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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.
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.
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.
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?
You act like this discussion comes out of the blue, like it's something Musk just came up with after AMOS-6. Discussion of MCT (now ITS) was something Musk was scheduled to unveil already, long in advance of the AMOS-6 accident.
I agree that AMOS-6 has taken a lot of the focus away from such "lofty" goals, but let's not act like this wasn't something that was already planned.
(I of course am a lot more interested in hearing the results of their AMOS-6 investigation right now than about their ITS plans... as are I think most people)
"You abandoned me! You abandoned my hatred!" "I... I have cuttlefish..."
Space Y
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...
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.
The shuttle had a lot of problems which the Falcon 9 and its family avoid. The Shuttle was designed to go into almost any orbit and was designed with extremely high performance hydrogen fueled main engines. Both of these made for a lot of expense. The situations aren't that similar.
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.
Except that a private business doesn't have to involve manufacturers in every state and most every congressional district in order to build the thing, like Shuttle had to in order to get Congress to pay for it.
Overpriced and underwhelming. That's what happens when Congress gets involved. Every single time.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
"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?
Yes, at first I was also worried. But then I RTFA and Musk does not say he is going anywhere else (than Mars). From what I gathered, he just wanted a new name for his Mars Colonial Transporter. Someone in Twitter suggested Millennium Falcon and Musk said that he loved the suggestions. The name Musk chose, Interplanetary Transport System, IMO is more formal something like NASA's SLS (Space Launch System). And notice that "Colonial" is missing in the new name. Maybe, just maybe, Musk is trying to scale down his ambitions, not scale them up.
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.