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SpaceX Aims To Put Man On Mars In 10-20 Years
An anonymous reader writes "SpaceX hopes to put an astronaut on Mars within 10 to 20 years. From the article: '"We'll probably put a first man in space in about three years," Elon Musk told the Wall Street Journal Saturday. "We're going all the way to Mars, I think... best case 10 years, worst case 15 to 20 years."'"
To put the emphasis on improving LEO access first (through better lower cost commercialized technologies) than trying to push the shuttle derived Ares program (that republicans have been trying to resurrect.)?
If Space-X can meet its goal of $1,000/lb. to LEO (one TENTH) the cost of the space shuttle, I would think so!
Thank you for having the vision, the money, and the balls to do these great things.
Regards,
Geeks everywhere.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Send man to his death in 10-15 years.
While I heartily support the effort, this isn't exactly news. Musk has said similar things in the past couple of years, but this time he happens to have said it to the Wall Street Journal.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I really don't see how spaceX is going to get the kind of money that a mars mission would need. Props to them if they can actually get investors to line up for it.
I'm so sick of all these various companies, and government space programmes telling us what they can do in 10 or 20 years. Apparently everyone and his dog will be on Mars by then, meanwhile nobody has actually walked even on the Moon in nearly 40 years. Don't get me wrong, I'd like very much for someone to do all these things they predict, but I wish they'd just shut up and do them instead of talking about all the great things they're going to do.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
I've always said that I'd support putting someone on Mars -- if I could choose who it would be. (At the moment, I have several candidates in mind.)
In TFA, he doesn't mention a return trip. Is that intentional? A one way trip to mars makes a lot of sense.
I'm not going until they can get some women on Mars too.
rewriting history since 2109
Well, is there really anything worth it in the moon? If there was some precious metals or something, I'm sure there would be lots of companies trying to get them and turn it into money. But there isn't. On the other hand, Mars surely could have such.
Really... At least nuclear fusion is only a decade away, like it's been for the past 50-60 years.
Is this the new nuclear fusion?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
We were promised jetpacks and flying cars, finish those first.
I want to see the space elevator or a mech before I die damn it!!
Perhaps you are forgetting, but SpaceX is driving the astronomical technology race. They may not be able to place a man on the moon just yet, but their technology is constantly improving in design and efficiency. No need to handle legacy systems and some of the best engineers in the world.
It's more realistic than SpaceX's goal.
If there was some precious metals or something, I'm sure there would be lots of companies trying to get them and turn it into money. But there isn't. On the other hand, Mars surely could have such.
Yes it probably does. I'd very much like to know how anyone intends to make a profit of taking a mining operation to Mars and then shipping the stuff back to Earth. That's once they've found it of course. No point going sending machinery and people until you know just where you're sending them. And finding it is probably the one thing that we could actually do with robots using today's technology. But nobody's doing that AFAIK - it's all talk about manned missions for the bragging rights (with maybe a little science on the side).
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Musk doesn't have the money to go to Mars. He doesn't have the technology yet. However, he can make SpaceX popular with credulous nerves by making a "10 or 20 years" claim.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Before any agency, public or private, starts making claims of getting to mars it would seem prudent to have demonstrated some baby steps toward that goal. SpaceX is one agency charged with replacing the Space Shuttle, and it seems years away from that. There are no detailed plans on the propulsion technology that would be used to get to mars, or even the moon. There are no plans for building various outposts that a mars vehicle could dock with to re-supply. I think mars is a stretch. Until we are avid moon visitors I hold any claims of getting to mars as a joke.
Who would have thought it. Mars could well be the thing that puts a positive influence on the world economy and world direction.
The moon landing energised the world, it literally invented modern computing technology.
Why can't a Mars landing?
In order to get to Mars significant advances in material, energy, and food science are going to have to be achieved. All of which would have real world positive impacts.
Now Recruiting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_12E1EN6fs
Nothing wrong with bragging rights. Have you forgotten the message behind Armstrong's "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind"? You have to start somewhere!
Space programs take a quite a long time to develop. The average government satellite takes around 12-16 years from development to operation. They have to think 10-20 years out.
I'm glad to hear it confirmed that SpaceX really does have ambitions beyond LEO. Still, I can't believe that they could afford to do this just because they want to. Somebody has to pay for it. Will the US Congress ever decide to fund space exploration to the necessary level and for long enough that they could pay SpaceX to do this? I am very skeptical. Is there someone else out there that would? Maybe a few other nations could but they would probably chose a company within their own countries. Not that I think they would... they didn't fund anybody's trip to the moon when that was the big race. Maybe they intend to get corporate sponsors? A WHOLE LOT of them.
Ok I'll shut up for now. In the meantime, can you please provide me with $10 billion in funding? I'll let you know what it was for in 20 years.
Quit whining - there's an investment opportunity for all in the next Big Thing - trips to Mars. Be the first to be seen walking on Mars using the Bubble telescope. Bring your own tulips.
Well, is there really anything worth it in the moon?
There's a low-gravity, no-atmosphere location from where it's possible to launch missions to anywhere in the solar system much cheaper than from the earth.
There's local supply of building materials, ample material for shielding against radiation, and things don't need to be so flimsy and fragile as something that's built in orbit.
Besides, there's the possibility of mining Helium 3, which has been assumed to be one of the possible means to obtain nuclear fusion power.
I can't see what would be the reason, either technical or financial, to go to Mars before building a permanent moon base.
Well, is there really anything worth it in the moon?
If we could develop the technology for a fully functional permanent base: food production, living space, life-style (exercise), robot miners, energy production -- then we will be well on our way to colonising the stars. Also, with 1/6th the gravity well and no atmosphere, the moon may be a better place to plan and execute further exploration.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
It has been 50 years away for about 50 years. Still dismal, but no-where near as bad as you say. And progress is still being made, so one-day we may have fusion still.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Really... At least nuclear fusion is only a decade away, like it's been for the past 50-60 years.
Is this the new nuclear fusion?
Humorously, you are exactly correct, for reasons that you probably don't know. Both are well within our technological reach, both repeatedly have been determined to be possible given a decade of funded work, both have repeatedly had "political" declarations that we'll do it, both without any budgetary follow thru.
For at least fifty years, if someone would slap down the stack of cash, in a decade you'd have a fusion plant or a moon colony.
At least one problem is the technology has been improving faster than construction can happen. For example, a 1950s fusion reactor would probably resemble a very large linear accelerator across the state of TX, using an old fashioned "mirror machine" design. But it would require something like the national steel output for a year to build the casing, the world wide copper output for a decade to wind the magnets, blah blah blah, and you'd even up with some multiple of the entire planets generating capacity. Which would make scheduled maint kinda problematic. Now a days you could build one vaguely powerplant sized, more or less, but the R+D costs using live hardware would be kinda expensive... Can't you just wait a decade for more studies to get the reactor wall perfected in simulation before cutting metal?
In a similar way, a 1950s mars colony would have been kind of expensive and risky... Almost certainly this will continue, and a 2020-designed colony will be quite a bit more expensive and risky than a 2030-designed colony...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
And I aim to win Lotto next Saturday.
In 10-20 years, we'll be lucky if we're not living in the world of Mad Max.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There are lots of elements on the moon that could be utilized to help launch from the moon to mars or elsewhere, from lower gravity. The smart thing to do is use robots to build a moon base, and proceed further from there.
If someone mentions He3 as a potential fusion fuel as a reason to go to the moon, he's pushing an agenda.
He3 is not a realistic reason to go to the moon, by any stretch of the imagination.
There is no shortage of D on earth. There is way more D on earth than there is He3 on the moon. It is easy to mine D from earth. It is difficult to mine He3 from the moon: the meagre million tons of it are spread over the entire surface of the moon. Moreover, He3 is more difficult to fuse than is D. And even controlled D fusion is, as they say, decades, away.
There may be all kinds of reasons to go to the moon, He3 as a fusion fuel is not one of them.
Well you see, if you want o go to Mars, you have to pay for going to Mars. One of the ways to pay for going to Mars is too talk a really good game and see if people pony up some cash. Talking a good game is not sufficient, but absent Bill Gates as a financial backer, it's necessary. (Realistically even Bill couldn't provide sole financial backing for this most likely)
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
There is no way they can even come close.
This is just a way to get money from clueless investors, of which there are plenty. It is also free publicity.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That's the wonderful thing about making predictions 10 or 20 years out: The predictor will never be called to account if the prediction fails to be accurate. Even better are those predictions about what will be possible in 50 years, because by the time the 50 years is done the person who made the prediction is either retired or dead.
The simple fact is that Hari Seldon doesn't exist, and thus any prediction beyond the next year or so is more or less complete BS. (This rule also goes for federal budget projections, so bear that in mind
And I support efforts to get to Mars, I just don't like BS predictions.
I am officially gone from
All this talk of going to Mars, but I believe if you take a look at the numbers, Mars is simply underwhelming:
http://s-ec-sm.buzzfeed.com/static/imagebuzz/web03/2010/3/1/14/mars-results-for-the-2010-winter-olympics-29508-1267471046-286.jpg [buzzfeed.com]
Then read the front page of a newspaper and not Slashdot.
Except that the closest star is something like 100 million times as far as the moon, and there's no guarantee the closest star is any good.
To visit the stars, we first need anti-matter based rocket propulsion, which we won't find on the moon.
We don't have the basic science for nuclear fusion, though. Mars is largely an engineering problem, not science.
I believe the tech is there. After all, we made the moon with laughable tech. Put slightly facetiously, we need to take a page out of 75 years of SF and get 16 cores of Intel goodness to help drive us there. The big deal with all those 1-shot earth side calcs for the moon is that they had no backup comps to do calcs on the fly.
Funny though, that's like three positive space stories in a couple of weeks. I guess people were upset that we looked like we were sinking into squabbling down here.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
While you are basically right with your points, I really doubt that we will have any hot fusion in the near future. The current reactors are attempting to compress the plasma with magnetic fields. We try this since 30 or 40 years, and every physicist knows that using electric fields would be 100 times more efective (See Fusor reactor types). ... but likely never as a power plant.
I doubt we will ever have fusion for power generation on earth. Perhaps as a "engine" in space crafts
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
There's no abundant source of energy like we have on earth (oil).
So, you don't want anyone to say anything about anything until what, the day before they do it? Week before ok?
Well, if I recall correctly there were lots of deaths as the European's did their exploration of the "new world". However, our legal system discourages this type of risk today.
So if this is to be accomplished it won't be in the west. Perhaps Asia or the third world?
get your ass to Mars
After all, we made the moon with laughable tech.
damn, you're clueless aren't you ?
...I'm okay with this.
Space! SPACE! So much space, got to see it all. Space!
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Elon Musk - fragrance for civilian astronauts.
Most of the problems associated with getting to the Mars are the same as those getting to the Moon, it's just farther.
He3 fusion doesn't create quite the neutron bombardment issue that D fusion does. Any reactor built to utilize D fusion will have to have its walls replaced every 5 years at the most due to increased brittleness under neutron bombardment. He3 fusion would allow that period to be stretched out significantly.
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise you kids...
"If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes."
- Carl Sagan
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21836088/ns/technology_and_science-space Just because some of the issues can't be solved by a smaller step, doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile.
Yes there is. The moon has no atmosphere and keeps one face pointed to the sun for two weeks at a time. That means that you get a lot better solar energy up there. There's also a lot of land area, so there's nothing stopping you from covering a few hundred square kilometres in panels. The only difficulty is storing it over the two-week night.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Most importantly, we need to drive down launch costs (Falcon Heavy from SpaceX) and we need to start sending infrastructure ahead of us. I'd argue the timer doesn't start until we have a manned mission on the way to Mars, so we can take our time lobbing equipment there that can prep things for us.
So, tech that needs to improve: Remote habitat development/maintenance automation, robotics (Google cars ftw?), and heavy lift capabilities.
We don't have the basic science for nuclear fusion, though
Yes we do. Bang two protons together. The science is easy, the engineering is hard. We've been able to generate fusion for decades, it just takes a lot of energy. Making it energy-positive is 'just' an engineering problem.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Outer Space Treaty makes that illegal, so noone is going to be planning on doing that.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Also, lots of us aren't going to be able to afford a ticket. I'm almost 30, and while I make six figures, I'm never going to have a million bucks to blow on a Mars ticket. When I have children though, I'll make sure to have a big enough life insurance policy so that when I die, they have the option of going if they so choose.
I'm a traditionalist, I prefer my alien wimmins to be green-skinned just as predicted by Rodenberry.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm announcing plans to bed every month of the 2010 Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar. Might take 10-20 years. However long it takes you to forget about my prediction.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
No it doesn't. You can read the treaty here.
Even if the treaty expressly forbade any commercial activity, only about 100 countries have signed on to it. All you would have to do is launch and run mission control from a country that hasn't signed the treaty.
Coincidentally, I saw a video of Elon Musk on YouTube recently where he addressed this issue. (Might have been an "@Google" talk, not sure.) In the Q&A someone asked why he didn't use a "reusable" shuttle-type design, and he said that wings just don't make sense for a reentry vehicle. The shape is aerodynamically unstable under such conditions, requiring complex software to keep it steady, and this was ultimately the weakness that felled Columbia. OTOH, the teardrop shape is inherently stable (and steerable), and there's no reason it can't be reusable too.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
First there was PayPal, which facilitates exchange but also
facilitates ripoff artists in a way which has caused those who
know better not to use PayPal.
Then there was the Tesla car, which is a toy, and an expensive one
at that.
Now it's "we're going to Mars". Oh really ? Why don't you tell us about it
when you're ready to actually do something, because until then it's just
talk, and it means nothing.
The common thread here is that the truth is a lot less cool than the
marketing bs. And there's no reason to believe this is any different,
unless you are one of the typical particpants on Slashdot, in love
with technology in a way that speaks of fetish rather than practicality.
I liked Dr. Roth's EFBT design, though it's unlikely it will move forward again..
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
After all, we made the moon with laughable tech.
damn, you're clueless aren't you ?
Considering that the computing power of the Apollo Guidance Computer was roughly the same as a hotel room "card key entry" doorknob of today, and that the guys on the ground, during the missions, were still using slide rules for emergency burn calculations, I'd call that laughable tech. Werner Von Braun was a good plumber that made some huge engines work, but there have been a great many advances in spaceflight since that era.
I think I know who the clueless one is.
The only difficulty is launching the massive structures needed, getting the to the surface of the moon, installing the panels, maintaining them, storing the energy overnight, and converting it to a useful form (like chemical fuel).
Did you try to calculate how much it would cost to cover a few hundred square kilometers in panels?
Let's see
10 kg/m^2 * 100 km^2 * $3000/kg = $3t (just for the launch; self-installation)
what would it yield?
1000 W/m^2 * 100 km^2 = 100 GW
like a few dozen power stations on earth, to be had for a few billion each.
It is useful to note that SpaceX is hardly the only company working to reduce launch costs, and there are a number of other potential future competitors to SpaceX that are likely to bust the $1,000/kg to LEO down much further. Even for the Falcon 9-Heavy rocket, rocket fuel considerations are a very minor consideration.
With the upcoming STS-134 Shuttle launch, I would venture to guess that the catering budget for the press corps covering the event (not to mention the VIPs) is going to be costing more than the fuel costs to operate the Shuttle.
Considering that SpaceX is using kerosene for their rockets, it still will be a long time before the price of a barrel of crude oil starts to influence launch costs. When that happens, I might think launch costs are starting to hit practical engineering limits. It isn't even a negotiation issue right now when calculating launch costs.
We have had fusion bombs for quite some time. We have the basic Science. We don't have the detailed engineering for fusion as a energy source.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
I'm almost 30, and while I make six figures, I'm never going to have a million bucks to blow on a Mars ticket.
WTF?
Unless you make $100,001/year I don't get this.
If you make $100k after tax, bank half of it and in twenty years you got your million. Lots of American families live off of less than $50k/year so a single 30 year old doing it should not be a huge problem.
With the upcoming STS-134 Shuttle launch, I would venture to guess that the catering budget for the press corps covering the event (not to mention the VIPs) is going to be costing more than the fuel costs to operate the Shuttle.
I think you just found one of NASA's problems. Why in the hell would you spend that on feeding reporters?
Let them feed themselves and spend that dough on something useful.
I make ~$120K a year before tax. It's substantially less after tax. Also, I support my wife and my father (both who have major medical bills yearly for issues I'd rather not go into), and I support my brother as well financially. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams is not the life I'm living (I'm actually quite frugal, I just work hard to support the people I care about who need financial support).
I also donate almost 10% of my yearly pay to charity (Kiva, OneWorldHealth, etc).
Note I said I'd never have a million bucks to blow on a Mars ticket. It doesn't mean I won't have a million saved for retirement or other more important goals.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's a one way trip to Mars for at least the next 50 years. You would need something like 10x-100x the total fuel (don't remember the actual number) to transport enough fuel up with you to be able to return, because every ton of propellant you take with you has to also be lifted out of our gravity well too. Furthermore -- and this is the main problem -- we don't have any good way of shielding astronauts from high-energy cosmic radiation. So I hope Mr. Elon Musk doesn't mind the person he sends to Mars getting there and looking like a well-done hotdog.
"...progress is still being made."
What a daft remark. You cannot know if there is progress until it has been achieved. It's not like that know what technology would be required to produce fusion. If they did, they would be building the reactor already. They are experimenting and what they are doing may or may not turn out to be 'progress'.
That brings up an interesting question: Is Boeing (or Lockheed, etc.) a "private" company or a pseudo-government agency, along the same lines as the Federal Reserve Bank?
I agree that SpaceX's vertical integration has allowed them to make great strides (along with the decades of NASA's basic research they have to work from), but I don't think the "entrenched" contractors will be able to stop them, especially since Obama has decided to steer NASA toward commercial launch services. Then again, politics is a finicky business... and the "entrenched" players definitely have an advantage on that ground.
Ultimately I don't think it matters. SpaceX is offering launch services at a competitive rate. That ought to be enough to keep them in the game. (Anyway, I hope so...;-)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
There's nothing in the summary about putting a living astronaut on Mars in 15 years. Hold an auction to be the first man buried on Mars to cover costs.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The one practical application for He3 that does not require nuclear fusion to be successful is to use the substance as a refrigerant. He3 happens to have the lowest boiling point for any liquid known in chemistry, and thus can cool stuff down when you really need to get to absolute zero. For superconductor research and other cryogenic applications, there is a huge need for the substance.... to the point that mining it on the Moon could provide a small but economically viable source of revenue.
Yes, it can be obtained from terrestrial sources too (and it is), but there is a market for the substance and obtaining it from the Moon is a practical alternative even if its use as a fusion fuel never happens.
Besides, I like Boron fusion systems better, and that can be obtained cheaply and easily from terrestrial sources. A box of Borax contains enough Boron to power a fusion reactor for a year... and many people simply flush that down the drain in a very literal fashion every week.
Exactly how is the Outer Space Treaty going to be enforced against a Martian civilization?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Sorry, wishful thinking is not going to do it. This is not going to happen in my 20 years. I doubt if it will happen in 50 years. There are many problems to be solved in making this trip and this is going to take a concerted effort and a LOT of money and we just don't have the will to do it. This is just not the kind of mission that can be done on the cheap.
No one regrets that more than me but wishing is not going to make it so.
Article II and Article VI would seem to contradict you.
And yes, it's at least theoretically possible to do the work from a country that hasn't signed the Treaty. Of course, it's arguable (and thus would be argued by someone) that citizens of a signatory nation would come under Article VI, even if operating out of a non-signatory nation.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I was not knocking you personally, just pointing out that for a single 30 year old male with that sort of income it should be doable. Meaning maybe not you, but much of the slashdot crowd could buy such tickets.
I made some assumptions and they turned out to be poor ones.
Is kiva the one that uses your money to make for profit loans to poor folks, then never gives you any interest?
I wish someone would come up with the such an organization that offered interest free loans based on charity contributions. I would hate to think my giving made a banker more wealthy.
When I give to Kiva, it funds them dispersing cash from people lending to microlending firms around the world. You lend your money at 0 percent, but the microlender gets to lend it with interested. This interest funds the microlender's operations.
aww he stopped talking to you. you almost knew someone decent, too.
It has been 50 years away for about 50 years. Still dismal, but no-where near as bad as you say. And progress is still being made, so one-day we may have fusion still.
The trend line for predictions is worse than that - it has been monotonically increasing with time. In the 1950s it was ten years (which is why Project Sherwood was highly classified - they expected fusion power would be a big national security asset in the near future. By the 1970s it was 25 years. Now, a full 60 years since fusion power research started, it is roughly estimated that the first prototype power plant might start operation in 50 years or so. The successful full operation of Iter, which will be necessary to design this prototype is 20 years away even though it is under construction now.
But it is very questionable whether magnetic confinement D-T fusion power will work at all - for reasons having nothing to do with reaching the necessary plasma parameters, which is the focus of all current research efforts. I count three reasons - two of which are related to the breeding blanket.
First, the breeding blanket is a huge complex structure that has such stringent design requirements no one can demonstrate that is possible to build one (it has to have effectively no parasitic neutron absorption), it has been observed that more important than the current fusion plasma research, a project as big as Iter should be started simply to develop a viable blanket system, or prove it cannot be done.
Second, the breeding blanket capital costs (counting only the raw materials) alone will make fusion power much more expensive than fission power, which is currently crippled by its high capital costs.
Third, a magnetic confinement fusion plant houses a multi-gigawatt power source inside a huge container cooled internally to near absolute zero. The problem of extracting this heat successfully and productively is another enormous unsolved engineering problem being kicked down the road.
A non-viable D-T power plant might be a stepping stone, a century or so from now, to a viable He-3 fueled plant (because it makes the breeding blanket problem go away).
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Article II prevents anybody from owning a celestial body. I can mine the moon without owning it just as I can carry out commercial operations in the ocean without owning it.
Article VI is about limiting the scope of national and international activities in space. It doesn't apply to private ventures.
This treaty is just an exercise in diplomacy and nobody takes it seriously. Already the weapons-in-space provisions have pretty much been totally ignored.
So then bankers (microlenders) are getting rich off of my donations. Lame. I would rather give my money to the poor people than let some banker charge them interest.
However, it seems astronauts are keen to go anyway. The blood wont be on SpaceX 's hands according to Musk:
"Our goal is to facilitate the transfer of people and cargo to other planets, and then it will be up to people if they want to go,"
Although the moral implications are ones I would personally agree with, I'm not so sure the public at large would continue to view a mission to Mars as an entirely noble venture if they knew.
Here's a more scholarly run down of the topic:
http://www.law.uoregon.edu/org/oril/docs/12-1/brittingham.pdf
Giving poor people money hobbles them. Lending them money for income-generating ventures raises their standard of living.
http://www.tocatchadollar.com/
Just by putting this slow 10-20 year estimate out there, more motivated people (Chinese, Indian, Israeli) now have an estimate to beat.
Raise the bar you slackers.
It is not 60 years right now. The ITER is expected to break-even before 2020. In turn, this will allow experimentation on the last remaining pieces of the puzzle, and allow the construction of DEMO, which is expected to produce as much electricity as a full-sized fission plant.
In the long road to fusion power, we are currently drilling down on the details. The cost of ITER is less than what the Canadian government wants to spend on F-35 fighters.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Elon is cutting the fat out of conventional rocket costs, and I applaud him for that, but that only takes the cost per kg down from it's weight in gold (for the Space Shuttle), to three times its weight in silver (for the Falcon 9). The actual energy cost of getting to orbit (8.7 kWh/kg) runs about $1/kg at typical retail electric rates. An efficient transportation system would run something like 4 times the bare energy cost, which works out to about the cost of UPS shipping or ground beef. So long as launch costs are measured in their weight in precious metals, rather than ordinary day to day items, space will be stupidly expensive and limited to a very few people. It should also be a hint you are doing it wrong if you are so far above what physics says the cost could be.
I used to work for Boeing on launch vehicles, advanced propulsion, and the Space Station. Now that I'm retired I am writing up my ideas on a better way:
http://lunar.tiriondesigns.co.cc/ It is a work in progress, but the key idea is that there is no magic bullet (or magic rocket) that can solve the cost problem by itself. You need to:
* Leverage multiple good ideas to get cost savings that multiply together. Apply these ideas in several projects and systems that build on each other
* Use less of or eliminate conventional rockets, because they are inefficient and expensive
* Design for re-use and recycling in orbit to lower hardware and supply cost
* Use materials and energy in space to cut down how much you need to bring from earth
* Build infrastructure to make things cheaper over time instead of exactly as hard and expensive as the last time.
That's what gives me pause... My gut reaction is to think this is too big of a job for one company, but Musk seems genuinely intent on this goal, and seems to be marking all the early steps toward that goal. (Heavy lift? Check. Man-rated? Check...) Even so, that's just a start. They're going to have to step up their current development trend by an order of magnitude, at least, in order to reach Mars, and that's a tall order for such a short timespan.
Actually, just as a thought experiment, here's my guess at Elon Musk's to-do list for the next 10-20 years before he'll be able to start sending people (including himself) and supplies on one-way trips to Mars:
What am I missing?
The amount being spent for the catering is still chicken feed and lost in the statistical noise of the budgetary process. My point is that fuel costs are so minor that it isn't even worth mentioning as an issue for getting into space. Still, your point is valid that setting up a fancy tent with catering staff, plush folding chairs, drinks, and a buffet table for the reporters does seem like an extravagance.
Then again, if you keep the press corps happy they tend to write positive stories about your organization. This is a PR trick as old as it gets, and something these reporters actually expect. If you snub a reporter where they eat some bad chicken at one of these events, they are likely to rip into your organization.... so they do tend to get some very royal treatment at planned events like a space launch. NASA funding depends upon good press reports (or at least no bad news stories) so the expense continues.
Members of "the press" also get a goody bag filled with signed autographs of the astronauts, a media kit (often a book.... sometimes hard covered) that has biographies of all of the astronauts and background information about the spacecraft, and sometimes a few toys and other stuff. A "reporter's notebook" is also often included along with a pile of pencils, pens, and perhaps even a flashlight. Coupons to local merchants aren't out of the question either, not to mention free "wi-fi" or even a hard network connection with broadband speeds.
NASA PR representatives are pros at the job and are especially noted for how well they put on a party for the press.
Fine, then let me lend them money at 0% interest. Putting anyone in debt is not helping them. It only makes bankers rich, so they can get free money out of the government.
The escape clause is perhaps the one part of the treaty that removes any teeth in the document:
There is nothing that really holds the signers of the treaty to really follow the principles in the treaty. If the need to claim extra-terrestrial real estate comes up, the nation seeking such a claim simply needs to withdraw and wait a year before they have to act. Some other countries might be clogging the local plumbing fixtures if that happens, but the whole treaty is basically a "Mexican stand-off" just waiting for somebody to make the first move before the land rush starts in earnest.
The Moon Treaty tried to fix those "problems", but the countries who ratified that treaty are not the ones that really matter. It nearly was ratified by the U.S. Senate, but the L-5 Society and some other space advocacy groups got some lobbying going before the final vote and instead it was rejected.
I read this a few years ago: http://www.universetoday.com/7024/the-mars-landing-approach-getting-large-payloads-to-the-surface-of-the-red-planet/
TL;DR: It says getting heavy payloads (such as required for a manned mission) safely onto the Martian surface is a problem that hasn't been solved, so the mechanics of building rockets to get there, although the subject most talked about, is perhaps not the biggest problem to solve.
I have no idea about this stuff. Does anyone else here? Is this an old story about a solved problem, or is it still unknown?
I think ITER is going to be a dead end, and is a good example of everything that is wrong with big science and massive research projects. Even if it ends up being energy positive, facilities built using that method are going to be very expensive and mostly custom one-off projects.... pretty much all of the problems that fission plants face and a few new problems on top of that. It certainly isn't going to be "the solution" to solving the world's energy problems even if it works.
If you could build a fusion reactor to fit as the core of a rocket engine (and keep the weight down too), it could conceivably be the route to significantly cut travel time around the solar system. A trip to Mars would be a matter of weeks rather than months, and "artificial gravity" would be due to actual acceleration rather than a centrifuge or some other similar system.
I hope that they get it to work, or at least some method of fusion working at a break-even or better level, but it is currently a shot in the dark. There are other approaches to fusion that might end up working better.
Thanks for the flame squishing.
I wanna know why (rhetorical, it's cause we wasted 25 years squabbling) we haven't commoditized moon runs. Sure, they can call it "costs" but everyone's saying the fuel is the easy part, so why can't we do 50% innovation on a Moore's Law through the roof and get this down to "One million dollars"? Absolutely, as said elsewhere including me, just sling spare supplies up to reduce the quad-or-nothing factor.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's not even an engineering problem, but a money problem.
This is blinging
mars gravity != moon gravity
You need much more fuel to get back to the mothership than the moonlander, so it need to be bigger, so the rocket need to be bigger, so, so, so
And it need to have 2 years worth of food/oxygen supply, it is very different than the moon.
As far as I understand, SpaceX's current docking capability consists of flying up to the ISS and then being passive while the space station robotic arm pulls the capsule up to a docking port. A Mars mission will require experience with more active docking systems. For all I know there's something in the works, but I don't think I've heard of it.
landing capsule: Done, with their Dragon capsule sent into orbit and brought back for water landing last year. The heat shield and parachute system are apparently have much more capability than needed for mere return from Earth orbit, although not known yet how they'd deal with Mars.
Huge not done. Mars doesn't have enough atmosphere for the chutes, they'd impact more than land. At the same time it's got enough atmosphere to make thrusters very difficult. The Mars rovers landed in a way no human would be close to surviving. AFAIK it's one of the big "never been done before" obstacles.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, the fact is, no company can do jack squat, until they blow some hot air out their ass, and get the financiers all hot-and-bothered. Who do you think runs the world, anyway? Until SpaceX brings in revenue, they need to keep the lights on. And the only way they do that, is by sweet talking the banks. It is a smarmy, distasteful, slimy business, about the level of used-car salesmanship. Nowhere near as glamorous as actually blasting rockets into space. Unfortunately. But the fuckers who print the money get to have their say-so.
Until Elon figures out how to put a W-33 on top of a one of his missiles, and point it at Goldman Sachs. THEN he won't need to do much talking anymore.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
That seems like a longer term improvement rather than something that will be necessary for the first generation of fusion reactors. And then that is still a long way away.
show me the tech that will allow you safe trip , aka not get cooked to death there and back.
Most reports i see are the trip is one way and once you get there YOU can't survive a trip back due to exposure to radiation.
this is why its all bullshit.
The other issue with reusability that the Shuttle demonstrated is that it's not necessarily cheaper to reuse things if there is expensive refurbishment required for each reuse. Unless you're launching very frequently (on the order or weekly or daily, which nobody is really considering right now because there's not enough launch demand), it seems to be better to go the cheap and disposable route. SpaceX is exploring reusability (without much success thus far, it should be added), but it's not a necessary component to keeping their costs low.
You're missing the Russians. The Russians will not allow SpaceX to undercut their pricing agreement with NASA. They also "own" the ISS and are refusing (read: until Musk pays them LOTS of $$ in bribes) to allow the Dragon capsule to dock with the ISS until they are certain (read: not until they milk SpaceX for every Ruble possible) the capsule is "safe".
Impetuous! Homeric!
Who's paying for it? Not them. SpaceX isn't "doing" anything but trying to drive up the deficit. You want to go to Mars? Fine, you pay for it. Don't ask the rest of us to shell out for your nerdgasm.
Huge not done. Mars doesn't have enough atmosphere for the chutes, they'd impact more than land. At the same time it's got enough atmosphere to make thrusters very difficult.
Keep in mind though that SpaceX is already planning a thruster-only (no parachutes) system for returning from Earth orbit. I wonder if SpaceX is plotting something along the lines of supersonic retropropulsion for the descent to Mars.
Dragon has all the requisite maneuvering thrusters for an active docking. The current ISS contracts are all for unmanned supply missions, so I suspect the reason they'd rather use the canadarm to dock the thing has to do with the lack of a pilot in the Dragon capsule to perform the docking; they'd rather bring it in with the arm than trust an automated docking system.
It also has one third the gravity of earth, so that helps somewhat. Although that helps a lot more with lifting off than landing.
The problems are He3 is much harder to fuse then D and it is spread very thinly on the lunar surface.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It is unfortunately that the ITER sucks up so much funding, and that other fusion approaches are not as aggressively pursued. But the budget is tiny in the grand scheme of things, and really should come out of a small levy placed on coal and oil. My understanding is that the ITER will be energy positive, and we are down to understanding the best materials for the job. DEMO should be energy positive and produce electricity, and demonstrate the technology to build large-scale commercial reactors. There are some ifs and buts, but the project is definitely worth pursuing.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The real reason why costs haven't been dropping is because of pure economics.
Keep in mind that Moore's law works for chips because a 50% drop in price can increase sales by 500% (more or less.... follow me on this point for a moment). Back in about 1950, the total number of computers being manufactured could fit on one hand, and there was a famous economist who honestly predicted that the total number of computers needed world-wide was just five. Considering the applications at the time, that was actually a fair estimate and you could even name off the customers (U.S. Army, Census Bureau, IRS, a consortium of banks, and one for Europe).
Gordon Moore himself gave a talk at a conference about microprocessors about 1970 where the discussion was about the number of microprocessors that might be needed world-wide. They did realize at the time the number was a bit more than five, but based upon growth trends they tried to predict how many microprocessors might be manufactured by the year 2000. They came up with something close to about 10 billion CPUs.... and then somebody gave a remark that would imply there would be a microprocessor for every doorknob in all the hotels of the world... making a joke. A subsequent conference by many of the same people happened in 2000.... and sure enough there were microprocessors in every doorknob of the hotel where the conference was being held... and those really weren't remarkable by that time. This has happened because the demand for those processors is almost insatiable and as the price drops many new applications can be found to use those processors. There are now legitimate applications (RFID tags, for instance) where having a microprocessor for 10 cents is still too expensive.... so cheaper processors are being made where every can of Coca-Cola could conceivably have a microprocessor.
Bringing this to spaceflight, the issue is how can you find some markets for spaceflight where a 50% drop in the price to orbit will give you more than a 100% increase in flights? So far, the opposite has been happening, where a 50% drop in price only gets you a 10%-20% increase in customers. That is a horrible position to be in unless you are also stealing customers (as SpaceX is doing) from other launcher companies due to you being a new entrant in the market.
This is precisely why many have suggested that SpaceX may eventually raise prices for launches, because the market will bear the price. If they raise prices 100% and only lose 20% of their customers in the process.... what do they have to lose? That is precisely what Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and the other traditional launcher groups have been doing for some time. Putting a communications satellite into orbit that costs billions of dollars to manufacture in the first place can easily afford to spend a quarter of a billion on launching costs.... so they don't care if they spend a little more as long as the rocket is reliable or at least covered by insurance if it fails. This is also why launch costs until recently have been increasing much faster than inflation.
If we can find some markets for spaceflight (space tourism BTW is one of those markets) where the number of customers increases substantially with even a modest drop in price, a launcher company can make of the loss of profits through volume sales and thus make more profit. That is generally true for many other industries of which computers is particularly true, but hasn't been the case for spaceflight.
I am still undecided if the economic case is prevalent for spaceflight to become much cheaper, and space tourism by itself isn't sufficient to make it happen. Scientific research in space gets it much closer to closing the business case, but not quite. What pushes it well over the edge is space mining.... but unfortunately that requires a huge drop in price before it becomes affordable to bring back refined rare earth metals or platinum from space and the process to bootstrap mining in space simply won't happen if launching a bottle of
Which makes you really wonder if we ever walked on the moon in the first place! Maybe the conspiracy theories were right. Or that political agendas trumped reality.
Boron fusion takes ten times the energy of D-T fusion, may never be practical.
Do you have any idea of the cost of your He3 refrigerant if we get it from the moon? Millions of dollars an ounce is NOT practical.
Antimatter is hideously expensive to produce due to amount of energy, tens of trillions of U.S. dollars per gram. You'd need tons of it to get to another star with a manned vehicle. It's just another pipe dream. More likely we'll use fusion power to get to stars for journeys of decades or more.
one thing the moon DOES have is the elements to make solar panels, both concentrator and semiconductor. So you'd only need to "seed" the operation.
the ITER *might* break even, and there are a dozen good reasons it might not (the harder you squeeze plasma the faster it escapes through the metaphorical cracks). More likely a breakthrough would come from certain types of fusors such as the Bussard polywell. Which by the way the report on the WB-8 testing is due at the end of this month, to get funding for WB-8.1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
I'd even go so far as to say if the Polywell doesn't pan out, we're screwed for fusion power. I have very little confidence in a multi-decade multi-billion dollar boondoggle political showboat project
that's wrong, even in the center of the Sun each cubic meter of material produces energy on the order of a candle, that's how very hard H-H fusion is to do and how rarely it occurs under the most extreme of conditions of pressure and density. We'll never use H-H fusion, it's only for stars. What we have done is D-T fusion at huge energy loss.
Did you read your whole article? Potential solutions are discussed, it's just a solvable engineering problem.
I think the cost per pound is several orders of magnitude cheaper than you are suggesting, but I admit it is still very expensive to pull something from the Moon and bring it to the Earth. The question there is in terms of how cheap can you make a bulk good transportation system (you don't have to worry about squishing something organic, so you can be rough with it) that can make it to the Earth.
He3 prices right now, on the open market from terrestrial sources, are about $4,000 per gram, or about $100,000 per ounce. That at least is a legitimate target for a business case and if you can get the transportation costs cheaper than that price including extraction costs. That is why it is something being talked about specifically as a profitable venture for a mining operation. Even at that price, there are organizations and businesses who will pay that kind of price for the substance, so it isn't completely out of the question. That is the price if it is used as a refrigerant.
If practical controlled fusion reactors ever get produced, it is possible that the value of He3 could soar to millions of dollars per ounce essentially closing the business case completely simply due to increased demand. Yes, it is something that is practical, and I'm pointing out an existing application that does not require fusion to even work and still can at least be marginally profitable even if you extract it on the Moon and bring it to the Earth in relatively modest quantities.
Fusion power won't give you enough specific impulse to get to the stars on a reasonable amount of fuel and within a reasonable time.
Assume a target speed of 0.1c, and an exhaust velocity of 1000 km/s for a fusion rocket, then you get a fuel/payload ratio of 1/exp(-30000/1000) = 10 trillion, and it will take a lifetime to reach the nearest star.
So, you'll have to fly much slower, so 0.01c, which will bring the fuel/payload ratio down to a more manageable factor of 20. Of course, you'll want to slow down when you get there, which means a total delta-v of 0.02c, and your fuel/payload ratio goes back up to 400, and your travel time is measured in centuries for the nearest star.
Okay then, how much does a solar panel factory weigh? How about its supply chain?
Assuming that the trip would be one way is a bit much. I doubt it would be allowed to happen at all, not least because it would become an open-ended and mission that could easily cost billions more than first projected if things go wrong an a rescue or emergency re-supply mission is required. There will have to be some collaboration with various space agencies too (for experience if nothing else) and I doubt they would go along with a one-way trip.
So they need to develop a lander that is capable of taking off again and returning to a service module. Gravity on Mars is much higher than on earth and there is a thin atmosphere, so much more fuel and bigger engines are required, and the lander will have to be of heavier and more durable construction.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You've got it backwards. Gravity on Mars is much lower than on Earth. Martian gravity is 0.376g
Well spotted, I meant that is it higher than on the moon so the Apollo lander would not have enough thrust to get back into Martian orbit.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Once we've got the issues of radiation protection, long-term power supplies (i.e., nuclear) and living in and maintaining a truly closed ecology solved ... the only thing between us and the stars is the psychology of building and manning generation ships. Suspended animation techniques might help there but they're not essential, so if they remain fiction that's not a show stopper.
A thousand-year long exploration expedition to Alpha Centauri might sound incredible today, but such a project would look very different to a family returning from a 10-year mining contract in the Kuiper Belt.
It's very unlikely that we're the only life in the universe, and I think that it's unlikely that we're the only intelligent life in the universe (but out of deference to Conway Morris, I do have to entertain the idea) ; but the galaxy could be ours before our species is a half-million generations old. (Actually, we'd speciate, I'm almost certain ; whether deliberately by genetic engineering or incidentally by founder-effect and drift is moot ; probably both.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"