Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[Flayer]

27 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

When you are spending billions of taxpayer/stockholder money, you bet you need a justification.

But there isn't a will. Mars colonization doesn't even register on the list of voter preoccupations. It isn't part of anyone's political platform. Most people on the street don't even know about the ISS or believe in the moon hoax.

You might think it's important, but "Flayer wants a Mars colony" isn't going to get Congress to start throwing money at NASA.

I have no doubt people will plant a flag on Mars before the end of the century, and maybe set up a permanent government-funded science outpost with crew rotations every two years. But colonization makes absolutely no sense.

 

If its cheap enough to get there it will make perfect sense. Enter Musk.

Thank you thread over.

[tater]

"Cheap enough" is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition.

[Nibb31]

42 minutes ago, Flayer said:

If its cheap enough to get there it will make perfect sense. Enter Musk.

Have you actually read this thread before jumping in ? Price depends on volume. Volume depends on demand. Demand depends on price and lots of other things.

Musk can only sell cheap tickets once somebody has built a colony and there is a market large enough to send people by thousands. Thousands of people can live on Mars only when there is large enough self-sustaining colony.

Designing a spaceship is the easy part (and even then, the ITS design has many fundamental flaws) but nobody seriously believes that Musk can build interplanetary spaceships for cheaper than a Boeing 737, which is what Musk bases his ticket price on. However, the main problem is that nobody is addressing the hard part, which is actually building the colony, because there is no business case or political motivation to do it.

Quote

Thank you thread over.

Only if you drink the Kool Aid.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Nibb31

[Flayer]

31 minutes ago, tater said:

"Cheap enough" is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition.

This is provided that the government research base is already there. What other qualifier would there need to be? If its cheap enough to get there, it will be cheap enough to send bigger hab modules, mining equipment, a canteena, etc. All that stuff will come quite easily, I imagine. Once its cheap enough... You're such a bunch of pessimists just because there's a ton of work still to do.

You can throw numbers at me, but that doesn't take away from what we've all seen happen in the past 15 years. The fact that we've got a very dedicated bunch of girls and guys who managed to go from nothing to launching and landing the falcon 9 rocket. I'm confident they'll build the big booster provided they can sustain the company for another 30 years, and -- forget the silly spaceship on top -- you can just use it to send tons of cargo to Mars one-way and use it to build the necessary facilities at a fraction of the cost of the research base.

I mean, other than the risk of some catastrophic failure in attempting to get the booster done, I don't see anything holding us back. And I've gone through large parts of this thread and read the criticisms, risk assessments, and all those silly little numbers that people keep bringing up all over this forum. I can barely do high school math, but seeing SpaceX do its thing, I know that 15 years + 30 years = huge booster to bring stuff into space for almost naught compared to what it costs now. The thing landed on a barge in the ocean after bringing something to orbit. This is freaking huge.

Let me ask you: when will you start believing? Will you start believing it is a possibility once SpaceX relaunches a Falcon 9? Will you start believing when the Falcon Heavy X is done and has been used to retrieve a soil sample from Mars with the new Dragon spacecraft? Perhaps when the research base has been built? When the first mining equipment sponsored by a corporation arrives? When the first tourists arrive on the base? Or how about when they do finally have a booster the size of that which was presented last September?

At which point will you finally choose to say "Wow, it can be done."

I'm not a religious person, but this is something I can put my faith in.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Flayer

[Tullius]

20 minutes ago, Flayer said:

This is provided that the government research base is already there. What other qualifier would there need to be? If its cheap enough to get there, it will be cheap enough to send bigger hab modules, mining equipment, a canteena, etc. All that stuff will come quite easily, I imagine. Once its cheap enough... You're such a bunch of pessimists just because there's a ton of work still to do.

You can throw numbers at me, but that doesn't take away from what we've all seen happen in the past 15 years. The fact that we've got a very dedicated bunch of girls and guys who managed to go from nothing to launching and landing the falcon 9 rocket. I'm confident they'll build the big booster provided they can sustain the company for another 30 years, and -- forget the silly spaceship on top -- you can just use it to send tons of cargo to Mars one-way and use it to build the necessary facilities at a fraction of the cost of the research base.

I mean, other than the risk of some catastrophic failure in attempting to get the booster done, I don't see anything holding us back. And I've gone through large parts of this thread and read the criticisms, risk assessments, and all those silly little numbers that people keep bringing up all over this forum. I can barely do high school math, but seeing SpaceX do its thing, I know that 15 years + 30 years = huge booster to bring stuff into space for almost naught compared to what it costs now. The thing landed on a barge in the ocean after bringing something to orbit. This is freaking huge.

Falcon 9 is economically a very sound idea. There are alot of potential customers out there, in fact SpaceX already did some commercial launches. They already proved that at least as a single use booster Falcon 9 works and why should they not be able to reuse them? So provided they can keep everything within the cost estimates, Falcon 9 will be very profitable until someone else puts enough time and money into the business to build an even cheaper rocket.

ITS on the other hand, is a whole other problem: There is barely any potential customer out there and it is a rather ambitious. Combine that with the fact, that Musk doesn't want to wait 30 years for the first Mars mission with it (NASA's SLS is planned to fly to Mars in 20 years), but he wants to send the first humans in 2024, i.e. in 8 years. That is why people on this forum have so much doubts about ITS and Musks plans for Mars: They cannot imagine that a mission to Mars can be developped by a single company in not much more time than NASA needed during the Apollo program to send the first humans to the Moon.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Tullius

[Flayer]

2 minutes ago, Tullius said:

Falcon 9 is economically a very sound idea. There are alot of potential customers out there, in fact SpaceX already did some commercial launches. They already proved that at least as a single use booster Falcon 9 works and why should they not be able to reuse them? So provided they can keep everything within the cost estimates, Falcon 9 will be very profitable until someone else puts enough time and money into the business to build an even cheaper rocket.

ITS on the other hand, is a whole other problem: There is barely any potential customer out there and it is a rather ambitious. Combine that with the fact, that Musk doesn't want to wait 30 years for the first Mars mission with it (NASA's SLS is planned to fly to Mars in 20 years), but he wants to send the first humans in 2024, i.e. in 8 years. That is why people on this forum have so much doubts about ITS and Musks plans for Mars: They cannot imagine that a mission to Mars can be developped by a single company in not much more time than NASA needed during the Apollo program to send the first humans to the Moon.

But.. have you never heard of opening up new markets? The simplest concept in starting a business and you just completely ignore it.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Flayer

[kunok]

27 minutes ago, Flayer said:

All that stuff will come quite easily, I imagine

That's the problem, no. The rocket is the easiest part, by orders of magnitude. Reality is not the KSP.

It would need to be redesigned almost every good to work in mars environment, nobody makes vacuum proof goods. As an example I already used, we don't have vacuum and dust proof lubricant that will be need in mars, and that's something very basic, extrapolate to everything outside the habitats, and everything inside that works someway with gravity.

I will cite myself about the mars life suport systems

On 31/10/2016 at 2:04 PM, kunok said:

That equipment doesn't exist outside a powerpoint or a viability report, that's the full point you are missing. And nobody is developing it.

The ISS is equipment develop by lots and lots of years. The first modules were a "MIR2" that taken the develops and from the MIR that is also based in the develops of previous soviet stations, the USA modules comes from the skylab and the experiments done with the shuttle. Most of this equipment won't work in gravity and would need a serious redesign. That's decades of research and design.

And yet they need regular supplies, and lots of spare parts, lots of regular repairs,  not selfsufficent at all. For a more than 400ton space station that is only being able to hold 6 humans.

Nobody is really developing any mars equipment, outside some sketchs, technical reports or powerpoints.

And then there is the part that we don't know if human body can live without long term issues in only 0,38g, and if a baby or a kid can grow healthy? if anything of this is a no, there won't be a human colony (until some medicine advances or maybe never)

5 minutes ago, Flayer said:

But.. have you never heard of opening up new markets? The simplest concept in starting a business and you just completely ignore it.

The problem of the SLS and it's huge prices is that there isn't market for it. Why it would be better for the ITS? And don't tell me the price because the price comes from using it lots and lots of times, the same problem than the SLS

Edited November 1, 2016 by kunok

[Tullius]

16 minutes ago, Flayer said:

But.. have you never heard of opening up new markets?

Sure, but usually, if you open a new market, you have a clear idea who the customers you want are.

For Mars, there are none I can think of:

• NASA and the other space agencies: For a flag planting mission, they are certainly interested. But after that, SpaceX would need to cut the costs down to around the amount of money the ISS costs per year, since otherwise the space agencies just won't be able to afford it. So unlikely, that they are the intended customers.
• Space tourists: There were in total only 8 touristic flights to the ISS, each for the small price tag of 20-40 million dollars. Even if they paid 50 million dollars each, and half of the crew are tourists, one flight would need to be cheaper than 300 million dollars (using the crew size of the early flights of 12). Compare that to the launch cost of a Falcon 9 at the moment: 60 million dollars. And even if ITS were that cheap, will SpaceX find enough tourists?
• Other companies: What should they do on Mars that would make it interesting for them to invest money into its exploration?

So who will pay for ITS flights?

Edited November 1, 2016 by Tullius

[Flayer]

2 minutes ago, kunok said:

That's the problem, no. The rocket is the easiest part, by orders of magnitude. Reality is not the KSP.

It would need to be redesigned almost every good to work in mars environment, nobody makes vacuum proof goods. As an example I already used, we don't have vacuum and dust proof lubricant that will be need in mars, and that's something very basic, extrapolate to everything outside the habitats, and everything inside that works someway with gravity.

I will cite myself about the mars life suport systems

Nobody is really developing any mars equipment, outside some sketchs, technical reports or powerpoints.

And then there is the part that we don't know if human body can live without long term issues in only 0,38g, and if a baby or a kid can grow healthy? if anything of this is a no, there won't be a human colony (until some medicine advances or maybe never)

So that's it according to you? We don't have the tools now, so just throw in the towel and why bother? What kind of an attitude is that, sheez. Once it becomes cheaper to get there, more people will work towards making use of that reduced cost... and there's already a ton of organizations around who are making tiny little babysteps... And a few big striders like SpaceX. You can't see this general industry growing slightly once the cost to get there has been cut in half? And then this trend continues over time?

I can understand your scepticism towards the medical stuff, but I really don't see that being an actual problem. Sure, the kids may have slightly less dense bones, but who cares you don't need em, you're a Martian, born and raised. Have you seen the kind of weird shapes humans can exist in here on Earth? If we can keep Hawking alive for all this time, getting pregnant and giving birth on Mars is not going to be a problem.

[Northstar1989]

On Monday, October 31, 2016 at 11:05 AM, tater said:

*sigh*

Where does the money that pays the corporate income tax come from? Do the corporations print their own money? No, they sell something, and a % of those sales pay their taxes. If their taxes increase---they raise their prices. ALL taxes paid by businesses are in fact paid by consumers. All. No exceptions.

Clearly you have zero understanding of economics.  Prices are set to maximize total profits along a curve between per-unit profit and total sales (the higher your price the lower your sales-volume).  What happens to that profit after the units are sold is irrelevant to optimal pricing.

Taking a percentage of profits in tax does not affect prices in the real world- only in theoretical, rarely-realized economic situations of total market saturation, where company owners are already making the minimum profit they consider acceptable for running a given type of company, and would rather go out of businesses than make less.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Flayer]

22 minutes ago, Tullius said:

Sure, but usually, if you open a new market, you have a clear idea who the customers you want are.

For Mars, there are none I can think of:

• NASA and the other space agencies: For a flag planting mission, they are certainly interested. But after that, SpaceX would need to cut the costs down to around the amount of money the ISS costs per year, since otherwise the space agencies just won't be able to afford it. So unlikely, that they are the intended customers.
• Space tourists: There were in total only 8 touristic flights to the ISS, each for the small price tag of 20-40 million dollars. Even if they paid 50 million dollars each, and half of the crew are tourists, one flight would need to be cheaper than 300 million dollars (using the crew size of the early flights of 12). Compare that to the launch cost of a Falcon 9 at the moment: 60 million dollars. And even if ITS were that cheap, will SpaceX find enough tourists?
• Other companies: What should they do on Mars that would make it interesting for them to invest money into its exploration?

So who will pay for ITS flights?

~2030: NASA plants research base on the back of the Falcon Heavy X. Interest in spaceflight grows, and funding/subsidies increase a little to help develop new technologies to be used on the base (agriculture, 3d printing of replacement parts, etc). The same technologies can be used on Earth. Solar power, food for Africa and the Middle East, etc.

~2040: ITS booster is done. Mining company signs a contract with the government to begin small scale mining operations on Mars. Government will buy the first resources extracted to use in the advanced 3D printers developed earlier to expand their own base.

~2050: Construction companies are hired by a bunch of rich people who want to do their own projects on Mars to make money later. They use the resources extracted by one of the now two mining companies that have medium-sized operations on Mars. More expansion.

~2060: People move over their families, buy products from rich guys that own factories on Mars, eat pizza, find spouses at work, have babies.

This is happening people, better get used to it.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Flayer

[Northstar1989]

2 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

When you are spending billions of taxpayer/stockholder money, you bet you need a justification.

As usual, you have no sense of scale, Nibb.  We *already* spend TENS OF BILLIONS of dollars on NASA each year (currently around $18 billion, but it's exceeded $20 billion in the very recent past).

If Musk were able to offer early tickets (before a colony were established) at "only" $12 million a seat (48 times his long-term price estimate), there would be nothing to stop NASA from sending maybe 100 colonists a year.  It would only require some reshuffling of NASA's existing budget priorities.

Heck, at that pricetag Musk could easily fund the first 500 colonists out of his personal wealth! (Musk is valued at around $10 billion, and that wealth is only likely to increase as Tesla takes off!  Plus, there's always some profit involved in the saleprice of an item- for instance SpaceX sells expendable Falcon9 launches fir around $60 million, but it only costs them around $40 million a launch according to the best guesses of industry experts).

For reference, a Falcon 9 can carry 22.8 metric tons to LEO in expendable mode.  So at that same price, Musk could already sell tickets to Mars for around $16 or $20 million with a craft with the same payload cost as Falcon 9.  If reusability really does bring down costs 10-fold, Musk will have no problem selling early tickets to NASA for $12 million...

1000 or 2000 colonists (and many times more tonnage in equipment) is more than enough to get started on a sustainable Mars colony in earnest.

We'll get there- just  probably not quite as quickly or easily as Elon Musk thinks we will.

 

Regards,

Northstar 

Edited November 1, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Tullius]

12 minutes ago, Flayer said:

2030: NASA plants research base on the back of the Falcon Heavy X. Interest in spaceflight grows, and funding/subsidies increase a little to help develop new technologies to be used on the base (agriculture, 3d printing of replacement parts, etc)

2040: ITS booster is done. Mining company signs a contract with the government to begin mining operations on Mars. Government will buy the first resources extracted to use in the advanced 3D printers developed earlier.

2050: Construction companies are hired by a bunch of rich people who want to do their own projects on Mars to make money later. They use the resources extracted by one of the now two mining companies that have operations on Mars.

2060: People move over their families, eat pizza, find spouses at work, have babies.

Did you just pull that out of your head?

Musk wants to do launch the first manned ITS mission to Mars in 2024. In 2022, the first test flight to Mars is intended to take place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_System#SpaceX_conceptual_dates_for_Mars_missions). ITS is not intended to be flown some time around 2040, but in 6 years.

Its not that I don't think that a manned flight to Mars is impossible: NASA's plans from 2015 (https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/09/sls-manifest-phobos-mars-2039/) are imho more realistic and more thoroughly thought through. Unfortunately they mention approximately 10 SLS launches for a single mission to Phobos resp. Mars for the time period around 2030-2040.

And then I should believe that Musk's plans are realistic, while they only involve a fifth of the launches and less than half the time needed before the first mission starts?

Edited November 1, 2016 by Tullius

[tater]

26 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

Clearly you have zero understanding of economics.  Prices are set to maximize total profits along a curve between per-unit profit and total sales (the higher your price the lower your sales-volume).  What happens to that profit after the units are sold is irrelevant to optimal pricing.

Taking a percentage of profits in tax does not affect prices in the real world- only in theoretical, rarely-realized economic situations of total market saturation, where company owners are already making the minimum profit they consider acceptable for running a given type of company, and would rather go out of businesses than make less.

Says the guy who thinks there are economic reasons to colonize Mars, lol.

Businesses don't pay taxes, their customers do. You can imagine cases where taxes increase acutely, and price increases lag, this happens all the time. But the reality is any successful business internalizes  all costs. Failure to do this would be insane. If the tax rate resulted in the current price being below cost, in your universe the price would remain unchanged, and they'd make up the per unit loss in volume (LOL).

Economists of all leanings tend to agree, for example, the the corporate income tax should ideally be... zero.

18 minutes ago, Northstar1989 said:

As usual, you have no sense of scale, Nibb.  We *already* spend TENS OF BILLIONS of dollars on NASA each year (currently around $18 billion, but it's exceeded $20 billion in the very recent past).

If Musk were able to offer early tickets (before a colony were established) at "only" $12 million a seat (48 times his long-term price estimate), there would be nothing to stop NASA from sending maybe 100 colonists a year.  It would only require some reshuffling of NASA's existing budget priorities.

No, it would require an alternate reality where "colonization" is a mission of NASA. Which it never has been, and won't be for the foreseeable future.

Quote

Heck, at that pricetag Musk could easily fund the first 500 colonists out of his personal wealth! (Musk is valued at around $10 billion, and that wealth is only likely to increase as Tesla takes off!  Plus, there's always some profit involved in the saleprice of an item- for instance SpaceX sells expendable Falcon9 launches fir around $60 million, but it only costs them around $40 million a launch according to the best guesses of industry experts).

No one is saying he cannot fund them himself. That's great. The taxpayers should not, however, and the notional "ticket price" does;t seem to account for the fact that they need expensive supplies likely for the rest of their lives.

 

Edited November 1, 2016 by tater

[Flayer]

15 minutes ago, Tullius said:

Did you just pull that out of your head?

Musk wants to do launch the first manned ITS mission to Mars in 2024. In 2022, the first test flight to Mars is intended to take place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_System#SpaceX_conceptual_dates_for_Mars_missions). ITS is not intended to be flown some time around 2040, but in 6 years.

Its not that I don't think that a manned flight to Mars is impossible: NASA's plans from 2015 (https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/09/sls-manifest-phobos-mars-2039/) are imho more realistic and more thoroughly thought through. Unfortunately they mention approximately 10 SLS launches for a single mission to Phobos resp. Mars for the time period around 2030-2040.

And then I should believe that Musk's plans are realistic, while they only involve a fifth of the launches and less than half the time needed before the first mission starts?

If I recall correctly, Musk did not exactly say the time line was set in stone. In fact I believe the words he used were "fuzzy timeline". But he intends to start sending some Dragons to Mars from 2018 on out, so if the government want to start building the first base, they can. Maybe send an orbital station first, then go from there. After the soil sample retrieval mission in 2022, you send the Orbital Station in 2024 -> orbital return vehicle in 2026 -> landing + lift-off vehicle in 2028 -> ground base equipment in 2030 -> and finally the first crew in 2032. And yeah, I'm pulling this out of my behind, but you know, what's to stop us from changing the plans that are currently on the table if new technologies do prove themselves over the next few years? From there on out it would be relatively easy to find more people willing to invest. I'd focus on mining and construction first (next to propellant production, I guess).

And don't talk to me about not knowing how to survive on Mars. "Ooohh, the life support designed for the ISS wont work with gravity" We know how to make stuff work in gravity, we're quite used to it. Maybe some of the dragon missions can send some robotic equipment to see if the Martian soil can be used to grow plants if you add some X Y or Z chemicals. If not just raw out there in the atmosphere, then in a greenhouse. I know it's not going to be easy per say, but I really have to counter the pessimism in this thread or I fear it might swallow up the whole of Earth.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Flayer

[tater]

You know, the more I think of NASA in a world where SpaceX is flying routinely to Mars, the more I see NASA not doing Mars, frankly. What would be the point, exactly? The nationalistic aspect would disappear, the flag would already have been planted (US company lands people on Mars, no one would care NASA vs SpaceX, "milestone" earned).

Planetary scientists work not just at NASA, but at universities. The "ticket price" is well within the possibility for grants given the prestige return for a geology program (that their prof was on Mars). So I see this as "democratizing" planetary science. NASA loses in this---though in early missions like Red Dragon (and even early ITS) they could totally throw some money at SpaceX, and it would be a bargain. They'd have to be careful to not step on toes regarding SLS, however, or they'd find their budget going away I fear (and what would be lost, since planets would be more, not less accessible).

NASA might end up refocusing on advanced tech for space, and their old standby of advanced aeronautics.

Edited November 1, 2016 by tater

[CatastrophicFailure]

Seriously, guys, this thread is rapidly becoming little more than a comparison of personal rocket sizes. You're not gonna find any consensus over the speculative colonization of Mars. It's time to just agree to disagree and...

 

[Northstar1989]

3 hours ago, tater said:

Businesses don't pay taxes, their customers do. You can imagine cases where taxes increase acutely, and price increases lag, this happens all the time. But the reality is any successful business internalizes  all costs. Failure to do this would be insane. If the tax rate resulted in the current price being below cost, in your universe the price would remain unchanged, and they'd make up the per unit loss in volume (LOL).

Economists of all leanings tend to agree, for example, the the corporate income tax should ideally be... zero.

[snip]

There HAVE been a series of articles by a certain cadre of economists lately, pushing for abolishing the Cirporate Income Tax.  But that does NOT mean "Economists of all leanings" agree on this issue.  That's just a bunch of pro-corporatw [snip].

The reasons for that push have to do with drawing corporations away from countries by offering lower corporate taxes (although US rates are already some of the lowest in the world after tax credits and loopholes- we have one of the highest statutory rates but lowest effective rates of any developed nation), encoraging wealthy individuals to invest money (Corporate Tax Rates don't affect prices, but DO affect rates of Return on Investment for private investors), and keeping companies considering leaving the contry here, not the basic economic logic corporate income taxes work along.

Corporate Income Taxes, unlike Personal Income Taxes, do NOT affect the price of goods.  That's because corporations still pay their workers the same, and for the most part (unless you are selling luxury goods targeted at the ultra-rich) consumers still have the same amount of money to spend.  Thus the price that will net you the optimal balance between sales volume and per-unit profit is completely unaffected.

Corporate Income Taxes hurt corporate after-tax profits, but they DON'T change the pricing that will maximize those profits.  Corporations attempting to "internalize" the tax in such a case by raising their prices would only be self-defeating- because it would only serve to reduce their sales-volume and hurt their bottom line even further.

Once again, you talk about a subject you know nothing about and don't understand.  And economics are off-topic and dangerously close to forbidden content anyways, so drop it.  We don't need moderators slapping us both on the wrist.

[Northstar1989]

1 hour ago, Flayer said:

Maybe some of the dragon missions can send some robotic equipment to see if the Martian soil can be used to grow plants if you add some X Y or Z chemicals. If not just raw out there in the atmosphere, then in a greenhouse.

Mars will never support plant life outside of pressurized and heated greenhouses at current pressures/temperatures.

The atmosphere is too thin, and most plants would asphyxiate due to lack of Oxygen (plants photosynthize, but they also respirate and consume O2, like animals).  The low pressure environment would also rapidly dehydrate plants (due to the low partial pressure of water vapir, any liquid water would instantly boil), and the rapid evaporation would also cause plants to simultaneously freeze due to evaporative cooling...

If none of that did it, the incredibly low temperature of the soil (the atmosphere on Mars is too thin to significantly cool plants- or manned habitats for that matter) would quickly kill/freeze plants as well.

Your only option for growing plants on Mars is in a pressurized, heated greenhouse.  Preferably in growth-trays lifted off the ground- since the main source of heat loss on Mars is conduction with the ground, not convection with the incredibly thin atmosphere or radiation (which follows the 4th power of temperature- and so isn't a very substantial source of cooling at biological temperatures).

What you *could* try to do is grow crops in processed/treated Martian soil in a pressurized/heated greenhouse.  It's not really that useful to do so, however, as soil isn't really necessary for many plants-  a large number of crops grow well in soilless conditions, via hydro- or aeroponics.

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited November 1, 2016 by Northstar1989

[Serpens Solidus]

57 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Seriously, guys, this thread is rapidly becoming little more than a comparison of personal rocket sizes. You're not gonna find any consensus over the speculative colonization of Mars. It's time to just agree to disagree and...

 

Yeah, I am also kinda getting tired of scrolling through pages and pages full of off topic text every day, just to be sure not to miss anything SpaceX related.

[Vanamonde]

Okay people, this thread gets into arguments and goes off-topic so much that we on the moderation team have been discussing whether or not it can be salvaged, or will need to be shut down entirely. We don't want that. You don't want that. So as always, keep in mind that:

• National policies and budgeting are beyond the scope of this forum, and are off-limits because they invariably result in arguments. 
• Even Musk himself has not yet gone into detail about how to survive on Mars once he gets people there, so that's off-topic. 
• And directing insults at each other is unacceptable in ANY part of our forum. 

[Serpens Solidus]

15 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Okay people, this thread gets into arguments and goes off-topic so much that we on the moderation team have been discussing whether or not it can be salvaged, or will need to be shut down entirely. We don't want that. You don't want that. So as always, keep in mind that:

• National policies and budgeting are beyond the scope of this forum, and are off-limits because they invariably result in arguments. 
• Even Musk himself has not yet gone into detail about how to survive on Mars once he gets people there, so that's off-topic. 
• And directing insults at each other is unacceptable in ANY part of our forum. 

Don't forget that all this started when some moderator decided is was a good idea to merge all SpaceX related threads into one.

*hides under table*

[kunok]

3 hours ago, Flayer said:

So that's it according to you? We don't have the tools now, so just throw in the towel and why bother? What kind of an attitude is that, sheez. Once it becomes cheaper to get there, more people will work towards making use of that reduced cost... and there's already a ton of organizations around who are making tiny little babysteps... And a few big striders like SpaceX. You can't see this general industry growing slightly once the cost to get there has been cut in half? And then this trend continues over time?

No, but this is a science subforum. If Musk comes with a total unreal plan we (well, some of us) will critic it, I don't care how cool it looks the render he presented in that conference if the engineering below is still dubious. He showed a big carbon fiber tank to make a point, but then in the reddit AMA he admitted that they still don't know how they will insulate the interior of the tank, it was only a production test (testing the manufacturing machine, looked very good by the way) , so there isn't a basic figure of tank mass to do the numbers.

Then he is also claiming that the biggest rocket ever with a big lifting body as upper stage will cost less than a serial production airplane. As you should understand I don't believe this estimation.

But outside the hypothetical big cool cheapest per kg ever rocket what's the plan? What about any other aspects of the ITS like the life support systems?

On the other hand NASA and other organizations are doing "boring" plans, but realistic with develops step by step, this would get us eventually to mars, probably first a flag mission, then a science camp, and then more and more, step by step but no claiming that you will start colonization in 10 years. Space agencies at most are making initial designs of science camps, not anything similar to a settlement, nothing permanent, nothing really comfortable or habitable. Give them time and resources, and they would do it but if we give them bad PR because SpaceX is cooler and have fancier plans we are putting stones in their way (not sure if this is a correct form in english). That's the part that bothers me, the total unrealistic plans are giving bad reputation to the ones that are working in real ones, with means less support from common people what in the ends would be less money in the step by step effort

The transport cost isn't really the biggest cost here, is all the developing effort, the space goods are already a lot more expensive than the space transport, don't forget that, is a common error here. The only "habitable" place that our stuff will work without mayor modifications is in the clouds of venus, you only need to deal with no oxygen atmosphere, and 4 days long days, and obviously forgetting about the surface (in mars too, you would live in the underground not in the surface, unless you want a collection of cancers), but you have: earthlike pressure and temp, radiation projection, very similar gravity, even more sun energy, all of that is already there. But there is little public interest in Venus, almost nobody knows that there is an habitable zone in the atmosphere at heights of 50-55km and most of the people that knows that think that living in a blimp is weird.

 

What's a strider anyway?

 

3 hours ago, Flayer said:

I can understand your scepticism towards the medical stuff, but I really don't see that being an actual problem. Sure, the kids may have slightly less dense bones, but who cares you don't need em, you're a Martian, born and raised. Have you seen the kind of weird shapes humans can exist in here on Earth? If we can keep Hawking alive for all this time, getting pregnant and giving birth on Mars is not going to be a problem.

Not only less dense bones, we are talking here also about abnormal growth of almost anything. But I'm a engineer not a medic, so here I don't really know, I just read things, and what I'm sure is that there is basically 0 data. We know that 0g is pretty bad. 0,38g? Who knows?

One example like any other: What about if the muscles grown faster than the bones? or viceversa?

[tater]

42 minutes ago, Serpens Solidus said:

Don't forget that all this started when some moderator decided is was a good idea to merge all SpaceX related threads into one.

*hides under table*

Yeah, I think maybe a new thread about notional Mars endeavors might be a good idea. Then if it goes off the rails, someone can make a new one. This thread was originally more about SpaceX operational stuff... where we'd go to get links to live casts, etc.

[Northstar1989]

15 minutes ago, tater said:

Yeah, I think maybe a new thread about notional Mars endeavors might be a good idea. Then if it goes off the rails, someone can make a new one. This thread was originally more about SpaceX operational stuff... where we'd go to get links to live casts, etc.

At this, point I agree.