Why SpaceX Are Going to Beat NASA to Mars

[rdl]

Personally, I think Elon Musk is just trying to sell his BFR to somebody, anybody. I'm pretty sure NASA realizes that Mars colonies are far in the future. It seems that, at least for now, they do intend to explore the place. For that, it looks like the SLS is still the current favored transport. Everything could easily change though. SpaceX has done some very impressive stuff. I hope they keep it up.

[donotdespisethesnake]

One thing NASA proved is you can't create a sustainable manned program if it costs $1 billion per launch, which is the cost of SLS.

What SpaceX hasn't proved yet is that if you drive down the launch costs then new applications will arise to increase demand. But Musk is uniquely different in that he is obviously driven by ideas, not money.

[Eka]

First of all, Elon has to fix all the issues troubling Tesla today.

Although building a brand-new vehicle platform is very tough, its difficulty is insignificant compared to sending humans to Mars.

For that reason, as the Shark Tank investors like to say, I am out.

Well, yeah the Shark Tank investors have to get out of their short positions. Did you get caught with shares shorted when Musk made a $420 a share buyback offer? That says mightily where he thinks the company will be going. Unfortunately I think it may be a mistake. Don't underestimate the loyalty ownership can create. On the other hand with complete ownership it may make getting loans for expansion plans easier.

The design teams are totally separate.

Have you read any of the recent engineering analysis of the Model 3? Many automotive techies are now figuring Tesla will soon be making money on them, if they aren't already. PS, remember the numbers released recently are months old and don't reflect the last few months of production, and production will be increasing by 2/5ths by year end with only parts and logistics as additional costs. No additional labor needed on the assembly line.  Even the non performance sedans have impressive acceleration and handling. I say this as somebody who has driven a Group 3 prototype race car that had a 1200kW engine in it.

One thing NASA proved is you can't create a sustainable manned program if it costs $1 billion per launch, which is the cost of SLS.

What SpaceX hasn't proved yet is that if you drive down the launch costs then new applications will arise to increase demand. But Musk is uniquely different in that he is obviously driven by ideas, not money.

He's also driven by money. He knows he needs to make it affordable so the investors come and make the hotels, research institutes, mines, refineries, and factories.

[Eka]

Personally, I think Elon Musk is just trying to sell his BFR to somebody, anybody. I'm pretty sure NASA realizes that Mars colonies are far in the future. It seems that, at least for now, they do intend to explore the place. For that, it looks like the SLS is still the current favored transport. Everything could easily change though. SpaceX has done some very impressive stuff. I hope they keep it up.

NASA is already seriously considering it for larger loads. That's because it will more likely be ready on time than the SLS will be, and will be cheaper. I’ve run across literature from NASA showing an telescope in the cargobay of a BFR. NASA wants both available and working.

[Eka]

And as for who has money in SpaceX or not, how does that change a single thing? You're shifting the goalposts faster than light, and that's not allowed.

It shows you that Musk isn't the only one with money that wants to get to Mars so it is very pertinent. You've tried to say there is no market. Mars bookings aren't open yet, but moon ones are. Looks like Musk has a private flight for two around the moon booked. I'd expect they are paying somewhere around the price of a large satellite launch on the Falcon Heavy considering that is the rocket SpaceX has that can launch a crewed lunar orbiter in a Dragon capsule. I wish I had that kind of money. I could do a lot with $90 million. I could hire minions to build the things my mind thinks up.

PS: Think about the syndication rights for the "Life on Mars" reality TV show.... 

[Eka]

First there was Steve and the Cult of Mac, now there's in Musk we trust. Poor fanboys, what would they do without a leader?

Sorry bud, but it's Kernighan & Ritchie, the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California Berkeley (creators of BSD UNIX), Richard Stallman, and Linus Torvalds. Together they released us from proprietary operating systems. I never was a fan of any Apple product, unless you are talking Apple Records. Then I am a fan. When I rented a PDP in the later '70s it had BSD on it. I thought the PC was also a deliberately limited functionality hack job. Did you know that IBM had a PC prototype that used the 68000 with a 16 bit wide memory bus? They went with Intel because IBM owned some of it's stock, and it's maximum capabilities were less of a threat to IBM's traditional business computer division.

[james_s]

Probably had to do with cost too. The 68000 was expensive, Intel also had the 8086 with a wider bus but IBM went with the lower cost 8088. I'm sure there was also some concern over cannibalizing sales of their mainfames and minis.

[In Vacuo Veritas]

Where is Musk's Sun probe? Surely colonizing the surface of the Sun would protect the species' egg basket far more than Mars, given the enormous surface area? Solar cells would work much better too. I guess in this case we'd install them on the bottom of our houses.

Plus you have a fusion furnace nearby to synthesize all the elements. Maybe we could turn the Sun into a giant 3D printer? Let those aliens in Andromeda know we mean business!

[a59d1]

Colonizing any planet in the solar system counts as colonizing the sun, my dear chap!

[In Vacuo Veritas]

Colonizing any planet in the solar system counts as colonizing the sun, my dear chap!

Correct. We are all, after all, in the Sun's atmosphere. But just think how cool Solar Roadways would be on the surface of the Sun? You could recharge your 3D printed Tesla in a microsecond!

[wraper]

^ someone doesn't know what atmosphere is.

[Brumby]

Perhaps they meant heliosphere.

[vk6zgo]

One thing NASA proved is you can't create a sustainable manned program if it costs $1 billion per launch, which is the cost of SLS.

What SpaceX hasn't proved yet is that if you drive down the launch costs then new applications will arise to increase demand. But Musk is uniquely different in that he is obviously driven by ideas, not money.

That isn't an enormous sum when you consider that the Western Australian Government paid $A1.6 billion (approx US $ 1.18 billion) for a sports stadium.

It's a very big, very modern, well appointed sports stadium, but ultimately, it's a place to play football, cricket, etc.

[In Vacuo Veritas]

someone doesn't know what atmosphere is.

You? For a Space Nutter charting the future of humanity in the Universe, you have a (typical) shocking ignorance of basic space facts.

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/19aug_lws

""It's true. We live inside the atmosphere of the sun," says Lika Guhathakurta, program manager of NASA's Living with a Star (LWS) program."

Go argue with Lika.

""We're not staying on Earth," says Guhathakurta. "Civilization is spreading into space.""

She's crazier than you though. But even she knows some facts.

Perhaps they meant heliosphere.

You mean the atmosphere of a star?

[In Vacuo Veritas]

One thing NASA proved is you can't create a sustainable manned program if it costs $1 billion per launch, which is the cost of SLS.

What SpaceX hasn't proved yet is that if you drive down the launch costs then new applications will arise to increase demand. But Musk is uniquely different in that he is obviously driven by ideas, not money.

That isn't an enormous sum when you consider that the Western Australian Government paid $A1.6 billion (approx US $ 1.18 billion) for a sports stadium.

It's a very big, very modern, well appointed sports stadium, but ultimately, it's a place to play football, cricket, etc.

And once Humanity has colonized the Galaxy, what do you think they will do on these thousands, nay MILLIONS, of new planets?

[Nusa]

One thing NASA proved is you can't create a sustainable manned program if it costs $1 billion per launch, which is the cost of SLS.

What SpaceX hasn't proved yet is that if you drive down the launch costs then new applications will arise to increase demand. But Musk is uniquely different in that he is obviously driven by ideas, not money.

That isn't an enormous sum when you consider that the Western Australian Government paid $A1.6 billion (approx US $ 1.18 billion) for a sports stadium.

It's a very big, very modern, well appointed sports stadium, but ultimately, it's a place to play football, cricket, etc.

And once Humanity has colonized the Galaxy, what do you think they will do on these thousands, nay MILLIONS, of new planets?

Thumb their noses at nay-sayers, of course!

[In Vacuo Veritas]

Thumb their noses at nay-sayers, of course!

LOL you're adorable! It's like listening to kids fantasize about themselves as adults. Cute, until you realize you guys are in your forties.

[Nusa]

Thumb their noses at nay-sayers, of course!

LOL you're adorable! It's like listening to kids fantasize about themselves as adults. Cute, until you realize you guys are in your forties.

I don't think you got a single thing right in that statement. Trying to fit us all into the same pigeonhole is just your way of insulting the world.

[a59d1]

As someone who actually works in space plasma physics, I can confirm that we live inside the sun's "atmosphere." It's not a very profound statement.

[vk6zgo]

One thing NASA proved is you can't create a sustainable manned program if it costs $1 billion per launch, which is the cost of SLS.

What SpaceX hasn't proved yet is that if you drive down the launch costs then new applications will arise to increase demand. But Musk is uniquely different in that he is obviously driven by ideas, not money.

That isn't an enormous sum when you consider that the Western Australian Government paid $A1.6 billion (approx US $ 1.18 billion) for a sports stadium.

It's a very big, very modern, well appointed sports stadium, but ultimately, it's a place to play football, cricket, etc.

And once Humanity has colonized the Galaxy, what do you think they will do on these thousands, nay MILLIONS, of new planets?

Probably build thousands, nay, millions of football stadia!

Don't lump me with the "colonise the galaxy" people, I was thinking more of just an extended version of
the 1960s Apollo program.

[Eka]

but ultimately, it's a place to play football, cricket, etc.

It's a place to watch others play... Meh, I'd rather do than watch, which makes having CFS really suck. Heck, I don't even have the energy to watch TV anymore.

Thumb their noses at nay-sayers, of course!

LOL you're adorable! It's like listening to kids fantasize about themselves as adults. Cute, until you realize you guys are in your forties.

I'm older...

It's no fantacy, no pipe dream, but instead a hope for the future.

I guess I'll post this. I wrote it up earlier and didn't post it because the conversation had moved on..

I'd suggest that bitterness is going out of your way in an attempt to spoil other peoples dreams. Why else would you spend so much energy on this topic?

Because there are thousands of dreams that are actually worth dreaming. Your time on the mortal plane is limited. How about working out how to make this planet work out for the species that's already here?

Instead of pretending to care about some nebulous future? Is it because you know it will never happen therefore you don't have to work at it? You know, like praying?.

I don't think you can understand the level of frustration I have with current society. At a job I'd get a string of outstanding performance reviews from my directly above managers, then I'd get fired because the big boss didn't want a queer on staff. Again, and again, and again this happened. I'm well past the point where I can deal with that BS anymore. All of that and the other ill treatment that I've received over my life has left me disabled. For me the future will hopefully be much better if I survive that long. There has been a slow but steady increase in the acceptance of queers in society. It's finally starting for transgenders like myself, but it's likely to late for me. I'm physically and mentally broken and can't stand going out of the house anymore. My endocrine system is worn out and failing because I spent to much time in fight or flight mode* when I was young. Even if I psychologically could work, my failing endocrine system won't let me. I have so little available energy production capacity left that I can't even spend an afternoon thinking to my full potential. Just an hour of deep thought leaves me exhausted with a severe headache and nausea. Then I have to take a many hour break to rest my mind, and let it recharge. Watching TV or listening to the radio is out. They use energy. I often just close my eyes, meditate on calm images, and try not to slip into deep thought, or go and post on the net. It takes very little of my mental capacity to read and post on forums.

* really Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Faun mode. Fight or flight is to simplistic and doesn't cover all the ways one can cope with potentially threatening situations.

Strange, I still don't see any Moon bases or Mars vacation colonies. Seems to me it's you who needs to accept you aren't right.

At the end of the Apollo era space travel was only in the nation state affordability zone, despite that some mega millionaires and billionaires were still thinking about it and exploring ideas. They just didn't have the money to commit to as an expensive of project as going to the moon or Mars looked like it would have been. Musk is managing to greatly reduce the transportation cost bottleneck. Once Musk has fully reusable rockets, actual launch costs per ton will be less than 100th of what they were in the Apollo era. He's getting it down into the cost range expected for space elevators.* His per ton Mars transport costs will be well less than 5% of what NASA projected, but the cost of the habitats will be more because they are designed to be permanent. The last design I've seen looked to be a stackable dome type structures that can be covered with regolith for solar storm radiation protection. NASA wasn't giving the visiting astronauts much more than a lunar lander module and some tents to live in. Musk's stated goal is $200,000 per person for what I assume is a 1 way trip to Mars. Even at 10 times that rate, I could sell the farm, visit Mars, and still have a very nice nest egg to retire with. Corporations and governments will see that as a bargain.

* Space elevators are a cable running from ground to way out past geo stationary orbit. They literally are in geo stationary orbit, but are so long one end touches earth, and the other is way out in space. You can balance the ground end with a weight at or out past geo stationary orbit. We can make the extremely strong carbon nanotube fibers needed to make them, but as of a decade ago there wasn't a glue strong enough to bind them together. Last I knew they needed a glue that was another 10x stronger. Don’t worry, that is being worked on. The BFR in one shot use mode would be powerful enough to loft a starter section of cable into geo stationary orbit. Once unreeled with it's earth end anchored on earth, they could thicken it to the strength needed for carrying loads up by sending cable layers that glue on additional strands starting in orbit, and going both down and up at the same time. This way the cable remains balanced in weight around it's geostationary orbit point. After it is heavy enough, then cable layers can start at ground level and go up. Eventually traffic up and down will need to be relatively balanced, or the counterbalance weight needs to be sized for the difference in traffic weight. Loads would climb the cable rather than being pulled up. The cable close to geostationary orbit will be thick and wide, but down at ground level a flat ribbon a meter wide and a few centimeters thick is all that is needed for starting 100 ton climbers going up. Multiple loads could be climbing or descending at once. There are some big technical issues needing to be addressed. Stuff like it maybe would ground out the Van Allen belts, and be a big lightning rod. Carbon nanotubes are an excellent conductor, but can also be made resistive. Yes, you can make integrated circuits with them. To have loads going both up and down at the same time would require some sort of tracks. Right now the plans call for the cable to be a flat ribbon and grip wheels will press on it from both sides. Power to the climber will needed to be provided somehow from the ground and geostationary orbit. The advantage of a tracked cable would be power from slowing descending loads can power ascending loads. On the other hand it is much more complex, and needs to be a lot bigger to support the track structures, and associated equipment. My expectation is ribbon cables first, and track ones later after mining the asteroids provides enough materials.

Thumb their noses at nay-sayers, of course!

LOL you're adorable! It's like listening to kids fantasize about themselves as adults. Cute, until you realize you guys are in your forties.

I don't think you got a single thing right in that statement. Trying to fit us all into the same pigeonhole is just your way of insulting the world.

Could just be a lazy binary way of dealing with the world that many have. For me, I deal with all the hues, saturations, tones and shades out there. Binary thinking with old opinions not being reevaluated when new data comes to light does not compute for me. When new data is learned, my opinions will be reevaluated and may change.

[In Vacuo Veritas]

As someone who actually works in space plasma physics, I can confirm that we live inside the sun's "atmosphere." It's not a very profound statement.

Of course not, I said it. If you had said it first, we'd be knee-deep in Space Nutter bodily fluids from the sheer awesomeness of the fact. These are people who look at pictures of nebulae light years away and start ordering trucks from the Caterpillar catalog for the mining operations. 

So, how's the space plasma physics world treating you?

[In Vacuo Veritas]

* Space elevators are a cable running from ground to way out past geo stationary orbit. completely fictional daydream. They literally are in geo stationary orbit, non-existent but are so long one end touches earth, and the other is way out in space. (as is your head) You can balance the ground end with a weight of course, so simple! at or out past geo stationary orbit. We can make the extremely strong carbon nanotube fibers needed to make them, sure we can! But first, let's build a bridge that can hold for 50 years but as of a decade ago there wasn't a glue strong enough to bind them together. Yes, that was the missing part.

 

Oh god, don't change. You're hysterical! You're as funny as this book. It's just stunning to see people still believe in such mindless rot.

[In Vacuo Veritas]

I deal with all the hues, saturations, tones and shades out there.

OK Goethe, tell me, what hue of "empty deadly radiation-blasted vacuum with nothing in it" should I be looking at?

www.distancetomars.com

Reality doesn't care what kind of magic mushrooms you put in your breakfast omelet. The only shade is : space is a dead end. There's nothing out there but cubic light years of sucking void. No combination of real materials and real engineering and real energy sources is going to change that.

Perhaps you meant to post to:
https://www.writingclasses.com/classes/description/science-fiction-fantasy-writing

[CatalinaWOW]

I'm not sure what powers your vitriol but whatever it is you have spent a sizable fraction of your total post count in a partially accurate portrayal of space exploration.  You clearly share much with the European stay at homes at the time of New World colonization.  I totally agree that colonization of space is orders of magnitude more difficult than colonization of the New World, but your words (slightly modified) would fit perfectly in pubsman from the 16th century.

"The colonies are a dead end. There's nothing there league after league of wild land, untamed savages and a hostile climate.  There are no canals, no markets, no mines, no universities, no libraries - nothing required to support a civilization.  Those attempting this will inevitably decline into a life of savagery like the existing inhabitants."

What you miss is that the vacuum isn't the interesting part.   The interesting part is the tiny fraction that has been gathered together by gravity.  Much of that is also inaccessible.  We won't get to the interior of Jupiter any sooner than we can get to the interior of the Earth.  But that tiny little bit that is accessible (with foreseeable extensions of today's technology) is far more than we can get too easily here at home.  Yeah, with much effort we can get to more here on Earth, but it is easy to tell stories of the difficulty and cost and environmental impact of finding and reaching those harder to reach resources.  Whether space is tougher than deep Earth is something that can't really be answered today. 

Beware of applying science to predicting failure.  That path is littered with goofs.  Profiles of the Future,  Arthur Clarke's excellent book on the problems and pitfalls of predicting the future has two telling examples.  Professors at the University of Cornell (a leading aeronautical research institute at the time) in the 1930s used detail calculations of power available, drag and weight to poo poo the idea of trans-atlantic passenger transport.  They proved that at best a handful of passengers at a time could be carried and it could never reach economic break even.  Their calculations were completely correct.  I will leave as an exercise for the student how their calculations could be correct while today anyone can book a cross ocean airline flight carrying dozens or even hundreds of passengers.  While many will argue that airlines still haven't reached economic break even, the profs clearly missed a couple of inventions.  In the second example, in the late 1940s the British Interplanetary Society used information from material science, rocketry and the energy content and Isp potential of various fuels to prove that it was impossible to place a man made object on the moon.  Again it is informative to understand why they were wrong, even though there were no errors in their calculations.