At first I was thinking of posting a joke about missed timelines, but then I remembered that nobody else is setting audacious public goals quite in the way that Musk does. So instead of a joke, I'll tip my hat to that and hope its true.
> Regardless of who gets there first, Musk thinks it's vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction, and also to inspire people.
I can understand inspiration part but don't get how this help preventing human extinction. Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? I understand that trying to reach other planets can push forward technology to incredible levels but it would be more meaningful if this technology can find areas to resolve Earth's current problems.
And if we completely address hunger, poverty, disease, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, sectarian violence, economic inequality, etc. but then an asteroid or comet causes our extinction?
Yeah, it's like focusing on writing 100% test coverage for all code you use so your company is more reliable while ignoring all your code is stored on just one 10 year old HD that could fail at any moment (or fire, flood, cloverfield, etc).
At least for the comet pusher, the tech needed to put a non-trivial number of humans on Mars has a ton of overlap with the tech needed to divert potential impacts.
I can understand inspiration part but don't get how this help preventing human extinction. Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? I understand that trying to reach other planets can push forward technology to incredible levels but it would be more meaningful if this technology can find areas to resolve Earth's current problems.
They are mostly political problems rather than technologies.
The exception would be diseases, because a lot of that is the scientific challenge and research and development.
And they're all problems that plague our quality of living rather than posing any kind of existential risks. Nuclear war, asteroid strikes, and UFAI would qualify as existential risks.
Plus, by establishing a colony on Mars, you reduce the probability of extinction should something happens to Earth.
There are very real astronomical and human-caused events that could wipe us out here on Earth. Becoming multi-planetary makes extinction much less probable.
What makes you think technology pushed to incredible levels won't assist with Earth's current problems?
> Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases?
Several times on HN I have posed replies that consist of the snappy comment: "your logical fallacy is: " followed by a link. It doesn't usually go over well.
Yes, it would be wise to do those things. I mean, to do them as well: It's not one of the other. The "don't go to Mars, fix poverty" argument is something like Whataboutery or "Fallacy of relative privation"
I love this idea. Alongside factual_error_bot it would completely transform political discourse.
Imagine if presidential debates had real-time scoring of what was being said. Politifact is great, but 24h delay makes it substantially less impactful.
People already use bots to harass their opponents on twitter, etc. It's not a good thing. This sounds good for a short while, but think through how misguided or malicious people would use it.
I am not saying "don't go to Mars" or not comparing two unrelated actions. What I just wanted to imply is reaching to Mars won't resolve our existence problem. There are several problems that we need to resolve. Human race won't be saved when we reach to Mars. Colonization will be highly dependent to Earth and Earth's problems. What I am saying is the solution of problem of human extinction isn't reaching to Mars.
> hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases?
Those are threats to individual human beings, not to mankind as a whole. A Great Plague or a (non-nuclear) world war here and there can wipe 1/3 of humanity, but for the species as a whole it's just an inconvenience: it can be compensated in a couple of generations, through our adaptable fertility rate.
There are dangers, mostly ecological, which can wipe out the whole species: nuclear winter, mega-volcanoes, meteors... (yes, most of them are about some form of climate change) The mitigation for those dangers is to have several separated ecosystems, not regrowing the population locally after a demographic setback.
A city on Mars would probably take centuries to turn into an independent ecosystem (including all of the mining, transforming and recycling of every material required, and the means to extend itself across the planet. Or even, maybe, terraforming). But a partially Earth-dependent Mars city is a very important milestone towards the big goal.
Finally, he doesn't say that all of our efforts should be dedicated to that single goal: he's quite involved in fixing Earthly problem, including energy, climate change and transportation. He's also vocal about how we should think very hard about the kind of IA we want to cohabit with.
You don't just need an ecosystem or contained biosphere. You also need an industrialized civilization that can fully support itself, producing everything used to operate that ecosystem, and everything needed to send rockets into space - which is the very tip of an enormous technological pyramid built on the backs of many, many people. So you need an ecosystem big enough to support that, which might have a realistic lower bounded size of as many as a hundred million people.
Perhaps a terraforming project could be accomplished in a few thousand years, but for the most part this is all ridiculous pipe dream. We only have one planet.
I agree. It's astronomically expensive to set up humans on the moon, and much more so on another planet. Think of the much much more productive ways that money could be spent here at the bottom of the gravity well.
As for asteroid mining, aren't metals available here on earth too, at a fraction of the cost? How about an R&D effort to make batteries and other technology out of easily-available metals here? Wouldn't that spending yield useful products much more cheaply than trying to get them from out there in the sky?
We have to stop reading science fiction and taking it as prophecy. The case for seeding our species on another planet makes no economic sense.
Why can't we concurrently work towards solutions to multiple existential threats at once? It seems like if we only focus on the threats we're aware of, one will likely hit us and wipe the species out.
Earth, this hunk of material orbiting the sun, doesn't need saving. It's also unlikely that anything would scratch it's life bearing capacity too. Life has weathered big mass extinction events. It looks quite resilient. So I assume by saving earth you mean saving earth's ability to sustain human society. It's a great goal! So how we do that? What's the plan with asteroids for example?
It wouldn't surprise me if by doing all the necessary research and engineering to make a stable mars settlement possible we would make leaps toward a sustainable life here on earth too. After all you won't live there by wasting your resources.
Even if we went full green/sustainable that doesn't stop a nuclear war, big hunk of rock hitting us from space or Yellowstone going boomboom at some point.
I've always found that human extinction argument rather dubious. The main mechanisms of extinction in those cases are atmospheric dust and fallout. If we can maintain a closed ecosystem on Mars, we can do it underground, for a fraction of the cost, much less danger, and with a crew that rotates.
Dinosaurs died out because they didn't have nuclear power plants or indoor greenhouses.
A major impact would still be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions... but putting a bunch of technocrats on mars isn't going to change that either.
We probably have a few 1000 people in submarines at any given time. I wonder if there are any crazy plans for them to repopulate the world in a surface disaster? Hopefully they have some women.
Edit: upon further thought it would be prident to store frozen embryos on board with the associated equipment to use them to ensure genetic diversity.
Probably, but that assumes that Musk's goal is saving the human race. More likely, he wants to go to Mars and is using this as an excuse / inspiration to others.
People before have given word that they plan to lead the expedition to space and have given timeline of seven years since this TED talk in 2007. So far no expedition to Moon has happened led by this speaker https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_...
"Talk about space always seems to be hung on ambiguities of purpose and timing. I would like to close here by putting a stake in the sand at TED. I intend to lead that expedition. (Applause) It can be done in seven years with the right backing. Those who join me in making it happen will become a part of history and join other bold individuals from time past who, had they been here today, would have heartily approved." - Bill Stone (TED 2007)
Bill Stone is a skilled engineer but anyone who knew about him from scuba diving circles wouldn't have taken that seriously. He is infamous for over promising, under delivering, and taking excessive unnecessary risks. So not really comparable to Elon Musk in any meaningful way.
Not to mention that there still isn't a cheap launch vehicle available that's cheap enough for lunar exploration to be feasible for a private initiative. SpaceX themselves could probably send a probe to the Moon soon if they wanted to; the Falcon 9 is likely a lot cheaper than what SpaceX charge their customers.
>vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction, and also to inspire people.
I think it inspires him, and many others, but working toward the many earthly problems that cause human suffering right now would also be pretty inspiring. Of course we should all tackle whichever issues are most interesting to us, but in this regard I'm more of a Gates fan.
You can have both, in my opinion. A huge Mars colonization project would yield tremendous technological spinoffs, not to mention employment for thousands of scientists and engineers, a national sense of purpose, a lot more research spending into disease and immunity (imagine the medical risks of being cooped up in a closed system with 50 other people for months at a time).
Given how, you know, polio is still a thing, it seems to be the whole distribution area that we're struggling the most with, and less the raw scientific aspects.
I'm personally convinced his long term, possibly unspoken, goal is mining asteroids. Getting a foothold on Mars seems like a logical, and necessary next step after SpaceX.
Why Mars? If all you want to do is mine asteroids, what sense is there in clawing your way out of a deep gravity well, only to jump down to the bottom of another one? Why not Ceres or Hygiea or Vesta or any of the other minor solar system bodies?
I think it's more of an appeal - visiting and colonizing Mars is more alluring than mining. I think there's benefit to having a base there though, even at the bottom of a gravity well (1/3 that of Earth so not the same kind of fight).
Some pros to having a base on Mars could be families of miners can live "close by" miners (or those that operate and/or maintain the telepresence or self driving mining equipment, and possibly a place to do any sort of processing.
Also, there could be mining possibilities on Mars as well, and without all the environmental issues we'd have to consider on Earth.
The "all of the eggs in one basket" aspect is certainly one I can get behind, but I think there's monetary gain is probably a more powerful motivator to those that have the most influence.
Think about how many people and resources are already devoted to those Earthly problems though. I'm not saying that they're not still huge problems, but Elon seems to be one of the only people that's seriously and realistically trying to tackle the the need for an interplanetary insurance policy.
As someone else in this thread mentioned, solving hunger disease, and violence doesn't really do anything to address most of the extinction-level threats.
It's not going to happen by then. Musk is trying to provoke a greater interest in space exploration. He has done the same for electric cars.
This may lead to greater public funding for NASA, and more private investment for things like SpaceX.
So I never take Musk's timing statements literally, but his hype-mode is an intrinsic part of him realising his vision, sooner or later that is.
It seems very hard to get people involved in a project like that in the current world, there is no common enemy to unite us and even if it's possible most people feel that they won't be a part of it in any meaningful sense. And I doubt that Trickle-down-technology is going to be enough to get people interested.
But who knows, the current world is young and we still don't know the direction it will take, maybe common projects come back in a meaningful way at some point.
>> Musk is trying to provoke a greater interest in space exploration.
He is trying to build a market for his services. He doesn't want to finance Mars himself. He want the public to get Nasa to pay for his company to send things/people into space. I'll believe his lofty intentions when I see a SpaceX-financed probe go to Mars, or the moon, or basically anywhere other than to fulfil a contract.
Why are these empty promises still taken seriously by supposedly intelligent audiences like HN? Elon Musk wants to have cancer ridden hospice on Mars, fine. But do not call it a "colony".
I'm a fan of moonbases myself but there are reasons why Mars might be easier. An atmosphere and a ~24 hour day make heat management less of an issue and solar power easier to do. Plus there's all this carbon floating around in the air you can work with. The Moon's big advantages are that it's close and it's easier to get up and down its gravity well. I think that makes it better for a non-self-sustaining. base but probably worse otherwise.
Will it be a "simple" round trip? The real problem is what to when you're there. Is there a base station? I don't see that happen before 2025. Maybe on the moon, but not on Mars. Maybe a return trip to Mars by 2025 or 2030, but not staying there.
Any round trip to Mars would require making the return fuel on site, correct?
If that's the case then just making a couple of unmanned return flights to test that seems it would take a decade.
A one-way ticket to Mars is certainly doable with current tech but unless we're sending Donald Trump I fail to see how we as a planet could get behind that concept.
I can't take seriously any Mars project that sends people without robots paving our way there first. It sounds like romantic marketing with no real long-term expectation.
As the article says one of the main reasons is to inspire people, but the current world is structured in a way that tells a lot of people that they are out, they won't ever be part of society in a meaningful way, they'll get some money to stay alive and sort of make it through life, but they will never be meaningful members of a community.
So in this kind of atmosphere seems very difficult to convince people to participate in any kind of common project for all of us.
SpaceX hasn't made any public statements yet on how they are planning to send humans to Mars, but you can be pretty sure that robots will be a big part of it. Lots of SpaceX people are big fans of Mars Direct and similar plans.
I agree entirely. I would venture to say that sending people without sending robots to pave the way is dangerous and irresponsible, as it denies whoever arrives to Mars a welcoming mat / basic resources which might help with survival.
For the best propaganda value (which I doubt Musk is concerned about at this moment)a member of the excluded economic caste should be sent abroad... but who knows how things will be different in 10 years.
If you look at the 2004 Grand Challenge things looked pretty bad too, but driverless cars have made huge strides in the past ~10 years. If robots can do the same, they could be ready by then.
I don't even feel like I take major part in IT industry. I just do my work, publish some research, contribute to some open-source projects etc. I may even get some great ideas at some point that will change something globally, but it is impossible to change the whole world for one men. Yet I follow HN and it is of value to me that other people create great things almost every day.
The same is true for Mars. I am almost sure I am not going into space in the next 50 years. Yet it is of value to me that someone goes into space or lives on Mars during my life. I would really like to see news from Mars, how people are doing there, what they invent to make their life better there etc.
Putting this into money is what Mars One [1] project proposes. They plan to raise money by putting their project on TV, because almost everyone would like to see how someone else is doing on Mars, even if not helping directly or participating in the project.
I think the original idea goes from chapter "Might have been" of the "Machinery of freedom" book [2]. There David Friedman proposed the same idea, just the goal is less ambitious: Mars is substituted for Moon.
I don't know about that. Maybe it's more practical to just send powdered Soylent than to build a robotic farm. By "practical" I don't mean "cheaper" or "more sustainable." Money and rockets work. Robot farming on Mars, not known to be as reliable.
In my opinion, the end game for getting to Mars quickly and economically has to be nuclear pulse propulsion[1]. With this approach, which was technologically feasible back in the 1950s-60s when it was first being studied, you could get to Mars in a couple of weeks.
Maybe use conventional means to robotically transport the shelters, building materials, and other resources to Mars, and then the humans can be transported via NPP, which would save tons of air and food resources compared to an eight month conventional trip, and also be safer -- a much shorter time in space means much less risk of cosmic ray exposure, micrometeorites, equipment failures, medical emergencies, etc.
If we can overcome the safety issues and the political squeamishness of manufacturing and launching into orbit hundreds of small nuclear explosives, we can possess Mars. It just takes money and will.
The problem is that the pusher plate is so heavy that you really want to launch that off planet under its own power to make it worthwhile and that would generate some fallout. There are things you can do to minimize that but it would still be as bad as an open air thermonuclear bomb test like Castle Bravo. The nuclear powers conducted lots of those but they do kill an expected 100 people each given some assumptions about the danger of low radiation doses. On the other hand nuclear-thermal, nuclear-electric, and solar-electric are all fine ways of getting to Mars faster.
I would think you could launch a pusher plate using a very large, conventional lift technology. The Saturn V had a lift capacity of 120,000 kg (260,000 lbs). Surely that's enough to get one of these bad boys into orbit?
A colleague of mine at Pivotal had previously interviewed with Elon for a position at Tesla. He asked the recruiting coordinator: "what's he like? What does he look for in an interview?"
The response: "The important thing to understand about Elon is that he wants to retire on Mars". Deadpan serious.
I have trouble reconciling Musk's stated goals and his current decisions, his daily status as a billionaire. Someone who truly believes in the dream should be shovelling all of their cash into that dream. At this point he should be selling his home to personally finance the first launches aimed at Mars. So either he doesn't really believe, or he is on a conveniently circuitous route that requires him to first gather untold riches to himself. By now I would expect him to at least setup a substantial trust (17B?) payable only to Mars exploration efforts.
There was a point after founding SpaceX and Tesla when Musk put all of his money into the companies; he had to borrow money from friends to make rent. This was just after SpaceX had blown up its third rocket, with no money left for another try, while Tesla was losing money hand over fist because the roadster was selling at a loss.
You can criticize Musk for many things, but he really does believe that his goals are achievable, that he will achieve them, and that they are good investments.
The really important dreams are rarely good investments. I don't think anyone seriously believes the manned exploration of Mars will turn any profit. A true believer wouldn't care. There are people who would hand over a dozen winning lotto tickets for a chance to go to Mars. Musk faces that decision every day. That makes it difficult for me to believe tales of his madman/dreamer rhetoric.
And I'm not criticizing musk the person. I'm say that here is a disconnect between the public dreamer persona and the known actions of the physical person.
Having a dream is not the same as beeing an idiot. For a Mars mission to have any change you need to improve on rocket technology, you need a strong space industry.
You can not put all your money into one mission and crash into mars. Its a multiyear effort of building a sustainable the needed infrastucture and technology.
Because of this approche Elon is different from others and its why he actually have a change of success.
>>> .. I don't think anyone seriously believes the manned exploration of Mars will turn any profit.
I think this will be the most profitable enterprise mankind has ever seen. A earth full of mineral wealth untouched, available for whoever can lay their hands on. If spaceX was trading today I would buy its stock in a blink and hold on to it for the next 50 years.
That's my point. Billionaires don't get to where they are by chasing outlandish dreams. There are people that sacrifice everything for a dream. They are usually the first people to climb a mountain or break an Olympic record. Or they join the church and serve the poor of india. Whatever money they have is dedicated immediately because money is always secondary.
Yes, but to be the first person to climb a mountain takes tens of thousands of dollars of gear, extensive research, and lots of experience.
Smart dreamers don't exit high school with that dream, make a hundred bucks at the drive-thru, and buy some rope and a few carabiners at the hardware store, see how high they can get that weekend, and repeat for decades. They re-invest their $100 until they can buy or commission the gear they need, gather experience on other mountains, and spend time learning about their target until they can make the climb.
Lol, take a look at climbers. The people doing new stuff are all nuts. Look at the guys who just died in Antarctica. Doing something new in the requires money. Just try launching an Antarctic expedition with less than a million. They spend family money, they spend student loans, they engage in borderline charity fraud. They leave wives and children at home, sometimes forever, just to put their names in a record book. Smart=careful, and careful people are rarely the first to do anything.
Yes, you still need money to attempt something big. But that's really a small blocker given what it would actually take in terms of human effort to do some thing of that magnitude.
As a regular lap swimmer, I have strong opinions on her stunts. Note the direction of travel, never north-to-south. She did swim a long way, but the current was a huge part of her speed. There is a fine line between swimming A->B and drifting. I am much more impressed by this guy.
>>Yes, but to be the first person to climb a mountain takes tens of thousands of dollars of gear, extensive research, and lots of experience.
The right way to look at this is to see, if you would climb the mountain tomorrow if you had all that. The answer is obviously for most people 'no'. The real reason why most people do no climb a mountain is because it hard.
>>They re-invest their $100 until they can buy or commission the gear they need, gather experience on other mountains, and spend time learning about their target until they can make the climb.
Very true, plus they keep climbing a lot of smaller mountains.
Perhaps he believes getting to Mars will cost a trillion, and is waiting to attain that? Given his track record I'm far more inclined to trust the guy's roadmap for attaining his personal goals than yours or mine.
That would be the conveniently circuitous route I mentioned. But if the plan was to gather all the money to himself first, then I would expect him to be living a more austere lifestyle to more quickly amass funds.
He does not just want to go to mars. He wants to live on mars, to make it habitable and wasting all his money on sending probes to mars today will be a useless waste of money and he will be bankrupt before achieving anything
A shuttle to mars with enough for a people to go and live today would cost hundreds of billions which be doesn't have so be is doing the next best thing bring down the price to millions so that he can go.
I don't see what you are getting at. An enterprise such as sending people to Mars is obviously not going to be made by selling a house or a one time boost from a personal fortune, but by setting up a system that allows consistent and substantial profits.
Also, Musk's fortune is comes from the shares he owns of his own companies. Not sure it's a smart move to sell all those shares to invest the cash back in the same company.
He has 10+ billion to spend. He could very easily fund probes to Mars, lots of them, to study the methods of landing/exploration needed for future manned missions. Those first steps could happen today, on his rockets.
After watching the movie, "The Martian," I wondered why anyone would want to live there... at least the first 1,000s of people.
It's not hospitable to humans and we as humans will need to create a vaccuum tube like city that if penetrated could kill all who lived in it.
This thought might be way off per seeing one movie, so I'd love to hear someone tell me otherwise..... like why inhabiting a inhospitable planet to humans is a good idea.
The big thing is to get people off world, learn and innovate to make it easier. Ultimately you want at least one backup plan for the human race so if we all die due to who knows what (giant asteroid, gamma ray burst, yellow stone going off, etc) the human race can live on.
Musk has been interviewed before saying he wants at least one large group of people acting as a backup. It would be a shame if we stayed on Earth hoping to get the technology to make a place 100% hospital before leaving; who knows how long that would take and how much innovation we'd lose out on for not being bold.
It would probably be thrilling for a couple of weeks, if you knew you were going back to Earth after that. There are definitely some people who would love to dive into the challenge of building a marginally comfortable existence there. For most people it would be wretched misery. Philip K. Dick explores this a little bit in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
After watching the movie, "Total Recall" (first one) I wondered why anyone wouldn't want to live there... at least the first 1,000s of people.
It's hospitable to humans and mutants alike and it has a nice structure over the city, which is a security risk if penetrated to be honest.
This thought might be way off per seeing one movie, so I'd love to hear someone tell me otherwise..... like why inhabiting an enclosed city hospitable to humans isn't a good idea.
I've been wondering if we're going to have problems with Mars 30% gravity. I don't think we know at all yet?
If it is a problem I was thinking people might wear well distributed weight suits most of the day? You could also sleep and spend time in a large centrifuge type structure.
NASA (in their infinite wisdom) have neglected reduced-gravity research entirely. For an organization that claims to be in favor of manned space exploration, they display little interest in its primary challenges.
Anything you can offset with weight suits you could also offset with more exercise. There are still physiological problems that that won't help with. I'd guess that 30% plus exercise would be enough but we don't know for sure.
Presuming one does not care about the problems of low gravity and what cosmic radiation can due to your eyes, body and brain. That you're okay with the antarctic cold 24/7 (Actually a year on Mars is 2-years long so perhaps it's 14-days for a single week) and that living in a surrounding vacuum with no water or life whatsoever with lots of dust and dust storms seem like solitude, then Mars is just the place for you!
Perhaps "terraforming" Australia's outback or the Sahara desert so as to create a swell place to live would be a more worthwhile project than living in a oxygenated and lead lined prison on Mars?
Funny thing about that - I suspect doing either of those would be 10x harder than terraforming Mars. Why? Because there are no Martians to complain about the ecological havoc your changes are making, or to complain that you are depriving them of their livelihood, or possibly destroying culturally significant land forms. I can only imagine the ecological impact reporting that would have to be done in Australia, and I imagine the countries that own the Sahara have their own equivalent.
I love how these "news" organizations take snippets and off-the-cuff comments from interviews and make it seem like Elon Musk has announced something.
This "news" is from an interview Elon did in Hong Kong. It's actually one of the better and most interesting interviews of Elon because the host was pretty knowledgeable. Well worth a full view:
I found the 'Wait But Why' articles on Musk and his mars ambitions to be pretty illuminating. They go in depth on why he wants to go to mars and also some proposed ideas for colonization.
I didn't particularly love the last one, on Musk's "secret sauce," but the rest of the Musk series was absolutely fantastic. You could give it to someone that has never seen a car or rocket, and by the end of it they'd understand the majority of the energy, auto, and space industries.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadAnd that's without people. Now add humans to that equation. Not easy.
I mean, we could barely refrigerate food 100~150 years ago and now we are developing technology to build habitats on another planet? How cool is that?
I can understand inspiration part but don't get how this help preventing human extinction. Wouldn't be wise to focus on unresolved problems like hunger, poverty, education and incurable diseases? I understand that trying to reach other planets can push forward technology to incredible levels but it would be more meaningful if this technology can find areas to resolve Earth's current problems.
Even if you are really into space exploration, developing a comet pusher would be infinitely more valuable.
They are mostly political problems rather than technologies.
The exception would be diseases, because a lot of that is the scientific challenge and research and development.
And they're all problems that plague our quality of living rather than posing any kind of existential risks. Nuclear war, asteroid strikes, and UFAI would qualify as existential risks.
Plus, by establishing a colony on Mars, you reduce the probability of extinction should something happens to Earth.
What makes you think technology pushed to incredible levels won't assist with Earth's current problems?
Several times on HN I have posed replies that consist of the snappy comment: "your logical fallacy is: " followed by a link. It doesn't usually go over well.
Yes, it would be wise to do those things. I mean, to do them as well: It's not one of the other. The "don't go to Mars, fix poverty" argument is something like Whataboutery or "Fallacy of relative privation"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci...
That's what my experience indicates, anyway ;)
Imagine if presidential debates had real-time scoring of what was being said. Politifact is great, but 24h delay makes it substantially less impactful.
"It's not one or the other"
To a large degree it is, as in "you cant have your cake and eat it".
But with the decent possibility of somebody like Donald Trump becoming President, I think the journey to Mars can't come soon enough.
Those are threats to individual human beings, not to mankind as a whole. A Great Plague or a (non-nuclear) world war here and there can wipe 1/3 of humanity, but for the species as a whole it's just an inconvenience: it can be compensated in a couple of generations, through our adaptable fertility rate.
There are dangers, mostly ecological, which can wipe out the whole species: nuclear winter, mega-volcanoes, meteors... (yes, most of them are about some form of climate change) The mitigation for those dangers is to have several separated ecosystems, not regrowing the population locally after a demographic setback.
A city on Mars would probably take centuries to turn into an independent ecosystem (including all of the mining, transforming and recycling of every material required, and the means to extend itself across the planet. Or even, maybe, terraforming). But a partially Earth-dependent Mars city is a very important milestone towards the big goal.
Finally, he doesn't say that all of our efforts should be dedicated to that single goal: he's quite involved in fixing Earthly problem, including energy, climate change and transportation. He's also vocal about how we should think very hard about the kind of IA we want to cohabit with.
Perhaps a terraforming project could be accomplished in a few thousand years, but for the most part this is all ridiculous pipe dream. We only have one planet.
As for asteroid mining, aren't metals available here on earth too, at a fraction of the cost? How about an R&D effort to make batteries and other technology out of easily-available metals here? Wouldn't that spending yield useful products much more cheaply than trying to get them from out there in the sky?
We have to stop reading science fiction and taking it as prophecy. The case for seeding our species on another planet makes no economic sense.
Wouldn't it be more economical to try to save our planet first?
What you want to know is to protect our planet from becoming a death-trap for the human race.
The question is, what kind of scenarios you envisioned would threaten the condition of our environment, thus humanity?
It wouldn't surprise me if by doing all the necessary research and engineering to make a stable mars settlement possible we would make leaps toward a sustainable life here on earth too. After all you won't live there by wasting your resources.
Even if we went full green/sustainable that doesn't stop a nuclear war, big hunk of rock hitting us from space or Yellowstone going boomboom at some point.
Dinosaurs died out because they didn't have nuclear power plants or indoor greenhouses.
A major impact would still be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions... but putting a bunch of technocrats on mars isn't going to change that either.
Edit: upon further thought it would be prident to store frozen embryos on board with the associated equipment to use them to ensure genetic diversity.
"Talk about space always seems to be hung on ambiguities of purpose and timing. I would like to close here by putting a stake in the sand at TED. I intend to lead that expedition. (Applause) It can be done in seven years with the right backing. Those who join me in making it happen will become a part of history and join other bold individuals from time past who, had they been here today, would have heartily approved." - Bill Stone (TED 2007)
EDIT: Adding quote
I think it inspires him, and many others, but working toward the many earthly problems that cause human suffering right now would also be pretty inspiring. Of course we should all tackle whichever issues are most interesting to us, but in this regard I'm more of a Gates fan.
He does have competition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources
Some pros to having a base on Mars could be families of miners can live "close by" miners (or those that operate and/or maintain the telepresence or self driving mining equipment, and possibly a place to do any sort of processing.
Also, there could be mining possibilities on Mars as well, and without all the environmental issues we'd have to consider on Earth.
The "all of the eggs in one basket" aspect is certainly one I can get behind, but I think there's monetary gain is probably a more powerful motivator to those that have the most influence.
As someone else in this thread mentioned, solving hunger disease, and violence doesn't really do anything to address most of the extinction-level threats.
But who knows, the current world is young and we still don't know the direction it will take, maybe common projects come back in a meaningful way at some point.
He is trying to build a market for his services. He doesn't want to finance Mars himself. He want the public to get Nasa to pay for his company to send things/people into space. I'll believe his lofty intentions when I see a SpaceX-financed probe go to Mars, or the moon, or basically anywhere other than to fulfil a contract.
Will it be a "simple" round trip? The real problem is what to when you're there. Is there a base station? I don't see that happen before 2025. Maybe on the moon, but not on Mars. Maybe a return trip to Mars by 2025 or 2030, but not staying there.
If that's the case then just making a couple of unmanned return flights to test that seems it would take a decade.
A one-way ticket to Mars is certainly doable with current tech but unless we're sending Donald Trump I fail to see how we as a planet could get behind that concept.
As the article says one of the main reasons is to inspire people, but the current world is structured in a way that tells a lot of people that they are out, they won't ever be part of society in a meaningful way, they'll get some money to stay alive and sort of make it through life, but they will never be meaningful members of a community.
So in this kind of atmosphere seems very difficult to convince people to participate in any kind of common project for all of us.
For the best propaganda value (which I doubt Musk is concerned about at this moment)a member of the excluded economic caste should be sent abroad... but who knows how things will be different in 10 years.
The same is true for Mars. I am almost sure I am not going into space in the next 50 years. Yet it is of value to me that someone goes into space or lives on Mars during my life. I would really like to see news from Mars, how people are doing there, what they invent to make their life better there etc.
Putting this into money is what Mars One [1] project proposes. They plan to raise money by putting their project on TV, because almost everyone would like to see how someone else is doing on Mars, even if not helping directly or participating in the project.
I think the original idea goes from chapter "Might have been" of the "Machinery of freedom" book [2]. There David Friedman proposed the same idea, just the goal is less ambitious: Mars is substituted for Moon.
[1] http://www.mars-one.com/
[2] http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
Maybe use conventional means to robotically transport the shelters, building materials, and other resources to Mars, and then the humans can be transported via NPP, which would save tons of air and food resources compared to an eight month conventional trip, and also be safer -- a much shorter time in space means much less risk of cosmic ray exposure, micrometeorites, equipment failures, medical emergencies, etc.
If we can overcome the safety issues and the political squeamishness of manufacturing and launching into orbit hundreds of small nuclear explosives, we can possess Mars. It just takes money and will.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket This one lets you at least 'aim' the fission fragments. It's dangerous and fast, thought you would like that.
But closed cycle is best: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket
We don't need or want 'Nukes in Space' just reactors and engines.
The response: "The important thing to understand about Elon is that he wants to retire on Mars". Deadpan serious.
Goals are dreams with a deadline.
You can criticize Musk for many things, but he really does believe that his goals are achievable, that he will achieve them, and that they are good investments.
The really important dreams are rarely good investments. I don't think anyone seriously believes the manned exploration of Mars will turn any profit. A true believer wouldn't care. There are people who would hand over a dozen winning lotto tickets for a chance to go to Mars. Musk faces that decision every day. That makes it difficult for me to believe tales of his madman/dreamer rhetoric.
And I'm not criticizing musk the person. I'm say that here is a disconnect between the public dreamer persona and the known actions of the physical person.
You can not put all your money into one mission and crash into mars. Its a multiyear effort of building a sustainable the needed infrastucture and technology.
Because of this approche Elon is different from others and its why he actually have a change of success.
I think this will be the most profitable enterprise mankind has ever seen. A earth full of mineral wealth untouched, available for whoever can lay their hands on. If spaceX was trading today I would buy its stock in a blink and hold on to it for the next 50 years.
The Gates and Zuckerbergs of this world are prepared to part their amassed fortunes, but only when they have no possible use for it (IE death)
Smart dreamers don't exit high school with that dream, make a hundred bucks at the drive-thru, and buy some rope and a few carabiners at the hardware store, see how high they can get that weekend, and repeat for decades. They re-invest their $100 until they can buy or commission the gear they need, gather experience on other mountains, and spend time learning about their target until they can make the climb.
Yes, you still need money to attempt something big. But that's really a small blocker given what it would actually take in terms of human effort to do some thing of that magnitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Strel
The right way to look at this is to see, if you would climb the mountain tomorrow if you had all that. The answer is obviously for most people 'no'. The real reason why most people do no climb a mountain is because it hard.
>>They re-invest their $100 until they can buy or commission the gear they need, gather experience on other mountains, and spend time learning about their target until they can make the climb.
Very true, plus they keep climbing a lot of smaller mountains.
Also, Musk's fortune is comes from the shares he owns of his own companies. Not sure it's a smart move to sell all those shares to invest the cash back in the same company.
It's not hospitable to humans and we as humans will need to create a vaccuum tube like city that if penetrated could kill all who lived in it.
This thought might be way off per seeing one movie, so I'd love to hear someone tell me otherwise..... like why inhabiting a inhospitable planet to humans is a good idea.
Musk has been interviewed before saying he wants at least one large group of people acting as a backup. It would be a shame if we stayed on Earth hoping to get the technology to make a place 100% hospital before leaving; who knows how long that would take and how much innovation we'd lose out on for not being bold.
It's hospitable to humans and mutants alike and it has a nice structure over the city, which is a security risk if penetrated to be honest.
This thought might be way off per seeing one movie, so I'd love to hear someone tell me otherwise..... like why inhabiting an enclosed city hospitable to humans isn't a good idea.
If it is a problem I was thinking people might wear well distributed weight suits most of the day? You could also sleep and spend time in a large centrifuge type structure.
Got some evidence for that surprising claim?
NASA is the only organization in the history of the world that has actually put people onto a reduced-gravity body.
Perhaps "terraforming" Australia's outback or the Sahara desert so as to create a swell place to live would be a more worthwhile project than living in a oxygenated and lead lined prison on Mars?
This "news" is from an interview Elon did in Hong Kong. It's actually one of the better and most interesting interviews of Elon because the host was pretty knowledgeable. Well worth a full view:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiRLGpm5CiY
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-coloni...