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Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

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Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#81

Post by gammarator »

rbanffy wrote: post #5

Mars is a very harsh environment - and it's very far from Earth (6 months best case with current propulsion technology). I'd suggest a permanent base on the Moon as a useful first step - it has some water, abundant energy, plenty of Aluminum, Magnesium, Titanium and a lack of atmosphere that makes metallurgy easy. Radiation is worse than Mars, but, in both cases, buried housing structures make sense and the Moon's lo…

The answer Musk gave at a Q&A I was at was, "We won't go to the Moon because the Moon sucks."

His point was that the Moon can never be made habitable for humans, and the low gravity makes it hard to work.

The analogy he made was the Arctic--sure, it's a lot closer to Europe and Asia, but Columbus et al. went to the Americas instead. Farther away, but more habitable.

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#82

Post by InclinedPlane »

ars wrote: post #80
InclinedPlane wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asteroids yes, comets not so much. A long period comet could hit the Earth with a warning time of only a few years, and could easily be large enough to destroy human civilization.

Asteroids can be large - up to 1000 km, but comets are much smaller - up to 40km. According to http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=20000&#38... a 40km comet impacting the earth would destroy entire countries. But on the other side of the earth, while it would be noticed, it would not kill anyone and it would not cause severe damage. So deadly? Yes. but humanity destroying? No.

Pluto is effectively a comet. There are objects just as large or larger in the Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud. It's likely that the larger an object is the less likely it is to be jostled by interstellar forces and have its orbit perturbed enough to fall into the inner Solar System (if we're lucky) but we don't really have any clue on what the size limits are for such processes. It would suck to find out by way of the entire human race being eliminated.

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#83

Post by gammarator »

Cushman wrote: post #11

I'm with Carl Sagan. Visit? Yes. Settle? Not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to go to Mars as a hobby, as a tourist-- if that's how you want to spend your billions, fine. But I worry that too many impatient sci-fi lovers see space travel as some way to escape from the problems of Earth, which it will never be. If we can't figure ou…

Musk said in a Q&A that he views it as cheap insurance.

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#84

Post by [deleted] »

ceejayoz wrote: post #53
ars wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might not take it, but they would have to make it. Almost no free oxygen on mars. But making oxygen (from rocks presumably) uses lots of energy (electricity - it's basically the same process used to make aluminium from ore).

Rocks? No. Water ice. Solar powered electrolysis, and you get to use the hydrogen for fuel too.

[deleted]

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#85

Post by gammarator »

jpdoctor wrote: post #12
Shivetya wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will take his grandest adventure line coupled with the part about, there will always be problems on Earth and waiting for a time there isn't will never come. Far too many people criticize lavish dreams such as what Musk has but that is what separates the watchers from the doers.

> lavish dreams such as what Musk has but that is what separates the watchers from the doers. ?? Not sure of your meaning: Dreams are usually the domain of the watchers, expertise and hard work are usually the domain of the doers. Musk has demonstrated expertise and hard work, but in a different area; here he is a dreamer. Is that what you meant?

Musk is demonstrating hard work in this area, too: they're building rockets and launching them. Far more affordably than their competitors, too.

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#86

Post by gammarator »

philwelch wrote: post #58
pjscott wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can do both. Hell, even Elon Musk can do both; he also runs Tesla Motors, which makes electric cars on Earth. Also, I notice that people are much more likely to condemn space development as frivolous than they are to criticize, say, football or whittling. Does that seem like a double standard to you, too?

Football and whittling are sustainably self-funding.

So is SpaceX. Their rockets are changing the economics of space launch already--they are several factors cheaper per pound to orbit than their competitors.

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#87

Post by gammarator »

greeneggs wrote: post #28
ceejayoz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, an asteroid could wipe out humanity with pretty minimal warning. There's something major to be said for at least a small self-sustaining colony somewhere else.

Except we can defend the earth from an asteroid for probably five orders of magnitude less money than establishing a self-sustaining colony somewhere else. And if self sustaining is all you need, setting up a self-sustaining colony a mile underground is also five or six orders of magnitude cheaper. I can't think of any risk to humanity where going to the moon or Mars makes sense as insurance.

"Five orders of magnitude less" than the cost of the Apollo program is $20 million [1]. Current large space telescopes and underground labs cost of order $2 billion, only 1/100th of the cost of the Apollo program, so I don't think your suggested alternatives are as cheap as you think.

What makes SpaceX important is that they've rethought the design and manufacturing process to make their rockets far cheaper than others to date. If you bend the cost curve enough, surprising things become reasonable.

[1] https://xkcd.com/980/

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#88

Post by greeneggs »

gammarator wrote: post #87
greeneggs wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we can defend the earth from an asteroid for probably five orders of magnitude less money than establishing a self-sustaining colony somewhere else. And if self sustaining is all you need, setting up a self-sustaining colony a mile underground is also five or six orders of magnitude cheaper. I can't think of any risk to humanity where going to the moon or Mars makes sense as insurance.

"Five orders of magnitude less" than the cost of the Apollo program is $20 million [1]. Current large space telescopes and underground labs cost of order $2 billion, only 1/100th of the cost of the Apollo program, so I don't think your suggested alternatives are as cheap as you think. What makes SpaceX important is that they've rethought the design and manufacturing process to make their rockets far cheaper than othe…

You aren't going to get a self-sustaining colony on Mars for the cost of the Apollo program. Just getting a biosphere-level of sustainment would be several orders of magnitude more expensive. If "self-sustaining" is meant to mean an insurance policy, then it requires more than just generating food and water; it will require a whole manufacturing base. I don't think 10+ trillion dollars, about three orders of magnitude more than NASA's budget either now or during Apollo, is unrealistic at all.

For comparison, the space station cost $150 billion 2010 dollars (according to Wikipedia). It is in low-earth orbit and satisfies no conditions of self-sustainability. With a factor of 100 on that, which is impossibly optimistic, you are already at $15 trillion.

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#89

Post by zerostar07 »

ars wrote: post #47
zerostar07 wrote: post #29

This is remarkable, but is going to Mars really our most challenging goal, our raison d'etre as humanity? Given the choice between being either the First human on mars or the First machine-augmented-human what would you choose?

Is there some reason these are mutually exclusive?

I find it interesting that people find these equally challenging. For the record, we know way too much about Mars and too little about the machine that makes us want to go (and go) to mars, the brain. If we can master our intelligence we could do so much more than going to a desolate planet. TBH i believe the first mission to mars will leave us disappointed (we won't have learned anything - and we don't really need mars for our future).

Re: Why Elon Musk Wants To Bring People to Mars—and Go There Himself

#90

Post by meric »

philwelch wrote: post #55

> In January, Newt Gingrich’s space ambitions were mocked by many experts as well as the public, particularly his vow that a moon colony would be established by the conclusion of his “second term.” Musk isn’t committing to a timeline nearly so ambitious; when pushed by Wright, he suggested that this could be a reality within the next 30 years. Gingrich's moon base by 2020 is probably less ambitious than Musk's Martia…

You're forgetting the economy and number of technological achievements grows exponentially.

At 4% per annum growth the world economy will be triple the current size in 30 years. (assuming no technological singularity event).

An economy triple the current size doesn't seem like it can easily afford a colony on Mars either but I think Elon Musk thinks my assumption is wrong.

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