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SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

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Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#241

Post by rtpg »

simonh wrote: post #238
rtpg wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Places people don't want to live in: - a submarine - the middle of Death Valley - the middle of Antarctica - the (completely lifeless) top of mount Fuji Living in a Mars colony would be a combination of all these experiences. If you somehow have the magic sauce to make Mars enjoyable, you could offer this experience in the middle of the desert as well. You could tackle real habitation problems on this planet. Just bu…

>Just building a couple school buses (ISS) to float around the Earth took hundreds of billions. Absolutely, but then just one of these things will dwarf the ISS all on it's own. The old equations of space exploration affordability are being rewritten. As for people wanting to go, there's a permanent base at the south pole, the peak of Mount Fuji is often a churned up field of mud from all the visitors and Burning Man…

Do you think the billionaires in their RVs at Burning Man would be willing to spend 6 months in that condition?

Even at a "ridiculously low" price of $500k, you're basically offering a mount Everest experience for people. Dangerous , uncomfortable, generally hard to do if you're not super free. A crazy adventure

Some people are interested, but you can't argue much for economy of scales when the total market of affordability is probably tiny.

Only 5000 people have ever climbed Mt Everest.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#242

Post by grondilu »

nicktelford wrote: post #173
grondilu wrote: post #96

This plan sounds much more sensible than most of what I've heard from Musk before. Especially the intercontinental transport part. That is a real business use-case, potentially very lucrative. I also suspect that could get quite a few more billionaires excited (after all they spend a lot of time in private jets and I'm sure they'd like to cut that time off) which could help raising more investment. I don't believe th…

Given his aspiration to sell it for prices comparable to economy airline tickets, I feel like the outlay of building the facilities at each end will eat up a lot of the profits. It's a neat idea, but I don't see this funding the Mars colony ambitions, at least not in the short term. If they can get that infrastructure heavily subsidised, then perhaps it's a different story. That said, I can't see many cities that wou…

> It's a neat idea, but I don't see this funding the Mars colony ambitions, at least not in the short term.

I think you misunderstood him. Musk doesn't plan on founding a mars colony. He plans on giving a solid business plan for a big, fully reusable rocket capable of transporting hundreds of people. He believes transportation is the main obstacle to people building a city on mars.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#243

Post by grondilu »

dogma1138 wrote: post #220
grondilu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thats why they show the spaceport out at sea, I suspect putting the spaceport at sea is mainly a security issue. Failing to reach the landing pad is certainly less catastrophic on water than on the ground.

Not for the passengers, although if they can do a soft water landing and the ship is somewhat buoyant you have some chance of hull recovery. And that would actually be better than aircraft, there isn't such thing as a water landing there it's called crashing in the ocean.

It will certainly be buoyant, provided it can dump its propellant in time.

You also want your rocket to land in an uninhabited area, in case something goes terribly bad. Sea makes much sense in this regard.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#244

Post by DrBazza »

tbabb wrote: post #18

Back of the envelope calculation for the price of an Earth-to-Earth ticket: Musk's stated goal is $500k/ticket to Mars. It's a shorter trip, so perhaps ~5x as many passengers in the same volume (i.e. 500 total; cf. a380 which seats 850). It takes five (?) orbital refuel trips for the martian journey, but we'd need none of those. Depending on how much less than a full tank the passenger vehicle needs (payload could be…

One problem with Earth-to-Earth is noise. A quick google tells me Saturn 5 was 220 decibels. So it has to be sea launches or desert launches. Also, Concorde couldn't go supersonic until it was significantly out to sea.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#245

Post by evanlivingston »

staticelf wrote: post #121
evanlivingston wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You said in another comment "Just ask the people that have a fulltime job but still cannot afford a place to live if slavery has ended."

I agree wholeheartedly with that. Let's consider those people, and lets consider some other, mmm, how about Rwandans as well. Has electricity and the radio, cameras and engines increased the liberties of those people? I many cases a lot of those technologies have been used to remove liberties from those people, and sometimes to even kill them.

We have the technology now to meet everyone's need. Right now. We can produce enough food, we can build enough houses and supply everyone with enough calories. What technological things need to happen in order to distribute our resources accordingly? You'll probably say that's not a technological problem, at least not primarily, and I agree. This is the larger point I'm trying to get at and challenge others to address. I don't believe the most exciting future is one that requires enormous technological progress and when we focus on enormous technological progress for the sake of progress, rather than the sake of equality, well then we as a society continue to create a world the mirrors our goals: progress instead of equality.

>Until then, there is no real incentive for people to reduce inequality.

Sure there is, it's called compassion.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#246

Post by DrBazza »

rtpg wrote: post #241
simonh wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just building a couple school buses (ISS) to float around the Earth took hundreds of billions. Absolutely, but then just one of these things will dwarf the ISS all on it's own. The old equations of space exploration affordability are being rewritten. As for people wanting to go, there's a permanent base at the south pole, the peak of Mount Fuji is often a churned up field of mud from all the visitors and Burning Man…

Do you think the billionaires in their RVs at Burning Man would be willing to spend 6 months in that condition? Even at a "ridiculously low" price of $500k, you're basically offering a mount Everest experience for people. Dangerous , uncomfortable, generally hard to do if you're not super free. A crazy adventure Some people are interested, but you can't argue much for economy of scales when the total market of afford…

You are also ignoring the pioneer spirit. Don't forget that essentially built America. Imagine if no-one wanted to cross the Atlantic because it was too expensive or it was 'unsettled'?

People want to go to Mars. People want to try and live there. Scientists want to go there and learn, and explore.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#247

Post by ashark »

netfire wrote: post #221
ajmurmann wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they miss 2022 the next window at 2024 is still incredible. Who would have seriously believed we'd fly something of that size to Mars by that time and have a manned mission two years later?!

Question: Why do the autonomous cargo missions need to be done in the ideal launch window? It doesn't seem like the systems required to operate and navigate in space should require much energy, once your are up to cruising speed (and there's no air resistance in space to slow you down). Does it matter if the cargo takes 6 months to deliver the cargo instead of 3? Am I missing something?

Longer exposure of components to radiation? Deterioration of fuel and fuel-touching components (wouldn't be able to get by on relatively inert monopropellant like on tiny probes, probably)? Best guesses.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#248

Post by ygra »

muxator wrote: post #240
igravious wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's key, and it's clever design. Basically space shuttle next edition with the booster on the bottom rather than it being strapped to the side of it and where the booster is reusable. It's a two-part vehicle: booster/shuttle. The original space shuttle had a 40% vehicular failure rate. The SpaceX Shuttle need to have commercial airline rates of failure and reusability. That's a big step up. You know the way we still…

What do you mean by "40% vehicular failure rate"? Could you please give some insights / sources?

Out of five vehicles built, two have been lost. I think you can find sources on those two incidents easily enough.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#249

Post by DrBazza »

Asdfbla wrote: post #142

Making life multiplanetary seems like one of the least important issues of our times to me: either we figure out how to make life on earth sustainable in the medium term (next 50-100 years) or we do not have enough time to become multiplanetary anyway (since that will take centuries, and we will likely never leave the solar system anyway). So it seems a bit premature to concern yourself with interplanetary ambitions…

> we do not have enough time to become multiplanetary anyway (since that will take centuries, and we will likely never leave the solar system anyway).

Neither of these statements are true. It's only a question of money, and money spent appropriately. Musk is demonstrating both of these.

As soon as we have a self-sustaining base on Mars, we're multi-planetary. There have been enough experiments to show that a man-made self-sustaining bio-sphere is possible. If Musk's timeline happens, this could be easily within a century, if not decades. To quote a phrase, 'necessity is the mother of invention'. It's likely that settling on Mars will drive the science and research that will solve these problems.

As for interstellar travel, that's well documented elsewhere on the web. It's doable, now, with current technology, without humans, but is massively expensive. And we don't know where to go. Once we do, it's just an engineering challenge for Musk V2 to solve.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#250

Post by DrBazza »

spike021 wrote: post #49
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…

His presentation style usually seems to be pretty raw, in a good way. It's not as crisp/polished as Jobs' presentations were, or in fact others. As in, it's not as marketable. It's doesn't seem like it's been a style of preparation for a pure sales/marketing kind of pitch. Kind of interesting, in my opinion.

Interesting that you mention Jobs in that Musk said, just like Jobs did, that he's reducing the product line to one thing, to increase economies of scale.
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