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Elon Musk: First Humans Who Journey To Mars Must 'Be Prepared To Die' (theverge.com)
At a conference yesterday, Elon Musk outlined his company SpaceX's plan to send humans to Mars. The vehicle is called the Interplanetary Transport System and it is capable of carrying 100 tons of cargo (people and supplies). Musk added that this rocket ship could take people to Mars in just 80 days. But he also reminded that the first batch of people who are brave enough to go to Mars should be well aware that they are almost certainly going to die. The Verge adds:During the Q&A session that followed, the question inevitably came up: what sort of person does Musk think will volunteer to get strapped to that big rocket and fired toward the Red Planet? "Who should these people be, carrying the light of humanity to Mars for all of us?" an audience member asked. "I think the first journeys to Mars will be really very dangerous," answered Musk. "The risk of fatality will be high. There's just no way around it." The journey itself would take around 80 days, according to the plan and ideas that Musk put forward. "Are you prepared to die? If that's okay, then you're a candidate for going," he added. But Musk didn't want to get stuck talking about the risks and immense danger. "This is less about who goes there first... the thing that really matters is making a self-sustaining civilization on Mars as fast as possible. This is different than Apollo. This is really about minimizing existential risk and having a tremendous sense of adventure," he said.
We're all going to die.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Basement on Earth, basement on Mars, the view's all the same...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The fact of the matter is he's right. And even if they do make the trip back, the probability that they will have crippling health issues is high. Exploring any frontier was dangerous throughout human history.
Out of several tens of billions of humans, only a fraction have not yet died, and of those who died, only a small percent of disputed cases indicate recovery.
I nominate Congress to go on the first voyage. This would be the best use of taxpayer money ever.
Ill respect a guy who can fail and ask for help over a guy who is successful without failure. The latter is always hiding something.
Someone please take the Kool Aid away from this guy. His rocket just blew up recently and was asking for help in figuring out why...
And what have you done that is so amazing that we should care about your opinion? The guy has one rocket blow up and you proclaim him to be some kind of failure. Go out and find some new perspective. It seems you lost yours somewhere.
At least I'd get away from all the Elon Musk stories.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Humans have precedent for sending out vessels filled with people who have a good chance of dying on their journey.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
You go first.
Challenge accepted:
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
What is the difference if you are not prepared? Will you fail at it?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
How about we first master having a self-sustaining civilization on Earth?
The first Mars colony is always wiped out. It's the second one that thrives -- after 90% of the colonists are wiped out.
Someone please take the Kool Aid away from this guy. His rocket just blew up recently and was asking for help in figuring out why...
He was asking for evidence (recorded videos, audios, security camera footage), not help.
At this point I'm really wondering why people like you post this sort of thing. I mean, it's not like you have any insight into the situation.
It very much appears that you have an agenda (or an axe to grind), and chose to misrepresent the situation because you think it will add incrementally to whatever goals you have.
What are your goals? How does it benefit *you* to misrepresent what Musk is doing?
I'm constantly surprised by what motivates other people. As in - can never figure out why people do what they do.
(Maybe you shorted some SpaceX stock? No, SpaceX is still a privately held company. Maybe you work at NASA and don't like being shown up? Maybe you work at a competing launch company? Your behaviour is inscrutable.)
Isn't that also in the Microsoft License Agreement?
Table-ized A.I.
If your goal is a self-sufficient colony on mars and your serious about it your opening move will not involve sending people there initially because this would be a pointless waste of resources.
It isn't enough to just preposition supplies you need to develop and transport a highly automated industrial base using technology that does not yet exist to create the things people will need to survive.
The solution today is basic research and development not building space buses and telling riders they are probably going to die.
You can't just ignore reality and subscribe to new age planning doesn't matter we don't need to learn how to walk first nonsense because if you do that you will fail.
Putting the practical aspects of getting there aside, this is no different than what many of our ancestors did at one time. Saying goodbye to everyone and everything that is familiar for the adventure of the unknown. Yes you will die. Quickly or slowly, in anticipated or unexpected ways.
Many people cannot envision a one way journey but others can. My great grandfather came to the US to join his sons. My great grandmother did not.
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
NASA has blown up a whole lot of equipment over the years and gotten a good bunch of people killed while at it, and I don't see you demanding anyone taking Koolaid from them.
Also, to be quite honest, asking for help in figuring out what happened is smart and useful. Not asking for help out of sheer arrogance, on the other hand, is the opposite of smart and useful. They figured out what happened and most likely now know to pay even more attention to it to prevent it from happening again, so, aside from the monetary losses, everything's better than before. Learning from mistakes may be a wholly foreign concept to you, but, thankfully, it's not that to the whole rest of the world.
So I have this friend with a father who is a Vietnam war hero. When the base was under attack, he would grab the nearest weapon he could get his hands on and run toward the enemy. He won a medal for demonstrating that after the enemy shoots the tail off your helicopter, it is indeed still flyable if you go just go fast enough. Funny thing was, his very successful military career was something of an accident. Before joining the army, when there was nothing at stake and nothing to be gained by it, he would get in trouble by doing some damn fool wild thing. After the umpteenth time the judge finally told him, it's the jail or the military, you choose.
It took a long time for me to understand because I am not like that myself, but some people need high-risk, crazy adventure to thrive. If that is denied to them, they will seize it anyway, however they can. So those people might as well expend that impulse on something socially redeeming, like establishing off-world human colonies, while the rest of us cower here on earth until interplanetary transport is proven safe.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Musk is a Space Nutter.
You throw around the phrase "space nutter" as if that actually means something every time an article about Musk is posted. Let it go. If you want to make an evidence based case that going to Mars is not possible then fine. Ad-hominem attacks do not in any way bolster your case. They just make you look like a jerk.
There is no way ANYONE is going to Mars.
If you want to claim that people aren't going to be on Mars in the near future I would agree with you. Any such mission is going to take a while before it happens. If you are going to claim that it is categorically impossible that humans will ever set foot on Mars then you have no evidence to back you up. Present some actual and irrefutable evidence that putting humans on Mars is irreducibly impossible or shut up about it. So far your argument consists of calling anyone who is interested in solving the problem a "space nutter".
The trip alone would kill you with radiation.
And you of course have irrefutable proof not available to the rest of us that there is no possible way to mitigate that problem? Rhetorical question because of course since you don't and we know you don't. It's a known problem with numerous potential solutions. We aren't going to Mars tomorrow. If/when we do try to go it will be among the engineering challenges we face and one of the risks along the way. There is no evidence that it is a problem without any feasible solution given enough research and funding.
This guy is a scam artist and is trying to get taxpayer money to fund it, so he can siphon it off to pay for his other projects.
I'm not sure you know what the word means. Building at last count 4 successful and industry changing companies, three of which have nothing to do with space nor rely on any direct tax dollars, is a peculiar means of scamming people out of tax dollars. Furthermore most of the SpaceX mission list has private companies as clients as of today so basically no tax dollars are at work there either. Additionally SpaceX is actually SAVING tax dollars by reducing the cost to orbit over what NASA can do themselves. You might want to actually use some facts in your argument at some point. They tend to help.
Maybe he/she doesn't like people who make outrageous claims they can't back up. While I have no ax to grind on this particular claim, I can understand being irritated by these kinds of people.
Okay, that's fair.
But if someone is irritated by that sort of behaviour, it would seem (to me) to be more effective to attack the claims, instead of other things. And misrepresenting seems a bit dishonest, and ultimately ineffective.
Is it *really* that obvious that someone could
a) be irritated by Musk,
b) be driven by irritation to attack other things Musk does, and
c) be dishonest enough to misrepresent?
I agree that it could be a reason, but it's a stretch.
Is this motivation/behaviour really that obvious to people?
Plenty of people died colonizing the Americas. Didn't stop more coming and keep trying hoping they would make it a success.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Australia should send all their prisoners to Mars just to be ironic.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Why not the moon?
Off the top of my head because there's no atmosphere which is a convenient way to mine rocket fuel and other needed components without having to transport or actually dig and also means the lack of weathering has left the surface of the moon covered in razor sharp dust that plays hell with everything.
However, Mars is covered in poison.
I'd heard that prior to the explosion there was a guy wandering around the launch pad asking if people had seen his Note 7.
Was the first Arctic traversal a government mission?
How about the first summit of Mount Everest?
How about the first flight?
Nope.
Either private enterprise or not-for-profit groups.
Government does little in the way of firsts as they are bound by health and safety laws and sending people on fact-gathering missions is generally a waste of money. Technically the moon missions would come under military, even then, wouldn't they?
Don't wait for your government to be the first to cross the Atlantic or swim the English Channel. It ain't going to happen.
To quote XKCD: "For Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane."
The problem with Venus is that, even after you seed the atmosphere with bacteria or whatever to turn the CO2 into O2, you have to deal with the O2 spending a billion years oxidizing everything before it starts to accumulate.
Being prepared for the possibility of death is a suicidal streak? So, every soldier and explorer in the history of the world has been suicidal?
I think it would be at least as honest to say that such people simply need to recognize a goal as being worth spending their life on, if necessary, rather than remaining in the comfortable delusion of immortality that many people wrap themselves in, some even unto their deathbed.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Your son is your time machine? I can already tell your son is very young and not that developed, yet. All newer parents talk like you. Where they believe their children are basically conduits to their own past. Where you can correct your own past mistakes by having your son not make them. You. Could. Not. Be. More. Wrong. Seriously. Do yourself a favor and stop walking down this path while you still can. Your child will be the most healthy if you treat them like they are *their own person* (which they are)... instead of an extension of yourself.
Love him. Be an influence. Be there for him when he needs you. Be unconditionally supportive (which doesn't mean agreeing with every decision he makes). That's all you need to do.
But please don't make him a prisoner to your own failures, successes, dreams, and fears. Let him develop all of those on his own. He will love you for it -- forever -- and never hold resentment.
The big difference is that, on Earth, you need to be operating continuously over the entire distance, thanks to friction, traffic, weather, and other environmental hazards.
In space, you just set your trajectory and then go to sleep until you get to your destination. We do it all the time when sending probes around the system. There's basically nothing to hit - even when sending probes through the asteroid belt beyond Mars, the densest debris field in the solar system outside of Saturn's rings, and almost entirely unmapped, we just don't worry about it - there's so little material scattered across such a large space that the odds of an unintentional collision are vanishingly close to zero. Even radiation is roughly constant, aside from solar flares. For non-living goods either it can pretty much handle it, or it can't.
The result being that it doesn't actually make much difference whether you're sending a vessel across the solar system or just leaving it in high orbit - the non-fuel costs and risks are roughly the same. And we've gotten good about building hardware that doesn't mind being left "asleep" for years while it coasts through space.
Yes, obviously, if you have people on board you need to keep life support, etc, running, and are dealing with cumulative radiation and risk exposure - but that doesn't actually change all that much once you reach your destination - be it in open space, the Moon, or Mars, you're completely dependent on life support, and are beyond Earth's magnetosphere - reaching your destination only cuts your radiation exposure by about half as the planet's mass shields one hemisphere (well, somewhat better than that on Mars thanks to the thin atmosphere and greater distance from the sun).
Basically, as long as you're living in a tin can outside Low Earth Orbit, it doesn't make a dramatic difference where you are in terms of risk or resource consumption, except for the cumulative biological damage due to microgravity. And while there's some reason to be hopeful, we don't actually know to what degree low gravity will negate those problems, though it seems likely that the higher gravity on Mars will reduce them further than on the Moon.
Yes, since you're being exposed to those risks regardless, it would be nice to not waste time just sitting around waiting to reach your destination, but if you're planning a multi-decade mission, a few months one way or the other isn't likely to make a huge amount of difference. Though, assuming you have inflatable or other "fast deployment" habitats that will offer substantially better radiation shielding than the ship, there's certainly a good argument to be made that you should get into them as soon as possible.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.