Mitchz95

Would the colony ship be able to return to Earth? With the current design it can go single-stage from the surface of Mars to the surface of Earth.

Don't forget, return to Earth is free on the colony ships. So once the stuff is extracted, it can be shipped home for no cost.

I agree this deserves to be its own thread. And here's a direct link to the video:

3 hours to go. I'm so excited!

More evidence of plumes. Although they do stress that Hubble is old and may not be 100% reliable... EDIT: Did the audio just cut out for anyone else? EDIT2: Never mind, I refreshed the page and it's back.

Update. Not much in the way of new information, but good to hear it's not related to the CRS-7 incident.

I've read theories like this before, but I've never thought of the Hawking Radiation question you pose. Would love an answer.

Already being discussed here.

There was a teleconference with NASA today regarding Red Dragon. Lots of juicy details regarding the mission and NASA's role in it. Notes, audio, and powerpoint slides here: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=41231.0

Probably not for a while, if they haven't found the cause of the Amos-6 failure yet. How long did it take them to figure out CRS-7 again?

Anybody else tuning in to this? I wish I could attend, but ... school. The full itinerary can be viewed here. Looks like an interesting lineup.

Exo-Dolphins not confirmed.

Coming on Tuesday. That's all the link is right now, an announcement that they'll unveil their Mars program -- the "realistic view" -- next week. Not sure what more you want until then.

That's exactly what they're going to be addressing on Tuesday. Here's a summary from the IAC website: "On the second day of the IAC, during a special keynote entitled “Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species”, Elon Musk will discuss the long-term technical challenges that need to be solved to support the creation of a permanent, self-sustaining human presence on Mars. The technical presentation will focus on potential architectures for colonizing the Red Planet that industry, government and the scientific community can collaborate on in the years ahead." It's not "The MCT and It's Gonna Be F---ing Awesome, Trust Us". It's "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species". The former is a means to help achieve the latter. Nothing more, nothing less.

Looks like they're gonna be running a livestream on YouTube and on their site. http://www.spacex.com/mars

We should totally drop those guys on Mars and see what happens. For science!

I'm wondering if Elon's waiting to announce the cause of the failure (and how they plan to prevent it in the future) for the IAC presentation.

Awesome! Is that 1:30 - 2:30pm in Eastern Standard Time? I'm in Toronto.

How exactly are the transfer windows calculated? I want to try Half-Size RSS in the next update but I'm not sure if this will be compatible.

Yeah, 1 or two seems a little more realistic now that they've starting hitting milestones. Still projecting 2030s+ for the actual colonization, though.

According to Elon on Twitter, it's now called the ITS: Interplanetary Transport System.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/135747-blue-origin-thread-merged/&page=1

Thanks!

They just got scrubbed.

What day is Musk doing his talk at the IAC? (assuming it's not postponed after Amos-6) And will there be a livestream?