What we need to know before we send people there. And they don’t even discuss the gravity issue.
[Update a few minutes later]
Eric Berger says that Elon is between a rocket and a hard place. I don’t think that taxpayer money should to go build giant rockets, whether by SpaceX or Boeing.
The article really didn’t address what we need to know, but I did like the obvious recommendation…
land all future precursor missions to the single site of human landing
If we want to know more about mars the fastest way is to get humans there. The fastest way to get humans there is to focus on a single site.
Then the focus needs to be survival (as Pournelle put it, “in style.”) Which means first of all an over abundance of energy. Science and the search for life has to be secondary to learning how to make mars a comfortable home for humans. Think of the percentage of humans on earth that engage in science. That’s the right mix for mars as well.
The second article is about where the money comes from. We already know Musk’s position. He will take whatever money he can from a government “partner,” but his goal is to sell tickets. The initial cost precludes most ticket sales so that will initially just be expense taking from other profits.
I don’t believe ticket sales will be viable. If we aren’t smarter than that mars will languish. We need leadership that doesn’t seem to exist. People believe govt. needs to take the lead when that’s never been true in the entire history of humanity.
We need someone bold enough to simply claim mars then let the arguments commence. Possession is still 9/10ths of the law. It finances the entire thing easily.
Ya, focusing activities at one site would be nice. The article didn’t say but it would be nice to have people doing telerobotics in real time to make the process go faster.
They could even prospect a number of potential sites this way.
So the great entrepreneur morphs into yet another rent seeking polyp on the taxpayer’s backside. I admire his accomplishments to this point, but when he’s goes hat in hand to the Washington money machine my support ends.
You say that as though there’s something new about it. He’s been milking the taxpayers for years, particularly with Tesla and Solar City.
The govt. shouldn’t be doing it, but Musk would be an idiot not to take advantage of it. The problem is not with Musk.
Its like tax law.
Yeah contamination could be an issue. Which is why there should be a way station between Earth and Mars. Possibly in the Moon or some orbital station. Which can be used to quarantine travelers.
The economics of the Mars program are not impossible. If they reuse launchers and Dragon capsules the cost of the fuel and payload could be quite marginal in comparison. Making robotic exploration and building the depots should be marginally expensive if its done over a large timeframe. Depending on how good the precursor missions are they could reduce the costs of doing the manned missions.
Raptor is supposedly undergoing subscale testing right now. If that program advances quickly I wonder if we will never get to see a Falcon 9 Heavy launched to begin with. They might skip it over completely. I expect to see Raptor in service in like 2 years time. If the program doesn’t get bogged down for technical or funding issues.
With travel between Earth and Mars taking months I don’t expect you’d need a separate quarantine.
We’re already quarantined to LEO. We don’t need anymore help with that.
It was mooted in some aerospace circles that Musk might change the focus
That’s a weird way to cite his own op-ed.
The notion of industry and government “collaboration” seems a key admission that SpaceX will need substantial financial help to establish a Mars colony.
This seems pretty straight forward. An actual colony will need many participants.
Because Musk cannot self-fund this, and it is unlikely SpaceX will produce billions of dollars in annual profit any time soon, the funds must necessarily come from somewhere else—probably the government. This represents the real challenge of Tuesday’s speech—convincing the “government and scientific community” to collaborate
Berger left out the business community but Elon included it.
Sure, Musk will need partners and participants to start a colony but why would our government not participate? Ego and the desire to maintain power will insure that our government is involved somehow.
The who pays question isn’t something Musk is trying to hide, he comes right out and says what groups will be involved. Its a little early to be assessing costs launch by launch.
It will be nice to get an update on the SpaceX investigation but unless it takes them two years to get back to launching, they will be doing better than some of their defense contractor competitors.
Something else to consider is that as those new pads come online and launch rates increase not only will revenues go up but they will be able to mitigate the risks of failed launches affecting launch rates, depending on what causes problems.
When will SpaceX hit a breakout pace?
I’ve been saying for a long time that I wish Musk would forget about Tesla and Solar City and concentrate on SpaceX.
Mars won’t need battery powered vehicles and solar panels?
One of them will be needed.
Musk can drop 100 tons of solar panels on mars a lot sooner than a nuclear power plant… that is just not happening anytime soon.
The assumption that govt. must finance colonization is just plain false. That’s not to say they will not contribute, but thinking they must is a roadblock. That’s also the problem with the ‘Space Settlement Initiative’ which seeks govt. endorsement as well as adding non essential requirements.
Taking possession of land is just that and does not require govt. approval. Making claims without possession has proved to be folly. Govt. has every incentive to do nothing until forced.
You can’t just claim the entire planet but you could certainly claim it in reasonable sized chunks. If Musk is serious about getting many colonists there and does, everybody will be telling me they agreed all along. Disgusting.
So lots of pre-cursor automated missions focusing on a specific future landing site? Sounds interesting. Speculation from the better informed here would be appreciated. So as far as soil toxicity studies are concerned, would be it easier to just land a laboratory on Mars that could give a definite answer or would sample return be the better way to go, with all its obvious risks? Sample return to ISS would be less risk but orbital matching would present challenges and might require some infrastructure development to support it. I’m sort of on the side of send what you need to get a definitive answer there and not putz around for the months in transit. Other thoughts?
“What we need to know before we send people there. And they don’t even discuss the gravity issue.”
I imagined they would say something important. I don’t think search for life
on Mars is important, or think issue of gravity is as important.
Crew safety is important, but I don’t think Mars life or Mars low gravity will kill the crew.
I think having a good place to land the crew is important. One should focus on finding the safest and best place to land stuff on Mars and/or improvements needed to this natural landing site.
One needs a site in which multiple landing can occur safely near each other- within say 100 meters.
The humans landing on Mars are not going to land where nothing has ever landed before- this is not Apollo.
There could be two purposes to land crew on the Mars. One is a stunt.
And the other is part of exploration.
Even with a stunt one going to land things at a site before the crew show up- if nothing else one wants to film the crew landing.
If crew are landing on Mars for purpose of exploring Mars, then crew are a part of a major robotic exploration program.
The first landing of crew for exploration program, should to explore Mars to find a location to use Mars resources in order to lower the cost
of the manned exploration part of the program- a such resources could be no where near the first landing site. And ultimate purpose of Mars exploration is to determine if Mars could be viable for future settlements on Mars. Future settlements on Mars would be using Mars resources.
So explore Mars to find useful resources to use for Mars exploration AND explore Mars to find potential resources for human settlements.
First resources for exploration purposes, then for possible human settlements. One thing for human settlements is a large and cheap source of water. For exploration purposes a water source could be thousands of tons of water- for settlements it’s millions of tons of water- at some particular site. Another thing to explore for Mars settlements could be natural underground caves.
Is ground penetrating radar from orbit any good for finding caves? Or for that matter, other assorted geological formations of interest?
One needs a site in which multiple landing can occur safely near each other- within say 100 meters.
I’d say a landing ellipse of 10 km would be fine. As Zubrin correctly points out, the most bang for the buck comes from surface transportation. They absolutely need trucks. I’d say a simple 5th wheel tractor pulling a fold-able trailer with an optional inflatable tent might be a good idea. That could have a low enough mass and volume to be included in a 4 crew lander.
Since I believe the landers themselves should only be used as emergency backup habitats, scattered about 10 km apart adds to both safety and exploration. One of the first things they need to do is build permanent ISRU habitats. The first crew should be primarily trained for this and probably be the first construction company for all the following colonists.
Initial landscaping could be done from orbit though not required.
Earlier a Musk plan had been to launch a constellation of communication satellites. Supposedly the Musk magic would prevent this from being Iridium debacle 2.0 and Elon would become a communications baron. But even if Elon became Carlos Slim on steroids, that wouldn’t finance Mars settlement.
I agree with Berger that Congress is unlikely to be his sugar daddy.
I sure wish Musk could shake the effects of Zubrin’s Kool Aid.
I’m interested in your thoughts as to what specific Kool Aid you refer to?
One thing should be pointed out about soil toxicity. Mars is toxic, not just some of its soil. They will always be living in controlled environments (very large spaces because that just makes more sense and reduces risk. They have almost no limits.)
Soil toxicity is one of the easier problems to deal with because, unlike the atmosphere, perchlorites are highly reactive and made non-toxic just by adding water.
There is absolutely no need to study the soil for toxicity before landing humans. Just assume lack of correct environmental protocols will kill you and proceed accordingly. This is no different from the doctor in the old joke telling you, “don’t do that.” Even if they land somewhere where the soil is not toxic they should always act as if it is.
The only important point is that their protected environment remain protected (and gets incrementally expanded over time for as long as they are there.)