Slashdot Mirror
Elon Musk: SpaceX's Mars Rocket Could Fly Short Flights By Next Year
On stage at SXSW, Elon Musk issued yet another incredibly ambitious timeline. During a Q&A session on Sunday, Musk said SpaceX will be ready to fly its Mars rocket in 2019. He said: We are building the first ship, or interplanetary ship, right now, and we'll probably be able to do short flights, short up and down flights, during the first half of next year. Further reading: Fortune.
How the fuck is it a "Mars rocket" if it's only doing short flights? It's like calling my '77 Toyota pick-up a "Formula One car" because I can drive it in an oval in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Musk might as well go all out and call it an "Alpha Centauri rocket".
On the other hand, I saw one of those new Tesla roadsters on Hwy 101 outside of Pismo Beach the other day and it's a very nice-looking little ride. It looks like it would be fun to drive.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary
The pigs coming out of my butt seem to be flying, too.
Just warming up, some stretches and a few short jogs around the Moon to get ready for the journey.
He probably implies Grass Hopper flights in Texas. That is what he suggested before at the Falcon Heavy press conference.
Also, crew was the highest priority for this year after the FH launch.
This is really impressive. Elon really follows through with his promises. He will be the one to get us off this rock stuck in a gravity well!
He's a bit wierd - but I'm a fan.
However, back-to-back Muskiness? Enough, thanks
Of humanity being wiped out entirely and in so many different ways. No generation before us lived with that fear... I want to be secure in knowing that humanity will survive after I m gone... This is a great step towards quelling my fears Thanks. :)
[($)]
Except that JFK and Obama's projects were by the government.
Trump has nothing to do with that private enterprises do.
#DeleteFacebook
Given his history Musk definitely has a propensity to set unrealistic timetables. However so does NASA, how many years behind is Constellation/SLS? And at least with SpaceX you're not dealing with multi-billion dollar cost overruns and rockets that launch the size of skyscrapers and return something the size of a small camper. It should also be noted that a lot of the delays to present have been due to the extensive learning curve required to get the bugs worked out of reusability for the Falcon 9 (and by extension Heavy). Development for the BFR should go quite a bit quicker as most of the work done on the F9 basically has to be scaled up for the BFR. Not always as simple as it sounds but a lot easier than building something from scratch.
WTF??!!
You are seriously suggesting that SpaceX having a long term goal of reaching mars is all down to Trump? And that they only came to this realisation within the past 1 year??
Trump canceled the Mars program and is aiming for the moon. And personally I don't remember when Obama talked about trains, so it clearly wasn't a big deal -- California voters and Jerry Brown are the ones who pushed for trains.
This space intentionally left blank
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
-- Douglas Adams
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Your misuse of grammar is embarrassing.
The BFR booster should be not that hard, yes. The second stage (the ship) though will be very hard. A fully reusable second stage that is a spaceship at the same time and can go to Mars and land there and be refueled and launch back to Earth and land there and then will be refueled on Earth and fly to Mars again? This is hard. Not impossible, mind you. Just a really tough nut to crack engineering-wise. And certainly nothing like just "scaling up the F9". At least one order of magnitude harder.
Our lipskis suckin' the ol' Musky.
Our handskis cuppin' his ballsky.
Like a BOSS we are!
Next we buttfuck Microsoft.
Over a chair.
That's how we roll.
For all that it's really cool, Falcon 9 Heavy might have been a mistake. And this is from someone who went to the launch and paid $200 for the good tickets. It cost them a great deal to get working, and is destined to be supersceded by their next rocket. We might not see that many of them ever fly.
The thing is, I'm not sure you can build the BFR without building the Falcon Heavy. It tests a lot of things about combining more engines together, which Musk noted was a lot harder than anticipated just making the FH... I think you need something like the FH doing repeated flights to get enough data to build a BFR that is more like to work than not.
So I don't really see how you can ever call the FH a mistake, even if it is replaced eventually.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Elon said as much at the post FH launch interview. Just because it happens at SXSW doesn't make it news..
Organization? You must be joking..
And we're seeing how that CA supertrain is doing. My money is on the rocket going to Mars before the train makes it anywhere near Los Angeles.
Has he been able to deliver even 1% of the Model 3's that people have ordered?
Him saying Mars test trips in 2019 = Mars test trips in 2025 at the earliest.
I don't respond to AC's.
Also, I have updated my sig yet one more time! I am now selling vacuum cleaners, going door to door while picking up second-hand lottery tickets at the same time!
Now, talk about efficiency! We will see who gets the last laugh when I collect all those royalties.
--
$700 For A Vacuum Cleaner -- Are You #%@$ Nuts?!
Why did Slashdot remove the article on Musk's warnings on AI published almost along this one? Where did it go?
It seems to me the Heavy accomplishes several things: nothing necessarily indispensable, but potentially worth the investment when combined:
First the non-technical strategic benefits:
It substantially boosts the maximum available launch capacity in existence, exceeding anything available in several decades. Great PR, and probably helps inspire complimentary businesses (Bigelow Aerospace, etc) to be ready to make use of the BFR.
It lets SpaceX start getting considered by the bureaucracies that currently demand heavy launch capacities, so with luck SpaceX will already be at the table ready to offer their bigger/better/cheaper rocket once it's ready to go to work.
So basically it helps create a market for BFR once it gets here. Yeah, it could go around just delivering F9 payloads cheaper, except it's probably going to need a lot of flights under its belt before the up-front costs are paid off.
And then there's the technical benefits - it gives them a test platform for coordinating large numbers of engines using comparatively cheap reused engines, as well as letting them experiment with multi-rocket linkages, which will quite possibly eventually be incorporated into the BFR design if things really take off.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
For all the other qualifiers you added, I'm not sure you actually added much difficulty. Refueling in orbit in preparation for a trip to Mars will be a new challenge. Refueling on Mars though will not be - making the fuel maybe, but that has nothing to do with the rocket. The only difference between refueling on Mars rather than Earth will be dealing with ambient vacuum, and considering the pressure the fuel is already under, I'm not sure that a one-atmosphere difference in ambient pressure is particularly relevant.
As for the heavy reusability though, that is indeed the major challenge, far beyond merely scaling up existing technology. In fact it's arguably a large portion of the reason behind the BFR in its current incarnation: small enough to profitably service Earth-orbital launch needs, and just big enough to get to Mars, and to reduce the relative mass of reentry systems to still allow for respectable payloads. It's a redesign made with business considerations front and center, and its success will ride on them being effective.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Another thing to consider is that for most of the time the Falcon Heavy was being designed and built, the plan was seemingly for the BFR to be an interplanetary vessel, too large to satisfy normal launch demands. It's only in the last year or so I think that the plan was scaled down to something that could service existing Earth launch needs as well, when they realized that there was a sweet spot in size that could be cheaper to operate than an F9, while still being able to make it to Mars with a respectable payload. Thus solving the single biggest problem with the original BFR design - how to pay for them.
The Heavy may prove to have been a waste of time and money, but I don't know that I'd call it a mistake - it was simply rendered obsolete by a change in strategic vision. Strategic revisions almost always carry a cost like that, it's just part of the price of not being omniscient. It may even be that lessons learned while developing the Heavy were instrumental in revising the BFR plan, making the Heavy development a valuable investment regardless of the value of the rocket itself..
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I think you're overestimating the difficulties involved in some of the noted steps. Orbital refueling has already been done by many countries, not on the scale that it will be with BFR but it's been done. And once you're in orbit with the necessary fuel getting around isn't difficult as long as you have a relatively efficient orbital engine (which they do). Reentry (both Mars & Earth) is a bit more of an issue, but not as much as with other craft due to the BFRs large size and low weight. Unlike traditional reentry which usually involves pile-driving through the atmosphere the BFR will likely slowly aerobrake in the upper atmosphere far longer which should decrease the stresses (both thermal and structural).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are a couple things that need some serious tech, but once they are solved, It will be a much safer place than Earth. Imagine, no more floods, earthquakes, ect.
[($)]
No... Maybe themselves... everyone they love... even their country... but not humanity.... that's a different feeling altogether.
[($)]
Of all of humanity being wiped out... it wasn't until relatively recently that anyone even that it to be possible. Whats hard to understand about that... What a strange anwer you have... odd
[($)]