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posted by chromas on Wednesday August 08 2018, @08:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-tell-the-little-green-men dept.

SpaceX organizes inaugural conference to plan landings on Mars

No one can deny that SpaceX founder Elon Musk has thought a lot about how to transport humans safely to Mars with his Big Falcon Rocket. But when it comes to Musk's highly ambitious plans to settle Mars in the coming decades, some critics say Musk hasn't paid enough attention to what people will do once they get there.

However, SpaceX may be getting more serious about preparing for human landings on Mars, both in terms of how to keep people alive as well as to provide them with something meaningful to do. According to private invitations seen by Ars, the company will host a "Mars Workshop" on Tuesday and Wednesday this week at the University of Colorado Boulder. Although the company would not comment directly, a SpaceX official confirmed the event and said the company regularly meets with a variety of experts concerning its missions to Mars.

This appears to be the first meeting of such magnitude, however, with nearly 60 key scientists and engineers from industry, academia, and government attending the workshop, including a handful of leaders from NASA's Mars exploration program. The invitation for the inaugural Mars meeting encourages participants to contribute to "active discussions regarding what will be needed to make such missions happen." Attendees are being asked to not publicize the workshop or their attendance.

The meeting is expected to include an overview of the spaceflight capabilities that SpaceX is developing with the Big Falcon rocket and spaceship, which Musk has previously outlined at length during international aerospace meetings in 2016 and 2017. Discussion topics will focus on how best to support hundreds of humans living on Mars, such as accessing natural resources there that will lead to a sustainable outpost.

Related: SpaceX to Begin BFR Production at the Port of Los Angeles
City Council Approves SpaceX's BFR Facility at the Port of Los Angeles
This Week in Space Pessimism: SLS, Mars, and Lunar Gateway


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Wednesday August 08 2018, @09:05PM (8 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday August 08 2018, @09:05PM (#719001) Journal

    Maybe we can heat the Red Planet up from its average −63°C. By cryptocurrency mining.

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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 08 2018, @09:11PM (7 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 08 2018, @09:11PM (#719011) Journal

    There must be a way to power the cryptocurrency mining computers which generate that much heat. It would be more efficient to simply use that power to do the heating and do away with cryptocurrency which is an astonishing waste of energy and resources on Earth. The power of GPUs should be put to more productive uses which better humanity . . . like video games, and 3d graphics on TPS reports.

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 08 2018, @09:43PM (2 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday August 08 2018, @09:43PM (#719036) Journal

      Or 3d graphics for VR, so Mars colonists can pretend they're not stuck in a tin can or igloo [nasa.gov] on Mars.

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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @02:26AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @02:26AM (#719190)
        Maybe it's cheaper to play games on Earth? They can even be shown a "martian" landscape...
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 10 2018, @01:59PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 10 2018, @01:59PM (#719907) Journal

        Cheaper: implanted memories from Rekall.

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        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:29AM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:29AM (#719137) Journal

      It would be more efficient to simply use that power to do the heating and do away with cryptocurrency which is an astonishing waste of energy and resources on Earth

      Energy to heat efficiency? No need to worry, the energy trapped into storing a new bitcoin is abismally low vs the energy required to perform the computation.**
      Power efficiency? Yes, there are ways to transform that energy into heat faster, but as you don't need to rely exclusively on GPU to cook your meal...

      ** See also Landauer's principle [wikipedia.org]. Yes, it establishes a minimum for the energy required to maintain a bit, not the superior limit. It's interesting anyway.

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      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday August 10 2018, @02:06PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 10 2018, @02:06PM (#719911) Journal

        Due to the conservation of energy, the energy trapped in bitcoin is never lost. In a million years people will be drilling into mars to mine the fossiled bitcoin for its stored energy.

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        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:50AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:50AM (#719155)

      Whenever I hear this its from people who have no idea how much energy is used for various things, oh and they just dont like people using energy for stuff they dont like.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 09 2018, @11:21AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 09 2018, @11:21AM (#719314) Journal

      It would be more efficient to simply use that power to do the heating and do away with cryptocurrency which is an astonishing waste of energy and resources on Earth.

      Why would we want to do that? Energy and resources are damn cheap. Maybe you ought to stop breathing to preserve the oxygen in the air.