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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?
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..."
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.
Indeed. As a Venus fan, I would think it a travesty if one designed such a craft to only suit Mars, when delta-V for a Venus transfer orbit is almost identical to that of Mars, transit times are shorter, power more abundant, and aerocapture easier. By any standard any craft good for transport to Mars should also be good for transport to Venus. However, if not planned for that upfront (for example, taking into account thermal management due to the higher solar constant) it might inadvertently be rendered Mars-only.
It's good that they're thinking beyond just Mars.
"You abandoned me! You abandoned my hatred!" "I... I have cuttlefish..."
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 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.
If radiation isn't a problem for Mars it's not a problem for any of the other choices, surely?
I also understand it's an "increased risk of cancer" thing, not a face-melting thing? Surviving long enough to die of cancer is going to be enough of a problem that the reduced lief expectancy is a side issue.
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.
Do note that you're responding to a troll; he's a regular in these threads, just ignore him ;)
As for Venus: you want to check out Landis's work for the basics (although the concept has been developed since then). No, not on the surface - in the middle cloud layer, ideally somewhere around 53-56km, ideally in the higher latitudes. It's the most earthlike environment in the solar system outside of Earth - gravity, temperature, pressure, sunlight, etc, plus the overhead radiation shielding equivalent of about 5 meters of water. And normal earth air is a lifting gas.
There's also been work on the HAVOC proposal, but IMHO it's not as interesting as Landis's work.
"You abandoned me! You abandoned my hatred!" "I... I have cuttlefish..."