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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.
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'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.
The previous generation of space contractors is focused around government jobs. This has created a broad patchwork of subcontractors that is organized to be in as many congressional districts as possible. All these layers create "profit stack-up" that bloats the price of a vehicle.
SpaceX is vertically integrated, which means that they don't have to pay as many subcontractors, which drives down the price. We'll see if they can withstand the assault from the entrenched players.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
If your going to die, you might as well go out with a bang, on someone else's dime, in the most glorious fashion possible.
Just remember lots of people will remember your name if your the first person to walk on mars, and never come home.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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 am still waiting for the announcement "We can get someone to Mars AND bring him BACK in X number of years". I mean we could put people on the Moon everyday by strapping them on one our fairly limited rockets shot off on the right trajectory. It might take a while to get there and the landing could be a little rough but by god they would eventually get there. Of course that would leave us with the big question of What Next? I still think trying to capture a good sized asteroid and placing it in orbit so we could work at turning it into a generation ship for those who really want to get a good look at space and all it's wonders. Such a project would allow us to really get the hang of working and testing new ideas in space manufacturing and life support adaptations for low gravity environments.
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.
We don't have the basic science for nuclear fusion, though. Mars is largely an engineering problem, not science.
The BBC has a radio offering http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b010dw0k/In_Business_Watch_This_Space/ (available for afew more days) detailing some of the businmess ideas behing Space-X and others. IMHO this is well worth a listen "America's space effort faces big upheavals as President Obama reigns in government spending and NASA is told to work in partnership with private enterprise. From the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida and the Mojave Desert, Peter Day asks what happens next on the USA's journey into space." Show the part played by both private business funding and new building methods.
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?
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.