JoeSchmuckatelli

One can hope.

I actually forsee someone pulling the power plant off a small used dozer and slapping in a Tesla battery (or 6)and a software suite plus solar panels. (maybe some plutonium to keep the fluids cycling at night) Presuming Musk is correct about payload - Percy sized rovers will seem quaint ... And absurdly expensive. https://miningglobal.com/video/asi-testing-out-new-autonomous-mining-dozer

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=73 Lots and lots of Money

LOL xD

I know. Nothing has been found... Yet. But if you think about that it has the same basic building blocks and the remnants of orbital bombardment... Something has to be there We just need better prospectors

Pork sausage - feeding America

I'm telling you - reading about the people who would sign up for Mars... It will happen. And they will die. And people will still go And die Until they stop dying. And once enough people are going and not dying? What do you have? Lolz!

I have a strong suspicion that Lunar is immediately more profitable - scrape 20 feet of regolith with a bulldozer sized probe and hopefully find ores in the 15-30 grams per ton range (using lunar gravity and water, maybe) is less of a technical challenge than trying to figure out how to separate ores in microgravity. Just spitballing - I don't suggest any of it is easy, but 1/6 earth gravity is better than nothing

Someone always has to be first. And like Sutter - they don't always succeed. But along the way someone gets rich, and a host of associated and supporting industries tag along for the ride. I'm curious as to whether this is a particularly American observation... We certainly have a relatively 'modern' experience with ventures into the unknown and undeveloped - and the appreciation for the possible (even if it's not evidently 'possible' to all observers). Is pessimism more a common human experience across the wider world? (Edit: suggested reading 'Empire of the Summer Moon' by S. C. Gwynne - who makes clear that the Americans who ventured into the Comanche territory of the Southern Great Plains were pretty much daft madmen /women... Completely unprepared for the environment /political system... And still they came)

Smart guys are often ahead of their times Although - to be honest I'm analogizing the advent of the Age of Sail if anything. Certainly, prior to 1492 sailboats existed - but afterwards deep ocean craft technology progressed in leaps and bounds... And economies never dreamed of were created. I seriously doubt those early adopters could anticipate the East India Company or the clipper ships of the Americas

Well, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa (maybe) could be customers. The point I think you are missing is the observation that SX perceives a new market. If they're correct - we still don't know what that will look like. We know about what exists currently (communications, information and academic - note not included military services on purpose) but new / reduced cost capabilities inevitably create opportunities where none existed before

Mostly I agree with you... Mars and Lunar missions for the foreseeable future are academic endeavors and 'look what we can do' national vanity projects. However - there are industries that can and will want access to space if launches become economical. Communication and information services are the obvious ones - but others should arise. Also - there are many Universities with astronomical cash reserves that might be interested in buying rides to various places (again academic and vanity projects). Someone, at some point, will buy a launch to try to find gold and etc on an asteroid to bring it back. Once that happens, we get to see if the modern economy can adapt, or if we see analogs to 16th century Spain https://erenow.net/modern/aspects-of-european-history-1494-1789/18.php But as I and Mike and others have pointed out - I think SX is perceiving a market that no one thought existed a few years ago

This is the heart of the criticism for the traditional approach. At least in the US it appears that completely government funded space exploration is declining.* CN is rapidly iterating government controlled space capacity - but there is some talk about private (yeah, I get it) enterprise space companies being authorized to exist. ESA has a problem in that it's a conglomerate of individual nations that generally cannot compete on their own - but if Musk proves profitable and the market exists, some EU type will make a run for the money. RU is capable of doing the same - and no, I don't think Roscosmos would roll over any attempt. Some intrepid individual(s) could start up a private business. And why 'billionaires'? Because the up front costs are staggering. Yet as you pointed out earlier - one Musk paves the way, all a prospective competitor has to do is copy and paste *certainly we will see government funded and academic minded missions... But the completely government funded design of rockets and payload delivering services is on the way out.

Or some RU based Billionaire could decide to imitate the commercial success of the impulsive kid from South Africa. They enjoyed being the only show in town much like the contractors for SLS... Then things changed. We have yet to even see the dust from what SX hopes to do, much less have an idea of what the global space economy will look like once it settles.

I've noticed a slight change in rhetoric from Musk lately. He's more often talking about shifting the industry to 'aircraft like' reuse & cadence than Mars. Personally I perceive this as a recognition of what SX actually sees as feasible in the short term. Like a reasonable goal that run-of-the-mill SX employees can see as attainable during their employment. Mars has always seemed like 'crazy space billionaire' talk to me - whereas this new tone is 'we are on the cusp of a new commercial capability' and 'we sense a market is primed for our products'. Mars can sit out there as an aspirational 'wouldn't it be cool if/when we can do it' as well as a 'design our ship to be a (pickup truck) capable craft with the ability to do anything from LEO to Lunar to Mars' design philosophy. IOW - they started off with this crazy idea and set out for the hills, only to discover a vista of possibilities that became evident only after the journey was commenced. So it looks like they are likely to explore the new possibilities for a while... Because Mars isn't going anywhere

Nope.

Grin - not political, just snark! (low hanging fruit)

One of those things that I don't know off the top of my head - grin! I always assume that the shape is for aerodynamic performance - which you don't need in space. Thus I wonder if tube shaped missiles on a spaceBattleKruizer are an anachronism

@sevenperforce - looks like the actuators are on the inner ring. If you recall the pic from tater's earlier post The actuators were evident but not obvious

Man, Putin's Soviet-style lock down on information is impressive... Because I've never seen any of Roscosmos' flights that SX is imitating. Can you smuggle out a VCR tape? /snark

I think you might be able to turn the regolith from your asteroid mining operations into concrete to use for Habs, but why a ship? Too heavy to turn. (have someone heave a concrete block at you and then ninja it aside... Kinda hard to shift)

Is there any reason to make a space missile cylindrical? Would a spherical missile be more maneuverable given that everything is closer to the COM? (Smart Guys: how would YOU design a spacecraft launched antispacecraft missile?)

Frankly I doubt that will be necessary. Natural gas turbines don't actually pollute all that much and are fine for surge, and quite safe. The cost of a purpose built surge reactor plant is likely to be prohibitive compared to NG

Everything involves some compromise or another. IIRC Niven or Pournell had guided missiles with nuke detonators that actually powered an energy weapon (the bomb was only the fuel source for the killing beams). Typically, you need to first assess your target before designing a weapon to defeat that target - so... What do your targets look like? If they're just satellites orbiting this planet, I would argue that terrestrial or in atmosphere weapons are likely sufficient to defeat those. If you are talking interplanetary craft hauling stuff - perhaps a combination of guided and directed energy are needed. The other thing is to know what you want your weapon to do - if you want to disable the craft and kill crew so you can harvest resources... You have additional limitations. If you want to obliterate it - you have to build more robustly. Edit - but ballistics ain't bad... A bunch of cheap, tiny, fast moving rocks have been used successfully for thousands of years to defeat a variety of targets