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Boeing CEO Vows To Beat Elon Musk To Mars (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg sketched out a Jetsons-like future at a conference Tuesday, envisioning a commercial space-travel market with dozens of destinations orbiting the Earth and hypersonic aircraft shuttling travelers between continents in two hours or less. And Boeing intends to be a key player in the initial push to send humans to Mars, maybe even beating Musk to his long-time goal. "I'm convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket," Muilenburg said at the Chicago event on innovation, which was sponsored by the Atlantic magazine. Like Musk's SpaceX, Boeing is focused on building out the commercial space sector near earth as spaceflight becomes more routine, while developing technology to venture far beyond the moon. The Chicago-based aerospace giant is working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to develop a heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System for deep space exploration. Boeing and SpaceX are also the first commercial companies NASA selected to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. Boeing built the first stage for the Saturn V, the most powerful U.S. rocket ever built, which took men to the moon. Nowadays, Muilenburg sees space tourism closer to home "blossoming over the next couple of decades into a viable commercial market." The International Space Station could be joined in low-earth orbit by dozens of hotels and companies pursuing micro-gravity manufacturing and research, he said. Muilenburg said Boeing will make spacecraft for the new era of tourists. He also sees potential for hypersonic aircraft, traveling at upwards of three times the speed of sound.
Meanwhile the permanently unemployed poor stay on the surface and rot. Jet-setting isn't good enough for ultra-rich idle scum, they want to be the space-setters.
I can do it too! See! I can! I can!
Mom! Dad! Elon won't let me play with him!
Having a plan to survive interruptions in logistical support is literally a matter of life and death -- not just for interplanetary settlers, but even for ones just crossing an ocean. Rushing things when the support services are not yet developed is not exactly a safe plan. Bold, certainly, but quite possibly bordering on suicidal.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Not with Boeings cost base it wont. But I guess what they mean is that public sector astronauts will be the first to Mars on their hyper expensive rocket ships.
For the human race, at our current level of technological development, space travel is a net loser activity from an energy standpoint. There is a finite amount of energy currently available to our species, both in an absolute sense and a per unit of time sense. We're currently in the process of squandering our fossil fuel inheritance and we're already looking for more sources of energy to satisfy our greed and thirst for growth. I like science fiction as much as the next nerd, but if you want an honest appraisal of our energy problems and growth prospects from a real physicist who pulls no punches then I suggest Tom Murphy's "Do the Math" blog on energy, growth and options to get a better understanding of why space is basically a distraction from our real energy problems right now.
Do the Math - Stranded Resources
and Elons plan is working perfectly. he cant build all the necessary tech and infrastructure himself. trigger a space race and the tech WILL get developed by a multitude of startups for those specific needs. It's a a sensible method!
Klik
open your mind too much and your brain falls out!
Oh wait, so he wasn't the sniper?
I can't see how you may justify such severe polluting of the high atmosphere and waste of CO2 and resources for joyrides for the 0.01% rich. You have to be a psychopath if you know enough about science yet still think it's desirable. What's next, build private pyramids? Flood century old village for fun, and let the people eat cake?
If the fat cats want thrills, I'd say fix up that Coliseum in Rome that's been in state of disrepair for so long, then pit them against gladiators and lions.
Musk announced SpaceX will try to get something to Mars every other year for the next 20 years.I'm not saying Boeing doesn't have the engineering talent but I seriously doubt it has the will to beat Musk to Mars. Musk said, this is what we're doing, this is when, and this is how. Boeing said, over the next few decades we're going to put tourists in earth orbit. There isn't even a competition at this point.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Boeing is saying this because they are going to suffer huge losses in the space area now their cosy model has been disrupted. Further, we will start seeing this sort of thing play out across the economy more and more, thanks to central bank monetary policy. When market capitalisations of incumbents get driven to such high levels by zero-interest-rate policies that much of a company's value is stuffed full of goodwill they become ripe for being disrupted by a new player. Effectively, it becomes increasingly cheaper to start your own company from scratch rather than buying a share in the incumbents, and technology is driving down the real cost of starting businesses, which is compounding the problem.
This is how the economy will correct for the current lock out of asset ownership for anyone who wasn't lucky enough to get into the bubble economy early enough - by destroying the value of existing assets. It means that if you are young the number one thing you should not do is take on stupid amounts of debt to buy a house, and you would do well to invest all you can into learning the business skills to build the new companies that will rise out of the mess that is being made of the real economy by the biggest asset bubble in history.
Surely this is such a big risky project that it'd make sense to cooperate, or at the very least coordinate together?
Hurry up to die.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Boeing CEO Vows To Beat Elon Musk
Bang! Zoom! Right to the... Mars.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
He linked to an article that shows the energy from the resources you'd get from space resources vs the energy needed to overcome the gravity well. It makes a good read.
"(rockets don't run on oil)."
Yes they do. either directly as Kerosene or indirectly used to make liquid Hydrogen.
"there is no need to give up on other research and development until we solved it "
We're already way passed sending manned flights, we can send probes one way, expendable, lighter, can do more, stand more extremes, have sensors exactly the way we want. Why the fuck would we send people? People in space are a novelty act.
Yeh its great showmanship (well until they die), but it would be ridiculous now. Imagine sending people to Mars on a one way mission to die, and the Chinese and Russians sending a probe with a camera to show the world.
...we could send all the CEOs to Mars, maybe we couldn't set up a colony there, but for sure we would make the Earth a better place where to live.
1. The Boeing that, indeed, did build the Saturn V first stage was not nowadays Boeing. The former was much smaller, more agile ("agile" not in the software engineering sense, but in the common dictionary sense).
2. Boeing is indeed heavily involved in the SLS program. That program's pace, however, is set by NASA, whereas Musk's SpaceX, being a virtual start-up, sets its own and dramatically different pace.
This is not to say that Boeing could not or should not be involved in what might became a "race toward Mars". I am, however, calling bullshit on the Saturn V and SLS arguments.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
A telltale symptom is the mind boggling stagnation in rocket technology. Look at main lift engine development: ULA is using Russian engines designed in the cold war. The rocket cartel hasn't invested a dime in big lift vehicles since the early 90's.
It took two outsiders, Musk and Bezos, to inject life into the US space sector. They were both technologists with no ties to aerospace. They independently realized that new booster technology was the key to 21st century space flight, manned or unmanned. They both spent their own money to build new rockets from scratch. Yes, they got federal funding, but they spent a lot more then that. (ULA has been developing new upper stage rockets, but that is a much smaller effort then building a new launch system from scratch.)
When ULA woke up and realized they were at least six years behind SpaceX in engine design, they went to Blue Origin. Their next generation main lift stage will based on the Blue Origin design. That's called being asleep at the switch.
Don't start whining about NASA, feel sorry for them. They are constrained by politics and budgets. If Congress only gave them rubber band and paper clip money they would still be making a valiant effort to get into space somehow.
Speaking of Congress, ten House Republicans are trying to squash SpaceX. They claim to be "greatly concerned" about the recent pad explosion and want the USAF and NASA to cut SpaceX off. What they are actually doing is shilling for ULA. Who gives a rat's ass about US technological leadership or actual capitalism when there are campaign contributions and jobs to protect in their districts? Congress are the real jokers behind the rocket cartel.
Why is Snark Required?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"...we'll take pot shots at their rockets from our rooftop while they're refueling them. (Oops! Did I say that out loud?)"
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
Now we have a Twitter race of who can make the biggest bullshit claims.
"The poster 11010101011 seems to be strangely absent from this thread."
Probably just posting AC again. Why do certain people have such a fear of having an observable posting history?
He linked to an article that shows the energy from the resources you'd get from space resources vs the energy needed to overcome the gravity well.
What's the mass of microwaves again? He proposes going to Titan, constructing a chemical rocket using local materials and returning a little bit of hydrocarbons as chemical energy. We could try things here that aren't that dumb like fissionable materials like uranium and thorium which both have a far better energy per mass, and which can power a far better rocket engine.
Or as I note in my question, we could send the energy as microwaves, that doesn't require any mass for transportation and isn't subject to the rocket equation.
Math is only as useful as the argument it supports.
We're already way passed sending manned flights, we can send probes one way, expendable, lighter, can do more, stand more extremes, have sensors exactly the way we want. Why the fuck would we send people? People in space are a novelty act.
Because people are faster and more effective than these probes you discuss. The problem isn't the sensors, it's the lack of someone on site to make decisions.
Yeh its great showmanship (well until they die), but it would be ridiculous now. Imagine sending people to Mars on a one way mission to die, and the Chinese and Russians sending a probe with a camera to show the world.
Maybe you should leave imagination to people who have it. We could just not do that, right?
While I can understand the attraction in jetting people across continents at very fast speeds (even though we've seem to forgotten we abandoned that 40-year old technology when we retired the Concorde), I fail to see this whole commercial "race" to Mars.
Attention Martian vacation peddlers; How about you start with proving you can safely navigate through our man-made asteroid belt of space junk before you start bullshitting investors about Martian getaways.
I'm not saying Boeing doesn't have the engineering talent but I seriously doubt it has the will to beat Musk to Mars.
It has nothing to do with will. It's all about capital and management. Musk is a crappy manager, And as far as capital is concerned, Tesla needs it badly and Musk's only option is to sell more stock and dilute current shareholders.
Musk doesn't have nor does his friends have the financial resources to go to Mars or anywhere beyond LEO. But here on Slashdot, folks will believe otherwise without facts because they get suckered into Silly Valley hype all the time.
House Republicans have a fiduciary responsibility to their investors!
CEO of Boeing should know better. ... HYPER sonic > mach 5. It is impossible, by definition, to have a hypersonic plane flying at 3 times the speed of sound.
Beats me.
I'm AC out of sheer laziness. My browser doesn't store cookies, so I would have to log in every time I wanted to post. I doubt I'd bother posting at all if logging in became compulsary. I'm punished as my posts start at 0, but it's usually my best posts that get modded up anway, so that's the system working as intended.
What worries me is how sure he is they will be the first. I read another article about the person heading up the same program at NASA (can't recall her name right off, sorry) and she said pretty much the same thing -- absolutely positive they would be there first. Now, their time line puts that is the 2030s. That's behind SpaceX's schedule, so unless they know something....
:T:R:A:N:S:
No, he's just posting as AC above.
There is a finite amount of energy currently available to our species, both in an absolute sense and a per unit of time sense.
Well, I suppose the amount of energy is technically "finite", but the amount is huge by human standards. You do the math. The solar power striking Earth is 173,000 terawatts. All the energy used by humanity is a trivial fraction of a percent of that.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Good luck with that. Today's Boeing isn't the same company that built rockets in the 1960s, so although that nostalgia is nice, it has nothing to do with Boeing's current potential.
many asteroids are full of rare earths.
No. they're not. Where in the world did that idea come from? Asteroids aren't particularly rich in rare earth metals. (Which, despite the name, aren't actually rare).
if they capture and crash even ONE, they'll be the richest men on earth. (the refining and processing is minimal, these are PURE at the core, nature sorted the elements already)
What?? No.
Nature has sorted out iron and nickel. Platinum group metals are sideorphiles, and segregate with the iron and nickel, albeit still at parts per million concentration, so you need a lot of refining. Rare earths, however, are not segregated in asteroids. On Earth they tend to be concentrated by aqueous processes, so you wouldn't expect to find rare earth segregated in asteroids.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
What's the difference between you and any other religious person talking about my salvation in the sky?
Well, unlike the heaven promised in other religions, space is objectively there. We can actually see Mars and even send probes there.
Send some probes to heaven and get a chemical composition of the surface rocks, and then we can say that spaceflight and religion are on a comparable basis.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Their flagship products literally catch on *fire*.
Wait, are we talking Boeing or have we moved onto Samsung?
They don't have any rockets.
Even if he's considering ULA's rockets being nominally Boeing's, they're shutting down production of the Delta IV family, the Atlas V is on shaky ground with its Russian engines, and is supposed to be discontinued when the Vulcan starts flying, the development of which they are underfunding and as it stands, even when it's done, would probably not even be competitive with SpaceX's current Falcon 9.
Or are they planning to buy out LockMart's half of ULA, or compete with their own subsidiary with an undisclosed rocket design?
This is exactly what Elon Musk has wanted to have happen. He wins! The beauty of all of this is that Elon Musk starts these projects not because he personally wants to execute them, but because he sees that no one else is doing them and he so badly wants humanity to do them.
All hail Elon Musk!
http://www.drboylan.com/xplane...
The TR3-B 'Astra' is a large triangular anti-gravity craft within the secret U.S. fleet. Black-projects defense industry insider Edgar Rothschild Fouche wrote about the existence of the TR3-B in his book Alien Rapture(10).
The TR3-B does not depend solely or principally on its hydrogen-oxygen rockets. It is a highly-reduced-gravity aerospace craft manufactured in secret "black programs" by Boeing. The reduced-gravity field it produces reduces the vehicle's weight by about 90% so that very little thrust is required to either keep it aloft or to propel it at speeds of Mach 9 or higher.
The TR-3B vehicle's outer coating is electrochemical-reactive and changes with electrical radio-frequency radar stimulation, and can change reflectiveness, radar absorptiveness, and color. This is also the first US vehicle to use quasi-crystals in the vehicle's skin. This polymer skin, when used in conjunction with the TR-3B's Electronic Counter Measures and Electronic Counter-Countermeasures (ECCM), can make the vehicle look like a small aircraft, or a flying cylinder - or even trick radar receivers into falsely detecting a variety of aircraft, no aircraft, or several aircraft at various locations!
A circular plasma-filled accelerator ring called the Magnetic Field Disrupter surrounds the rotable crew compartment and is far ahead of any imaginable technology. Sandia and Livermore National laboratories developed the reverse-engineered MFD technology. The plasma, mercury-based, is pressurized at 250,000 atmospheres at a temperature of 150 degrees Kelvin, and accelerated to 50,000 rpm to create a super-conductive plasma with resulting gravity-disruption [reduction of almost all of the pull of gravity and effects of inertia].
The MFD generates a magnetic-vortex field which disrupts or neutralizes the effects of gravity by 89 percent on a mass within proximity. The MFD creates a disruption of the Earth's gravitational field upon the mass within the circular accelerator. The mass of the circular accelerator and all mass within the accelerator, such as the crew capsule, avionics, MFD systems, fuels, crew environmental systems, and the nuclear reactor, are reduced by 89%. The current MFD in the TR-3B craft causes the effect of making the vehicle extremely light, and able to outperform and outmaneuver any craft yet constructed - except of course those back-engineered total-antigravity craft, which the government does not admit exist.
The TR-3B is a high-altitude, stealth reconnaissance platform with an indefinite loiter time. Once you get it up there at speed, it doesn't take much propulsion to maintain altitude.
With the vehicle mass reduced by 89%, the craft can travel at Mach 9 vertically or horizontally. My sources say the performance is limited only the stresses that the human pilots can endure. Which is a lot of reduction, considering that along with the 89% reduction in mass, the inertial G forces are also reduced by 89%. The crew of the TR-3B can comfortably take up to 40Gs.
The TR-3Bs propulsion is provided by three multimode thrusters mounted at each bottom corner of the triangular platform. The TR-3 is a sub-Mach 9 vehicle until it reaches altitudes above l20,000 feet - then who knows how fast it can go!
The reactor heats the liquid hydrogen and injects liquid oxygen into the supersonic nozzle, so that the hydrogen burns concurrently in the liquid- oxygen afterburner. The multimode propulsion system can operate in the atmosphere, with thrust from the Magnetic Field Disrupter powered by the nuclear reactor; in the upper atmosphere, with hydrogen propulsion; and in orbit, with the combined hydrogen/oxygen propulsion. The engines are reportedly built by Rockwell.
"I'm convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket,"
Informing people that you are deluded isn't the best idea. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Muilenburg just wants Boeing to win the race for all of those tax dollars that Musk has been burning up smashing rockets into the sand and occasionally into the ocean. What do we need NASA for if it is just going to act as a clearing house for tax dollars to fund toys for oligarchs?
Sounds legit.
Latest news on the battle of the idiotobillionaires. Find out at 11 how they plan to cure all disease within the next year.
Alternate headline: Boeing CEO posturing to be as ambitious as SpaceX so Boeing gets the contracts. Despicable.
Step one. Sniper bullet through rocket. Check
Boy, that is a lot of beating for a long time. Hope the CEO's arms don't hurt too much and that Elon wears a kevlar suit.
Rocketdyne built the engines, and Boeing hired some guys to wrap tin around them. Seriously, the first stage is basically engines and fuel.
Saying Boeing built the first stage is like saying the job foreman built your house. They contributed to the effort, sure, but the most valuable thing they did was schmooze bureaucrats to get the contract.
The biggest reason for going according to these guys is to survive an extinction event. Why not build a city on the moon?
* Getting there in a matter of days vs. months or years
* we've been there before
* its way way way cheaper
* communications could be continuous
* more efficient power from the sun
* If something goes wrong, the earth is right there!
The only reason people want to go to mars first is that it is sexier. If they were truly worried about an extinction event, they would go to the moon.
"I'm convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket"
At the rate it is going I expect them to revise that statement to, "I'm convinced the first foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket"
Nothing more to say.
I worked as a contractor for Boeing over a decade ago. Learned to respect their engineer ethos, and their aversion to risk. Which, when I fly a Boeing airplane, makes me a lot more comfortable.
But.
This isn't about bringing risk to zero. It's about managing risk. I cannot see Boeing transform it's (correctly) risk intolerant culture to one where they repeatedly crashed landers till they got it right.
I see this as so much messaging and crap to the institutional funds, who're probably asking, "so whaddya got after the dreamliner ? It's great and all, but what's the long range plan that'll make me see growth for Boeing in the next decade?"
Considering that elon mush is going about claiming his rocket was perfect and it must have been sabotage that caused it explode. Compared with the track record and history of boeing which has helped NASA in the past build their rockets and space craft that have a MUCH better safety record.
as long as they can keep blowing up the spacex rockets
It IS, the engine is build by Rockwell, the same company that engineered and perfected the Turbo Encabulator. (look it up on you tube, there is a very easy to follow video on how it works)
This would be great if we as a world community support and finance this... However, as we have seen in the recent past (Space Age/Race - the screeching slowdown of innovation) Capitalism stifles innovation, and at least in the short run. And the short sighted that our corporate leaders are, all this talk just seems like empty 'space filler' talk!
Example... See what happened to the BWB (Blended wing-body concept) in the aeronautical arena? We still fly in a cylinder with wings powered by propulsion technology from the 50's ("modern hi-bypass turbofans"). And even here, the best we can do is 'active clearance control' and 'geared fans'...
... managed to survive on the transport market due to their excessive fuel consumption and cost, they want to make us believe that "travelling to Mars" will become big business? Sorry, but that's clearly not going to happen. Yes, a few rich people will pay whatever price for getting to Mars, but clearly not enough to sustain a regular flight schedule.
The TR3-B 'Astra' is a large triangular anti-gravity craft within the secret U.S. fleet.
Now that is a bona fide Space Nutter, with capital letters. Where's our binary friend when we need him. There should be a rant right here. Or perhaps some of his new biting sarcasm.
oh wait, thats not what they said...