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Elon Musk Scales Up His Ambitions, Considering Going 'Well Beyond' Mars (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: For most of its 14-year existence, SpaceX has focused on designing and developing the hardware that will lead to its ultimate goal: colonizing Mars. These plans have remained largely secret from the general public, as company founder Elon Musk has dropped only the barest of hints. But that is expected to change on Sept. 27, during a session at the International Astronautical Congress, when Musk details some of these plans for the first time in a public forum. However, on the eve of the meeting, Musk dropped a surprise on Twitter. The workhorse spacecraft that will carry approximately 100 tons of cargo or 100 people to the surface of Mars, which until now has been popularly known as the Mars Colonial Transporter, can't be called that, Musk said. "Turns out MCT can go well beyond Mars, so will need a new name..." he tweeted on Friday evening. By Saturday evening he had a new name dubbing the spacecraft the "Interplanetary Transport System," or ITS. Mars, it turns out, isn't the solar system's only marginally habitable world for would-be new world colonists. The Moon, Venus, the asteroid Ceres, and outer Solar System moons Titan and Callisto all have some advantages that could allow for colonies to subsist. However, Mars has generally been the preferred destination -- due to its relative proximity to Earth, a thin atmosphere, and sources of water ice. Musk now seems to be suggesting that some of these more distant destinations, especially moons around Jupiter and Saturn, might be reachable with the Interplanetary Transport System.
The ELF = Explodes on Launchpad in Florida
And he delivers real stuff that (mostly) works.
This is the kind of person we need as POTUS, not a choice between a couple of cynical, under-performing outrageous liars.
I'm a really big fan of SpaceX and a lot of the other things that Musk is doing. He's helping solve global warming with Tesla and SolarCity not just with his own companies but by pushing other companies to follow. The Falcon 9 is as of right now the cheapest rocket for medium sized payloads even without reuse (they aren't launching by themselves the very small payloads, and until the Falcon Heavy is setup they won't have the ability to launch the largest satellites). That number will go down even further if/when reuse is successful (and honestly I was very skeptical initially about reuse when they were just starting with the Falcon 1). However, this sort of statement worries me a lot, especially in the context of the recent AMOS-6 disaster where they lost a rocket on the ground and destroyed the satellite in the process http://spacenews.com/analysis-disaster-on-the-launchpad-implications-for-spacex-and-the-industry/. We need to colonize other worlds, simply as a backup plan for serious disasters on Earth, but it would seem a lot better if they focused on systems just for Mars and didn't jump out so far ahead as to aim at other bodies (as cool as that is). I worry that they are proceeding too fast, and that if they fail, it may not be for a very long time until anyone else tries anything similar.
While I'm totally on board with trying to visit other parts of our solar system, here's the bit I don't quite get. Who exactly is going to pay for these trips to Mars or wherever else? Despite their general success I don't see SpaceX being able to fund it themselves any time soon and there is no obvious economic return from such a trip given that at this point it is purely exploratory in nature. The only institution with enough money and no need for a profit is the government so how does he propose to get the government to pay for it OR where is the ROI on the trip for any would be private investors?
I don't ask this question to be snarky but it's a pretty important question and I think it's being glossed over at this point. I don't have any problem with tax dollars being used for this kind of exploration but some parts of our congress are pretty against raising the taxes that would be necessary to pay for a trip like this. NASA doesn't have the budget at this point nor do they have a congressional mandate to support what Mr. Musk is proposing. And I just don't see private sponsors with deep enough pockets to fund the trip stepping up to the plate.
Elon Musk is a complete idiot.
A complete idiot who has made the first practical rocket with a recoverable first stage which is likely going to shortly go into use, has made successful electric cars which have pushed other companies into making similar autos. He may be overly ambitious here (and I suspect he is), but whatever his failings, he isn't an idiot.
First, Mars, then Proxima Centauri (I heard the weather is nice there, at this time of year) ...or wherever.
Somewhere in between, if time allows, I'm sure a lot of people are interested to see a working Hyperloop.
By the way. How comes it's "March" for the month, but "Mars" for the planet and the god ?
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
How about we get to Mars and get the Model 3 out in 2018 and then we'll talk stretch goals?
The entire basis of this article is a few tweets, I wouldn't equate a few random comments, even from the head of a number of related companies as a full fledged ambition. Though even if the MCT/ITS is primarily intended for Mars transit (assuming its ever built) its nice to think that they're considering other destinations as well in the planning stages. One of the larger problems historically in the space industry is that too many craft/satellites/rockets are designed for a very narrow, often single use, purpose. That failing is on its way out in the launch industry, is possibly being changed in the satellite industry but still exists pretty heavily in the science probe area.
Radiation, anyone? Have wondered about it since the 60's. Continue to here very little (not nothing) about it in the teens.
We've yet to even land a human being on Mars, and Musk is talking about how his spacecraft will take people well beyond Mars -- to where, one of Jupiter's moons? That's nearly a two-year journey, and we haven't even figured out how to return people to Earth from Mars... so basically it's a suicide mission.
Let's take one step at a time, especially considering that one of Musk's rockets just reminded us that space travel is hard.
NASA went to the moon on a massive budget. A major part of SpaceX's goals is to *reduce* the cost of space travel. And they aren't aiming at the moon primarily because there aren't enough resources on the moon to easily have a self-sustaining colony.
He may be overly ambitious here (and I suspect he is), but whatever his failings, he isn't an idiot.
I think he's more of an idiot savant - gifted in some ways, a little wacky in others. Like that whole "pretty sure the universe is a computer simulation" thing. He has lots of money, some good ideas, and a knack for hiring smart people. Keep in mind that *they're* really the ones who build the rockets and cars.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I hope he's developing some parallel plans. First, how to head off the Belter/Earth war? The Belter fringe made a real mess dropping some rocks into Earth's gravity well.
What's his plan for spin-stabilizing Ceres?
The argument that there's a high probability we live in a simulation has been seriously discussed by philosophers such as Nick Bostrom. See http://www.simulation-argument.com/. I disagree with the argument but it isn't by itself a wacky idea or one we should dismiss out of hand.
1) Concerning the crash in China, it's not even known if autopilot was on. Most of these "Autopilot did it!" stories have turned out to be people just trying to find someone/something else to blame for their accidents.
2) Musk did not "blame a possible UFO", that was part of the media's silly season about the disaster. He simply tweeted that they're not ruling anything out in the investigation, and reporters put two and two together and got negative six hundred twenty three. On the same note, Musk did not ask twitter to "solve the accident for them" as also was reported; SpaceX put out a request for footage of the event from anyone who may have filmed it. The context was in relation to a sound heard before the incident, so it sounds like the motive is to triangulate the sound to see if it was near the pad or not.
"You abandoned me! You abandoned my hatred!" "I... I have cuttlefish..."
Space Y
Good point. Seems logical to me too. You could link them up like the wagon trains that used to cross America. Then you return the rocket stage and reuse it. But you are right, with the emdrive we won't need rockets. Then space will be much more affordable.
NASA never had a reusable first stage, and they certainly never have been able to offer launches at the price SpaceX is asking. And in the near future, NASA will likely hitch rides to the ISS on SpaceX vehicles. And before the Model S came along, electrical vehicles were considered to be impractical and/or ugly affairs. The Model S made EV's objects of desire, and managed to convert even some petrolheads who did not want to believe that EV's could ever hope to offer an exciting drive. None of this happened because of sweeping, fundamental inventions, but of incremental improvements and making the right combinations of technology in the right places. That's what a visionary does, by the way: they are not inventors, but rather make use of what's already there, and invest in taking the last steps to make possible the almost-possible.
As for the exploding rocket... the fact that it blew up before it started (or was even fueled) could be good news for Musk; it means the accident didn't happen because of a fundamental issue with the design, it could be a problem with the supporting equipment or the fueling procedure.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Bank of America some time back released a report with similar speculation that we are in a simulation. "Simulation" probably isn't accurate but as a model it may actually be useful for us to adopt this view at least for the next few hundred years
http://www.businessinsider.com...
THE REAL issue is where is the cure for cancer? Where is the FUSION POWER? Where is clean energy production? How do we care and feed for 7 billion people?
That argument is completely moronic. There are endless numbers of problems yet to be solved. You solve the ones that you have the means and ability to solve and hope others work on the rest. You don't have to pick one and all the others can bugger off. The notion that we shouldn't try to go to space because we haven't solved every conceivable problem on Earth is idiotic and short sighted. Trying to go to space HAS solved a lot of terrestrial problems. The value of satellites alone justifies everything we've done in space 100 fold and those same satellites help to some degree with every single problem you just mentioned. Most estimates of the value of the space program indicate it has in the worst possible case somewhere between a 3-8X return on every dollar spent. The only shocking thing is that we are too short sighted to spend more on the space program and related research.
And asking Elon Musk "where is clean energy production" is a pretty stupid question given the particular ventures he's involved in.
These problems should come before billionaires playing model rockets.
"Playing model rockets"? Weird, last I checked SpaceX was a real business carrying real cargo and doing something genuinely useful in driving down the cost to orbit. What have you done with your life that was anywhere close to as valuable to the human race?
Ceres is large enough to have marginal gravity, but more importantly, it's a giant ball of ice. Since it only has marginal gravity, less than that of the Moon even, makes it very easy to get on and off of it with hardly any fuel. In fact, even though it's past the orbit of Mars, the fuel budget to do a manned trip (and safe return) is only 20% more than that of a moon mission. Mainly due to the tiny tiny gravity well.
moox. for a new generation.
The argument that there's a high probability we live in a simulation has been seriously discussed by philosophers such as Nick Bostrom.
Just because some people have "seriously discussed" an idea doesn't make the idea a credible one. The whole "we are in a simulation" is just a modern repackaging of philosophical questions that have been discussed in some cases literally for centuries.
I disagree with the argument but it isn't by itself a wacky idea or one we should dismiss out of hand.
Oh it's a pretty wacky idea but to date the evidence to support it is for all practical purposes nonexistent. Find a way to make the concept falsifiable and then it will become worth discussing. As it stands it is as much a waste of time as wondering if god exists.
Mars and titan have atmosphere and water. That makes them vastly more ideal for colonization than the moon. The moon is close, and has some He3 but all fuel, propellant, and nitrogen needed for, well everything would need to make the round trip from Earth. A real attempt would need to have at least SOME resources come from the place being colonized.
He has lots of money, some good ideas, and a knack for hiring smart people. Keep in mind that *they're* really the ones who build the rockets and cars.
Gifted engineers are pumped out of top schools all the time. Nobody is pumping out entrepreneurs to attract them and harness their talents for far fetched ideas like Mars rockets, or even reusable orbital rockets. There is more than one kind of smarts.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Massively reducing the production of CO2 and other gasses which contribute to global warming and climate change.
What exactly does 'solving global warming' mean?
NAZI space mirrors to block out the Sun
Mr Burns is philanthropist. You little people are just too stupid to understand his genius.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
But you can see here why Musk is a successful and important tech entrepreneur. He didn't set out to make an electric car because it made economic or technical sense; he set out to do that because he wanted one.
Which is to some degree a load of crap. Yes I know he has claimed that and for the most part I think that claim is largely nonsense. People set out to do all sorts of things but they don't actually happen unless there is an actual path to success. You'll notice that Elon Musk has yet to start a company that is truly clean sheet. People built financial software before he did. People built rockets before he did. People built electric cars before he did. He was in a position to improve on what had come before but make no mistake that none of his businesses were started without a path to profitability. He knew from day one that it was feasible to build an electric car. What he didn't know was whether he could build a viable electric car business. If all he wanted was an electric car he could have done that in his garage in his spare time.
Pure engineers and MBA types don't advance the state of technology.
Some do, most don't. You could say that about every single profession out there. Even among those who are trying to advance technology most fail at it. The biggest reason is that the key to success in most cases is being able to manage people and get them to do something collectively. Advancing human knowledge is rarely a solo endeavor so your argument that particular types of individuals often fail is a flawed argument because you could say that about most people in most professions most of the time and it would be equally true. This includes most entrepreneurs.
Mars is at the bottom of a fairly deep gravity well and has a very thin atmosphere. This makes landing on Mars is challenging. The atmosphere is thick enough to cause problems but not thick enough for useful aerobreaking. Getting useful loads down to the ground is a a technically challenging problem, and getting back into orbit is just difficult enough to be annoyingly expensive.
The Moon, Ceres, Titan, Callisto, all are easier to land and take-off from than Mars, and since you can land and take-off with much less fuel there's a lot more useful payload capacity to work with. I guess that if you can get a human live to Mars, Titan and Callisto are equally possible.
I'm not convinced by Venus though, unless someone really thinks cloud-cities can be made to work.
Despite the tech advancement this moron can't make his cars not catch fire...
In case you hadn't noticed, every other type of vehicle on the planet is powered with a liquid of such explosive force that merely igniting the fumes inside a vessel can be enough to blow steel apart. In other words, there's not a single auto manufacturer on this planet who can make a fire-proof/explosive-proof vehicle.
Tesla modified their design to include a titanium plate to prevent a rupture of fuel cells after a single incident. That's a far cry from pretty much every other manufacturer who likes to legally refute that there's even a fucking problem to address after the first dozen deaths occur due to a defect.
And you can try and dismiss his "tech advancement" all you want. Bottom line is there's not a single vendor who's made an electric vehicle that matches a Tesla. If you can't see that as visionary, you're blind.
A major part of SpaceX's goals is to *reduce* the cost of space travel.
Worth mentioning they've succeeded......costs of launching a satellite have dropped by an order of magnitude or two.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The Martian atmosphere has 1/200 the pressure of Earth's: in other words, it's barely even there, and really not enough to be useful for much.
Mars is an interesting place geologically, but it's also a 6-18 month journey from Earth IIRC, which is far, far beyond anything we've ever attempted with manned missions. It's not a trip you can just go on, drive around in some rovers, take photos, and come back home; you need to establish a permanent settlement there of some kind. We've never done that anywhere offworld. The logical course of action is to build a base on the Moon first, so we can get some experience with building settlements on other worlds. The Moon is only 3 days away, and we've been there before with 50-year-old technology, so it's entirely feasible to do a lot more there now. There's still plenty of scientific work to do there, including looking for useful mineral deposits and other natural resources, to see if an economic case can be made for a more permanent human presence there.
Jumping straight to Mars (or worse, Titan) is putting the cart before the horse.
You're a fucking moron. Gas-powered cars catch on fire all the time; they just don't make the news because it's so common. What have you done that's so noteworthy, anyway?
Yeah, how is it that a single private business can't achieve what it took one of the richest countries on the planet a nationwide effort on a larger scale than the Manhattan Project, and cost over $110B, inflation adjusted, with every single player in aerospace engineering working on different aspects of it?
What a moron!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
People who never accomplish anything, but sit around throw insults at people trying to...
However the moon is close enough to get back if something goes wrong.
A moon base although not great for colonization can make a good rest stop for deep space travel. A good place to build the next generation spaceship without having to launch it with less fuel, which you can use for greater speed.
A moon base would be good for a set of rotating crew over a few months. Where they are actually doing the hard work, and being the main support for deep space missions.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Is it "ITS" or "IT'S"?
For Musk, this isn't just a *theory*: it's fairly obvious he's using the cheat system. ;)
:::The Spear in the heart of the Other is the Spear in the heart of You; You are He - Surak of Vulcan:::
all these worlds are yours except europa attempt no landing there use them together use them in peace
"as a model it may actually be useful for us to adopt this view at least for the next few hundred years"
Not really.
The negative aspect of embracing this idea is that ramifications of bad decisions suddenly no longer matter.
Wipe out half the world's biodiversity due to AGW? Doesn't matter, those animals were just simulated... etc...
Alternatively, why be risk-averse with your investment choices? It doesn't matter don't you know, we live in a simulation!
Why do you think a *bank* made that announcement?
I don't have to: NASA lost two space shuttles with the loss of 14 lives.
I love the fact that he's at least thinking big, about using his $billions for big, long term stuff that sure, might make him piles of cash but would also seriously advance humanity.
OTOH, I'm just sort of afraid he's either not totally serious or tons of people are going to die going along with his ideas....not because of THEM (if they volunteer, that's their choice) but because it would then set such projects back so far they'll never happen.
-Styopa
Apparently you have read the article.
Apparently you haven't, not that it's necessary though considering his entire statement on Twitter was in the summary.
Musk knows how to get to mars with colonists.
That's not what he said. He said the spacecraft being designed is technically capable of going farther than Mars, which is why it needs a different name. That shouldn't be a massive surprise to anyone, that a spacecraft which is able to travel from Earth to Mars could also go to places other than Mars.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Of course they aren't, read about Howard Hughes some time, or if you don't like reading, watch the film starring Di Caprio, it wasn't too bad.
We will one day live on every large rocky surface in the solar system... ... just not in Elon Musk's lifetime.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
You can craft fuel, methane and oxygen from water and the Mars atmosphere. Obviously oxygen, too.
Just because it is low pressure does not mean, it is not here.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Seriously, for any trip to go beyond mars, they MUST have nuclear power, and very likely nuclear engines.
Im guessing that he is looking multiples on these with NASA, along with Bigelow and Bezo.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Turn the light off before you go, you jaapie shit.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Apparently you have read the article. Musk knows how to get to mars with colonists.
Musk can't figure out how to repeatedly launch SpaceX's rockets with them blowing up on the launch pad. Getting to Mars, hell, getting to the moon is a bit out of his reach.
Our concept of self drives a latent sense of self-importance and self-identity. If I believe I am a special snowflake then I will go to great lengths to protect myself, nourish myself, and exist to the best of my ability. The prospect that I am nothing more than a simulated entity, regardless of how real it may seem, fundamentally devalues my own perceptions of my identity. Meditate on this a while, and you will see that the same concept is trivially extended to anything else in the universe, for if I do not value myself then I surely do not value you, or the whales, or the beetles that swarm and multiply upon the earth.
This is not new philosophy, but I lack the formal education to point you towards the exact philosophical classification or identify masters who espoused these views. Perhaps someone can help? Comments from those who identify as "real people" only please :)
I don't have to: NASA lost two space shuttles with the loss of 14 lives.
The also lost three astronauts in the Apollo 1 fire caused by a fire on the pad.
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
That was a terrible accident. I know they were short on time and there was some justification for pushing ahead with the test, but you couldn't pay me a million dollars to get inside a pure O2 atmosphere. It kind of suggests how trusting the team was during the Apollo days: the astronauts had to trust everyone, and everyone had to trust everyone else to do their job properly and keep an eye out in case anything was amiss.
That's interesting, but it's still not much of a reason to go there. You don't need rocket fuel on Mars, except for the return trip.
As the caption mentions, he's reading Excession by Iain Banks. ...way beyond Mars.
On a similar note, the 1960s were fun, too!
Ezekiel 23:20
All those things can be useful to a colony, not just for the return trip, which was the point under discussion.
Luxembourg is a forward-looking country. They invested in communications satellites in the 1980's, and now operate the largest commercial constellation of satellites. Recently, they started investing in asteroid mining, and they are also a SpaceX customer. I don't think Musk is so dumb he didn't know a big rocket could go other places than Mars. I think what's happened is he has a customer who is *interested* in going other places than Mars. And he needs lots of commercial customers to help pay for the big rocket he wants to build.
I would go colonize Mars ASAP if we had the chance. But I'm the exception. I mean other humans can't be bothered to live in places like Antarctica, the Sahara desert, or North Dakota. How do I expect that they are going to colonize Mars? They would go to Mars, declare it a desert and come back. Why aren't we all over the moon?
I don't live in Antarctica, but not cause I don't want to.
It is possible to do ISRU in the Moon as well. There have been people who have proposed to extra LOX (oxygen) in the Moon as most lunar dust is largely made of SiO2. The Moon is also rich in Aluminium and some have proposed to do LOX/Al engines with it. The Isp is crap but it works. If you want high Isp you can go with solar-thermal or solar-electric or nuclear versions of that.
There were voyages in the Age of Discovery which took about that long. But I agree that Moon settlement right now makes more sense.
Asteroid mining... I think ocean mining would be cheaper right now and its not exactly popular.
You do need to breathe.
If I punch the wall it still hurts. It doesn't matter if its a simulation or not.
Lunar colonization makes much more sense as a starting point than Martian colonization,
No, it doesn't. And it won't, until there is something to commercialize on it.
The biggest piece of ignorance which favors Lunar colonization over Mars is the notion that there is a greater energy expense to go to Mars than the Moon. The overwhelming expense comes from leaving the earth. Once in GEO, there is little difference in the amount of thrust needed to go to the Moon or go to Mars. The other flawed notion is that once there is a functioning moonbase, that its easier to resupply or rescue humans from a crisis. It costs money to make available transport back from the Moon, and no space program wants to blow that kind of money for redundant space vehicles. All so a human can stick their thumb up their ass admiring the view, running almost the same kind of experiments which can be done in LEO.
Even if an effort was made to make longterm life sustainable on the Moon, we don't know if there is enough recoverable water on the Moon to make it cost effective to defray the cost of going someplace beyond Earth orbit. To put it as an analogy, instead of sending explorers from Europe to colonize the New World, you want to send them to the Azores or Iceland first, even thought its already been done and there already human settlements, just to somehow improve the possibility of a more successful return of the explorers from the New World.
Moon colonization is a waste of time. Money would be better spent utilizing robot probes along the Moon's surface, merely to investigate if there is something worth mining on it.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
A moon base although not great for colonization can make a good rest stop for deep space travel.
In what way? If you need to send back your mined cargo, you're sending it to Earth, not the Moon. When you want your human miners to return, they're returning to the Earth, not the Moon. If there is some need for a rescue out in deep space, the space company can just put a cargo pod in orbit with machines, fuel, & consumables to be sent to the asteroid, or for the space miners to go to the pod. You don't need a Moonbase to do that. It costs lots of money to make a permanent Moonbase. There also needs to be an economic justification for a Moonbase. You guys are crippled by what you think you know from 1950's science fiction, which believes you need a Moonbase OR a "stepping stone" in order to explore space. You're not looking at the actual engineering facts OR the economics of space exploration.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
No, it is not if you have to get the construction materials from Earth! Think of the hideous expense of maintaining a Moon base, along with the 3 day wait moving material back and forth using chemical rockets. You could construct a "space factory" in LEO, be under the "protection" of the Earth's magnetosphere, and not require a 3 day wait.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Does anyone give a shit what an anonymous coward thinks? Duh......
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
In the Age of Discovery, everywhere people went there was oxygen. There wasn't much land that shipwrecked Europeans couldn't survive on in a pinch (except if there were hostile natives), and colonies weren't vitally dependent on supplies from home.
I say we start on the Moon, where if we screw up we probably have time to get whatever's necessary to the colonists before their emergency measures fail.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
How many light years is Venus?