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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.
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
Nope, this represent a major seismic shift in corporate ideology, a humanity saving shift. That shift is the change from a war industrial complex to a space industrial complex. Instead of turning in on ourselves in a egoistic orgy of self destruction through war for profit, that energy is finally starting to shift out into space. Instead of glorifying mass murder and the most brutal engines of destruction, that energy will be focused on better space craft, a full fledged Lunar City, colonies in space and even terra forming mars and that is just the start with hints already coming out about how to get past the FTL barrier. So a change that should be celebrated in every home, a shift from end of the species war to extinction to becoming a galactic species.
Likely many are just way to shallow, self centred and narcissistic to appreciate things which benefit humanity as a whole, they quite simply can not see it because it is never reflected in the mirrors they stare at every day of their lives.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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.
"Meanwhile the permanently unemployed poor stay on the surface and rot."
In a socially mobile country anyone can be made poor by temporary circumstances. But those permanently unemployed poor of yours are the people who lack the vision it takes to improve themselves. Perhaps it's being dedicated to an obsolete industry, perhaps it's BLM-style racial hatred, or perhaps it's falling into the black hole of addiction.
"Meanwhile the permanently unemployed poor stay on the surface and rot."
In a socially mobile country anyone can be made poor by temporary circumstances. But those permanently unemployed poor of yours are the people who lack the vision it takes to improve themselves. Perhaps it's being dedicated to an obsolete industry, perhaps it's BLM-style racial hatred, or perhaps it's falling into the black hole of addiction.
Exactly. If everyone had the will to be rich, everyone would be incredibly wealthy. 100 percent of us would be in the top 1 percent.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Instead of glorifying mass murder and the most brutal engines of destruction.
This part of our history will serve us well when we encounter other species.
Instead of fixing local problems, people get wrapped up in tech porn.
And they have forever. And that's actually a good thing. Those ships that brought most people's ancestors to where they live now are technology. Wagons are technology. You have to deal with it that not all people are stuck in the mud.
It's almost like they escape problems here by thinking of grandiose plans in space and imagine that they will solve anything.
Wanderlust is an integral part of the human experience. Not everyone has it, but aside from people who might be fleeing overcrowding or lack of opportunity, it is something rooted in their psyche. We are not trying to solve anything, we are just doing what we do. It's the difference between someone who wants to go to the Grand Canyon for the experience, and someone who wonders why anyone is interested in a big ditch
This isn't even an indictment of you. There is a very big place for people who resist change, and don't like risk. The world also badly needs adventurists, people who strike out towards something new.
In the end, all practical matters aside, a lot of people are interested in going to Mars, even as a one-way trip. Others are happy to not ever venture out of the city the live in. Its just how people act.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I think a lot of people confuse the possibility of social mobility with the probability of social mobility.
Think of it like the difficulty setting on a game. Difficulty settings can range from the ridiculously easy to the virtually impossible. Likewise, different players have different skill levels in how good they are at the game. If the game had the same difficulty setting for everyone, comparing in-game scores/accomplishments/times would be an easy way to compare how good players are at the game.
But it's not that way, because you have difficulty settings. A person can be quite good at a game, but still loose because they choose to play it on a tough difficulty setting. Likewise, a person can really suck at a game but still win because they chose to play it on an easy setting. Now, there always will be some people who are so good that they'll win at the toughest settings and some people who are so bad that they'll still lose on the easiest settings. But lots of quite good players will still fail when the settings are hard enough, and lots of quite bad players will still succeed when it's easy.
We enter life with a variety of factors that influence our "difficulty settings" that we all have to play on. A white cis straight man with wealthy, college-educated parents raised in a good household is probably going to be playing on "easy". A poor black gay or trans woman with poor, high-school-educated parents raised in a bad environment, with no healthcare, loaded in debt from day one, having to work to support their family, limited transportation options, etc? Not so much. Will some of the former fail, and some of the latter succeed? Of course! But the odds of it are skewed. Many if not most people who would have been quite successful had they been on a level playing field will fail, and vice versa.
I, for one, support giving everyone access to the easier difficulty settings. I don't think it's a good thing for an economy when you have potential talent not being realized and people who really should be working a cash register in management. More to the point, the cost to the economy is almost unfathomably large. So if it takes some money to make this happen? So be it. Social mobility isn't just about the technical possibility of moving from one economic reality to another; it's about the practical reality of it, and how much merit and ability are able to overcome social inertia for the majority of players in the system.
Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.