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SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

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Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#51

Post by extrapickles »

audeyisaacs wrote: post #29

Musk's speaking is always a little awkward (in an endearing way), but did he seem significantly more nervous/emotionally affected than usual in the first part of this speech? It seemed that way to me, curious if anyone else interpreted it like that. He calms down when he starts talking about risk and it being the anniversary of a launch. edit: Good and fun presentation regardless! edit2: Thoughts: - Maybe he feels in…

I saw that.

The talk was on the 9th anniversary of their first successful launch, which basically made SpaceX possible.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#52

Post by modeless »

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…

Elon says on Instagram: "Cost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy in an aircraft. Forgot to mention that."

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#53

Post by greglindahl »

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.

Dragon 1 has already gone through a couple of iterations of heat shields. Mars entry is expected to be hotter, that's straightforward math.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#54

Post by krastanov »

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 has stated a couple of times that the radiation will be there and it will have the same lifetime cancer risk increase as smoking. It seems the plan is to just live with the increased cancer risk.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#55

Post by schwarrrtz »

perilunar wrote: post #37
ajmurmann wrote: post #25

So what's the carbon footprint of one of these launches? Did I understand correctly that we can make the fuel by taking CO2 from the atmosphere? That would make the footprint negative, would it? That seems to good to be true.

Not negative, since you are creating just as much CO2 burning the CH4 as you removed in the first place. Carbon neutral though.

Carbon neutral assuming you are creating the CH4 using atmospheric CO2. On Earth I suspect that most CH4 comes from natural gas. On Mars it would be carbon neutral - but that's actually a bad thing, assuming that your goal is to increase the atmospheric density on Mars.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#56

Post by andrewwharton »

perilunar wrote: post #15

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).

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#57

Post by Osmium »

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.

> His presentation style usually seems to be pretty raw, in a good way.

Completely agreed that it's raw in a good way -- you can tell he really has technical detail down too, I noticed one of the times when a slide left too early he still knew the numbers that had been on it. Also he has an understated sense of humor ("mountain").

I also sometimes got the sense he genuinely was in awe at what he was seeing. Like it still took him by surprise. It was interesting to watch.

> It's not as crisp/polished as Jobs' presentations were

All this said, I wish there were a Jobs-like figure to sell SpaceX. I'm sure there are people who'd disagree with me on this, but I can only imagine how popular/well-known SpaceX would be if they had someone who could pitch to the general public. SpaceX keynotes could be tune-in television with the right person, but it'd have to be someone really tied to the company, I don't think you could hire someone to do this. It'd have to be authentic.

Re: SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary [video]

#59

Post by Osmium »

extrapickles wrote: post #47
Osmium wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, I think SpaceX will have a lot more trouble with any E2E ambitions than they would with missions to Mars. So much red tape, no one's going to want a space-port in their backyard, different/difficult economics, safety concerns, terrorism concerns, etc. etc.

Thats why they show the spaceport out at sea, as it kills the standard NIMBY objections. Also the cities they want to fly out of don’t have enough room to easily build a spaceport.

If you think putting it a little out to sea would kill NIMBY objections .... still, we can but dream.

I'm not entirely sure how serious SpaceX are about their E2E idea anyway, I took it as more of a "hey, isn't this neat? totally physically possible and practical too." I imagine it would take a long time to scale up to that point though, probably decades(?) after the Moon/Mars.

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