Elon Musk: Future Round-Trip To Mars Could Cost Under $500,000

An anonymous reader writes with this quote from the BBC: "Rocket entrepreneur Elon Musk believes he can get the cost of a round trip to Mars down to about half a million dollars. The SpaceX CEO says he has finally worked out how to do it, and told the BBC he would reveal further details later this year or early in 2013. ... 'My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars — this is very important — so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there,' he said. 'The whole system [must be] reusable — nothing is thrown away. That's very important because then you're just down to the cost of the propellant.' ... He conceded the figure was unlikely to be the opening price — rather, the cost of a ticket on a mature system that had been operating for about a decade. Nonetheless, Musk thought such an offering could be introduced in 10 years at best, and 15 at worst."

Comments

Half a mill?

[wild_quinine]

Crikey. He could get that on kickstarter in about half an hour.

I'm reasonably sure that...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

...pink unicorns are involved, so perhaps it's horseshit.

Wait, are unicorns horses?

Re:I'm reasonably sure that...

[stevegee58]

Only the ones that fart rainbows.

Re:I'm reasonably sure that...

[crazyjj]

Wait, are unicorns horses?

Technically, they're rodents.

Re:I'm reasonably sure that...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

...pink unicorns are involved, so perhaps it's horseshit.

Wait, are unicorns horses?

I'm not sure, but I've read somewhere that Melkor captured some unicorns once, tortured them and mutilated, and now we have rhinoceroses. So even if they are not horses, they are at least Perissodactyla.

I think musk lost his marbles

[spaceplanesfan]

Did he launch them in falcon 9 last time?
I mean spaceX is awesome, but he really should have more realistic look on things.
Please first make a human rated space capsule, and actually start launching stuff from its long manifest,
then we will talk mars

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[jayrtfm]

He DID make a human rated capsule, the wheel of cheese survived its Dragon flight just fine. A good argument could be made that the Shuttle was NOT human rated.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Teancum]

I guess a whole lot is going to be riding on this next Falcon 9 launch. If it blows up on the launch pad I would think you might be right. Somehow I doubt that will happen, but who knows?

The problem with your reasoning is that Elon Musk is launching stuff into space and building real spacecraft, hiring real astronauts and getting stuff done. He also has that "crew-rated space capsule" and has even done the math to get it to Mars. In terms of the "long manifest", they are paying deposits to get onto that list, so there must be some actual people with money who are willing to spend several million dollars risking that something is going to happen.

I agree that SpaceX needs to go through the manifest, but Elon Musk does seem like he is able to deliver on his promises.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Cold hard reality]

SpaceX got one thing right: it's conservative.

It's using proven technology with no exotic materials that they had to develop themselves. They're not even using the more efficient Hydrogen as fuel - they're using the less efficient but much more reasonable kerosene. This is what allowed them to develop a reasonable launcher for better-than-reasonable prices.

However, it's a far cry from round trips to Mars. That needs a lot of exotic development and is in uncharted territory, unlike everything else that SpaceX has done before. Musk's promises are worthless here unless he can see into the future.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[tragedy]

As the Rogers Commission report showed, NASA management held that the shuttle would catastrophically fail about 1 out of every 100,000 flights, which is a ridiculous figure. The engineers more realistically put it between 1 out of every 100 flights and 1 out of every 50. Reality put it at about 1 out of every 68 flights. I'm not sure what the human-rating requirements were before the two shuttle disasters, but the current standards are 1 catastrophe in every 500 ascents and 1 in every 500 descents, so the Shuttle would have had a long way to go to meet those standards. Of course, NASA doesn't actually have any spacecraft that meet those new standards and it's about 100% probable that, if a new craft is developed that the engineers say doesn't meet those standards, NASA will find a way to say it meets those standards anyway.

In a lot of ways the shuttle was a monstrosity designed by multiple committees (some of them purely political). It should have become obvious after a short period of time that, even if a cheap re-usable spacecraft were possible, it simply wasn't possible for NASA to manage it. If they have to rebuild the entire thing every time they fly it anyway, it would have made more sense to make it out of new parts every time rather than extensively (and expensively) testing all the old ones.

Elon Musk, or someone else, might be able to make a re-usable craft work, or find a good way to knock off lots of cheap, but high-quality craft. The price point from the article might be unrealistic, but the overall goal is a good one. Send a craft to Mars, refuel there, send it back. Do enough of those and all of the other costs (like maintaining the launch facilities and all the controllers, etc.) can be amortized across all the launches, resulting in much cheaper launches.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[wanzeo]

They could make baby steps first though, like sending a manned capsule around Mars and back way before they attempt to land. That would be a publicity boon and might get them the resources needed to push further.

Although now that I think about it, is it even possible to go to mars and back in one trip, or do you HAVE to wait at Mars for planetary alignment every time?

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Anonymous Coward]

He must have some new and futuristic propulsion technology in an advanced research state to state something so optimistic. Some really compact and powerful superconducting magnetic field generators for that shield he is going to need to protect the passengers from charged particles would be nice as well.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[symbolset]

However, it's a far cry from round trips to Mars. That needs a lot of exotic development and is in uncharted territory, unlike everything else that SpaceX has done before.

There is absolutely nothing revolutionary about getting humans to Mars and back once you've got them in the can headed the right way. At that point it's a zero-G submarine.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Even submarines can surface for air, get food flown in, have the correct gravity to mantain health and allow machinery to work, and are not exposed to lethal radiation, vacuum and extremes of temperatures. Wanna try again? Your comparison was hopelessly optimistic at best, totally moronic, idiotic and willfully ignorant at worst.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Teancum]

In the U.S. Navy, the only thing that forces a submarine to surface is strictly food, as the spaces aboard ship are too small for them to grow it. Six to nine month deployments where they stay underwater the whole time are even pretty common. In other words, your analogy is sort of flawed here. Yes, they can surface... but doing so compromises their mission and that is something they won't do.

In terms of gravity, spinning a spacecraft can do wonders. You want to keep the spin rate below about 1 RPM, but that merely implies the size of the vehicle or the length of the tether to the counter weight. That isn't being done on the ISS because.... it has been proposed as a possible module and was even one of the original module designs. It was cut for pure political reasons, not technical ones.

As for radiation, a tank of water does wonders to stop just about all hazardous radiation you would encounter in space. You might need to hunker down in some reserved spaces for a few days when a solar flare goes by, but it isn't impossible to cope with or to even predict when it happens. The Space Weather Prediction Center already exists to do forecasts for solar storms, where I'm pretty sure more resources would be put into trying to make more accurate predictions for manned spaceflight.

In terms of the vacuum of space, 30 m of water is the same pressure difference as going from sea level to space. On top of that, it is a whole lot easier to build something to keep pressure in (like a balloon) than to keep the pressure on the outside from crushing you. Spacesuits are more complicated because you want to bend that balloon to make it useful, but that is also a solved engineering problem based upon suits of armor fabricated at the time of Henry VIII of England.

As for extremes in temperature, it isn't that big of a deal either. Space is a very good insulator and the largest problem you have is simply getting rid of excess heat as you need to radiate it away as convection isn't an option. To keep a spacecraft from getting too hot one one side, rotating the vehicle is again key, something almost all satellites use even now much less manned vehicles.

I'm not saying that the issues you are complaining about are invalid, but it is something that there is experience and knowledge on how to accomplish them, where the largest factor in their use is simply getting them into space in the first place as launches to LEO have been so expensive in the past. When a liter of water costs $100k or sometimes more to put it into space, weird sorts of attitudes about what is important start to happen with spacecraft designs. Elon Musk is suggesting he might get that below $500 or perhaps even less with these reusable spacecraft, which is partly where the $500k per person round trip to Mars comes from.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Teancum]

You would be surprised at how much protection a foot or so of water offers from hazardous radiation. You can even drink the stuff that is in the shield too! I didn't know that water tanks were necessarily high tech devices, but then again I'm still sort of young about these things.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[dryeo]

Remember the first shuttle failed due to be flown out side of specs so doesn't really count. Any man rated vehicle will crash/blow up if flown far enough out of spec and for something as complicated as a space ship it often doesn't have to be too far from spec. The spec here being, "Don't fly in freezing weather"

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[dryeo]

Although now that I think about it, is it even possible to go to mars and back in one trip, or do you HAVE to wait at Mars for planetary alignment every time?

Not with todays tech and I don't think there is anything on the horizon that'll help much.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[dryeo]

The really hard part is arriving at Mars with a way to safely land. Mars is one of the hardest bodies to land on. Too much gravity for a rocket powered landing like they did at the Moon and too little atmosphere to use aerobraking like they do for landing on Earth or Venus.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[dbIII]

Even if it blows up maybe the next one won't, so it's a setback not a complete failure. Considering what these machines are it's astonishing that so few of them have blown up.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we get it, you're a Space Nutter. The fact that you'd need 100% reliable technology for your fantasies should tip you off that's it's not based in reality. I repeat, 100% reliable technology does not exist. But that's what you need. Won't happen. Don't buy that condo on Mars just yet! :)

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, a hollow water tank that can hold water against space while being 100% reliable and how much does water weigh again? And aren't you the one who wants to spin this thing for "gravity"? OK, how big does it need to be so that there's little enough coriolis force so that the astronauts aren't constantly sick?

You're not just "young" about these thing, you're hopelessly naive and clueless. You constantly hand-wave away tremendous complexity and then you're all smug about it. You are a child scribbling away at daydreams with large strokes of non-existent Crayolas.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[amliebsch]

Dragon was designed to be able to land on Earth using retros alone. Mars, at 1/6 G, should then be no problem for a 100% retro landing.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[khallow]

The fact that you'd need 100% reliable technology for your fantasies should tip you off that's it's not based in reality.

QA, we don't need 100% reliable technology. Next.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Muad'Dave]

In terms of the vacuum of space, 30 m of water is the same pressure difference as going from sea level to space.

IIRC, it's more like 10 m or 33 ft.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, who's gonna pay for all this marvelous Mars sightseeing? A person with 500k$ disposable income doesn't have 2 years of time to do nothing. People who do have the time to do nothing have no money. Those that are retired, have the money and are healthy enough for this... Like what, 5 people?

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[spaceplanesfan]

No, dragon is NOT yet human rated, Heck it just flew once,and that dragon didn't even had the equipment to berth with the station, lets alone give humans the life support.
Cheese is a lot easier to launch that a human, trust me.

Don't get me wrong, Musk is on the right track. His dragon sure will became soon man rated, he will eventually launch sats.
I just want to note that I think he is overly optimistic, taking all the time about how he will launch a falcon 9 every 3 months, about mars, re-usability, etc, and yet, until now he just can launch just one rocket per year,

On the other hand, he has plenty of enemies. I even witnessed one myself. Many peoples that work for pork that nasa provides are really upset by his work, and try to spread the FUD about how unsafe his rocket is and stuff like that.
So I guess here really plays it safe.

So go SpaceX, go and just suceed.

BTW, it looks like you (slashdot readers) were right when you laughed about Skylon
I actually registered here on slashdot to express my opinion about it.
Yet almost year passed since their 'precooler' test supposed to start, and its not done yet.
They indeed probably just blow dust into investor's eyes.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[khallow]

A person with 500k$ disposable income doesn't have 2 years of time to do nothing.

Going to Mars wouldn't be the same as "doing nothing". And I see you backtrack a couple of sentences later to admit, that there are people who'd plunk a bit of change down on a two year vacation to Mars.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, but it certainly won't be sustainable. There will *always* be some idiots with more money than brains to back *any*cockamamie scheme. Once. I don't dispute the allure of a one-time stunt for eccentric rich people. But there's nothing in space to do, nothing to get, and there will be no repeat business, and it *certainly* won't help with all the delusions about "getting off this rock" and all the other religious nonsense you people paste onto anything remotely rocket-based.p.
Tell me, where are the customers for the Concorde? There isn't even a business model for that, where there ARE destinations.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[f()rK()_Bomb]

Mars is 1/3 G roughly, 38% really. The Moon is 1/6.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[tragedy]

They didn't exactly have that as a written spec though. It was just outside the range they'd tested and all the people who knew better said not to do it. You might consider it unfair to lump the administrative and political aspects of the shuttle in with its physical technical limitations, but those factors weren't really separable. The shuttle wasn't really just the one craft, it was the whole system, which includes all the support staff, the procedures and the administrative structure.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Cold hard reality]

Let's list them
- getting a large enough can to space (Apollo and Dragon are too small for an 8 month voyage with all the consumables needed)
- protecting the humans from radiation during the 8 month voyage
- slowing down (can be done with fuel, but increases launch costs a LOT)
- landing (can be done with fuel, but increases launch costs a LOT)
- generating fuel and consumables on Mars
- handling contingencies

Submarines that are capable of 8 month voyages mass 10,000 tons. Fancy lifting that into space?b

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Cold hard reality]

That adds a huge amount to the fuel load.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[WindBourne]

10 years ago, Musk said that he wanted to make multiple rockets that were cheap to launch. His point was that launch was not about capability, but about economics. He now has the cheapest launch system with the F9 and shortly, the worlds currently largest rocket, the Falcon Heavy. Both of these will beat any launch system unless nations like China and Russia simply subsidize even further, and dump on the global market. As such, more than 2/3 of his flights are Commercial, with many more expected once the FH flies. When he announced this 10 years ago, everybody, including those in gov. backed systems, said that it could not be done.

6 years ago, he won COTS. He said then that he wanted to build a system to provide cargo as well as human launch. His rocket is already human rated, just his capsule is not. However, it was designed with human launch in mind. Even now, all that is missing is an escape system, full life support, an upgrade in software and a change from berthing to docking. His cargo system is within 2 months of final approval for cargo launch. Then he will fly 2-3 launches / year for the next several years, while he focuses on finishing up the human rating of the capsule. Back when COTS started, everybody screamed that Musk could not do cargo for so cheap. Even now, loads of other companies claim that Musk is lying about doing 100 million launches for cargo when others can not even build a capsule for 300 million. Yet, he has a massive contract for NASA. Likewise, Bigelow Aerospace will use him right away once he has human launch capability (which is why Bigelow is re-hiring).

Now, Musk says that he is going to mars in 15 years and you and others scream that he can not do this.

Do you see a pattern here? I do.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Water is probably just fine for other than tourist trips, with more trained and less experience driven crew. ;)

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[symbolset]

Phobos and Deimos are nearly zero G and they are believed to have at least some water. I'm not sure if a trip to Phobos counts as a trip to Mars.

It's not necessary that the Mars-to-mars moon shuttle travel with the passengers. Mars is well known to have vast amounts of water and it's not required that humans participate onsite in mining it and transforming it into rocket fuel. It may be more convenient and cost efficient to get our zero-G water from the asteroid belt, where it's abundant rather than mining it from Phobos or shuttling it up from Mars - but that may take longer.

It's not required that the Mars-to-orbit shuttle travel with the passengers either.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Teancum]

My bad. You are correct, and that is something I should have fact checked.

The point is that somebody complaining about the "rigors of a vacuum" are only thinking of what it takes to maintain a vacuum here on the Earth as you have all of that pressure of the atmosphere pressing down upon you. A balloon which uses tensile strength to contain the air isn't nearly so hard. There were parts of the Apollo Lunar Lander which were about the thickness of a couple pieces of Aluminum foil that contained the atmosphere and kept it from leaking out into space for nearly a week. While I won't deny there are technical challenges, they aren't insurmountable.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[khallow]

But there's nothing in space to do, nothing to get, and there will be no repeat business, and it *certainly* won't help with all the delusions about "getting off this rock" and all the other religious nonsense you people paste onto anything remotely rocket-based.

So "nothing" on Mars (and other locations in "Space") to do? Seriously, that's your argument? One could make the same arguments about any tourist destination on Earth today and be equally in error.

Tell me, where are the customers for the Concorde? There isn't even a business model for that, where there ARE destination.

Sure there were customers. There simply weren't enough given the cost of the Concorde. If it had cost somewhat less, then the model would have been viable.

And what's magical about the Concorde? It was only a modestly faster, limited means of flight over what already existed. For the analogy to Mars to hold water, there needs to already be slower, cheaper manned travel to Mars that the proposed mode would be competing against.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[dryeo]

Really, designed to de-orbit and land on Earth solely with retros? That means they'll be taking as much fuel into orbit as it takes to get to orbit with no re-entry capability. Besides I can't imagine how they could bypass the atmosphere to land solely on retros. No matter what, Earths atmosphere is going to slow down the Dragon, potentially to terminal velocity.
As I remember, Dragon is designed to use retros for the last stage of landing. It is hard to decelerate from 25,000+ MPH (18,000 for low Earth orbit), to zero without some help from atmosphere braking.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Muad'Dave]

I didn't say I disagreed with the rest of your post, just a single physics faux pas; in fact, my correction supports the thrust of it - vacuum isn't that far 1 atmosphere and it only takes 10m of water to create the same pressure difference.

What blew me away as a kid was realizing that a column of air 1 square inch by all-those-miles-to-space tall only weighs about 15 lbs.

Re:I think musk lost his marbles

[Cold hard reality]

Mining water from an extraterrestrial body, with or without humans, is science fiction at the moment. I don't see how you can make 10 year plans that involve this.

As to passenger-less travel, I'm all for it. It's so much cheaper, faster, safer, and efficient that I don't see why anyone bothers with people.

Captive market

[petes_PoV]

The cost of the trip might only be half a mil, but the board and lodging on Mars would run to $1000's per night (minimum stay 8 months until the planetary alignment is right for the return trip). Got to make the money back somehow and it's not like there would be many alternative places to stay

Re:Captive market

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you could get paid $1000/day on Mars. Captive market for labor as well.

Re:Captive market

[Anonymous Coward]

The first thing I'm planning on doing when I get there is opening the Mars Hotel.

Re:Captive market

[vlm]

minimum stay 8 months until the planetary alignment is right for the return trip

Technically you can just swing by on a minimum energy Hohmann ellipse and come right back. If you want to stay awhile its either gonna cost more fuel or time until you can set up another minimum fuel ellipse to come back.

If you're willing to burn a tiny tiny little extra fuel, you pass beyond mars orbit ... so you jump a lander craft off on the way out, and rejoin on the way back in. Basically you plan a Hohmann pretending that Mars is in a slightly bigger orbit. Its actually a hell of a lot more complicated than this.

You can model stuff like this with the "orbiter" orbital mechanics simulator from the early 00s (and still going), or you can run the numbers, or just go intuitively.

From memory fooling around with this, the increased fuel in the main machine, and increased fuel in the lander craft, means you are not going to hang around very long... but from memory a couple days was not too unrealistic in terms of increased delta-v?

Re:Captive market

[dkf]

(minimum stay 8 months until the planetary alignment is right for the return trip)

That depends on whether you're committed to using an interplanetary transfer without thrust for the large majority of the time. If you can apply thrust the whole way, you have many more options open. Admittedly that means you're not going to be using conventional rockets, but that's pretty obvious in any case. The other advantage of a transfer under power is that it greatly shortens the time that people are at great risk from radiation and solar events like flares.

We don't do those sorts of transfers at the moment though: electronics can be made more robust than flesh.

Re:Captive market

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically you can just swing by on a minimum energy Hohmann ellipse and come right back.

You come back to the Earth's orbit, but not to the Earth itself.

The period of a solar orbit, in years, is equal to its semi-major axis, in AU, to the power 1.5. So one Earth year is 1**1.5 = 1 year (funny about that), and one Mars year is 1.5237**1.5 = 1.88 years. For a Hohmann ellipse, the semi-major axis is the average of the inner and outer circular orbits, so for an Earth-Mars Hohmann orbit the period is ( 0.5*1 + 0.5*1.5237 )**1.5 = 1.42 years.

So if you put yourself into an Earth-Mars Hohmann orbit, and just let it ride, you'll get back to Earth's orbit 1.42 years later. By which time the Earth will have done a full orbit, plus another 0.42 of an orbit - putting it almost on the opposite side of the sun from you.

I haven't checked the parent's other scenarios, but since the first one fails, I'd be wary of accepting the others without more working.

Of course

[Brett Buck]

Everything seems plausible, if you don't know what you are doing.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything seems plausible, if you don't know what you are doing.

Is that your way of saying that you concede?

Or are you trying to say that you know what you're doing more than Elon?

Re:Of course

[Shoten]

No, I think he's onto something. The trick is that once you get partway there, you'll be dead from some random solar flare's radiation. So, you won't need NEARLY as many amenities...and since you'll miss your flight back, that saves costs too! I can see the marketing now...

"Our customers love Mars so much, not a single one has decided to come back!"

Re:Of course

[Kittenman]

Everything seems plausible, if you don't know what you are doing.

I've known some project managers who work along that principle.

Re:Of course

[Moryath]

To say nothing about marketing people and upper management.

Re:Of course

[tragedy]

The trick is that once you get partway there, you'll be dead from some random solar flare's radiation

While radiation risks in space are certainly real, the actual odds of what you suggest happening are very small.

Re:Of course

[khallow]

Is that your way of saying that you concede?

Or are you trying to say that you know what you're doing more than Elon?

My thoughts exactly. Empty words from a know-it-all.

Re:Of course

[WindBourne]

Interestingly, many said the same thing about sending men to the moon. And yet, we did it.

You would be surprised how effective H2O is for shielding.

The one place that I believe that Musk has wrong, is that the first couple of missions will NOT be 2 ways. They will be one-way. These ppl MIGHT come back later, but not for a decade or more. And likely, by then, they will not want to.

Re:one word

[kanto]

bullshit

Doubt that'll make a good rocket-fuel even if it is affordable.

The Space Shuttle was supposed to be cheap too

[Anonymous Coward]

It turns out that maintenance of a reusable spacecraft is sometimes more expensive than buying a new one.

Re:The Space Shuttle was supposed to be cheap too

[mosb1000]

It turns out that maintenance of a reusable spacecraft is sometimes more expensive than buying a new one.

. . . if your spacecraft was designed by a congressional committee.

Re:The Space Shuttle was supposed to be cheap too

[WindBourne]

I wish that I had mod points. You are 100% correct. The shuttle was the bastard from hell designed by CONgress and Nixon. What I find amazing is that the ONLY way to cheap launches is by building equipment that can be re-used. Yet, so many claim that it can not be done. Of course, if you never try, it will never happen. Just like Musk said 10 years ago, that he wanted the cheapest launch system in the world and he was told that it was impossible. And now he has it.

Cost of living

[stevegee58]

Wow by the time they get that working that'll be the cost of living back on Earth for the year you'd be gone.

Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[walterbyrd]

with space stations at the top of both elevators, I suppose the trip could be made easier. Much less fuel would be required, since you do not have to break earth's atmosphere, or much of earth's gavity. Landing on Mars would be a non-issue, since you would just have to dock the space station at the end of the Mars space elevator.

Not sure about that time frame.

Just a random thought, I'm not sure if that would actually work.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[ColdWetDog]

Been there, done that.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[mosb1000]

Incidentally, fuel accounts for about 1% of the $50 million launch cost of a Falcon 9. That's what Elon Musk is trying to say. If you can get to a point where reassembling and reusing the launch vehicle costs as much as it's fuel, you can bring the cost of space flight down by two orders of magnitude.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[Teancum]

Space elevators are stuff of dreams and the distant future... if they will ever be built. It is an interesting idea, but I'm still not convinced that the technology ever could be built to make them work... Carbon nanotubes and other claims about materials that might be able to withstand the tensile strength needed to get the job done withstanding. It certainly is something that needs the kind of technological progress we've seen over the past 200 years to continue on for another 200+ years.

Also, a Martian space elevator is going to need to perform an even more massive task: Moving Phobos. If the technology to move asteroid sized pieces of rock is commonly available, who needs stuff like space elevators? I guess several well placed nukes might get the job done, but that would be several bombs like the Tsar Bomba and perhaps even more powerful that would be needed to get the job done.

The reason why Phobos is a problem is that its orbit is inside the radius needed to build a space elevator, and that it would run into any elevator built eventually. The same issue applies to a space elevator on the Earth as it would shut down all spaceflight activity in LEO and for that matter just about everything closer than GEO. It is the kind of thing that is all or nothing: When it gets built, everything else must shut down. You can't have a partially completed and semi-functional space elevator built as a prototype.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[vlm]

And as the shuttle shows, reusable hardware is the most expensive imaginable hardware. Much cheaper to design for recycling than reusing.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[Darth_brooks]

No, the shuttle shows us that government procured hardware is the most expensive imaginable. After all, when assembling components for the shuttle, the order of business seemed to be 1. Find congressional district where reusable components could be built 2. build them there 3. figure out how to get the stuff where it actually needed to be in the first place. 4. Jobs! I mean Re-election! Er.....Profit!

Musk is almost certainly talking out of his ass. I'll plunk down 500 grand to go to mars right after my Phantom game console shows up. That being said, of all the people trying to make space flight more of a private endevour that it has been in the past, Musk has his name on the very short list of people in the "put up" rather than "shut up" category. He's putting real shit into real orbit, not not dragging tourists up for glorified X-15 flights (no slight to the Virgin / Scaled composites gang, but they're not doing heavy lift at the moment, but what they're doing is Steerman bi-plane rides on a much more awesome scale.)

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[mosb1000]

reusable hardware is the most expensive imaginable hardware

People seem to be saying this because the Space Shuttle was fantastically expensive. The problem with that is that where were a lot of poor decisions that went into the shuttle (the ceramic heat shield, and the solid boosters) that we don't have to repeat in every new reusable launch system. Even in the '90s with Venture Star NASA was trying to move away from those technologies because they knew they were expensive and not beneficial.

There's nothing wrong with looking at your failures, seeing where they went wrong, learning from them, and trying again. The result is by no means a foregone conclusion. Can you imagine if the Wright Brothers had said "people have been trying to build airplanes for a hundred years and no one's succeeded so we may as well not even try." It's absurd to think we should give up on reusable space craft simply because the Space Shuttle didn't save money. Especially since the things that made it too expensive are so obvious and fixable.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not fair to the X-15. SpaceShipTwo can't go anywhere near mach 6.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[Anonymous Coward]

Space Elevators as envisaged, can be steered. Space is big and there is no reason why future orbits of Phobos are not locked down so far in advance that they need never meet. Of all the issues in making a space elevator this one is not a blocker.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[njvack]

(no slight to the Virgin / Scaled composites gang, but they're not doing heavy lift at the moment, but what they're doing is Steerman bi-plane rides on a much more awesome scale.)

Technically, they aren't. They certainly plan to do that, but no one's currently flying commercial suborbital rocket missions.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[Teancum]

Who says it is just Phobos? What other space infrastructure would be put in and around Mars before somebody finally gets around to building the space elevator?

Sure, steering around Phobos and Deimos might be "easy" (god help you if you need to squeeze between both Moons) but it is all of the other stuff that is a problem too. And it presumes you have the steering mechanism set up and going too. Still, that doesn't get over the all-or-nothing issue that space elevators present in terms of the low altitude orbits needed while the elevator is under construction... or do you simply propose that while the elevator is under construction that all spaceflight activity stop on that planet?

Good luck with that one.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[dbIII]

The very shape of the shuttle showed it was a poor compromise between two roles which was done when it was too far into the project to back out of some complete design features. After that point it appeared the primary role was to funnel money into the correct pockets. That pork was directly responsible for the death of 7 Astronauts (o-rings), while the insane compromise of strapping the rockets on the side to be able to get into polar orbits led to the other deaths.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[khallow]

while the insane compromise of strapping the rockets on the side to be able to get into polar orbits led to the other deaths.

No. There the problem was the placement of the Shuttle on the side of the main external tank (the two SRBs made no difference engineering-wise to where the Shuttle was placed). When Shuttle Columbia launched in 2005, insulation falling off the tank damaged the heat shielding on Columbia, subsequently leading to destruction of that vehicle at reentry.

The engineering trick there was that the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) could then be placed on the Shuttle and hence, easily recovered and reused.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[LeadSongDog]

It's actually the Mars elevator that'll be the real enabler. Once you've built that, fuel, reaction mass, shielding (water) can all be bot-mined on Mars so the cost in LEO will plummet. And of course the Mars elevator is a much easier materials challenge than the Earth elevator, once you figure out how to get bots to build it all. But by then of course, our new robotic overlords won't want us escaping Earth...

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[WindBourne]

Not a problem. Talk to your fairy godmother about doing these. They can do it in no time flat. In the mean time, the rest of us will work with current physics and economics reality.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[dbIII]

There the problem was the placement of the Shuttle on the side of the main external tank

That's what I meant by "the very shape" and "strapping the rockets on the side".
You are doing it again khallow and these pretended misunderstandings and nitpicks to inflate your own ego or something are annoying, just like the orbital post and those nuke posts a while back.

Re:Once space elevators are built on both planets,

[khallow]

That's what I meant by "the very shape" and "strapping the rockets on the side".

Ok, I see what you're saying.

You are doing it again khallow and these pretended misunderstandings and nitpicks to inflate your own ego or something are annoying, just like the orbital post and those nuke posts a while back.

I don't know which of the nuke posts you refer to, but the orbital post was a useful observation and doesn't support your assertion above.

Re:one word

[swanzilla]

bullshit

Doubt that'll make a good rocket-fuel even if it is affordable.

Same goes for Martian basalt.

Trip to Mars Powered by Methane

[uslurper]

Hey powering a trip to Mars is easy!
All you need is methane derived by the inconceivable amounty of bullsh*! produced by Elon Musk.

10-15 years... Really!?

Re:Trip to Mars Powered by Methane

[nschubach]

I've determined 10-15 years to be the equivalent of "20 minutes" when asked by your kids if you are there yet.

Re:Trip to Mars Powered by Methane

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish I could recall where I saw it... perhaps XKCD... but it was a funny timeline interpreter. 5 years = "mostly figured out", 10 years = "we've got an idea that's technically possible", 15 years = "It's hasn't been proven physically impossible yet", and 20 years = "Man, it'd be cool if that ever happened".

Something vaguely along those lines.

Re:Trip to Mars Powered by Methane

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope...magneto-plasma jet, solar electric powered. Near constant thrust, "short" travel time.
Maybe 2 months or so.

Unbelievable

[prehistoricman5]

My first reaction to this was WTF, but I think I know the basic idea for his plan: pack as many people into a tin can as possible and send them flying. Couple that with frequent trips and the price drops even further. This is also probably going to involve asteroid/moon mining as well as fuel plants on Mars.

I am still very skeptical that he could get the cost down to 500k/person even with all of those improvements, but a 5m/person cost doesn't seem impossible to achieve with economies of scale.

Re:Unbelievable

[Brett Buck]

My first reaction to this was WTF, but I think I know the basic idea for his plan: pack as many people into a tin can as possible and send them flying.

    Aside from the little detail of also sending enough supplies to sustain them on the trip and once they get there, and on any presumed return flight, yes.

Re:Unbelievable

[Joce640k]

My first reaction to this was WTF, but I think I know the basic idea for his plan: pack as many people into a tin can as possible and send them flying.

Let's hope they're all hairdressers and telephone sanitizers.

Re:Unbelievable

[LaissezFaire]

That makes some sense. Spacex puts their retail price for launches on their website. So, ~$55 million for a Falcon 9 launch (http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php#launch_and_placement). You make a good point that the total cost isn't $500,000, just the cost-per-person.

if it were up to me, I'd make it a free* trip to

[Anonymous Coward]

If it were up to me, I'd make it a free trip to mars. But on your way there you have to work 8 hours / day on answering surveys and looking at advertisements, and when you get there, you have to endure 8-months of timeshare talk. By the time you come back, you'll have technically have spent over $18million and bought 4700 condo's in locations that you've never heard of before, especially that nice one that can be found on the moon, which would require you to upgrade to a PREMIUM flight to get there.

Starting cost?

[Lunaritian]

The article doesn't say how much it would cost to build a space ship like that, so probably several billions at least. Probably won't happen.

But if I can really get a ticket to Mars for half a million, I'll get one no matter what it takes.

Re:Starting cost?

[oreiasecaman]

I'll get one no matter what it takes.

Quite a dangerous statement sir :)

How much for one way?

[Kenja]

Didn't really want to 'retire' any how.

Mars?

[nitehawk214]

How about we get to LEO for under a million first.

Re:Mars?

[Chris Burke]

LEO is nearly halfway to Mars surface in terms of delta-v.

So yeah, SpaceX is directly addressing the most important component of making Mars missions economically feasible.

If we can make access LEO a relatively cheap commodity, and make it so we don't have to lift every single thing that we're going to take to Mars all at once, and have a way to have robotic manufacture of fuel on Mars for the trip back, then I can totally see Musk's statement playing out.

It does all hinge on that first huge step though. Fortunately SpaceX is hardly neglecting that part, and progress is promising.

Re:Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory xkcd.

Ok, not quite the same thing as Delta-V but a very cool visualization of gravity wells.

Cheap

[mcswell]

I bet Arnold could afford a ticket.

Wait, hasn't he already bought his ticket and gone there?

Re:Cheap

[Boronx]

He doesn't remember.

Fuel?

[MisterMidi]

Is there any fuel on mars he can use? If not, how is it gonna get there? By rocket? Wouldn't it make more sense to just put enough in it for a round trip instead of wasting fuel to get a supply on mars? If there is fuel on mars, will he take some of it back to earth?

Re:Fuel?

[joh]

There is no fuel to be found, but you can make fuel from the atmosphere (CO2) and water (and lots of power from solar cells or fission). This has been proposed for decades now. For everything more than a one-off foot print mission it's certainly worth the effort.

Elon Musk may be a bit crazy, but he's not an idiot. In fact SpaceX has done lots of things meanwhile that were deemed plain impossible with the kind of money they had in hand. The crucial point will be if SpaceX will be a profitable company in the next years. If they manage to make sane profits I'm pretty well sure that Musk will put every penny into going to Mars. He's *that* crazy, really.

Re:Fuel?

[loufoque]

Supply ships can travel only in space and needn't be fast, and don't need to be human-rated either. Therefore they can use more efficient designs than rockets.

Also, since Mars is very Earth-like, it seems very likely that there is fuel there.

Re:Fuel?

[Teancum]

Elon Musk did say that he wanted to retire by living on Mars, and wants to make sure that he isn't alone there either. Given his age and what he has accomplished so far, he might just make it too.

It sure is a whole lot more sane than spending $30 billion dollars for a rocket that is half as powerful as the Saturn V and costs twice as much per pound as the Space Shuttle designed by the incredibly talented engineering firm known as the United States Senate. Which future do you really want to live in?

Re:Fuel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh.. what? The lack of vast amounts of life on Mars today suggests (but doesn't, admittedly, guarantee) a lack of vast amounts of life on Mars in the distant past. Life, being the source of no small amount of the organic material otherwise known as crude oil.

Fuel can be manufactured, possibly.. but the low density atmosphere and the greater distance from the sun will both contribute to lower manufacturing rates than are possible on earth.

Fissile material may be present. But we aren't yet on propulsion that can make good use of it..

Re:Fuel?

[Anonymous Coward]

"you can make fuel from the atmosphere (CO2) and water (and lots of power from solar cells or fission)."

What's the rate of fuel production for an installation of a size we could reasonably get to Mars? Have we tried this on Earth already?

One problem i see is that atmospheric pressure on Mars is 1/100th of that on Earth, so even if CO2 content is a lot higher than on Earth, the intake rate of raw materials is likely to be very low.

Re:Fuel?

[Gavagai80]

According to a quick check the martian atmosphere is about 95% CO2 while Earth's atmosphere is about 0.039% CO2, so despite the much thinner atmosphere on Mars it seems you could expect to find more CO2 in absolute terms.

Re:Fuel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mare Acidalium is loaded with uranium and thorium. Why not set up atmospheric fuel production there using breeder reactors?

Not sure about that time frame

[petes_PoV]

First job is to develop the materials, then a workable design, then raise the (guess) 100 trillion to build it. Maybe 200-500 years.

Re:Not sure about that time frame

[Lanteran]

100 trillion? Where is it in your ass that you're pulling these numbers from?

Re:Not sure about that time frame

[uigrad_2000]

then raise the (guess) 100 trillion to build it. Maybe 200-500 years.

That's actually rather optimistic, in my opinion. The catastrophic devastation that would be caused by a collapse is enough to prevent such a structure from ever being built. And unless we suddenly develop some kind of miracle material that makes nanotubes look ordinary, we'll never have the material needed anyway.

Re:Not sure about that time frame

[petes_PoV]

100 trillion? Where is it in your ass that you're pulling these numbers from?

Don't you understand what the word "guess" means?

Re:Not sure about that time frame

[snookums]

then raise the (guess) 100 trillion to build it. Maybe 200-500 years.

That's actually rather optimistic, in my opinion. The catastrophic devastation that would be caused by a collapse is enough to prevent such a structure from ever being built. And unless we suddenly develop some kind of miracle material that makes nanotubes look ordinary, we'll never have the material needed anyway.

The amount of damage caused by a falling cable would depend very much on its composition and geometry. A thin "tape" of high-strength material would rapidly slow down due to air friction, and a large proportion of it may simply burn up.

Re:Not sure about that time frame

[Lanteran]

I do but... 100 trillion? Seriously? That's nearly double the world GDP. Maximum projections I've seen were .5% of that, at the absolute most.

Re:one word

[starworks5]

To get into LEO the space shuttle requires 500,000 gallons of liquid propellant and 1 million pounds of solid propellant. How does he propose that he is going to go to mars an back while carrying supplies for the whole trip?

Not much "cheap vehicle" experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, isn't this the CEO of Tesla? Didn't they take a boatload of VC and tax money and are still losing money? Doesn't their cheapest vehicle sell for $50+ even with subsidies?

He can't even get you to the grocery store for less than $50k. Here's a $50 used moped and a cup of gasoline. Ride off someplace that cares.

Re:Not much "cheap vehicle" experience

[Chris Burke]

Heh. He's also the CEO of SpaceX, which has the Chinese saying they can't compete with their cost structure.

Re:Not much "cheap vehicle" experience

[Teancum]

If you think that a $50 used moped is just as sexy as a Tesla Roadster and has the same performance characteristics, I suppose you are correct.

As for "taking tax dollars", the only tax money that was dumped into Tesla Motors was a loan program put together under the W. Bush administration originally intended to be for General Motors, but somehow Elon Musk was able to work it out that Tesla qualified for the same program and got some of the money. It was also a loan that had to be paid back.

As for the cost of the vehicle, if you don't like it, don't buy it. The only reason why Tesla is currently "losing money" is because they are ramping up the factory in Fremont, California (the former NUMMI plant) and getting ready for production of the Model S. Tesla Motors did make money off of the Roadster... not just a technical profit but a rather substantial amount. It was enough that Toyota decided to become one of those "venture capitalists" investing in Tesla... where I hope the Toyota corporation knows a thing or two about how to manufacture automobiles. Yes, they are just a minority owner in the company, but it also wasn't a tiny investment either.

Re:Not much "cheap vehicle" experience

[Anonymous Coward]

That should tell you something... A wise person would investigate. A Space Nutter would just drool more. Which one are you, boy?

Re:Not much "cheap vehicle" experience

[khallow]

That should tell you something... A wise person would investigate. A Space Nutter would just drool more. Which one are you, boy?

Obviously, "it" is telling you to drool more.

Maybe in 2200 or so...

[jandrese]

So basically he's quoting the fuel costs for just the weight of the person and minimal life support for a one-way trip to Mars assuming a more efficient engine than we have today? That's nice, but it doesn't really capture the full extent of the costs for this trip.

Re:Maybe in 2200 or so...

[Kjella]

Actually he said round trip but only after being done in volume and with R&D paid down, he did say towards the end that fuel costs were only $10-20/pound but already the Falcon Heavy would break the $1000/pound barrier - I assume this is to LEO. The capacity is only 40% of that to GTO which is almost the same as Mars transfer orbit, so more like $2500/pound but it still puts a 150 pound person on his way to Mars for $375k. The delta-v needed from Mars to Earth is lower, about as LEO so $150k for a $525k total. Of course you'll still need a lander and life support but I assume at the $500k price point Musk expects there is among other things a working Mars colony that can be expanded using local resources.

Remember that at this price point we could put 36,000 people a year on Mars if we dedicated NASA's budget to it, I'm thinking of a society that makes their own fuel, builds their own domes, produces their own solar panels and expands their own oxygen, food and water supply. The trip costs would be just the trip costs, I don't know how low you could get the lodging cost but surely it can't be that bad in volume. If you assume you start with a fully stockpiled ship on both ends and only think capsule+people+life support for the trip then it doesn't seem that unfeasible. Of course right now we have none of that but it'd be stupid for every mission to bring their own base and supplies forever.

If you could start to approach those rates you could possibly even make a living going to Mars, if you go for a 10 year trip and is a $100k/year software developer - which you can be from a cubicle on Mars - you can probably pay your own trip and boarding. Okay, the millionaire playboys will be first but if they can fund the R&D, get the volume up, cost down, fund the initial base then maybe you can get a snowball effect where lower costs lead to more people lead to lower costs. It won't solve earth's population problems but at $500k/person then colonizing Mars starts to look realistic. Once you're past a few thousand individuals they can procreate on their own too, though I suppose this is at odds with sending software developers ;).

Sounds a bit like...

[s0litaire]

... "Buzz" Aldrin's "Mars" Cycler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler

Send up a number of transport vehicles that run in an orbit between Mars and earth. It's not fast since it's using "gravity assist" trajectories (i.e. no fuel) all you need is the fuel for a shuttle to transfer the passengers to either the planet surface (or orbiting station).

Have a few of these transports in operation then you can have transfers every 4/12 weeks with the travel time of between 80 and 200 days depending on the orbital positions.

Re:Sounds a bit like...

[pavon]

But to hitch a ride on the Mars cycler you would need to match it's velocity with it at some point on it's orbit. But at that point you have already obtained the correct trajectory to get to Mars anyway, so why do you need the cycler?

Re:Sounds a bit like...

[hob42]

I haven't read any of the details of the idea, but I would guess it would be because you'd have a larger ship, more support equipment, etc., in the cycler and a small, limited capsule to go up and down. Therefore, you'd be using less propellant, since you're accelerating less mass back and forth.

Re:Sounds a bit like...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can attain that speed on some tiny vehicle, and then transfer to a much larger vehicle designed for a 200 day journey.

Re:Sounds a bit like...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take a claustrophobic tin can where I can't get out of the space suit for a few hours, max of a day. Tell me I have to spend 80-200 days in the same space suit and that is a bit of a problem. More space for people means more mass for the ship, more mass means more cost to accelerate - but if the larger mass stays at speed then you only have to accelerate it once. The tin can just gets you on/off the comfy space ship.
Mass is the driver of the expense to accelerate. Doubling the mass of the ship doesn't just double the mass of the fuel, because now you have more fuel mass to accelerate as well, so need even more fuel. The lighter the ship the proportionately less fuel you need - so assuming equal reuse, the lower the costs.

Re:Sounds a bit like...

[s0litaire]

If i remember correctly Aldrin's original idea was to use the "main tank" from the Space shuttles as the transport vehicles.

The tank was just jettisoned and left to burn up on re-entry, The extra "cost" to take it into orbit would have been negligible.

Then all they would need to do is vent any residual fuel in the tank to the vacuum of space, install a couple of air locks and some viewing ports and you have a habitable pressure vessel.

All that's left to fit is life support and a few home comforts if it's for human transport or a load of cargo straps... ^_^

Then load it up and give it a nudge in the correct direction...

Re:Sounds a bit like...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Then all they would need to do is vent any residual fuel in the tank to the vacuum of space, install a couple of air locks and some viewing ports and you have a habitable pressure vessel."

I imagine *fuel* tanks meant to be jettisoned at/before LEO lack substantive radiation shielding. Carrying human occupants in a much harsher environment is probably a very different story. Much as it would be nice to see equipment put to good secondary uses, it's easy to oversimplify.

Re:Sounds a bit like...

[sconeu]

Kim Stanley Robinison also used shuttle tanks in the Mars Trilogy.

This guy is just a hustler

[Ryanrule]

Dont give him money.

Re:This guy is just a hustler

[Spy Handler]

He's not asking for your money, so STFU. He's already getting enough money from NASA and corporations to build rockets for them -- and delivering.

In other words, a real company making a real product... unlike you.

Re:This guy is just a hustler

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, a real company making a real product... unlike you.

Seriously. I mean, he has already orbited a cheese. Doesn't get much more real than that.

And I don't know what country you are from, but folks with their noses in the NASA trough ARE asking for my money.

Re:This guy is just a hustler

[WindBourne]

Yeah. It is much better to buy from Russia, China, and EU, then to do it here in America for a fraction of the costs.

Fuel

[Lucky75]

How does he plan on getting the fuel TO Mars in the first place?

Re:Fuel

[joh]

How does he plan on getting the fuel TO Mars in the first place?

He doesn't want to get it TO Mars, he wants to get it FROM Mars. There's enough CO2 and water there to produce your own fuel and oxidizer from local resources. Has been proposed (and demonstrated engineering-wise) since decades. This is not easy or cheap, but much easier and cheaper than to transport it there from Earth.

Re:Fuel

[tragedy]

You make the fuel in situ from local resources. You can use nuclear or maybe solar power. You can then make methane and oxygen out of Martian CO2 and hydrogen. To get the hydrogen, either you ship the hydrogen there (8 tons of hydrogen lets you make 112 tons of methane and oxygen), or you use martian water and electrolysis to generate the hydrogen for the process. Aside from that, you could also mine for perchlorates and process plenty of other martian resources to make fuel. The methane plan has a lot of appeal though because, if you bring the hydrogen along, all you have to do is set up your power supply (either a self-contained nuclear reactor or tons of high-efficiency thin-film solar cells which could be spread out and staked down by robots) and suck in atmosphere. If you don't bring the hydrogen, you need to mine for water, but that's considerably easier than mining for just about anything else, or you can possibly extract water from the extremely tiny quantities in the martian atmosphere, but that would probably never be practical.

Re:Fuel

[Anonymous Coward]

Has been proposed (and demonstrated engineering-wise) since decades.

FYI - this is a common ESL error (mostly from European folks). Try:

Has been proposed (and demonstrated engineering-wise) for decades.

You could also make it work as:

Has been proposed (and demonstrated engineering-wise) since a time decades ago

or

since [a certain event] like 'since the Apollo Project'

but those are more awkward.

Re:one word

[mosb1000]

He's not going to be using the space shuttle, so what does it matter how much fuel the space shuttle uses?

How does he propose that he is going to go to mars an back while carrying supplies for the whole trip?

The same way you bring supplies for any trip. You figure out what you'll need and you bring it with you.

Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Create a civilization on Mars and wait for them to build some gas stations ...

Seriously, Musk has obviously gone of his meds. The part about everything being reusable will bring the cost "just down to the cost of the propellant." is so far removed from reality that I question whether he has been alive during the shuttle years. (Hint: the parts of the shuttle that got thrown away were the cheapest even on a per-trip basis) ... or does he think that recycling an interplanetary vessel is just a matter of topping off the tank and turning the nose back the way it came?

Re:Step 1

[mosb1000]

The single most expensive part of a rocket is it's engine. After that it's the fuel tanks. There is no reason these things couldn't be reused without any significant refurbishment between trips, as long as you could recover them. Indeed, the space shuttle was able to save a lot of money by not replacing the engines after every launch. But they had an expensive experimental heat shield that needed extensive repairs after every launch. Add to that the ill-advised use of solid boosters, and you get what adds up to a really bad idea. There's no reason you can't keep the parts of the shuttle program that worked (reusing the engines) and get rid of the rest (the ceramic heat shield, the solid rocket boosters, putting the orbiter next to the fuel tank instead of on top of it).

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

The data I see on airline operating cost put fuel and oil at 27%. For comparison maintenance is 15% and Flight crew is 12%

I'm gonna stick my neck out and guess that an interplanetary vessel will need more maintenance on a per-flight basis than a commercial aircraft.

The idea that re-usability makes all costs except for fuel go away is just plain stupid.

Re:Step 1

[hob42]

I would assume that most of the interplanetary portion of such a spacecraft would only have to survive one launch up through the atmosphere, rather than repeated ups and downs of, say, the Shuttle. There will always be the crew capsule itself, but for most of the vehicle - yes, it's mostly a matter of topping off the tank and turning it around. Or, not even doing that, if you use a Mars Cycler to go between the two.

Re:Step 1

[vlm]

The single most expensive part of a rocket is it's engine. After that it's the fuel tanks. There is no reason these things couldn't be reused without any significant refurbishment between trips, as long as you could recover them. Indeed, the space shuttle was able to save a lot of money by not replacing the engines after every launch.

I'm detecting a little history rewriting, or subtle trolling. For anyone who doesn't get it, he's saying the opposite of what actually happened. With the exception that yes, he is correct engines are more expensive than fuel tanks.

The most expensive part of a rocket is its R+D, by a huge margin.

Re:Step 1

[mosb1000]

The idea that re-usability makes all costs except for fuel go away is just plain stupid.

Gosh, it's a good thing nobody said that then.

Re:Step 1

[mosb1000]

The shuttle did save a lot of money by reusing engines. They just lost it elsewhere in the project. I don't see how pointing that out is "rewriting history."

The most expensive part of a rocket is its R+D, by a huge margin.

That really depends how many you launch, don't you think?

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea that re-usability makes all costs except for fuel go away is just plain stupid.

Gosh, it's a good thing nobody said that then.

"The whole system [must be] reusable — nothing is thrown away. That's very important because then you're just down to the cost of the propellant."

Re:Step 1

[Teancum]

At the moment, flight crew costs on most spacecraft are statistical noise, and the fuel costs are less than the catering budget for the public relations team and the people they are hosting at the launch. For the Space Shuttle it was the maintenance costs and the flight monitoring costs (analogous to the ATC crews for aircraft) that ate up most of the budget and had staff in the tens of thousands. Airlines wouldn't ever make a profit if they had to work under that kind of structure.

While I agree that fuel costs won't be the only factor in a fully reusable spacecraft design like Elon Musk proposes, if it was made much more significant due to the fact that the current way that spacecraft were flown was modified to be more like airline operations the general cost for getting to space could drop significantly.

An interplanetary spacecraft would operate more like long haul oceanic ships, depending on the method of operation. The actual spaceship itself would likely never fly in the Earth's atmosphere, so maintenance issue would not be an issue in terms of being designed for the stresses of atmospheric flight and might even be more like maintenance issues for buildings instead. Yes, they would need to be kept in good shape, but there would be relatively few urgent issues that would need immediate attention and could be done on an as needed basis and even prioritized were some issues could be put off for days, weeks, or even months.

The hard part has always been simply getting from the Earth to LEO and back. Flying through the air and being able to reach orbital velocity is tough, and using chemical rocket engines requires the vehicles to be solidly built. Those vehicles are going to be the work horse to drop costs, but I think it is indeed possible for them to be put onto a schedule similar to trans-oceanic aircraft on a per-flight basis. In terms of what happens once you get into LEO... that is a completely different story.

Re:Step 1

[bbn]

The data I see on airline operating cost put fuel and oil at 27%. For comparison maintenance is 15% and Flight crew is 12%

I'm gonna stick my neck out and guess that an interplanetary vessel will need more maintenance on a per-flight basis than a commercial aircraft.

The idea that re-usability makes all costs except for fuel go away is just plain stupid.

Now imagine building a new airplane for every flight.... This is how space is done today. The only exception, the Space Shuttle, somehow ended up being even more expensive.

Re:Step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, aren't you gloriously stupid? If stupidity were rocket fuel, you'd be in your way to Pluto by now! (Who says "gosh" anyhow? I say we send you to Pluto anyways.)

Re:one word

[Moheeheeko]

Dragon Spacecraft: just under 5 tons

Space shuttle: 2,000 tons

thats how.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_(spacecraft)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_shuttle

Fees add up, read the fine print

[bkmoore]

That's just the internet teaser price. Add in checked luggage, oxygen, in-flight meals, in-flight entertainment (plastic head phones), airport taxes, taxi fare, hotel at the destination, and a quarter every time you use the lavatory, and you'll regret ever taking the cheap no-thrills space line. Stick with the established major carriers.

If you can get there why come back?

[Anonymous Coward]

You got a whole planet to yourself, no government to mess you up, no nasty people in your business.

Just set up camp and start building your own civilization...

Don't tell me mankind has forgot howto!!!

Space Shuttle

[subreality]

"My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system" ... NASA had that vision with the Space Shuttle, but even excluding all R&D and capital purchases, just the incremental costs per launch were orders of magnitude higher than $500k per seat. And that's just to LEO! OK, that's "halfway to anywhere", but maintenance is a bitch, the staff required is huge, on and on... NASA isn't a role model for efficiency, but I seriously doubt that the commercial sector is going to be able to outdevelop them in just 10-15 years.

Re:Space Shuttle

[joh]

"My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system" ... NASA had that vision with the Space Shuttle, but even excluding all R&D and capital purchases, just the incremental costs per launch were orders of magnitude higher than $500k per seat. And that's just to LEO! OK, that's "halfway to anywhere", but maintenance is a bitch, the staff required is huge, on and on... NASA isn't a role model for efficiency, but I seriously doubt that the commercial sector is going to be able to outdevelop them in just 10-15 years.

I thought the same a few years ago, but SpaceX just did everything right then. Hey, they developed a launcher (two actually), launchpads and a spacecraft, built *and* launched them for about the same amount of money as NASA or ESA need to build a single launchpad. ESA's ATV alone (without the launcher and everything else) did cost *more* than what SpaceX did spend altogether until now and ATV is just a one-way orbital transporter with no reentry capability.

Outdeveloping NASA and the other government-fed entities seems very much possible.

Re:Space Shuttle

[subreality]

I just think 10-15 years to get completely ahead when they're currently where NASA was in the mid-'60s (initial manned suborbital and LEO exploration) is a bit optimistic.

Longer term I agree. Hands down, the commercial side with greatly outpace NASA and ESA.

Re:Space Shuttle

[hob42]

They already have. Dragon and Orion both started development in 2005. Dragon has already made one unmanned test flight and next month will fly an unmanned capsule to the ISS. Orion is planned to launch an unmanned test flight in two years. Dragon will carry 7 people and is planned to make the first crewed flight in 2016. Orion was originally supposed to support a 7 man crew, and then 4-6, and now it is 2-4, and the first flight will be 2020 or later. What part of out-developing and out-performing NASA are they not doing?

Re:Space Shuttle

[Teancum]

NASA hasn't gone too much beyond where they were in the mid 1960's and in some ways are going backward. The SLS isn't anything more than a scaled down version of the Saturn V made with used parts from earlier spacecraft, so if SpaceX is at the same level that NASA was in the mid 1960's... in 10-15 years they will be far ahead of anything NASA is doing at the moment. It is sad to say, but Skylab pretty much was the pinnacle of the manned spaceflight program and it has been going downhill since. They've improved some procedures, but NASA hasn't really done anything genuinely inspiring with the manned spaceflight program other than repair the Hubble telescope. The Shuttle flights looked cool.... but really?

It terms of daring to go where nobody has gone before, NASA just isn't where it is at any more. Heck, they can't even duplicate Alan Shepard's first flight, even though Richard Branson is trying to make that happen.

Mars Direct - The Case for Mars

[douthat]

His plan sounds a lot like Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan detailed in The Case for Mars

Re:Mars Direct - The Case for Mars

[FleaPlus]

His plan sounds a lot like Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan detailed in The Case for Mars

Robert Zubrin actually had a piece in the Wall Street Journal last year where he described how to adapt his Mars Direct plan to use SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rockets.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730804576317493923993056.html

Nothing in this plan is beyond our current technology, and the costs would not be excessive. Falcon-9 Heavy launches are priced at about $100 million each, and Dragons are cheaper. With this approach, we could send expeditions to Mars at half the cost to launch a Space Shuttle flight.

Re:Mars Direct - The Case for Mars

[WindBourne]

There is a reason for that. He and Zubrin are pushing this. It is not just Musk, but Bob that wants this. So far, the ONLY thing wrong is that both are pushing for 2-way missions. Big mistake. The other difference is that Musk is pushing for NASA to finish NERVA development and start production of it. With that, THEN we can talk 2-way missions. But until that time, it is actually cheaper and less harmful to send ppl on one-way missions.

Re:one word

[Chris Burke]

Probably something like this:
1) Use cheap SpaceX rockets to reach LEO.
2) Use multiple launches, carrying components of the Mars craft, the supplies, fuel, and crew on separate launches. This keeps you from needing a Giganto-rocket that ultimately couldn't lift as much as these separate launches anyway.
3) Transfer to Mars orbit (which is easier than getting to LEO)
4) Detach landing craft, land on Mars
5) Re-fuel with fuel conveniently pre-manufactured by previous robotic missions (this is the only part not obvious to me how it would be done for whatever that's worth).
6) Return to orbiter.
7) Return to earth.

LEO is the big obstacle. Earth's gravity well is a killer -- it's the largest of any rocky body in the solar system. If we can make LEO cheap and easy -- which just happens to be Elon Musk's major goal with SpaceX -- then we've made the rest of the solar system significantly cheaper and easier.

Deja vu? Shuttle?

[qwe4rty]

Long time lurker, had to create an account to post on this one. Wasn't this the whole premise behind the space shuttle...a reusable craft to ferry people to/from the ISS? And didn't this fail because of the extreme abuse the shuttle suffered upon re-entering the atmosphere? And unless he's planning on mining for fuel on Mars, there is going to be the cost of ferrying the fuel to Mars in the first place, regardless of whether or not you are on that ferry...

Re:Deja vu? Shuttle?

[Teancum]

The Space Shuttle suffered not from extreme abuse upon reentry, but rather from going through the bureaucratic grinding mill known as the United States Congress and the fact that it was envisioned to be "The One True Launcher" that would be used for everything and thus had to do everything possible in space and was built like a swiss army knife. It had to fly polar orbits, have cross-range ability to avoid "enemy" interception, carry a huge payload, and do all sort of other things that ate into its budget to meet the needs of every federal agency (not just NASA)...and that wasn't all. The cost of the orbiter started to go up because there were many early costs that were deferred until later because the bean counters felt they could go for a cheaper solution during the design stage and the early development that would end up costing more when it finally got to flight status. So many compromises were made on the Space Shuttle that frankly it ought to be a textbook example for how not to design a spacecraft and what happens when you let non-engineers become involved in key engineering decisions.

Seriously, don't use the Space Shuttle as an excuse for why reusable spacecraft fail. A much better design was with the "Crew return vehicle" that was designed and even had some metal bent, but never made it into space due to shifting priorities on the part of the U.S. Congress. That should say something too, where there hasn't been a single spacecraft designed by the NASA manned spaceflight program which has made it from the drawing boards to making an actual flight into space for over 40 years (the last one was the Space Shuttle). It hasn't been for a lack of ideas or even billions of dollars spent toward building something else, it is just that every time something is tried *something* goes wrong and the design is scrapped for the next better thing. That happened so many times that America doesn't even have a spacecraft any more for astronauts to use.

Re:Deja vu? Shuttle?

[WindBourne]

Nope. It suffered because of compromises made. The original shuttle that NASA wanted would have used a system similar to what Scaled is doing. They were going to use valkarye (B-70) to launch a shuttle to space. It was to cost more up-front, but be REAL CHEAP to launch. Then Nixon got involved and made this be cheaper to develop as well as upgraded cargo capacity for RETURN trip. That changed the dynamics. They went with solid rocket boosters, and we know where we are at now.

Re:one word

[Anonymous Coward]

One Word: Irrelevant

A 5 ton capsule designed to deliver supplies to the space station != a spacecraft that can successfully transport and return humans to/from Mars alive.

SInce a journey to mars will take 9-10 months with a convenient alignment between the planets, travel time would be at least 1.5 years, and the spacecraft would have to carry all its own supplies, it would have to be quite massive.

I think Mr. Musk just forgot to say $500,000 was in 1776 dollars, so that would be approximately $14 million in today's dollars. It certainly won't be in 2022 dollars, when he expects the first flights to be possible.

correct.

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's very important because then you're just down to the cost of the propellant."

Another "too cheap to meter" misunderstanding or misstatement of costs. Maintenance (scheduled and unscheduled), equipment amortization, facilities, and oh - salaries for the people making this all work.

If the Shuttle had been 100% perfectly reusable, you don't think the cost of an orbital mission would have been just the LOX and LH2 costs, do you?

Re:one word

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Hey. This guy can't make an $80,000 electric car that doesn't brick itself on deep discharge.

I don't want to trust his lithium-ion, bargain basement Mars mission! "Range-anxiety" on the road? That's one thing. "Range-anxiety" in interplanetary space? Quite another kettle of fish...

Re:one word

[johnjaydk]

It would be more honest to add in the weight of the required Falcon 9 launcher (334 tons) since You quote the whole Shuttle stack.

Re:one word

[Anonymous Coward]

If we can make LEO cheap and easy -- which just happens to be Elon Musk's major goal with SpaceX -- then we've made the rest of the solar system significantly cheaper and easier.

Particularly if the Earth/Mars spacecraft is reusable so you don't need to launch a new one every time.

Re:one word

[MightyMartian]

It's an obscenely idiotic claim. We're talking about something that would, no matter which way you cut it, cost billions. It's not even a vaguely believable line of bullcrap, but doubtless he'll scam some moron.

Re:one word

[Moheeheeko]

True, my bad. Nice catch, still not even 1/4 the weight of the shuttle.

Who needs to go?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why go to Mars when we can just implant the memory of going to Mars in your head? Now on sale for only 400k! Its 100k cheaper than actually going!

ROFLMAO!

[Anonymous Coward]

YHGTBFKM!

What about the Moon?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, it's a little closer to us than Mars...

Re:What about the Moon?!

[taiwanjohn]

He addresses this issue in the interview. Basically, the delta-v required to reach Mars is not much more than the moon, because Mars has an atmosphere that can be used for aero-braking. The moon has no atmosphere, so you have to spend a lot of fuel to land there. He also says that Mars is better suited to human habitation because it has more water, etc..

I disagree with him on this point (the moon's proximity to Earth makes it a lot easier to overcome those challenges) but hey, it's his money, so more power to him. I'm just happy to see somebody actually making a serious effort.

Travelling costs more than propellant

[arceum]

My car is a pretty reusable craft, and though i almost never throw any part of it away, it still seems to cost a lot more than just propellant to keep it going. So, he can design a system to deliver people on Mars with insignificant wear and tear? I think more people would pay 500K for a car that could travel 250 million miles between tune ups.

Re:Travelling costs more than propellant

[jschultz410]

Thank you! Excellent point! Not only do you need an expensive craft, you will need all the crazy amount of infrastructure necessary to get people into orbit, to resupply and service the craft. The list of necessary things that would need to be set up before you can have regular trips going back and forth is mind blowing.

This guy thinks he could do it in worst case within 15 years and break even with $500K per seat.

I'm sorry, but there's no nice way to put it: that's just plain stupid.

Re:one word

[starworks5]

I think that your comparing the weight of the capsule to the weight of the entire space shuttle (not just the orbiter). And the space shuttle (orbiter) could (unmanned) be sent to mars to assemble a space station, and then return to earth and be use for another mission, something that the dragon capsule could not do.

It's a fanstastic subject

[HeckRuler]

Even more so when it's outside the realm of fantasy. But ignoring the probability of his quoted price. Ignoring the difference between putting humans on Mars vs putting robots on Mars. Ignoring the story here and taking a step back:

What do we do once we get there?

There's science to do. I get that. I'm a fan of science. But what exactly? And why do we want to go do it ourselves?
I've seen this boil down to two reasons: 1) Political showmanship. Getting people interested in science. All that fluff which is identical to faking it in a sound stage. Meh. 2) To colonize. To get our ass out of the cradle. May seem crazy, it's certainly the long view, but I'm actually hip with that reason. It's just SO FAR out there that it seems like stabilizing our own planet seems like a more important task to throw our resources behind. Safeguarding our ability to try for colonies is important.

Re:It's a fanstastic subject

[inventorM]

Another reason to go to Mars is just to explore it. There's no way to know what's there until men start exploring the surface and subsurface of Mars. A distinct possibility exists that certain metals that are rare on Earth could be found on Mars in such forms as to make mining for those metals and shipping them back to Earth profitable.

Re:It's a fanstastic subject

[HeckRuler]

Well, actually, the other way to explore Mars is to send drones which carry all the tools which men would be holding. They're still piloted by men back on Earth. (or if the she beats the odds, a chick)

Re:one word

[Teancum]

Why does it cost billions in order to travel to Mars? Explain that one then I might agree with you. If you are only suggesting it costs billions because the only way government bureaucrats have been able to figure out how to expand their empires to include a manned Mars mission is to ask for a trillion dollars from congress, then that is one approach.

The issue really is one of simply getting into low-Earth orbit cheaply. Drop that cost and getting to Mars can be done quite a bit cheaper. I don't know about a half million per seat, but it certainly could be done for less than a billion dollars a seat much less mutliples of a billion dollars. If mankind is ever going to get to Mars and doing anything realistic there, it simply must be cheaper.

The proof of this concept is simply letting Elon Musk have the legal ability to be able to try to do this, and to do so with his own money. Either he can get it done or not, but if idiots like you go around rewriting laws in Congress so people like him simply can't even try, we will never know if it is even possible. Space exploration is stagnating and the costs are escalating faster than inflation precisely because some groundhogs don't think there is any cheaper or easier way to get into space.

Re: point #5.

[khasim]

5) Re-fuel with fuel conveniently pre-manufactured by previous robotic missions (this is the only part not obvious to me how it would be done for whatever that's worth).

The same way as the other stuff.

Get it off Earth.
Get it into orbit on Mars.
When they need it on Mars, have it drop out of orbit.

That way you can also ship extras. Just in case something goes wrong. And spare parts.

Re:one word

[Teancum]

Ah.... Earth-orbit rendezvous missions. The concept was originally dreamed up by none other than Werner Von Braun (and it wasn't even original then but he was in a position to make major decisions of that nature). That was the original plan for going to the Moon until the Lunar-orbit rendezvous plan was created.

In terms of a place to rendezvous around Mars, I think a landing on Phobos would be in order and would be a proven stable location that could be used for transfer between a low-Mars orbit and the Martian surface. Besides, the delta v necessary to get away from Phobos is a joke, and Phobos has some interesting things that would be worth doing for its own reason.

On the whole though, I agree with your mission plan outline. The trick is the details... as you've pointed out too.

You're forgetting one important thing...

[Anastomosis]

Guys, guys! Mars is where all the information on how to make mass effect fields is buried. So getting back should be really fast and easy.

Re:You're forgetting one important thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, I played ME3: Cerberus wiped the Prothean archives.

Re:one word

[multi io]

Well, whatever you do, a 500 K$ per person price tag for the whole trip doesn't work. Even if you solve all major technical obstacles -- with that price, you're gonna be flooded with many thousands of applicants, whom you cannot all provide with a seat in a space ship, which means that basic supply-demand mechanisms will drive the price up.

Uh oh

[Anonymous Coward]

The man's started believing his own horseshit. Get the poor man some Haloperidol, stat, wo we can get his fever-ridden Space Nutter brain under control!

Sure, if you hand-wave away enough obstacles and assume any number of technological breakthroughs, *I* can get you to SATURN for 250,000$!!! I'll reveal details in 2013.

Re:one word

[TheRaven64]

The energy cost of getting to Mars can be relatively low, if you're willing to take a long time and use an efficient transfer orbit. The problem with that is that the longer you have the humans in the vehicle the bigger it needs to be, and that pushes the cost up again. A short trip that's accelerating hard all the way will minimise muscle wasting and the food requirements. It will also require a huge amount of energy. A very efficient trip will take a significant fraction of a year. You can't expect humans to be in something tiny for that long without going completely insane (unless you can make them hibernate for most of it somehow).

Half?

[sconeu]

It sure is a whole lot more sane than spending $30 billion dollars for a rocket that is half as powerful as the Saturn V

Ares V was projected to be half-AGAIN as powerful as a Saturn V.

Re:Half?

[khallow]

Ares V was projected to be half-AGAIN as powerful as a Saturn V.

Ares V would have been a lot more than half as powerful, but most of that extra power would be lost with the inefficient solid rocket motors. The primary reason that Constellation failed (which incidentally will be a good part of the reason the SLS will fail) was the dependence on ATK's solid rocket motors.

Besides you and the original poster are really talking about payload to LEO, not power.

And it's worth noting here that the original poster is talking about SLS not Ares V which has a minimum legislated payload requirement of 70 tons, which is roughly 2/3 the payload of Saturn V.

Re:Half?

[WindBourne]

At a cost of 60 Billion and 2-3 billion PER launch (and more likely would be a great deal more expensive than that). OTH, the FH costs America nothing to develop, and it will take up the same amount total for under .5B.

Space WRT to the moon and Mars is NOT about capability. It is now all about economics. Constellation was a nightmare designed by neo-cons and dems alike to provide JOBS for their districts. It has NOTHING to do with NASA, America, or Space. Sadly, the same is true of the SLS.

Ice

[billybob_jcv]

If there is ice on Mars, then that means there is a source of Hydrogen (fuel) and Oxygen (oxidizer).
http://news.discovery.com/space/mars-ice-sheet-map-climate.html

Re:one word

[tgd]

If anyone -- literally anyone -- other than Musk said it, I'd agree.

But he's got a decade of proving people wrong when they said bullshit, and he's demonstrated he doesn't say things lightly.

The real enemy

[Anonymous Coward]

He's up against the FED. Race against the printing press... OLPC also lost that one.

Re:one word

[tgd]

Well, whatever you do, a 500 K$ per person price tag for the whole trip doesn't work. Even if you solve all major technical obstacles -- with that price, you're gonna be flooded with many thousands of applicants, whom you cannot all provide with a seat in a space ship, which means that basic supply-demand mechanisms will drive the price up.

You're mistakenly equating the cost to send someone to Mars and what YOU would pay to go to Mars. High demand and almost zero supply doesn't drive up what it costs SpaceX to do it, just what it costs you to pay SpaceX to do it.

Musk didn't say he could sell tickets to Mars for $500k in 15 years, he said he could send people to Mars for $500k. That's a HUGE difference, and means there is no question of demand or supply involved.

Re:one word

[Darren Hiebert]

laughed pretty hard at this one. He's blowing smoke. His own damn cars cost nearly that much!

Something we already do every day!

[XiaoMing]

Well duh!

I mean, obviously we can all see the logic in this as we have so much practice on a daily basis comparing the relative cost/value of cars based purely on gas money! Hell I think we'd all hard-pressed to find even a fraction of the transportationally-inclined population that gauged costs of automotive travel based on silly things like initial investment capital or maintenance fees!

It's only a logical leap (nay, barely a hop!) to assume that stellar travel will be just as reliable as our maintenance-free and sunk-cost-obviated automobile technology!

Re:one word

[Idbar]

The catch is that probably they will charge you 1million for checked bag... some fees and of course insane prices for food.

How long it takes the round trip again?

Re:one word

[Titoxd]

5) Re-fuel with fuel conveniently pre-manufactured by previous robotic missions (this is the only part not obvious to me how it would be done for whatever that's worth).

You just make it there, using the Sabatier reaction or something similar.

Re:one word

[tenco]

5) Re-fuel with fuel conveniently pre-manufactured by previous robotic missions (this is the only part not obvious to me how it would be done for whatever that's worth).

Really? I have another one: shielding. Solar storms and cosmic rays can be a bitch if you're not living in a giant magnetic bottle.

Re:one word

[denzacar]

5) Re-fuel with fuel conveniently pre-manufactured by previous robotic missions (this is the only part not obvious to me how it would be done for whatever that's worth).

Probably manufactured through Sabatier reaction.

Or if you prefer video more...

Re:one word

[MightyMartian]

I have no problem with him trying, though I think it's a scam. But LEO ain't cheap, and then there's all the energy to get decent acceleration, and then there's building a craft that can sustain people for a considerable length of time. Half a million bucks is pure bullshit. Can't be done. I wouldn't believe it for half a billion, but that's certainly more believable than half a million. If that's the case, my net worth, if I cashed it all in, would be almost enough to get me to Mars, and I can tell you this, I wouldn't be sitting here right now :)

Re:one word

[Teancum]

Once you get into space you can also use other technologies for propulsion, like ion thrusters (low thrust.... but they can operate for a very long time with continuous thrust and insane specific impulse numbers) or even nuclear rocket engines like NERVA.

In theory, you can travel from the Earth to Mars in about six weeks and possible even less if you had the right engines. Yes, that takes a whole lot of energy.... but space is also full of a whole lot of energy too!

There are also things like Aldrin Cyclers and mission profiles that don't need to worry about how much mass is traveling between the Earth and Mars, so it becomes more like a cruise vacation on the journey complete with 5-star accommodations and staff along with entertainment. Those spaceships can literally be as big as you care... as large as any major cruse ship or larger. They can also be expanded to accommodate more passengers on each cycle or even have the construction crew "on staff" while in flight. It would be a bit of a trick to get the thing built initially, but the per passenger cost would be minimal and doesn't even need to worry about delta-v or even fuel at all and the staff can even be rotated out on each cycle. Food can be grown in such a vehicle, with air and water recycled as necessary... such a system is even being done on the ISS at the moment even though I'll admit it does need to improve to become practical on a larger scale. Solar arrays can be used for what energy needs such a vehicle might have. If you are going insane when running around a spaceship the size of a cruise ship, I can't help you out much. It may not look like a cruise ship, but then again stuff in space doesn't have to look like anything on Earth or even anything like what you've seen Hollywood come up with for spaceflight either.

In other words, it takes changing the notion of how things are done. The first few flights and getting the infrastructure set up are going to be expensive, but once that is built it doesn't have to be expensive for ongoing costs. The tough part is getting to and from the Earth to LEO or at worst to a "Earth Transfer Orbit" position. The sitting "as a sardine in a can" would only be for a couple days, and even then something like an Aldrin Cycler could be built to transfer between LEO and those other positions relatively near the Earth to get to the Earth-Mars cycler.

The idea that you are going to build a disintegrating pyramid starting from sea level at KSC bringing everything with you needed for the trip as you throw parts of your spaceship away is where the perception is flawed. Such a design methodology was useful in a wartime situation like how the Apollo program was built, but that doesn't need to be the only way to travel to other worlds. If anything, getting to the Moon with the Lunar Lander was about the limit of what you can do with chemical rockets flying on the disintegrating pyramid and Mars is simply unreachable. It is that mentality which creates the trillion dollar manned Mars missions too.

Re:one word

[Anonymous Coward]

The part you're missing is how many passengers would be on the flight. The $500k number was a per-passenger cost, so it's likely there would be more than one passenger. If he could cram 50 passengers onto the craft, he'd only have to get the cost down to $25m...not an easy task, but perhaps it's possible.

Re:one word

[lennier]

Why does it cost billions in order to travel to Mars?

Easy:

$10,000 for the giant cannon
$999,990,000 for the criminal-negligence lawsuits when your budget-price spacestronauts suddenly yet inevitably explode on liftoff

Now, if you wanted to actually get them there and back alive, it will cost a few more zeroes than that.

(IE, design and implement a space greenhouse - including a space compost-recycling toilet - that runs perfectly for 18 months. However, if you can succeed at building one of those, you can probably amortise the cost by selling a few million of them to Earth to colonise the Sahara desert, Antarctica, or Beverley Hills.)

Re:one word

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

We aim to please.

Re:one word

[bbn]

I think that your comparing the weight of the capsule to the weight of the entire space shuttle (not just the orbiter). And the space shuttle (orbiter) could (unmanned) be sent to mars to assemble a space station, and then return to earth and be use for another mission, something that the dragon capsule could not do.

Why could the dragon capsule not do this? It was in fact designed with this purpose in mind! Read about it here: http://www.webcitation.org/63bnwPQHZ

Re:one word

[tragedy]

Properly dehydrated and compacted it should work fine in a hybrid rocket. It could also be used to make methane, which can be used as a liquid propellant.

Re:one word

[tragedy]

Well, basalt contains Feldspar, which consists of Al2Si2O8 in combination with either calcium, sodium or potassium. The aluminium and oxygen certainly could be used in rocket fuel. Plenty of other Martian resources can be used for rocket fuel also. There are available perchlorates. There's also the CO2 rich atmosphere and available water. Using electricity (from nuclear or solar power) hydrogen can be obtained from the water, then the hydrogen can be used to make methane with the CO2.

Re:one word

[tragedy]

His numbers may not be realistic, but neither is your criticism. As far as fuel costs go, they're a miniscule portion of the overall costs of launching something like the space shuttle. If you were able to get all those other costs down so that the fuel costs were a major part of the launch rather than a rounding error, then that 500,000 gallons of fuel could be had for $500,000 at $1 per gallon (not incredibly unrealistic given current prices) and a vessel carrying a number of people, each paying $500,000 could be launched. On Mars, the craft would be refueled with fuel produced in situ. With good recycling of water and oxygen, the supplies needed for the whole trip wouldn't really be that extreme, especially if you can fill up on water again on Mars.

The $500,000 per passenger figure probably isn't all that realistic, but he is absolutely right that there's no reason, if economies of scale come into play, that space travel, even to Mars, couldn't come down to a fraction of what it costs today. Comparing what he's suggesting to the absolutely ridiculous costs of the space shuttle is crazy.

Re:one word

[Strider-]

You can't expect humans to be in something tiny for that long without going completely insane (unless you can make them hibernate for most of it somehow).

I don't know, a significant portion of the /. crowd spends their time in their parent's basement... not sure that this is much different. ;)

Listen

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it was Madison who said all great accomplishments in society and envisioned or implemented by a single man. There is plenty of evidence in all walks of life to show this true in many if not most cases.

Notably they are all shunned, mocked, or worse, burned and hanged. Shooting or stabbing is too good for them!

JJ

Re:one word

[Dastardly]

Reusable spacecraft in space. The problem with every interplanetary mission plan is that it is a one time plan, or always involves launching the entire spacecraft form Earth every time. Why launch an interplanetary spacecraft to LEO multiple times? Launch it once and after that just launch fuel, supplies, and people. Maybe the a new lander or parts of a lander will need to be launched each time. Since, Ion engines are useful once in space fuel needs would be greatly reduced. A spacecraft that never lands should suffer very little wear and tear, so quit trying to build a single spacecraft to handle all phases of the travel plan. In addition, a reusable spacecraft that never lands can probably be built bigger and more comfortable than one that needs to survive re-entry.

1) Build one spacecraft that launches stuff to LEO.
2) Assemble an interplanetary craft in LEO along with a lander.
3) Launch supplies and crew to LEO. (could be multiple launches)
4) Transfer crew to interplanetary craft.
5) Set interplanetary craft on transfer orbit.
6) Land lander.
7) Do Stuff.
8) Launch lander to interplentary craft.
9) Return interplanetary craft to LEO.
10) Transfer people to LEO landing craft.
11) Repeat from step 3

This is one of the reasons I find any plan to de-orbit the ISS is stupid and wasteful. Even if there is no other science to be had, why waste a perfectly good transfer station for interplanetary travel? It would also probably be a good place to perform vehicle assembly since the interplanetary craft might makes sense to launch in multiple pieces or, if in a single launch, partially disassembled, so it does not have to be designed to survive launch stresses in a fully assembled state.

Why are futurists so bad at projecting timeframes?

[jschultz410]

Ten to fifteen years? Dude, please pass whatever it is you are smoking because that's F'ing nuts!

I think even fifty years would be grossly optimistic for "commercial" travel to Mars.

How about we "conquer" Moon before we try for the much harder target of Mars???!!!

Re:one word

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

SInce a journey to mars will take 9-10 months with a convenient alignment between the planets, travel time would be at least 1.5 years, and the spacecraft would have to carry all its own supplies, it would have to be quite massive.

If you're going on a cross-country car trip, you don't fuel your car up with hundreds of gallons of gasoline at the start, do you?

One possible approach would be to set up "rest stops" stationed along the route the capsule would follow. If the capsule had the capacity to hold enough supplies that a missed station or even two wouldn't be fatal to the crew, all you'd need is sufficient fuel to travel from one station to the next plus some extra to maneuver. Rather than carrying a year and a half's worth of supplies, the capsule would need to carry two months of supplies (with stations set up a month apart.)

Re:one word

[symbolset]

LEO is the big obstacle. Earth's gravity well is a killer -- it's the largest of any rocky body in the solar system. If we can make LEO cheap and easy -- which just happens to be Elon Musk's major goal with SpaceX -- then we've made the rest of the solar system significantly cheaper and easier.

Well that's the deal, isn't it? If we had a nice orbital colony rolling along, it wouldn't be any big deal to get the residents to Mars and back.

Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere." - Robert Heinlein.

There are lots of nice icy bodies out there in low G, and with the right engineering and some robots we could get a nice big hunk of that back to Earth orbit so we wouldn't have to drag so much water (and the propellant it's made of) up the well.

Re:one word

[mug funky]

wait till you see the rage when the internet latency increases with distance from earth...

Re:one word

[Teancum]

When I hear somebody say that you should colonize Antarctica before Mars, I have to say.... let me! The reason and the only reason you don't see cities in Antarctica (beyond something like McMurdo that doesn't have a permanent population) is politics. If you tried to set up a permanent settlement there and did something like drilled for oil, mined coal, or did other things on that continent to support a real city you would get your hand slapped so fast and put into prison that it would make your head spin.

Simply put, it isn't because we can't build a city in Antarctica, but because the politicians won't let us. There may even be valid reasons for stopping that from happening, but it has nothing to do with the technical capability of doing so or even the willingness of people to go there. That argument is not only tired and old, but misleading and presuming something that isn't even true. The arguments for stopping colonization of Antarctica really don't apply to Mars, the Moon, or other places in the universe though... unless you think development on Mars is going to cause global warming on the Earth due to industrial activity on Mars (or the Moon for that matter). Indeed I would argue exactly the opposite, and Mars could use some global warming.

Re:one word

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a very good theory and almost word for word what I was about to post; with the exception of 5.).

They will send a few unmanned cargo modules to Mars first, then the first manned mission will be non-paying people as they will have to have a crew of about 5-7 people to a.) Setup the fuel manufacturing facilities on Mars, b.) Setup some form of lodging on Mars, c.) Stay on Mars to maintain the fuel manufacturing and lodging facilities. Most likely 7 people will make the first trip and 4-5 of them will stay behind either on a permanent basis or like a 6-8 month mission cycle.

Additionally, they will need to continuously send unmanned cargo modules to Mars with supplies, transport vehicles, etc. to sustain the fuel manufacturing and expand the lodging facilities. They will also eventually need to send unmanned cargo modules full of equipment to mine, drill for sub-surface water, manufacture materials, etc. so that they can eventually have a full-fledged self-sustained city on Mars and thus reduce long-term expenses.

Once all that is in place and a viable self-sustained city is built I could see the cost of a round-trip to Mars dropping to $500k or lower. Not only that but once the city is built they will need additional personal to live on Mars permanently to operate/staff/maintain the city on a permanent basis or maybe a yearly contract. Those people will get even cheaper flights if not get paid outright to go.

Re:one word

[__aaltlg1547]

Maybe he left off three zeroes.

Latency

[pgpalmer]

Loading... loading... loading... "Your connection to the server has timed out." *hit F5* Loading... loading...

Cost of a mistake: About $40,000.

[Futurepower(R)]

Quote from the article to which Jeremiah linked, Tesla's 'Brick' Problem:

"The amount of time it takes an unplugged Tesla to die varies. Tesla's Roadster Owners Manual [Full Zipped PDF] states that the battery should take approximately 11 weeks of inactivity to completely discharge [Page 5-2, Column 3: PDF].

"However, that is from a full 100% charge. If the car has been driven first, say to be parked at an airport for a long trip, that time can be substantially reduced. If the car is driven to nearly its maximum range and then left unplugged, it could potentially "brick" in about one week. Many other scenarios are possible: for example, the car becomes unplugged by accident, or is unwittingly plugged into an extension cord that is defective or too long.

"When a Tesla battery does reach total discharge, it cannot be recovered and must be entirely replaced. Unlike a normal car battery, the best-case replacement cost of the Tesla battery is currently at least $32,000, not including labor and taxes that can add thousands more to the cost."

Re:one word

[root_42]

Sounds like a rather good plan. I am currently reading the Heechee trilogy by Frederik Pohl. The spaceships there never enter an atmosphere, except for the landing pods. Those are rather small. This sounds like a good idea for me. Even in Star Trek we have the idea of big space ships and small shuttle crafts -- ok, those are reusable, but I think the idea here could be: Use a small Soyuz type spacecraft and rocket to get into LEO. Then dock to your re-usable non-reentry spaceship that takes you to Mars / asteroids / whatever. With Mars the problem would of course be, to get a small-ish Soyuz-like rocket to the ground. I guess here you would want some Apollo style lander, but with a heat shield.

Re:one word

[TheRaven64]

At best, you'll have a latency of over 10 minutes for most of the trip. At worst, you'll have days of total communication blackout, depending on the orbit. I suppose taking a copy of the GOG.com archive with you would help (nothing too modern though, since electricity for the computers is likely to be at a premium). The real problem is muscle atrophy though. The longer the trip, the more important it is to exercise on route, and exercise facilities take a lot of space.

Re:one word

[rufty_tufty]

Or he's not using thr same spacecraft to go all the way.
One to LEO, one to MTO, etc.

Building one craft to go from earth surface to Mars is like building one craft to take you from your apartment in New York to a concert in London. You're talking about a transatlantic helecoptor, he's talking about a car, a bus, an airplane, a tube line and a taxi; each as separate vehicles.

Re:one word

[FTWinston]

And they'd have to have the extra fuel to stop at the stations, and then accelerate away again. AAAND they'd have the fun problem of having to time their departure to coincide not only with a reasonable alignment between Earth and Mars, but also enough of the "rest stops" ... which would presumably be on their own independent orbits.

Re:one word

[value]

The ISS has cost about $150 billion.

Letting private companies use it as a transfer station for their own flights, might bring up questions of ownership. The ISS is essentially owned by politicians. That's a very uncomfortable situation for any private company, if they want to rely on it for their own missions.

Maybe it would be cheaper and easier for private companies to launch and maintain their own simple orbiting stations for a few $million, than to have to deal with the politics of the ISS.

Re:Why are futurists so bad at projecting timefram

[Anonymous Coward]

It's *because* they are so bad at timeframes (and reality in general) that they're futurists. Passing off this techno-feces as something realistic is the end result of being bad at timeframes!

It's a dirty job but someone has to do it

[Anonymous Coward]

How much to send all the politicians and lawyers to Uranus?

Re:one word

[khallow]

Here's the tl;dr version of what tgd just wrote: price != cost.

Re:one word

[khallow]

whom you cannot all provide with a seat in a space ship

Why not? It's not that hard to make a huge number of space ships. One could say the same of airplanes or cars, for example. But mass production actually leads to it being easier to make in bulk than individually. Learning curve and economies of scale make it less cost and effort per unit produced.

Re:one word

[AstroMatt]

He's saying 1/2 million per passenger, not per trip.

Re:one word

[tehcyder]

If mankind is ever going to get to Mars and doing anything realistic there, it simply must be cheaper.

That's putting the cart before the horse.

And anyway, what exactly are people going to do there? Mine stuff, I suppose, and magically transport it back to Earth for pennies? Basing your business model on people prepared to spend $500,000 on an eighteen month holiday seems wildly optimistic.

Bull****

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull****

Re:one word

[Teancum]

How is trying to get cheaper flights into LEO "putting the cart before the horse"?

I'll admit one of the attractions of going to Mars is that you can get away from the problems on the Earth. Think about it... if you want to say "take this country and shove it", where do you go? Mars is a genuine frontier where if you want to avoid paying taxes to the IRS, you've made a whole bunch of enemies and simply want a clean start, or just get tired of the Micky Mouse games and idiotic politics that sometimes happens on the Earth... Mars seems a whole lot more attractive as a way to genuinely "get away from it all".

Yes, there are challenges, but that sounds like something pretty attractive to me. There used to be places like that here on the Earth in the past, but those no longer exist.

BTW, I do agree though that economic activity is going to be the main motivator for going into space. I'm sort of partial more to mining asteroids, where economic potential is much more provable and you don't have to deal with getting tons of material out of a gravity well, like you would on Mars. There are several asteroids that cross between Mars and the Earth, where the technology needed to get to Mars could just as easily be used for those destinations as well and the economic potential is for me much larger on those bodies.

All of that though is predicated on the ability to bootstrap that activity with cheap launches from the Earth. If Elon Musk follows through with his $20-$50 per kilogram cost of getting to LEO, a whole lot of different kinds of activity become much more affordable where a clear business case can be found to start doing stuff like even mining. You can't even start doing any of that when the launch costs are $100k/kg or higher as the current proposed NASA launch systems are going to cost (low-balling the estimates too!)

Re:one word

[__aaltlg1547]

A half billion sounds about right.

Re:one word

[Dastardly]

Well, I was thinking that NASA could use the ISS as a transfer station. But, airports are generally government owned or quasi-government owned and private companies rely on them for their missions (aka Airlines flying passengers to their destination.) So, there is precedence.