I assume many of you will have seen this but just in case you haven’t…
From the good people of VideoFromSpace. Launch is at 30:00…
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Replay! SpaceX launches Starship on 5th flightOctober 13th, 2024 |
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Seems Musk et al. will get us to Mars…but what then?
Have they worked out how to survive there, grow food, make fuel for return flights, produce energy (solar, nuclear presumably), shield themselves from radiation and meteorites, etc. etc. Air and water come to mind as key challenges, although I’ve read about buried glaciers of water ice.
Still…while I might see someone walking around on the Martian surface in my lifetime, it seems unlikely I’ll see any sort of long-term settlement.
Seems that if you’re investing this much money to get there, you’d have a pretty solid plan for doing something once there, something to make it all worthwhile, right? Maybe part of that plan is to establish enough resources there to explore and develop things to see what’s practical and on what timescale?
And can this whole endeavor survive a loss-of-life disaster? Seems that is bound to happen sooner than later.
It certainly captures the imagination…I just hope there are “Moon Princesses” (hat tip Galaxy Quest).
I doubt if they’ve worked out solutions for any of the problems GregWA mentions. Yet.
But I’m certain that they have defined these problems, and others, and will address them.
The ‘catch’ of the returning booster was the most impressive piece of engineering I’ve seen.
I would look at the Tesla showcase of Optimus robots as a guide.
Elon claims they’ll send multiple ships in the next orbital window in Q4 2026, but I suspect they won’t be ready in time for that and their commitment to returning to the moon through Artemis will be the priority.
The Earth/Mars Transfer window of Q4 2028/Q1 2029 seems more likely, with only a robot crew (Tesla Optimus robots) but with a cargo including power generation, construction, inflatable habitats and in-situ production of methane / oxygen.
If they survive re-entry at Mars then they’ll setup an autonomously operated base and begin preparations for a human crew in the early 2030’s.
Lots of problems to solve like sourcing water from the underwater deposits, making sure habitats can survive the environment and removing perchlorates from the soil before it can be used as a growth medium.
Getting to Mars is only part of the problem. The bigger part is humans surviving there for any substantial duration.
I’m pretty sure that as soon as we land a biologist on Mars or get a Mars sample return back to Earth we’re going to find unicellular life on Mars, which may well nix Elon’s whole Mars colony for the foreseeable future anyway.
Did they ask these questions of Columbus and Erikson?
Neither Columbus, nor Erikson had to deal with the FAA or the Fish and Wildlife Service to get permits.
I’ve not seen a Martian equivalent, but I suspect it won’t be long before the UN comes along and tries to claim Mars as it’s eminent domain.
Why is that?
The only tests for biological life were those conducted by Viking 1 and 2, which came back initially positive, showing significant evidence of microbial life and then eventually deemed inconclusive for reasons which are hard to justify scientifically.
NASA have never since tested for microbial life signs and the Mars sample return mission has essentially been priced out due to costs related to over complexity.
I suspect that NASA would struggle to send astronauts to Mars if they had already confirmed it was teeming with microbial life (and therefore a biohazard to both the astronauts and humanity), so by not actively testing, that barrier is removed.
Every picture of Mars sent back by the rovers since 1997 has shown a dead, frozen desert.
Much easier to sell as a future landing place / colony than one teeming with microbial life.
Did the Viking landers find life on Mars in 1976?
I’d guess the first tranch of spacers who make the trip to Mars do so with an express acknowledgement that return might be a problem, mostly for the infection issues. It might be a one-way trip for some time, until good hard data is had.
Unless those Wuhan Lab people are in charge of this contamination security too. Then we’re all dead in a year.
Wall Street Journal today:
In a way, it is entirely right that Mr Musk is not at the UK’s “investment summit” hosted by the current leftist UK government. Mr Musk is, whatever his faults, a supreme entrepreneur and risk-taker, while the UK government, a socialist one that likes Big Government, regulation, taxes on the “rich”, is the opposite. No entrepreneur with half an ounce of IQ will want to hang around in the country run by such jumped student union activists in suits, and indeed, evidence shows they are leaving in large numbers. (See this data from the Adam Smith Institute.)
There is also the point that with people such as Mr Musk, they have better things to do than attend these grand conferences, summits, World Economic Forum, whatever. His a doer, not a talker.
Excellent work – a true achievement.
As for regulators – especially international ones. A pox on them.
@John Galt
Neither Columbus, nor Erikson had to deal with the FAA or the Fish and Wildlife Service to get permits.
One should not underestimate the bullshit involved in this. Musk has some great stories. For example, should a spacecraft land in the ocean — what is the probability of it hitting and killing a whale? Or what impact will noise from the rocket engine take offs have on the local seal population.
Which is why taking off from a converted oil platform as was originally planned with Phobos and Deimos seems like an easier option but the technology isn’t there yet.
Any launch from the sea would still require FAA approval, because it is a US launch platform, but might be less disturbing to the local wildlife.
Refuelling would be a bigger problem though, especially given all of the cooling technology for cryogenic methane and oxygen as well as the sheer volume of propellant required for each flight.
@John Galt
Which is why taking off from a converted oil platform as was originally planned with Phobos and Deimos
Which makes me wonder why Musk is doing it all in the hyper regulated nanny state of the USA. But I think the reason is twofold — first of all he needs the very, very best engineers, and I suppose that is easiest to get which you are in the USA (not because all great engineers are American, but because the best ones prefer Southern California to some jungle in Guyana.)
And second, because he gets a lot of business from the US Government. In fact, contradicting my past statement he might only hire American citizens simply to get the necessary security clearances to work on military projects. I could be wrong on that, but I think I read that somewhere.
This is what, in engineering, we call “trade-offs”.
Fraser Orr it is more basic than that.
Elon Musk knows that the West could survive the collapse of any Western country – apart-from-the-United-States.
If America falls there is no hope left for the West – it is that basic.
Elon Musk wants to save the West. Possibly an impossible task – but he is trying and he has allied himself with other people who share his objective.
Perhaps the West will collapse anyway – but at least he is trying, unlike me. I do not even clean the house any more – I just wait for death.
Elon Musk is not like that – he thinks there is still hope.
I beg to disagree: there is definitely a very small chance that the West will survive* even if America falls.
That would happen if America’s fall can be predicted in advance by smart people, AND such smart people are in charge in the other Western countries that matter the most.
* Did you catch the paraphrase?
“I suspect it won’t be long before the UN comes along and tries to claim Mars as it’s eminent domain.”
And they’ll be just as successful enforcing that as UNIFIL has been keeping Hezbollah out of Southern Lebanon.
Look at what free men and women can do!
Snorri – as I told Dr Sean Gabb long ago (it was one of the reasons we fell out) – if the United States of America falls, the other Western nations are just not big enough or strong enough to survive.
If there is no strong United States of America – there is no way, for example, that Australia could do anything other than say “Yes Sir!” to the People’s Republic of China Dictatorship.
As for the United Kingdom – it can not even feed itself, in the past it exported manufactured goods in order to import food and raw materials (a vulnerable, but possible, way of life) – but, for years now, it has had (and still has) a deficit of manufactured goods as well (it relies on the absurd Credit Money Bubble that “The City” has become) – the U.K., especially England, is also absurdly overpopulated (in America if cities fail, due to ethnic conflict or whatever, people can travel hundreds of miles and create new communities – try that here and you fall into the sea).
Nuclear blackmail would not be necessary to defeat Britain or most other Western nations – they are small and weak (both economically and militarily) – and they treat “GDP” (SPENDING) as if it was a measure of economic strength.
Elon Musk does things – he builds things and they work, we do not do that any more.
Paul: what you write strikes me as irrelevant.
Of course no one Western country can survive on its own, at present, without American support.
But countries need not be on their own.
Australia can count on Japan and India. India has the nukes, and as i understand Japan can get them in a matter of months.
The UK can — perhaps — count on EUrope, and vice versa. The UK has the nukes, and so does France. Poland and Ukraine should get them asap.
In answer to Perry’s rhetorical question, why is the appearance of unicellular life on Mars a problem for Elon Musk, I agree.
The Tory shadow cabinet is not likely to be much of an obstacle.
The West has plenty of woes to be sure. But the failure in the room is Russia, which has so far taken two years, seven months and 23 days to get nowhere much at all in Ukraine. During that time, it has displayed an astounding level of military incompetence.
The Russians are now in the unenviable position of failing even if they win.
@JJM
The Russians are now in the unenviable position of failing even if they win.
Can I point out that Russia is JV when it comes to military incompetence? The United States spent twenty years in Afghanistan and left with their tails between their legs and a legacy of scandal, bloodletting, disgrace and seven trillion dollars in debt.
The Russians are now in the unenviable position of failing even if they win.
The American military and its political overlords don’t even know what the word “win” means. Quite literally they could not tell you what it means to “win” in most of their engagements.
With all due respect to the excellent and honorable men and women in the US Armed forces, but they truly are lions led by donkeys. However, I guess if you measure success in terms of DEI compliance then I guess the DoD is “killing it”, though not in the way they used to use that word.
Spent an evening recently in a bar getting drunk with a pile of Navy intel E-6’s.
At least 70% of them have now put in their papers. They are done. The donkeys have finally exhausted them.
Fortunately, their replacements will be expert pronoun-selectors, which is the kind of skill we need in our warriors.
@bobby b
Spent an evening recently in a bar getting drunk with a pile of Navy intel E-6’s.
That’s a pretty risky choice. I used to be a contractor for the Royal Navy back when I was in my twenties and in much better shape. Those guys would have me drunk under the table after about an hour in the pub, those men were hard drinking, hard living kind of guys.
Some of the best human beings I have ever known though, and a hell of a lot of fun.
May I ask Bobby what E-6 means?
E-6 is a NATO military rank scheme, corresponding, in the Navy, to First Class Petty Officer, a non commissioned officer. They use it to be able to compare ranks across military branches and across ranks in different national militaries.
Enlisted (E) versus commissioned Officer (O) types – these are the higher-ranking people in service who didn’t go through Officer School at the beginning. You start as an E1, and climb the ranks. Most E6’s I know have been in for 10-15 years. E6’s are the people who run the actual day-to-day operations of the services. The backbone.
Once this crowd takes off, the services will be woke. This group is the last stand of the hardliner US military crew. And they’re leaving.
Amusingly, most will be going to contractors, doubling or tripling their pay. Used to be, being part of the real military would make up for the low pay. Not anymore. The spirit is gone.
They really are. And, funnily enough, they’re about 30% female. But they could all put me under a table. 😉