tater

Yes. But the second contract in HLS is the Blue Origin lander, so even if the landing engines stay high on LSS there's a concern I think. I am using HLS generically for both.

I'll likely aim for Spain/Morocco. Book a place in Tangier as far in advance as possible.

https://global.toyota/en/mobility/technology/lunarcruiser/ Volume is maybe 80-90 m3 (larger than Shuttle's). It is supposed to be able to support crew for 30-45 DAYS. A few observations. 1. This means that the amount of life support gear to do this is fairly compact (as a constraint on HLS... is not much of a constraint). Crew could easily be 4 in that volume. 2. The uncrewed autonomy means that assuming it's built for resupply, any lander can land, then rover drives up to it, the new crew swaps out whatever... and off they go, exploring. Drive back, enter HLS, rover drives behind that hill over there for safety... it solves some logistics problems about fixed infrastructure and ejecta damage from landers.

Will do 2027 instead of 2026. Duration for 2026 is way short, and the altitude is so low... Egypt in 2027 has totality >6 minutes. \

A localized "dark forest" strategy. Huh.

I'm not a Mars guy, either. I keep trying to make it work in my head.

Information/tech is not Mars specific though. The only way this makes sense is with substantial population. Ie: the new colony has enough added humans that we have more smart humans than just Earth would have had minus the colony.

This will be flight 20 for this booster apparently.

I want a science fiction future where humans live all around the solar system... I just have difficulty imagining how this could be a thing. Startup period has money lit on fire to build the place. Then it becomes self-sufficient (somehow). Now what? Presumably they want something from Earth sometimes. Some nice wine, or frozen steaks, or whatever. Cool, they buy that... with what? They have their own economy/currency, what's the exchange rate unless there is actually trade? Why would anyone on Earth want Martian dollars, even a bank? Someone needs to genetically engineer sandworms so the spice can flow.

Musk posted this:

Norminal liftoff Great footage. Landed. SECO 1.

14 min

Video:

The alternative is always enforced with state power (generally maniacally lethal) for groups larger than a tribe (tribes can probably be collectivist). And even then, those states still have black markets—the purest form of commerce (completely unregulated). Heck, even in prisons (or POW camps) there is a black market. Hence my statement it is the natural condition for larger groups of humans in a world with limited resources. Also, the people in charge of such a system invariably get to live like the CEOs while telling everyone else everything going to plan. Maybe if the Mars city is post-scarcity we could dream otherwise (here as well)... but that's not likely given the need of supplies from Earth for a looong time. Honestly, send the bots first, build the city, then send people... maybe everyone can just live with the hard work done by the bots. The trick is then what do the people do? Tough life, living inside most all of the time. The Moon can't be a colony I think, gravity probably too low. Not sure there is any real interplanetary economics possible at all. It is certainly true that living on the Moon or Mars requires a flavor of collectivism—since the result of a failure to take care of the canned environment they live in is not that 100 years from now it might possibly be a barely different temperature—they could literally all die immediately with a failure for everyone to do their jobs. So it's not exactly the same as Earth, obviously. The question is what motivates people, and what will they do there? If the goal is self-reliance, they need everything. A chip/electronics industry along with medical, bioscience, etc. Much easier to attract the number of baristas required—course they'll need someone to get coffee plants to grow as well for long term sustainability (til then coffee would be a precious cargo from Earth (I say that while sipping my Americano)). I dunno how such a thing ever gets bootstrapped economically, tbh. I've never been a colonize Mars person, dunno how to make it self-sufficient economically. As hard as it would be to build a completely self-reliant colony on Mars such that they don't all die/decline if the Earth ships stop coming (really really hard to do), I think an interplanetary economy is probably harder still.

I saw something that suggested a Moon Cruiser pressurized rover, but was looking for something with more info... Toyota was involved, right (Land Cruiser—>Moon Cruiser ). That might be a more substantial contribution than the Orion SM... which uses Shuttle engines, so it's just some tanks, etc, and a few hundred million. I have to imagine a pressurized rover is billions (certainly would be if NASA did it, they've spent that kind of $ already on surface EVA spacesuits that don't exist yet).

That's fairy dust IMO. Humans are humans, and there are bottom-line incentives that drive us (all of us as a species). In the natural state for large groups—capitalism—people work to increase their own place in the world, with the most motivated being the higher end of the scale (these days CEOs, etc). Minus the "profit" incentive structure the same people exist (history has demonstrated this to the misery of 10s of millions)—but since they cannot create ways to generate wealth via commerce, they improve their lot by the only remaining outlet—personal power. I don't see collectivism being a way to innovate Mars into long term survival. So while a Mars colony could absolutely be created without any chance of profit—it will certainly fail if profit is never bootstrapped there. It can possibly survive with just a working internal economy—profit in Martian currency units—but the input in dollars will be a sunk cost, IMO. There's nothing to trade cost effectively with Earth that is unique to Mars. People claim that they might come up with new intellectual property, inventions, etc—and that's certainly possible—but that kind of innovation doesn't depend on Mars, it happening there would just be luck. So all the initial spend on building the place is just to do it, there's no ROI. Regardless, I agree that convincing people to move there would be... nontrivial. As much as I might like to visit Mars before I die as a tourist, the idea of moving there? Literally anywhere on Earth would be preferable to live. Even Antarctica. Yeah, no human colonization to data is even remotely analogous. Guys from Europe got off of ships—the apex of technology at the time—and walked off the beach to find people already there, in many cases virtually naked. I only mention their choice in clothing because it demonstrates how technologically easy it was to live in those places. If literal stone age tech allows people to thrive—the location is pretty hospitable. Mars might as well be orbit in terms of how hospitable it is—death is always just however long you can hold your breath away. Even the first colonists of the New World—the people who we now call "Native Americans"—had it easy compared to Mars... there was food, resources, and heck, they could even breathe!

They show up fine for me.

Was just joking. DIVH was by far my fave ULA rocket.

Interesting. Wife and daughter are pretty fluent. Son and I... both took it, but not our best thing.

At least in Morocco English is like the 4th language you get hassled in... French, then Italian/Spanish (depends on where), then even German before English. Never done a cruise at all. Probably cheaper than renting a boat (with a skipper)—or learning to sail better, and just renting the boat.

2027 Tangier would be pretty cool.

Wow, awesome!