Spaceception

4000 atm pressure!? Did it have life?

It was just something fun to think about, not everything space-related has to be short-term, to me, space is about long-term big thinking, it's more fun to think about it that way.

We've talked about putting near-term colony's on the Moon, Venus, and Mars (Especially Mars), but where is the Outer moon colony love? Personally, Titan would be by far the best outer solar system colony.

1: I didn't say they were really close 2: Fine, 15x Earths atmosphere (Although blob-like extremophiles would be cool), Plus, at least it's not this thick: http://orig04.deviantart.net/7221/f/2013/352/9/5/terras_with_problems__1_by_hgfggg-d6yeyca.jpg 3: This gas giant orbits the sun REALLY far out, but not so far that it's just floating around and is a rouge planet 4: How's the planetary art going?

SpaceX for sure.

How else do you know how to build a Black hole from scratch for a Black hole drive? And how much energy would you (Roughly) need? Also, the Kugelblitz would only last for about 3-5 years.

The way you would create the Kugelblitz Black hole is by focusing a few lasers into a very small area until the space around it collapses, and the energy needed to create the Black hole would be greater than the power output of the Black hole itself, so you'd need A LOT of anti-matter (Plus the power output of the Black hole would be significantly greater than what the world produces in a year).

Assuming the Alcubierre drive doesn't pan out, what other propulsion systems could we use to zip through the galaxy in style? It comes down to these two: The Kugelblitz drive (Aka, the Black hole drive) which could accelerate a spacecraft to 10% c in 20 days and is just simply AWESOME: http://news.discovery.com/space/powering-a-starship-with-a-black-hole-engine-140114.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship And the Anti-matter drive which could get us to 99.9999999999999999999999% c and could allow us to TIME TRAVEL TO THE FUTURE, as well as getting us to the stars pretty darn quickly. Additionally, it would also be the power source for the Alcubierre drive if it turns out to work due to it's energy density. Finally, it's in some ways near term, seeing as we could just go to Jupiter for the AM, with the only problems being collecting/storing the stuff. http://news.discovery.com/space/revving-up-the-antimatter-engine-120927.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_rocket Here's a really cool video made by PBS space time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZGPCyrpSU Both are really cool propulsion systems, and would give us style points. Now they are pretty complicated, but at least they don't break the light barrier.

Well, there is the possibility that the price tag will be higher in the beginning, and the $500k price tag doesn't come until the first few "Colonial fleets". Who knows? I guess we'll have to save our judgement until SpaceX lays down the plans in (Hopefully) a couple of months.

Elon Musk want's to expand the spacecraft to hold a few hundred people, also, the revenue from their satellite launches will also help pay for the mission, and the fact that they'll have rapid-reusable rockets, will make the price tag seem much more reasonable.

Exactly, Not worrying about interplanetary colonization, and only worrying about Earths problems is like not worrying about your heath until all of your bills are payed, there will always be problems here, but if we don't colonize space, fixing them will be useless.

Definitely, if SpaceX really gets serious putting humans on the red planet by 2030, NASA will want very much to be part of it, like the saying goes, "If you can't beat em' join em"

"It shouldn't take too long" was for the article. And you're right, there are a lot of things that are unpredictable, but I have faith this will succeed, not just because SpaceX is doing incredible things (Even if they're not always on schedule), but because people all over the world will want to take part in humanity's greatest adventure, and if that sounds like MarsOne, I admit, it does, but SpaceX is much more trustworthy, with.lot's of credibility behind them, so this time, It'll be different. I guess it does sound like wishful thinking, but I believe this will succeed, one way or another, Elon Musk will make this work, just like when people said he wouldn't be able to make an electric car company, he made a electric car company, and it's working really well, or when he tried to make a new space program, people said it wouldn't work, and yet, it's one of the most notable space programs out there now, Musk will put a colony on Mars, I just know it.

I think that it's possible, but they'll only be providing launches and/or spacecraft. Even then it'd be like 2040/50/60 or never. SpaceX is a business, and there's not much of anything on Mars to profit from except people willing to pay them for hardware/services. Is there any way you could change your mind?

Here's how they expect to bring the cost down to 500k a seat 1: Bring lots of people at once, And 2: Rapid reusable rockets. Go down to the bottom half of the post to "Changing the game" and read down from there. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html/4 It shouldn't take too long.

I'm not trying to be mean, but have all of the naysayers read the article in the first post? Because it might change your mind. Also, Frozen_Heart, they plan on paying for it through the people who want to go ($500,000 a seat. And how do you expect people paying for it you may ask? By selling everything they own of course! It's not totally crazy, seeing as how the first American colonists would do the same thing), as well as having rapid-reusable rockets That's pretty good reasoning, but you never know the pages you haven't read yet. Read this page and the 5th page (On the article): http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html/4

Back to Mars! Who are the people who voted (It won't happen, and Elon will be really sad)? I don't have anything against them, but did at least one of them vote that because they thought it was funny? Just wondering.

What about a binary moon system orbiting a gas giant system in the Oort cloud that through being a duo of super-Earths, has ideal tidal heating and an extremely thick atmosphere (About 30x thicker than Earths) to have liquid water oceans under some of it's icy surface (The rest is rock where cold loving extremophiles live), as well as a primitive amphibious civilization that is currently limited by 14th century technology?

Oh.

What about the person who was making that really cool art?

I don't think we should be putting exact numbers on anything yet. In 2011 Elon said they'd launch the first manned Mars mission in 2021-2031 (10-20 years). - jumps off chair - WAIT WHAT? When did they say they'd show us in March? As far as I know they only said it would be 'Early 2016', which could mean anything from January to November. Oh ---- not this 'space vs surface' argument again! It's just a guess. I don't remember where I saw it, but if I'm right, follow me. (jk) No comment. Off-topic for a sec, how's your "Alternate solar system" thing going?

Rotating Space colony's are something we should definitely consider, but they're essentially big habitat modules in space, and putting them on planets is better for 2 reasons: 1: You have the ability to mine for resources (Especially water) i.e. If the Earth popped out of existence your colonists wouldn't have to worry about running out of resources. And 2: You have access for expansion i.e. you could hold a huge amount of humans, and beyond that, you wouldn't really have to worry about overpopulation because you could just launch them off-planet, and the planetary colony wouldn't die out for not having enough room, water, oxygen, and resources.

Read the article above, You don't really need a profit when the outcome is that we probably won't ever go extinct. And besides, it'd probably pay for itself after the first few manned Earth-Mars transits.

If he did reveal it before then (As well as plans for landers and such), wouldn't inspire interest in a future Mars colony? (Maybe MarsOne already did that, but beat it down since they kept missing milestones; but because SpaceX is more trustworthy it would probably stay)

That's a reasonable guess, will it change when they (Hopefully) reveal the MCT design in March though?