
throwaway13337 wrote: post #23

It's quite inspiring to see a real goal and drive towards it. 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. Such a clear goal makes it easy to have greater purpose that you don't second guess. This isn't a scheme to get rich, a zero sum political movement, or a narcissistic artistic endeavor. It's pretty unique there. There's that whole da…

> It's quite inspiring to see a real goal and drive towards it. I'm throughly uninspired... As a friend of mine once said: "progress when you're going the wrong direction, is turning around". The idea that we'll settle Mars while the Earth burns in borderline sinister. It reminds me of the elite outpost from Kingsman (the movie). We have a planet that is in dire need of this kind of motivated action, and yet Elon wou…

The person who is doing this is also very concerned with the state of affairs on Earth.

He owns SolarCity, a solar panel company, Tesla, an electric car and battery company, and Boring Company, an attempt at creating a transportation system that mandates the use of EV.

The fact that all of this technology will benefit human existence on Mars should go ahead and show you how developing technology in order to survive a situation far more dire than Earth's, in a sustainable way, might also help us better survive our situation on Earth.

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