I like to think of what Musk is doing is as a Liberty Ship construction. From the great depression through the late 30’s, merchant vessel construction plummeted, shipyards were mothballed and worker skills atrophied and disappeared. Up until around 1940, maybe a hundred hulls were launched. The need to produce Liberty Ships resulted in nearly 6000 new vessels being constructed by the end of 1945. A small number of designs, lots of training, new techniques, and new shipyards.
Zubrin’s cost per seat breakdown ignores the 6 support launches he says are required for 1 trip to Mars. Not a lot of money when compared to SLS but the more a ticket costs, the less people can go.
Who knows what will happen but the cost of Starship allows someone, like our government, to do a lot of things on Mars for so much less money than is spent on other things at NASA. If some billionaires want to underwrite some missions, even better. But either way, colonization is a long way off.
The ticket price isn’t the only cost. People need housing, food, supplies, and assudries when they get to Mars. Looking at how the population of people who could afford it act on Earth, life on Mars would be very unpleasant.
Also, chuckled when I saw I only had 3 free articles left. Not a worry my dudes.
Musk’s breakdown of per seat costs includes the refueling launch costs. It’s all on the slides in Musk’s various annual presentations (see YouTube videos of same).
Those launches are reusable, and therefore very cheap. It’s only the semi-expendable one (because it winds up stuck on Mars for at *least* one window, if it’s not disassembled for spare parts first) that are “expensive”… and I use scare quotes deliberately, given the $20-$30 million figure.
Elon needs to start thinking about what he’s going to put on Mars, and how he’s going to unload it, deploy it, connect wiring, etc. These are questions that nobody has ever really answered, and could seriously slow him down.
There’ve been plenty of concept illos of what Musk thinks will happen. I’m pretty sure Musk knows the first several flights to Mars are going to be time consuming and expensive. Especially interesting is the one showing two pressurized rovers being unloaded on the Moon, with tiny astronauts waiting on the ground below.
What we know is, Musk plans to send two unmanned Starships to Mars in window 1, then two unmanned and two manned in window 2. Crew size bandied about is 12 to 20 per Starship, which puts 24 to 40 crew on Mars at window 2 (thus in 2025 at the very earliest). I would guess (based on sheerest Muskology) that some portion of that crew will remain on Mars to build the initial base.
A couple of years ago, I figured out how to build a non-indendent (that is, requires some ressupply) base on Mars using bomb shelter and mining equipment. The pieces and parts would about about fill one cargo Starship. Then the second one would need some electric trucks, cranes, and diggers (all availble off the shelf, needing relatively minor mods to be useable on Mars). You’d also need a sealed but not pressurized Quonset hut to store the vehicles in. My conceptual off the shelf base would cost around $20mln, tops, and would house around 8 crew for 2 – 4 years without resupply.
Btw, where did the $20-30 million figure come from? I think it’s reasonable if you include interior equipment, but a basic Starship hull, engines and all (the part you’d abandon on Mars) is only $5 million. Everything else is stuff you’d pull out and use in the base.
His self-serving claim that Musk is following Mars Direct is… self serving. And his description of NASA following Von Braun’s plan is false. Von Braun’s plan, as expressed in “The Mars Project” in 1948, involved building a fully reusable 3-stage LEO LV (stages 1 and 2 recovered by stainless steel mesh parachjtes, stage 3 was a spaceplane), using that to build a space station, and then using the station as a construction shack to build a fleet of 10 nuclear powered Mars vehicles. The fact that Apollo happened pertains to JFK, LBJ, and the 1970 deadline.
Musk has stated that anyone who wants to go can as they (SpaceX) plan to offer a finance plan. There have, as far as I know, been no details just the statement.
It’s pretty speculative, I think. For someone to arrive on Mars with just a couple of steamer trunks, there’ll have to be some kind of boom town in place, and jobs to be done by anyone skilled. I think Musk is hoping once he shows the way, others will step in to “colonize” Mars. Shipping is always the big cost increment. When I was planning my Mars hab, the cheapest bomb shelter component was only $18K, but the manufacturer wanted $70K to bring it to my property in NC.
(When I was planning my 1-man Mars base, I figured I could save money by riding *inside* the largest base component, aboard a cargo Starship. I mean, if you can live in it on Mars, you can live in it in an unpressured cargo hold…)
Yes I like this idea a great deal. Fits in well with the idea of a one way hab that is essentially a Red Dragon capsule without the propulsion.
In fact I still like the idea of the Mars Direct concept of linking a bunch of Red Dragons together to make a base.
“Elon needs to start thinking about what he’s going to put on Mars”… Tesla vehicles (Cybertruck), Boring Company habitats powered by Solar City cells.
I’m still thinking the trip is going to present radiation and zero-G problems, plus the temptation to shove someone out of an airlock just to mark that off humanity’s bucket list.
There’s a new HBO series called “Avenue 5” that takes an in-depth look at human social dynamics during long-duration space flight. Having watched six episodes, I think it has a lot of insights for mission planners.
I like to think of what Musk is doing is as a Liberty Ship construction. From the great depression through the late 30’s, merchant vessel construction plummeted, shipyards were mothballed and worker skills atrophied and disappeared. Up until around 1940, maybe a hundred hulls were launched. The need to produce Liberty Ships resulted in nearly 6000 new vessels being constructed by the end of 1945. A small number of designs, lots of training, new techniques, and new shipyards.
Zubrin’s cost per seat breakdown ignores the 6 support launches he says are required for 1 trip to Mars. Not a lot of money when compared to SLS but the more a ticket costs, the less people can go.
Who knows what will happen but the cost of Starship allows someone, like our government, to do a lot of things on Mars for so much less money than is spent on other things at NASA. If some billionaires want to underwrite some missions, even better. But either way, colonization is a long way off.
The ticket price isn’t the only cost. People need housing, food, supplies, and assudries when they get to Mars. Looking at how the population of people who could afford it act on Earth, life on Mars would be very unpleasant.
Also, chuckled when I saw I only had 3 free articles left. Not a worry my dudes.
Musk’s breakdown of per seat costs includes the refueling launch costs. It’s all on the slides in Musk’s various annual presentations (see YouTube videos of same).
Those launches are reusable, and therefore very cheap. It’s only the semi-expendable one (because it winds up stuck on Mars for at *least* one window, if it’s not disassembled for spare parts first) that are “expensive”… and I use scare quotes deliberately, given the $20-$30 million figure.
Elon needs to start thinking about what he’s going to put on Mars, and how he’s going to unload it, deploy it, connect wiring, etc. These are questions that nobody has ever really answered, and could seriously slow him down.
There’ve been plenty of concept illos of what Musk thinks will happen. I’m pretty sure Musk knows the first several flights to Mars are going to be time consuming and expensive. Especially interesting is the one showing two pressurized rovers being unloaded on the Moon, with tiny astronauts waiting on the ground below.
What we know is, Musk plans to send two unmanned Starships to Mars in window 1, then two unmanned and two manned in window 2. Crew size bandied about is 12 to 20 per Starship, which puts 24 to 40 crew on Mars at window 2 (thus in 2025 at the very earliest). I would guess (based on sheerest Muskology) that some portion of that crew will remain on Mars to build the initial base.
A couple of years ago, I figured out how to build a non-indendent (that is, requires some ressupply) base on Mars using bomb shelter and mining equipment. The pieces and parts would about about fill one cargo Starship. Then the second one would need some electric trucks, cranes, and diggers (all availble off the shelf, needing relatively minor mods to be useable on Mars). You’d also need a sealed but not pressurized Quonset hut to store the vehicles in. My conceptual off the shelf base would cost around $20mln, tops, and would house around 8 crew for 2 – 4 years without resupply.
Btw, where did the $20-30 million figure come from? I think it’s reasonable if you include interior equipment, but a basic Starship hull, engines and all (the part you’d abandon on Mars) is only $5 million. Everything else is stuff you’d pull out and use in the base.
His self-serving claim that Musk is following Mars Direct is… self serving. And his description of NASA following Von Braun’s plan is false. Von Braun’s plan, as expressed in “The Mars Project” in 1948, involved building a fully reusable 3-stage LEO LV (stages 1 and 2 recovered by stainless steel mesh parachjtes, stage 3 was a spaceplane), using that to build a space station, and then using the station as a construction shack to build a fleet of 10 nuclear powered Mars vehicles. The fact that Apollo happened pertains to JFK, LBJ, and the 1970 deadline.
Musk has stated that anyone who wants to go can as they (SpaceX) plan to offer a finance plan. There have, as far as I know, been no details just the statement.
It’s pretty speculative, I think. For someone to arrive on Mars with just a couple of steamer trunks, there’ll have to be some kind of boom town in place, and jobs to be done by anyone skilled. I think Musk is hoping once he shows the way, others will step in to “colonize” Mars. Shipping is always the big cost increment. When I was planning my Mars hab, the cheapest bomb shelter component was only $18K, but the manufacturer wanted $70K to bring it to my property in NC.
(When I was planning my 1-man Mars base, I figured I could save money by riding *inside* the largest base component, aboard a cargo Starship. I mean, if you can live in it on Mars, you can live in it in an unpressured cargo hold…)
Yes I like this idea a great deal. Fits in well with the idea of a one way hab that is essentially a Red Dragon capsule without the propulsion.
In fact I still like the idea of the Mars Direct concept of linking a bunch of Red Dragons together to make a base.
“Elon needs to start thinking about what he’s going to put on Mars”… Tesla vehicles (Cybertruck), Boring Company habitats powered by Solar City cells.
I’m still thinking the trip is going to present radiation and zero-G problems, plus the temptation to shove someone out of an airlock just to mark that off humanity’s bucket list.
There’s a new HBO series called “Avenue 5” that takes an in-depth look at human social dynamics during long-duration space flight. Having watched six episodes, I think it has a lot of insights for mission planners.