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posted by janrinok on Sunday October 02 2016, @02:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-a-way-to-go dept.

If I died today it'd be a holiday... on Mars. Elon Musk has suggested that the first Martian settlers should be prepared to die:

The first people who fly with SpaceX to Mars should be OK with the possibility that the decision could cost them their lives, company founder and CEO Elon Musk said. SpaceX aims to ferry 1 million people to the Red Planet over the next 50 to 100 years using the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), a rocket-spaceship combo that Musk unveiled Tuesday (Sept. 27) during a talk at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Well, he unveiled the ITS in concept; neither vehicle has been built yet.)

Musk painted a picture of a not-too-distant future in which 1,000 or more ITS spaceships, each loaded up with 100 or 200 settlers, zoom off toward Mars simultaneously from Earth orbit. But it's naïve to expect that everything will work perfectly from the start, he said. "I think the first journeys to Mars are going to be really very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high; there's just no way around it," Musk said at the IAC, adding that, for this reason, he would not suggest sending children on these flights. "It would be, basically, 'Are you prepared to die?' If that's OK, then, you know, you're a candidate for going," he said. Musk said he'd like to go to Mars, but it's unclear if he'll be among the Red Planet vanguard.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by hopp on Sunday October 02 2016, @03:41AM

    by hopp (2833) on Sunday October 02 2016, @03:41AM (#408973)

    From the man who just had a rocket blow up on the pad (although my money is on sabotage).

    Space travel is going to carry the risk of death for the foreseeable future.

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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday October 02 2016, @04:33AM

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday October 02 2016, @04:33AM (#408978) Journal

    True, but as you point out, sabotage is a real possibility. Too many chances for sabotage by nations that don't want to see the US or even an alliance of countries get at toehold on an entire planet.

    1,000 or more ITS spaceships, each loaded up with 100 or 200 settlers, zoom off toward Mars simultaneously

    Look, this is a nonsense approach. Why the hell would you launch simultaneously, or even in rapid succession?

    Too many vehicles to manage, in flight. Too many launch pads to manage (are there even 100 launch pads in existence?). And too many people to vet in a short period. And what do they eat when they get there? Stewed Martians. You will have to land shelters, hydroponics, energy supplies before you start sending 200 settlers at a time.

    We won't be using rockets. Its not practical. We are going to have to fly to altitude and then rocket to orbit. And there's no atmosphere to speak of, so landing is not going to be easy either. 200 people at a time?

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @06:42AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @06:42AM (#409001)

      Why the hell would you launch simultaneously, or even in rapid succession?

      You probably wouldn't. This is a second-hand report of the perceptions of a journalist who probably wasn't even at the presentation. "Simultaneously" is unlikely to be part of the plan at all. From what we know of the plans for reusability of the ship, it's likely that there will (eventually) be several ships in flight at the same time, which is not at all the same as leaving simultaneously. You might have one in orbit getting ready to go, another nearing Mars, and another on the way back.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday October 02 2016, @01:00PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday October 02 2016, @01:00PM (#409056)

      Why the hell would you launch simultaneously

      Probably a journalist translation of some orbital mechanics issues. There will be wide ranges of launch times, but they'll always be moments of peak payload where you can carry some extra candy bars or whatever into space.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @04:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 02 2016, @04:50PM (#409103)

      Look, this is a nonsense approach. Why the hell would you launch simultaneously, or even in rapid succession?

      Just because you have a ludicrous rocket that can launch a spacecraft anytime in the synodic period and still get substantial payload to Mars doesn't mean you will. You want to maximize payload per vehicle, which means you want to minimize energy alone (slow ITN routes that may take years, not sure what windows are like), or minimize energy subject to a maximum transit time (which implies Hohmann or faster transfer orbits, either way at 26-month intervals). For anything with people on it, the latter applies, due to radiation exposure.

      Too many vehicles to manage, in flight.

      You know they spend almost all the time coasting, right? I do think they're far more likely to be sequenced than literally simultaneous, but you don't need much stagger to avoid having too many vehicles in critical phases of flight to manage.

      Too many launch pads to manage (are there even 100 launch pads in existence?).

      AIUI, these are to be fueled and prepped in LEO. So they'd be launched over the course of 2 years, then all leave, whether all at once or in quick succession, at the minimum-energy window. I'm not sure whether returning ITS ships are meant to be inspected and refurbished on-orbit, or if they're meant to land for refurbishment, launch to LEO, and be refueled. But either way, launch pad capacity isn't likely to be an issue. And if it is -- well, how do you think the launch pads we have came to be? I'm sure they can build more, even 100 more if they needed them.

      And too many people to vet in a short period. And what do they eat when they get there? Stewed Martians. You will have to land shelters, hydroponics, energy supplies before you start sending 200 settlers at a time.

      Yeah... So you ramp up slow. Doesn't mean you couldn't end up with 100,000 people at once en route to an established colony.

      FWIW, I think the 1000-ship figure sounds ridiculously optimistic -- 100 seems more like it. But it's absolutely plausible if you can justify it economically.

      We won't be using rockets. Its not practical. We are going to have to fly to altitude and then rocket to orbit.

      It's more practical than anything we else have, though -- everyone's talked about that sort of aerodynamic/rocket hybrid vehicle (I'll call it "spaceplane", while acknowledging it could be two separate stages rather than a true SSTO spaceplane) for decades, but I still don't see any practical plans that won't require either on-orbit spacecraft manufacturing or else still need a super-heavy-lift rocket (Saturn V or better) to put a practical interplanetary spacecraft to orbit. Since we don't have on-orbit manufacturing, I think going ahead with rockets is a very sane strategy for a SpaceX to pursue. If, while they're doing that, some other company perfects the spaceplane, then SpaceX can buy launches on those to transport fuel, supplies, and passengers to the ITS ships in orbit, and save money. (If this doesn't save money, they haven't really perfected the spaceplane.) Conversely, if someone else can't make the spaceplane work better than reusable rockets, that would show it was a good thing SpaceX hadn't diluted their efforts pursuing it.

      And there's no atmosphere to speak of, so landing is not going to be easy either. 200 people at a time?

      It's not as hard as it seems. All the landers that go through such contortions trying to land? It's because they don't have rockets, and it would be ridiculously costly to add rockets and fuel tanks big enough to decelerate from orbital speeds. All the hypersonic parachutes and bouncing airbags and retro-rocket skycranes are used because that complexity is less costly than doing it the "easy" way. Since the ITS ship needs rockets anyhow to take off and return to Earth, it can use them for landing as well.

      Now landing with rockets is hard in itself, but it's also something SpaceX will have lots of experience with between now and then. And it's a general technique -- if you can do it right on Earth, it's relatively simple to transfer that knowledge to doing it right on Mars with only 60% less gravity. Whereas the sort of aeroshells and parachutes that work on Earth and Mars are completely different because of two orders of magnitude difference in density -- we're doing really amazing things with computer modeling and wind tunnel tests, but that's not the same as hundreds of real-world tail-sitter landings.