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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday January 18 2020, @05:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-are-here dept.

CNet:

The first aren't even built yet, but [Elon Musk] already has big plans for his company's spacecraft, which includes turning humans into an interplanetary species with a presence on Mars. He crunched some of the numbers he has in mind on Twitter on Thursday.

Musk doesn't just want to launch a few intrepid souls to Mars, he wants to send a whole new nation. He tossed out a goal of building 100 Starships per year to send about 100,000 people from Earth to Mars every time the planets' orbits line up favorably.

A Twitter user ran the figures and checked if Musk planned to land a million humans on Mars by 2050. "Yes," . The SpaceX CEO has suggested this sort of . This new round of tweets give us some more insight into how it could be done, though "ambitious" doesn't do that timeline justice. Miraculous might be a more fitting description.
...
fans, rejoice. there will be plenty of jobs on Mars. When asked how people would be selected for the Red Planet move, , "Needs to be such that anyone can go if they want, with loans available for those who don't have money." So perhaps you could pay off your SpaceX loans with a sweet terraforming gig.

Terraforming the planet should be easy if Quaid can get past Cohagen and start the reactor.


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  • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:22AM (4 children)

    by deimtee (3272) on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:22AM (#945192) Journal

    It's very likely it would be a one way trip. You are emigrating, not visiting. What would be the point of leaving assets on Earth?
    You would buy your ticket and spend the rest of your total net worth on high-value/useful items and extra baggage allowance to carry them there.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 20 2020, @05:28PM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday January 20 2020, @05:28PM (#945891) Journal

    While that makes plenty of sense, Musk has indicated that anybody who goes can get a free return trip. Which makes sense if the plan is to send back the Starships for continual reuse. Just put passenger(s) on one.

    Elon Musk considers move to Mars despite 'good chance of death' [theguardian.com] (Nov. 2018)

    He also implied that such a move might be permanent, saying: “We think you can come back but we’re not sure.”

    Elon Musk: Moving to Mars will cost less than $500,000, ‘maybe even below $100,000’ [cnbc.com] (Feb. 2019)

    Elon Musk says he is “confident” moving to Mars will “one day” cost less than $500,000 and “maybe even” cost below $100,000.

    While the final cost is “very dependent on [the] volume” of travelers, Musk said the cost of moving to Mars will be “low enough that most people in advanced economies could sell their home on Earth [and] move to Mars if they want.” (The median home price in the U.S. is $223,900, according to Zillow.)

    [...] Perhaps that’s why Musk tweeted on Sunday that the return trip from Mars will be free.

    The tweet mentioned:

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1094796246613516289?lang=en [twitter.com]

    Q: What are the estimated costs for tickets to Moon/Mars accounting for reusability?

    A: Very dependent on volume, but I’m confident moving to Mars (return ticket is free) will one day cost less than $500k & maybe even below $100k. Low enough that most people in advanced economies could sell their home on Earth & move to Mars if they want.

    So people who want to chicken out or have a medical non-emergency could hitch a ride back. There may be problems with the synodic period timing. Maybe it's possible to refuel with Mars-origin propellant and get more delta-V than you would from leaving Earth, shortening the return trip.

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    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 24 2020, @05:35PM (2 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Friday January 24 2020, @05:35PM (#948026)

      The Mars-to-Earth delta-V is the same in either direction, though Musk has clearly stated that the plan is to far exceed that for a faster trip (a minimum delta-V Hohmann transfer takes almost 9 months). Though while he has also said that a Starship could return to Earth directly from the surface of Mars, an orbital refueling their would certainly let the trip be shortened.

      There is however no real solution for the 26 month synodic period. If the planets aren't in the proper alignment it's going to take a LOT longer for the trip - even traveling at many times the minimum necessary speed. Long enough that it's probably worth just waiting until the proper alignment is close before you launch. It's going to be something really urgent to be worth spending several extra months being blasted by radiation in a steel can, rather than waiting twice as long for the alignment and quick flight.

      As for the free return trip - I suspect that would be necessary to get *any* sane person to consider immigrating. Dreams are nice and all - but committing to spending the rest of your life in a likely extremely limited and austere community, sight unseen? Many Europeans did something similar for the Americas, but that was mostly the poor and persecuted moving to a lush new paradise. And for colonizing Mars we're not going to need much manual labor, but instead the more marketable skills that would earn people a comfortable life here on Earth.

      Plus if you're returning the rockets to Earth for reuse anyway, a few passengers doesn't change the cost much, so why not? Of course, with the move to stainless steel that becomes far less attractive, especially early on - they're a lot cheaper to "throw away", and the steel pressure vessels are going to be valuable raw materials on Mars, while the fuel to send them back will be eating into the colony's energy budget. It seems quite likely to me that they'd end up leaving many/most of the rockets there, though perhaps send back the expensive engines for re-use.

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 24 2020, @06:13PM (1 child)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday January 24 2020, @06:13PM (#948048) Journal

        an orbital refueling their would certainly let the trip be shortened.

        That is what I meant, obviously. Actually you have to start with having it fully refueled on the surface, using propellant produced on Mars. Then you have to have one or more additional Starships capable of doing the in-Mars-orbit refuel. They may be limited by the propellant production rate or storage.

        There is however no real solution for the 26 month synodic period.

        In the short term, we'll just respect the synodic period and launch at the optimal time unless it's absolutely necessary. Later developments (nuclear rockets?) should speed things up. Also, cargo shipments might be sent at any time and any velocity as long as the cost to launch does not go up.

        As for the free return trip - I suspect that would be necessary to get *any* sane person to consider immigrating.

        As I said in another comment, we should expect 10,000 Martians in the near future, not a million. I don't think it will be too difficult to find people who are relatively stable, can do some work, and would not mind dying on Mars. The age may be skewed towards older individuals.

        Plus if you're returning the rockets to Earth for reuse anyway, a few passengers doesn't change the cost much, so why not? Of course, with the move to stainless steel that becomes far less attractive, especially early on - they're a lot cheaper to "throw away", and the steel pressure vessels are going to be valuable raw materials on Mars, while the fuel to send them back will be eating into the colony's energy budget. It seems quite likely to me that they'd end up leaving many/most of the rockets there, though perhaps send back the expensive engines for re-use.

        Maybe the first 20-50 or so Starships will definitely stay there for use as habitats and scrap*. But if the number of Starships landing there reaches into the hundreds, there could be an effort to cycle them between Mars and Earth. Sending back a single one loaded with engines as cargo is a neat idea... hopefully it reaches the surface of Earth safely. Note that the target [twitter.com] for Raptor engines is about $200k each, so it might not matter that much.

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        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday January 24 2020, @08:20PM

          by Immerman (3985) on Friday January 24 2020, @08:20PM (#948114)

          Well, *all* the Starships going to Mars will be capable of (receiving) orbital refueling, since they had to do it on the Earth side to get there. And from the early discussion it sounds like it will likely be a symmetrical process, i.e. any two Starship-class vehicles will be able to transfer fuel in either direction - though I wouldn't be all that surprised if that ends up being more challenging than planned.

          Wow, I hadn't realized that Raptors were targeted so cheap, that's barely more than $1M for the Starship's full set! If the full ship costs ~$60M it'd probably barely be worth salvaging just the engines. (though as they say: A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking real money)
          And I suppose, if we use the payload-to-orbit as a baseline for payload-to-Mars, the ship will mass roughly the same as its payload, so shipping rolls of steel (etc) might well be much more cost effective than recycling the rockets. Once adequate fuel production is established on Mars of course.

          Now I'm curious - let's run the numbers. On the Earth side, 1200t LNG in a fully fueled Starship = 60,000MBTU At current spot prices of $2/MBTU = $120,000 of fuel per launch. Plus at least 12 additional launches to fully refuel the ship in orbit (100t payload = refueling fuel, per launch) = at least $1.6M worth of fuel to get to Mars. So, yeah - if the rockets are reusable enough that fuel is the primary cost, or even just a large fraction, it should be substantially cheaper to send raw materials than cannibalize the ships. I'm a bit surprised.

          >...nuclear rockets...
          They could speed things up - but you're still talking about ~5x the distance between nearest and furthest approach. Not to mention that pesky sun in your path when you're in opposition - in fact it's incredibly energy expensive to get anywhere near the sun, so your opposition trip distance might be pushing 4-5x your conjunction trip distance, so you're probably looking at at least twice the travel time (at much greater cost). Of course if that just means weeks instead of days... maybe not so bad.

          I don't think it will be too difficult to find people who are relatively stable, can do some work, and would not mind dying on Mars.

          I'm inclined to agree - though the governance might be a sticking point. It could be be hard hitting those numbers if you effectively became corporate slave labor. But having the option to return to Earth would be a major consideration - especially if Earth abandoned the colony. Which I think is quite likely to happen - it'll be expensive, and there's not really anything in it for Earth. Profits make the world go round - and while supporting a research outpost is one thing, supporting a colonyis quite another. Especially when as far as we know, there's nothing on Mars worth the cost of shipping to Earth to rectify the trade imbalance. Short of discovering unobtanium deposits, a Mars colony is likely to be an expensive multi-century charity project. I suppose artists, software developers, researchers, etc. could ship their wares to Earth for Earth currency - but for the most part the minute a colonist steps on the ship to Mars, they have all the Earthly wealth they'll ever have, and it becomes a question of how to fund the Earth-imports that they and their children will need to survive.