I’m betting the two rivals will be male and female with a sexual history. Or worse, two males with a sexual history.
$100m to make a movie, about the same over a year for a dozen episodes of a TV series… how about actually going to mars with $200m in seed capital? $100m to $300m income annually for a decade would do it.
The lander is the hard part but SpaceX has already given us ballpark figures for price ($150m) and payload (2,500 kg) on that with the major components already tested. The easy part is replacing the upper stage of an F9R with a fully reusable general purpose 13 ton ship that is amortized over dozens of missions and is a profit center the moment we put it in orbit. That’s just two vehicle types. If some are coming back, it’s just three types (with fuel produced on mars.)
SpaceX got us halfway (not alone) and makes the rest possible. I’ve seen enough Star Trek. Well, I might tune in for captain Worf.
Off topic, A book alert that popped up for me in google alerts on “falcon heavy”
http://www.amazon.com/Piers-Bizony/e/B001H6U13M
Worth a browse
And that link was off, the book is “New Space Frontiers” , Hardcover – October 15, 2014
http://www.amazon.com/New-Space-Frontiers-Venturing-Beyond/dp/0760346666
I’m betting the two rivals will be male and female with a sexual history. Or worse, two males with a sexual history.
$100m to make a movie, about the same over a year for a dozen episodes of a TV series… how about actually going to mars with $200m in seed capital? $100m to $300m income annually for a decade would do it.
The lander is the hard part but SpaceX has already given us ballpark figures for price ($150m) and payload (2,500 kg) on that with the major components already tested. The easy part is replacing the upper stage of an F9R with a fully reusable general purpose 13 ton ship that is amortized over dozens of missions and is a profit center the moment we put it in orbit. That’s just two vehicle types. If some are coming back, it’s just three types (with fuel produced on mars.)
SpaceX got us halfway (not alone) and makes the rest possible. I’ve seen enough Star Trek. Well, I might tune in for captain Worf.