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Topic: SpaceX and the prospects of Mars colonization. - page 8. (Read 31904 times)

legendary
Activity: 2926
Merit: 1386
Just happened to comment that there was no business model for small groups or colonies on Mars; that's unchanged and cannot change.

Well, he wants the company doing the business of moving cargo and passengers to and from Mars. Perhaps ....

Lot of hype, no business model for Mars.

By the way, something that should be obvious but apparently is not. Going to Mars is eight months in a SPACECRAFT, and that's one way. Musk is not building spacecraft. He is building launch rockets...

The spacecraft that could possibly do Mars is variants of the Constellation / Orion NASA project.
legendary
Activity: 2030
Merit: 1569
CLEAN non GPL infringing code made in Rust lang
Just happened to comment that there was no business model for small groups or colonies on Mars; that's unchanged and cannot change.

Well, he wants the company doing the business of moving cargo and passengers to and from Mars. Perhaps an expanded version of what he is doing now to the ISS, and probably the moon and other places will add up as well (Lagrange point stations?). The basis of: Provide the means, and the customers will come. Similar to the west conquest by the train in America.

And it might happen that some governments could fund the colonies, just like they do today to Antarctica and the ISS.
legendary
Activity: 2926
Merit: 1386
Well, you'd need the materials to build those cities with...

How about colonizing Antarctica? It'd be a whole lot easier than another planet, although it would still be very difficult.

You can get a lot of materials from the Venus itself. All you need to transport from the Earth it's the materials for the first sustainable factory. The rest will be sourced locally and transformed to whatever is needed.

About Antarctica, what would be the point? Maybe just as an exercise to train for Mars or Venus colonization. Because the thing here is that we need to become a multi-planetary specie and remove the single point of failure that Earth is right now. Humans can vanish from Earth for a dozen reasons and if we don't have a sustainable colony on another planet, the specie will disappear. And I think we should work to not let that happen.
Venus? no, you can't get materials. IIRC, the surface temperatures were around 900F, so no going down there. Some speculation exists about living in airborne vehicles, like Zeppelins or such, in the upper Venusian atmosphere.

Antarctica would be useful to test self sufficient biospheres, which we have never achieved. Thus it's totally correct to say we DON'T KNOW HOW to build a colony off earth.
legendary
Activity: 2926
Merit: 1386
....

Anyway space has multiple commercial benefits, and they have already done what nobody else did before: reuse stages, to lower launch costs. SpaceX can probably remain afloat while the master goal of going to Mars (and back) becomes reality, tho Elon Musk himself refuses to go, he sent his car for lulz...

Master goal? I don't care what Musk has as goals.

Just happened to comment that there was no business model for small groups or colonies on Mars; that's unchanged and cannot change.

Therefore, there will be no colonies on Mars. I could be wrong, just show the business model that would support the travel and colony costs for humans. But I don't see it for Mars.

legendary
Activity: 2030
Merit: 1569
CLEAN non GPL infringing code made in Rust lang
According to the plans published, there won't be any artificial gravity on BFR.
I clearly remember Elon Musk saying the BFR will be constantly accelerating to maintain gravity until the middle where it turns around start constant deceleration intended to keep gravity as well. The 0G would only last while orbiting and when turning around in mid route to switch from acceleration into deceleration.

I generally agree with most of the points, but I think small colonies are feasible, similar to the Antartica bases. If they build underground, the radiation and weather issues would probably be mitigated. I would guess if they happen to find some valuable mineral (ie. Gold) things would move on nicely (and the gold price would go down nicely as well...).

gold? the cost to move a pound just to the moon is about 3x the price of gold, to get something on a return trip would be far, far higher.

as for constant acceleration, that would require one of the several versions of ion propulsion, which would create a very, very slight gravity. not really noticeable. better to just consider as no gravity.

bfr is a launch vehicle, not a spacecraft. it could launch anything....

i stand by my former comment...

....it will be the Moon, not Mars, that is first colonized. The Moon is lacking in some elements which makes it harder, but it has massive solar energy power source. The reason it will be the moon is quite simple. There is no viable business model for Mars; there is one for the Moon, and that would be 3 week vacations.

You are right, the ship itself has a fancier name, the BFR is just the (reusable) launch vehicle which was also renamed to something I forgot.
I believe SpaceX also has plans for the moon, and NASA is already thinking of playing in the asteroid field, something about towing one to the moon orbit, or was that also scrapped under Trump's administration?

Anyway space has multiple commercial benefits, and they have already done what nobody else did before: reuse stages, to lower launch costs. SpaceX can probably remain afloat while the master goal of going to Mars (and back) becomes reality, tho Elon Musk himself refuses to go, he sent his car for lulz...
legendary
Activity: 2926
Merit: 1386
According to the plans published, there won't be any artificial gravity on BFR.
I clearly remember Elon Musk saying the BFR will be constantly accelerating to maintain gravity until the middle where it turns around start constant deceleration intended to keep gravity as well. The 0G would only last while orbiting and when turning around in mid route to switch from acceleration into deceleration.

I generally agree with most of the points, but I think small colonies are feasible, similar to the Antartica bases. If they build underground, the radiation and weather issues would probably be mitigated. I would guess if they happen to find some valuable mineral (ie. Gold) things would move on nicely (and the gold price would go down nicely as well...).

gold? the cost to move a pound just to the moon is about 3x the price of gold, to get something on a return trip would be far, far higher.

as for constant acceleration, that would require one of the several versions of ion propulsion, which would create a very, very slight gravity. not really noticeable. better to just consider as no gravity.

bfr is a launch vehicle, not a spacecraft. it could launch anything....

i stand by my former comment...

....it will be the Moon, not Mars, that is first colonized. The Moon is lacking in some elements which makes it harder, but it has massive solar energy power source. The reason it will be the moon is quite simple. There is no viable business model for Mars; there is one for the Moon, and that would be 3 week vacations.
legendary
Activity: 2030
Merit: 1569
CLEAN non GPL infringing code made in Rust lang
According to the plans published, there won't be any artificial gravity on BFR.
I clearly remember Elon Musk saying the BFR will be constantly accelerating to maintain gravity until the middle where it turns around start constant deceleration intended to keep gravity as well. The 0G would only last while orbiting and when turning around in mid route to switch from acceleration into deceleration.

I generally agree with most of the points, but I think small colonies are feasible, similar to the Antartica bases. If they build underground, the radiation and weather issues would probably be mitigated. I would guess if they happen to find some valuable mineral (ie. Gold) things would move on nicely (and the gold price would go down nicely as well...).
legendary
Activity: 3906
Merit: 1373
People are quite weak. It is shown in the fact that they die, mostly before a mere 100 years.

Together people might be able to send a few of their kind to Mars. The ability to do this probably exists, if enough of them work together on it. But, they will still all die.

The trick to getting them to work together is to find something that they want, and wisely/shrewdly use it to leverage them into working together.

Musk knows this. That is why he is creating a variety of things that people want... so that he can get money from as many of the people as possible, for his Mars project. Why money? Because almost all people want money. How to get money from them? By making it look like he is paying them enough of the money that they want to keep them working for him.

This is a trickier job for Musk than many might think.

Cool
newbie
Activity: 42
Merit: 0
It's unbelievable the fantasies some people have come to believe.
member
Activity: 494
Merit: 10
I am not sure I want to live on Mars or any other planets.  But it would be cool to see the exploration of other planets.  I hope to see it happen in my lifetime. 
legendary
Activity: 2926
Merit: 1386
SpaceX new baptized Starship (former BFR) seems to be advancing even ahead of schedule:

https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-big-falcon-rocket-spaceship-hopper-vehicle-launches-2018-12?op=1
"SpaceX is building a 'test hopper' Mars spaceship in Texas — and Elon Musk says it could launch by March"

Bah.

I realized yesterday that it will be the Moon, not Mars, that is first colonized. The Moon is lacking in some elements which makes it harder, but it has massive solar energy power source.

The reason is quite simple. There is no viable business model for Mars; there is one for the Moon, and that would be 3 week vacations.

legendary
Activity: 1455
Merit: 1033
Nothing like healthy scepticism and hard evidence
SpaceX new baptized Starship (former BFR) seems to be advancing even ahead of schedule:

https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-big-falcon-rocket-spaceship-hopper-vehicle-launches-2018-12?op=1
"SpaceX is building a 'test hopper' Mars spaceship in Texas — and Elon Musk says it could launch by March"
legendary
Activity: 3906
Merit: 1373
The problem with Venus is the heat. If the heat and the chemical reactions caused by it were not a factor, Venus might be almost as good as Mars. There are a host of other things that make Venus to be not as desirable as Mars for us fledgling space enthusiasts. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus.

We can easily protect from cold. All we need do is cover ourselves with more insulation. Our own body heat, and the heat from the heat engines we use, is enough to protect us from cold. But we don't have much in the line of simple protection from high heat. Mostly we use convection in one form or another to protect from heat when it is surrounding us. We can make heat from microwaves, but we don't really have an efficient "microwave refrigerator."

Mars is the better choice by far. Science would have to advance far to make Venus a viable option. And Mercury is way too close to the Sun to be any good.

God probably made Venus and Mars just to show us that He placed us in a position with a planet that is not too cold or too hot. The reason He would do this is to show us the love He has for us, and that we should be focusing on Him, and cleaning up Earth rather than trying to go somewhere that is way too difficult to live.

Cool
copper member
Activity: 61
Merit: 2
Well, you'd need the materials to build those cities with...

How about colonizing Antarctica? It'd be a whole lot easier than another planet, although it would still be very difficult.

You can get a lot of materials from the Venus itself. All you need to transport from the Earth it's the materials for the first sustainable factory. The rest will be sourced locally and transformed to whatever is needed.

About Antarctica, what would be the point? Maybe just as an exercise to train for Mars or Venus colonization. Because the thing here is that we need to become a multi-planetary specie and remove the single point of failure that Earth is right now. Humans can vanish from Earth for a dozen reasons and if we don't have a sustainable colony on another planet, the specie will disappear. And I think we should work to not let that happen.
legendary
Activity: 3906
Merit: 1373

Science fiction writings:



Reality:




All the time notbatman talks about the distortion and aberration that the atmosphere of earth does to camera pictures. But now you want to undermine his whole thing by essentially suggesting that the pictures are without distortion and aberration, and that the clear picture is CGI. You can't have it both ways. Either there is atmospheric aberration and distortion, or there isn't

As far as Wernher von Braun goes, he had a whole lot of knowledge about the space program that he was under oath and orders to not divulge. He knew all about the Orion Project - https://newatlas.com/orion-project-atom-bomb-spaceship/49454/ - which could get people to Mars in a few months rather than a couple of years... and do it in safety and comfort.

The fact is, we have enough equipment to assemble the Orion Project spaceship in orbit, and then boost it to high orbit (outside the Van Allen Belts), where the radiation it would produce would be pushed away from the earth by solar winds, when it finally blasted off.

In fact, this ship is powerful enough to move in on Mars from the outside (beyond the Mars Sun orbit), so that the radiation would head harmlessly out into the great voids of the Asteroid Belt. Even Mars would be protected.

I don't know that I agree with the Project, but we have the technology, and nearly the economy, to do it.

Elon Musk
exemplaar

Cool
hero member
Activity: 978
Merit: 506
 
Science fiction writings:



Reality:











legendary
Activity: 2926
Merit: 1386
There will never be a Mars colonization, you have no idea of how much Mars is distant from planet Earth

That's just gonna make it a distant colony!
member
Activity: 182
Merit: 10
Personal Text
There will never be a Mars colonization, you have no idea of how much Mars is distant from planet Earth
legendary
Activity: 2926
Merit: 1386
I like the idea of colonizing Mars, but, as the OP said, it's a tough job to pull off and I am not that convinced that it's the best idea to colonize Mars first. I think there are more chances to go and colonize Venus, a planet that it's similar to Earth in size (so similar gravity), closer to us than Mars and a bit more protective because, unlike Mars, Venus has a magnetic field to protect inhabitants against radiation.

I don't say that you have to live on the surface, because everyone knows on the surface of Venus is living Hell. But you can build floating cities that live high in the atmosphere, where they don't have to endure high pressure and scorching temperatures. Because the atmosphere on Venus is so heavy, it will be easy to float entire cities in it's upper atmosphere.

Well, you'd need the materials to build those cities with...

How about colonizing Antarctica? It'd be a whole lot easier than another planet, although it would still be very difficult.
legendary
Activity: 3906
Merit: 1373
I had thought that nuclear was the only way to get to Mars with any kind of control, and in any reasonable time. But some other ways are popping up. Check this article out:

Momentus plasma water propulsion will two to three times better than chemical rockets


The funds will go towards in-orbit technology demonstration of the company's in-space rocket scheduled to launch in the 1st quarter of 2019.

Prime Movers Lab led the round for Momentus, a 2018 graduate of the Y Combinator program, with
participation from Liquid 2 Ventures, One Way Ventures, Mountain Nazca, Y Combinator and numerous other
VCs.

Dakin Sloss, Founder and General Partner at Prime Movers Lab (which invests in physics-powered startups) said:
"Momentus has not only developed groundbreaking and efficient water-powered, in-space rockets, but also
validated the massive market demand for their services with hundreds of millions of dollars in LOIs.

...

Momentus Technology


Momentus will use microwaves to heat water to super-high temperatures.

They are using proven components in an innovative way.

Future systems will be able to gather water from asteroids and planets for easy refueling. Missions will be able to travel anywhere in the solar system and get fuel. Power can be from solar or other power sources.


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