exmachina64
Banned
Yep, just take some Rad-Away.
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Elon Musk to announce SpaceX's Mars colonization plans at IAC on Tuesday (Sept. 27)
- Thread starter HellBlazer
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Yep, just take some Rad-Away.
Well...its just that i have not heard any real good reasons to invest all that money and technological ambition in something so nebulous as opposed to immediate problems we're facing right now, that will REALLY fuck us over if we're not focused on them right this second.
Its like someone wanting to make an amusement park in space just because they can.
Money goes in and out of the world currency system a hundred miles a minute, yet we can't use any of these resources to funnel with the same vigor into the most important things for some reason like world hunger or terminal illness and disease, instead we must listen to some guy wanting to colonize some rock in space for an undetermined amount of money and materials while getting troll comments at his conference.
I'm saying it would be better to use that scientific drive and know how to solve more direct and immediate problems here on earth, not the nebulous and much more likely prone to failure and waste of resources.
The only reason we as humanity even went to the moon, and indeed, even shot a rocket into space in general, was because of some cold war nonsense and two countries wanting to get the one up on each other in terms of nationalism and propaganda.
If we can fund a project to colonize space, we should spend an equal or more amount to fix this planet we are already destroying while we can, instead of just waiting for it to become a shit hole and then run around with our heads cut off because we have no other recourse.
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I'm still a bit confused about the logistics of the colony. Who will be in charge of it? Surely it must be one, organized colony with someone in charge? It seems like SpaceX doesn't want to be in that position. And where does the funding come from? For the flights it comes from the colonists themselves, but how about for the colony itself? And lastly, how about food production? Vehicles and other machines etc? I understand that they are not a priority at the moment, but it's still a long way to actually make it livable even for a small outpost. But still, manned exploration of Mars is one of the things I'm most looking forward to in the future 
I'm still a bit confused about the logistics of the colony. Who will be in charge of it? Surely it must be one, organized colony with someone in charge? It seems like SpaceX doesn't want to be in that position. And where does the funding come from? For the flights it comes from the colonists themselves, but how about for the colony itself? And lastly, how about food production? Vehicles and other machines etc? I understand that they are not a priority at the moment, but it's still a long way to actually make it livable even for a small outpost. But still, manned exploration of Mars is one of the things I'm most looking forward to in the future
If Matt Damon taught us anything it's that the answer is dysentery and potatoes.
TarpitCarnivore
Member
I'm still a bit confused about the logistics of the colony. Who will be in charge of it? Surely it must be one, organized colony with someone in charge? It seems like SpaceX doesn't want to be in that position. And where does the funding come from? For the flights it comes from the colonists themselves, but how about for the colony itself? And lastly, how about food production? Vehicles and other machines etc? I understand that they are not a priority at the moment, but it's still a long way to actually make it livable even for a small outpost. But still, manned exploration of Mars is one of the things I'm most looking forward to in the future
It's pretty clear musk believes that other industries, investors, etc will jump on board once SpaceX proves they're able to travel to Mars, and I think he's completely right. People underestimate how much hype and excitement there will be when they first make it there. He's already succeeding at building excitement with things that are relatively simpler, imagine when we get to watch that first launch to Mars. The first people that go the entire world will be watching.
From what I understand, the radiation danger is fairly overblown and making a short trip there will be important in keeping the risk low.
source:
https://youtu.be/3UChuIqIKF4?t=28m18s
Many incredible technologies came about from every venture made to space, between moon landings, ISS, and the Hubble alone, we've not only been able to advance current technologies but have a profoundly deeper understanding of our universe. Also he's already tackling major issues on the planet with Tesla, solar power, and now AI.
Hey, Earth wasn't always a garden of Eden you know, it was just another rock in space, until some organic molecules hitching a ride on some asteroids probably decided it would be a good place to colonize, despite the trolling from other proto-molecules.
It's quite possible that the effort of terraforming another planet could give us significant insight into fixing problems on Earth. It could even be motivational enough to help us overcome intractable differences that are the real reason we haven't already solved these problems, not the availability of funds. More likely though, sometimes a portion of the population just needs to break off and try things a different way rather keep banging their heads against the same wall over and over.
Tal Shiar Agent
Member
Watch the Martian colony become an American state before Puerto Rico does.I'm still a bit confused about the logistics of the colony. Who will be in charge of it? Surely it must be one, organized colony with someone in charge? It seems like SpaceX doesn't want to be in that position. And where does the funding come from? For the flights it comes from the colonists themselves, but how about for the colony itself? And lastly, how about food production? Vehicles and other machines etc? I understand that they are not a priority at the moment, but it's still a long way to actually make it livable even for a small outpost. But still, manned exploration of Mars is one of the things I'm most looking forward to in the future
Many of the lessons learned from colonising another planet will be applicable to the problems we're facing here on Earth.
It could be argued that attempting to colonise another planet is the best thing we could do to help us better manage how we live on Earth.
Ether_Snake
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It's clear from the presentation that the best way to scale down the costs is to send AIs/robots to Mars and not humans. You don't even need oxygen or water. Seems like you'd get much better return on investment, and by the time you have facilitated travel to Mars it would be incredibly cheap to send humans there. You would have future-food and some way to freeze humans on the way there or whatever, and the bulk of the installations would be in place to support life.
The colony would obviously belong to America barring some international treaty that the US signs. The shuttles are taking off from American soil and SpaceX is headquartered in the US. There's no other country that has the military or political power to really dispute this. The citizens going are most likely to be American so the US government would have to probably set up some regional government once the colony reached a certain size.
Why do you think his engineering skills are lacking? Did you read an article somewhere that he stole someone's technology and now think he's brainless? You haven't provided any serious sources on that.
Did you know one of the hyperloop startup companies is using government researched technology called inductrack? Did you know almost every major tech company owes a huge debt to government research?
Here's an actual nasa scientist talking about his experience at spacex. In the first video he explains how spacex developed the best heat shield facility on the planet in 9 months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMLDAgDNOhk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P06X2TZUKZU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUiIhyhp0XU
Lol, I was more referring to shielding.
dangerbyrnes
Member
does the second amendment apply in space?
cant wait for the first mars western trilogy. A Fistfull of Millions. For a Few Million more. and of course The Good, The Bad and The Martians.
but seriously, i imagine it will be more like the research stations in Antarctica, at least until its self sustainable. i mean there's already treaties saying no country can own space, though i cant imagine that will last.
First there must be a proper genocide of native martians, to really make it American.
I don't know if this is sarcasm or not
Either way, I expect this to be governed in a fairly different way, probably by some organization like the UN or something similar, or maybe something new set in Mars.
That's kind of missing the whole point though.
The point is to have multiplanet life for redundancy, not to get the best return on investment. Though if a Mars colony allows life to survive a extinction level event on earth, it effectively has infinite ROI, so hard to beat that with robots and science probes.
You are also assuming those future technologies develop without an economic incentive(a mars colony) to develop them.
Musk's plan is to make Mars colonization so economical through economies of scale that it is inevitable regardless of the whims of the market or public support. Not sure I agree entirely that this approach is 100% required for a sustainable mars colony, but it certainly will work. If they can build the vehicles for roughly the costs estimated and master that level of reusability, that creates an enormous demand for all of these other engineering problems to be solved. Not to mention the scale itself makes the problems much more easily solved if you can just afford to send more mass.
I mean at the cost per ton of mass that Musk is trying to achieve through scale and reuse it becomes economically feasible to import all kinds of stuff instead of manufacturing in situ, and the low gravity of Mars makes it obviously feasible to export if you can find or create anything valuable on Mars. The kinds of things that make civilization possible most notably. If I was an dude with a billion laying around, I'd book one of the first flights completely and just send up like a complete set of machine tools and heavy equipment for mining modified to run on methalox and become a space industrialist.
I mean, transporting the machinery will be like double the cost of the machinery on earth instead of a couple of orders of magnitude, and can you imagine the prices for steel in a growing Mars colony?
Maybe I've played too much Eve Online.
To my knowledge the Outer Space Treaty might have some issues with that.
Also not allowed.
History is your friend.
The technology and wealth created that's come out of atomics, genetics, and space engineering that were kicked off during the 40s and pushed hard during the cold war have gone a long way to aliviating poverty and hunger.
We're not finished, but you seem to discount all the progress that has been made and discount where those technologies came from.
Exactly.
He's trying to lower the cost of getting us there to under 200.000 USD (even lower).
When the cost gets that low, you'll have companies/people lining up to go since there's a lot of money to be made by actually going there.
Can you imagine being the first construction company to set up shop there?
Maybe you'll have someone setting up greenhouses all over the place
Universities sending students/professors/scientists to go there to study Mars, the atmosphere, the soil, heck the biggest draw would probably be being able to see how a colony forms and studying the sociological effects of a remote colony first hand.
Heck even transporting your products (from comforts to raw materials) to sell to the people at the colony would make you a shitload of money.
SpaceX is leading to innovation of getting us there. There will be other companies/people leading innovations on the other fields that will be needed;
water extraction, energy generation, creation of food, etc.
A government retains ownership of any materials they send into space. Most of the resources used to build the colony will probably be American. Not to mention most of the individuals will most likely be American. Until the population size is large enough to self-manage and self-govern, I would forsee any sort of conflict being handled by the US government.
There's quite a few articles suggesting he doesn't quite have the engineering chops as some of his fans believe. Here's one example that shows that he consistently falls short of goals. What's really telling is that many of the goals that falls short are caused by pretty basic problems, like getting doors opening or closing correctly, or car trim pieces properly installed. There's also been a slew of issues with all of his companies lately, like deaths caused by deficiencies in Tesla's self-driving car technology, SpaceX losing a rocket on a launchpad, etc. Of course, he's only the CEO, not the guy designing these components, so we can't put all of the blame on him. But you can blame his combination of pushing certain ideas with fully vetting them and his inability to grasp basic engineering problems, as well as being really bad at managing other people, as a major driver of these failures.
Yes actually. I also know that Hyperloop is basically impossible when taking account safety and practicality issues: debunking video.
Heat shields are old technology, dating back to the 1960s. Maybe he did a good job in this one particular instance, but this is hardly a major accomplishment.
Unless they are funded by the American govt, they are private/corporate property I would imagine. They wouldn't be subject to US law or anything.
The treaty was made at a time when it was inconceivable for anyone but a govt to put things up there.
If I fund a colony on Mars it doesn't mean it's a British colony. It means someone needs to make cat space suits.
Well the treaty doesn't necessarily apply to individuals/corporations. So it would probably be a situation where the British government, as an example, would still have jurisdiction over you and possibly own your building but not necessarily the land. A private corporation, if they send up the resources, could potentially own the building and land however the individual people would be bound by the country they're citizens in.
Edit: I found a good article discussing this,
http://www.popsci.com/astrobiologist-wants-liberate-future-mars-colonies
HellBlazer
Member
Hmm, but you seem to be missing the point that this is not some rich guy building a Martian base just for fun. He's doing it so that humanity and civilization can survive if something happens to Earth. It would not be not great if we do solve the major problems you're talking about like poverty and world hunger... and then a giant asteroid hits Earth and everyone dies. That's the kind of situation Elon Musk wants to avoid, and as such, having the entirety of humanity living on a single planet is one of the major problems that needs solving ASAP.
Besides, Musk is also driving forward renewable energy and the fight against climate change with Solar City and Tesla. He's planning to deploy a fleet of satellites to offer cheap Internet access to everyone in the world, especially developing nations. It's not like he's completely ignoring the rest of the world's problem. Do you want the guy to fix everything by himself?
And anyway, curing all diseases is Zuckerberg's job now.
Again this is all pretty non-specific.
"He consistently falls short of his goals." In relation to what exactly? In your article it mentions he's far more aggressive than Henry Ford in his expansion. Seems pretty good to me!
-"Deficiencies in self driving technology" Technology more advanced than any other available to consumers
-"Losing a rocket on the launchpad" Nevermind everyone has lost rockets and we don't know how it happened.
This is a joke right. You can find reputable people who are skeptical of the hyperloop and of all the sources you find a guy on patreon who splits his "engineering" time with rants about feminists. I'm sure the people at MIT designing the pods need to watch this video.
The technology that developed the internet dates back decades, that's not a rebuttal. You keep reverting back to this old similar tech argument which doesn't distinguish between old and new technology. Guess what?
Ahhh I remember when I used to watch this guy, good times, good times.
:l
PdotMichael
Banned
Of course.
Not that the mars would be able of providing enough resources and food for a real large group of people. Even ignoring the negative effects of the low gravity or radioactivity.
Sending humans to any other place in space is just PR, there is neit her the need for humans with the improvements of robotics nor is there a sustainable place there to be colonizied - just death traps.
eyeball_kid
Member
Shouldn't we basically try to find out definitively if there's life on Mars before we send humans there? I mean contamination prevention basically goes out the window once that happens.
So basically this then?
So basically this then?
My worry too, but, how do you know there is life there if robots cant find it?
Guess life is better at identifying life.
There are two answers to this criticism.
1) People are already spending huge sums on money to fight against hunger and disease worldwide. These are not simple problems to solve, but the desire to fight them is there already. Going into space doesn't take money away from fighting those problems either.
2) Developing space gives us ways to better fight the problems we face here on Earth.
For one clear example, space development would give us the means to acquire a nearly limitless amount of renewable, clean energy in the form of solar energy. Solar power plants have some major problems. They can't generate energy at night, they can be difficult to keep oriented in the ideal position at all times, and any kind of weather will reduce their effectiveness. In other words, the Earth and atmosphere get in the way. Solar power plants in orbit could point directly at the sun 24/7 and never be disrupted by clouds or rain.
However, it is simply too expensive to launch large scale solar power plants from the surface of the Earth into orbit. If they are ever going to exist, they need to be built in space using raw materials extracted from space. Without the extreme cost of lifting construction materials into orbit, constructing such things becomes cheap and easy. Similarly, mining materials from various places in space allows for large-scale extraction of resources without polluting Earth or damaging its ecosystem.
The goal of developing space isn't to create a back-up plan in case something happens to Earth. The purpose of it is to open up a vast solar system of resources to our use. There is no shortage of energy, ore, organic chemicals, or room to live in our solar system. Our Earth can support a few billion people, but the Solar System could support a trillion.
In the short term, anything being built off of the Earth would require regular resupply and support from Earth. In the long term, we will have space colonies shipping food back to Earth, since it is more efficient to grow crops in space.
Spending money on space is not funding an amusement park, it is investing in future farms, factories, and cities.
And what would you base all this on?
I find it hard to believe that companies like SpaceX all employ idiots who clearly didn't think about any of this stuff, but that people on the internet already know it's gonna be a disaster.
PdotMichael
Banned
You mean stuff like the lack something like the earth magnetic field to provide people protection against cosmic ray? Living on Mars for just three years would exceed the NASA's limit for cosmic ray.
Stuff like the low athosmperic pressure doesn't help either.
This is not Star Trek but a highly complex task and pretty much everything we find on Mars would kill people.
PR stuff like making Mars travel cheap for the masses is nice and stuff but not very realistic in the wild Sci fi fantasies sense.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
It's almost as if you forgot that Elon Musk is the guy behind Tesla...
This. (And other good refutations too.)
Literally in the title: "Elon Musk Sets Ambitious Goals at Teslaand Often Falls Short." It's pretty clear that he's falling short all the time.
Tesla uses the same Mobileeye technology that other car companies use. They just pushed the envelope of what's possible: http://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-autopilot-vexes-some-drivers-even-its-fans-1467827084
A launchpad failure like this hasn't happen in more than 50 years in the US. SpaceX is basically unable to solve problems other have solved long ago. This is a pretty strong example of the lack of engineering ability by Elon Musk, or at least his inability to get other people to properly engineer these issues out.
He's a PhD in physics and should be taken seriously at least in physics (definitely won't defend his other opinions though). The main points he raises are pretty solid, namely issues like thermal expansion of the pipe, loss of vacuum killing everyone in the system, near impossibility of building the turbines needed for it to work, etc.
The technology that developed the internet dates back decades, that's not a rebuttal. You keep reverting back to this old similar tech argument which doesn't distinguish between old and new technology. Guess what?
He's certainly capable of making things that are an iteration of existing ideas. I don't dispute that. However, here he is trying to do things no one has ever tried or even attempted, and there is scant evidence that he can.
Ether_Snake
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I think in fact one day we could instead increase the sustainability of living on Earth by moving production facilities in space or on other places, keeping Earth as pristine and protected as possible from catastrophes. Of course we need to colonize space as well to some extent, but that's further off IMO than the usefulness of AI/robots being sent out over humans.
And you are seriously thinking they have no interest in solving these issues before they dump a couple of 100 people on Mars?
You don't think it would be in their best interest to keep those colonists alive?
To tackle those problems so as not to have everyone die a horrible death and basically having the colony be a failure and losing all funding for future colonization/space travel.
I think they (SpaceX and their partners, etc) are highly invested in making this a succes.
I rather take the word of a genuis millionare that has been pushing multiple dormant fields into innovation and has grand innovative ideas (and close contact with a lot of brilliant people, also at NASA) over some naysayers on the internet, that seem to think nobody else sees problems ahead.
I'm pretty sure peope are gonna die on this venture and there are 100's of ways to die even before getting to Mars. But seems like that has happened with any other great scientific innovation/giant step we as humanity have taken.
I really have to bite my tongue here, but are you serious right now or are you joking??
That literally lacks context. If he sets super ambitious goals and achieves them at a later time that's not necessarily indicative of "bad engineering." It could be for any number of reasons that it happens, including bad engineering.
One example would be having to develop an entirely new supply chain because suppliers aren't used to supplying electric vehicles! Not something the science guy on youtube would have knowledge of.
Like I said the article puts it in context itself unwittingly. GM literally can't produce as many electric cars as Tesla because the batteries don't exist in the numbers they would need. Despite missing his goals he'll be far ahead of any large automaker in producing electric vehicles. Being late on his terms might make the stock jump around but needs to be understood in relation to the industry.
What does pushing it too far mean? Here's how mobileye's CEO describes the tech back in January.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/q-a-mobileye-founder-talks-self-driving-cars-1452714384
That's seems to accurately describe the situation it failed in.
Like I said before this again lacks context. For one you don't balance this with the achievements of spacex, you also don't know how engineering relates to this explosion in a substantive manner. The primary reason being nobody knows why this happened. Which is why you shouldn't be jumping to conclusions.
Being a phd in physics does not make one an expert in vacuum technology. If he was he might be more likely to work somewhere like aecom instead of spending his time ranting about sjw's.
This isn't a coherent chain of thought. Virtually all technologies can be traced back in this overly broad way of classifying it. Nobody cares that something like google maps borrowed technologies that have their roots in decades old inventions, what matters is what it's doing now.
eyeball_kid
Member
We haven't actually sent any missions to Mars that directly search for life, aside from the Viking landers in the late '70s, and the results of those experiments are still in dispute. Opportunity and Curiosity can basically only search for indirect signs of life, unless an alien happened to wander up to the camera.
It sounds like the best chance of finding any current life on Mars would be in the caves we've seen in satellite photos, but investigating them with a robot would require specialized hardware.
People are gonna be a little less skeptical once the Falcon Heavy comes into action, becoming the cheapest heavy LEO payload deliverer ever.
The Falcon Heavy is another project of Elon's that has "fallen short" by being pushed back. Yet it's happening Q1 of next year, and nobody else is even thinking about recovering boosters, let alone two at the same time.
The Falcon Heavy is another project of Elon's that has "fallen short" by being pushed back. Yet it's happening Q1 of next year, and nobody else is even thinking about recovering boosters, let alone two at the same time.
Most of your points aren't bad. But come on man, what are you going to prove with an ad hominem? That's not really helpful here.
What is your point exactly? He is likely to fail... and?
By the way, it seems to me that what he talked about doing during the presentation is making improved iterations of existing ideas. What he has talked about is scaled up transport system using bigger and more advanced versions of technology SpaceX already has. So what exactly is it that you have a problem with?
Yeah, I'm not sure why HyperionX is ignoring the fact Elon has staff backing him up. Does he know how companies work? Usually if they don't have certain experience in house they will hire people, they can even get outside assistance through partnerships of one type or another. Elon even talked about this during the presentation or the Q&A, I forgot which.
Lmao, those Q&A questions can't be real.
What about shit in space?
Can I give you a kiss?
I have a prototype electrical blah-blah, you interested in funding me?
Why not hire foreigners?
Can we send people I hate as the first crew?
Sweet mother of god, who let these people into this keynote.
What about shit in space?
Can I give you a kiss?
I have a prototype electrical blah-blah, you interested in funding me?
Why not hire foreigners?
Can we send people I hate as the first crew?
Sweet mother of god, who let these people into this keynote.
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