from the before-SLS-gets-to-the-moon? dept.
SpaceX's 1st crewed Mars mission could launch as early as 2024, Elon Musk says:
Company founder and CEO Elon Musk said on Tuesday (Dec. 1) that he's "highly confident" SpaceX will launch people toward the Red Planet in 2026, adding that the milestone could come as early as 2024 "if we get lucky."
Musk made the remarks during a webcast interview with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the German media company Axel Springer SE. The two spoke at Axel Springer's Berlin headquarters as part of a ceremony honoring Musk, who won this year's Axel Springer Award.
"And then we want to try to send an uncrewed vehicle there in two years," Musk told Döpfner. (The two-year target intervals are dictated by orbital dynamics: Earth and Mars align favorably for interplanetary launches just once every 26 months.)
[...] The vehicle that will make these Mars trips is the 165-foot-tall (50 meters) Starship, which will launch from Earth atop a giant rocket known as Super Heavy. Both of these craft will be fully and rapidly reusable; Super Heavy will return to Earth for vertical touchdowns shortly after liftoff, and Starship will be able to fly from Earth orbit to Mars and back again many times, Musk has said. (Starship will be powerful enough to launch itself off both Mars and the moon, which have much weaker gravitational pulls than that of Earth.)
SpaceX is iterating toward the final Starship via a series of prototypes, the latest of which, SN8 ("Serial No. 8"), is gearing up for a big test flight. SpaceX aims to launch the three-engine SN8 to a target altitude of 9 miles (15 kilometers) this week, Musk said recently.
[...] The final Starship will sport six of SpaceX's powerful new Raptor engines, Musk has said. Super Heavy will sport about 30 Raptors.
Related Stories
Elon Musk will run into trouble setting up a Martian government, lawyers say:
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is steadfast in realizing his dreams of establishing a permanent colony on Mars, but any new government there will face immense legal challenges.
We got an early glimpse of what such a future society could look like, buried deep inside the user agreement for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service.
“For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities,” the terms of service read. “Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”
[...] Lawyers, however, have their doubts about SpaceX’s abilities to set up a Martian state. In fact, several told The Independent in a new story, what SpaceX has laid out in its Starlink user agreement isn’t radically different from space treaties that have been signed over the years.
[...] For instance, the 2020 Artemis accords stipulate that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
[...] “[Musk] could be trying to lay some groundwork for offering up an independent constitution… just like he did for electric cars and reusable launch vehicles,” [Randy Segal, of the law firm Hogan Lovells] told The Independent. “Does it have any precedent or enforceability? The answer I’d say is clearly no; but if you say something enough, people might come around.”
[2021-03-03 22:13:57 UTC; UPDATE #2]:
Ars Technica posted an update to their earlier story:
Update 3:45 pm EST: The SN10 Starship prototype very nearly launched on Wednesday afternoon from South Texas, but a last-second out-of-bounds reading aborted the attempt. The abort was caused by a "slightly conservative high thrust limit," SpaceX founder Elon Musk said afterward. Basically, the onboard flight computer received data from one of the engines that it was producing more thrust than anticipated.
The good news? This thrust limit can be adjusted upward in the flight software, and the vehicle is now recycling through propellant loading for another attempt. SN10 may still fly later today, time to be determined.
SpaceX's original (i.e. aborted) launch YouTube link.
Original story moved below the fold.
There is a slight possibility of a retry later today, Wednesday 2021-03-03.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday December 02 2020, @09:00PM (47 children)
Well done, but to send a crew so soon isn't a great idea. It's going to be bad for their health, mental as well as physical. I hope that they are successful, though. It's high time that the Human Race did something like this. I hope they've sorted out the problems with radiation and bone and sight loss etc.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday December 02 2020, @09:13PM (16 children)
The first Europeans to set sail for the New World didn't have a great time of it either.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday December 02 2020, @09:45PM (15 children)
The Europeans who came to the new world didn't have to worry about:
* radiation
* breathing
* growing food
* keeping warm
* being limited to a very small habitable living space while the rest of the planet is not inhabitable without a suit or vehicle
It will take MUCH MORE than merely getting humans to Mars. In fact, merely getting them there is downright irresponsible if there is not already significant infrastructure already there before humans arrive.
I'm not holding my breath for SpaceX to send a
crewedcrude mission to Mars.When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2020, @10:09PM (6 children)
You over-estimate the comfort of a small sailing ship with a limited food/water supply.
And don't even get me started on scurvy...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday December 02 2020, @10:51PM (4 children)
I don't over estimate it. I'm sure it sucks. But still . . .
* breathing
* radiation
* growing food, beyond the supplies that you take with you from Earth
In the end, anyone living on Mars is dependent on a very long supply chain from Earth. I believe it won't be remotely be possible to have sustainable independent life on Mars for quite a while. At least not without a lot of infrastructure set up there. In my opinion, this should be done in advance of the arrival of first humans.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday December 03 2020, @01:14AM (3 children)
A lot of people did starve or freeze in the new world. Some didn't even survive the trip.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday December 03 2020, @04:31PM (1 child)
I get that.
If we send people to Mars as early as 2024, with arrival in 2026, I predict that one of:
* people will starve or freeze (eventually)
* we will have to support them indefinitely at great expense
* they will have to return back to Earth
Pick one.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday December 03 2020, @04:32PM
My point is that this is not like people who traveled to the new world. They did not need a long supply chain from the old world.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday December 06 2020, @07:40PM
Native Americans were already living and settled in the New World.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Touché) by legont on Wednesday December 02 2020, @11:40PM
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm [gutenberg.org]
I hope Musk is similar generous to his crew.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday December 02 2020, @11:04PM (6 children)
Neither will Martians for the the most part. And (presumably) there'll be no understandably hostile natives to steal the land from.
Radiation is a non-issue anywhere that dirt is cheap. Make your roof a few feet thick, and radiation is less of a problem than rain.
Meanwhile, breathing, growing food, and keeping warm are actually closely interwoven solved problem. You need power - presumably solar, or nuclear and from there early colonists will benefit from the same simple fuel-refining technology that will make it possible to return to Earth.
dig up the plentiful ice
Thaw and convert to hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis (that solves breathing)
Feed hydrogen to microbes to make food (solved by NASA in the 60s
Combine more hydrogen with CO2 to produce methane and pure water (that solves drinking and getting back to Earth)
Building habitats of a comfortable size may be a challenge, but probably not a particularly big one. The weight of the same dirt you pile on top to shield from radiation means you don't need a pressure vessel, just a way to keep air from leaking through the walls. And there should be lots of massive lava tubes around, which should be relatively simple to seal off and fill with air to make vast open environments.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @02:43AM (1 child)
If it's so easy, why don't you do it then. In four years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @04:25AM
Easy and cheap and not the same thing. And virtually nobody cared about any of that due to USSR bursting anyway.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday December 03 2020, @03:25PM (3 children)
Compact deployable Earth-sheltered pressurized shelters: https://www.concretecanvas.com/cc-shelters/ [concretecanvas.com]
They'll need to be fitted with airlocks and passthroughs at each end and confirm that the binder will cure at Mars ambient temperature and conditions.
You'll also need a compressor capable of harvesting Mars atmosphere up to service pressure for the initial inflation, but that's "free" since you need that for the gasworks too.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 03 2020, @03:55PM (2 children)
Quite so. Those things are massively heavy "just add water" contraptions, but they'd get the job done for early habitats until options using local materials were available.
Though with all the work being done on 3d-printed structures such inflatable structures they might not end up having much to offer. Even if you have to bring a binding agent from Earth, using local materials for the bulk of the structure dramatically increases how much habitat you can build for your launch-dollars.
Personally I've long liked the idea of inflatable dome casting, where you have a single inflatable form that can be used to quickly and easily build many domes from local concrete using low tech hardware. But 3D printing isn't actually all that much more sophisticated in principle, and would be far more flexible. And of course, once you've got the initial form printed, you can reinforce it with layers of stronger poured or sprayed concrete if desired.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday December 03 2020, @10:26PM (1 child)
You are right, they are pretty heavy. My recollection is they were about a ton for a size useful as a habitat. It's definitely not a scalable solution. The way I see it we use one as a seed shelter while establishing rough infrastructure. We could live in the can, but the distance from the surface to the hatch makes that problematic. Once we have the seed in place with power connected we can run the scrapers and press to make compressed earth bricks. Those stack into structures that are scalable. For pressurized living spaces we can line those with earth-shipped plastic liners that weigh >100 kg, and once we establish a water supply we can make the membranes locally.
... all that presumes we don't move directly out of the can into bags in subway tunnels.
For printing: I like the idea of 3d printed structures, but it's pretty novel and at the far end of a complex technology train. Squeezing dirt into lumps and stacking them has a lot less that can go wrong. Worst case scenario, e.g. if we don't have enough upmass for the seed or room in the can we can inflate the bags naked on the surface and then brick in around them. The constant bombardment from UV and cosmic rays will be an incentive to work faster.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday December 04 2020, @02:40AM
Compressed earth bricks are indeed a promising idea as well assuming they'll work with Martian regolith. And I do like relatively minimal tech solution. Build stacked-blockstructures sufficient to support at least 15psi worth of sand above them, bury them, and you need only seal the inner walls with something airtight to create a habitable space. Well, and anchor them against lateral expansion I suppose, gravity only holds things down. But I'd bet there's some simple archlike shapes that could be developed to effectively distribute the outward pressure to the ceiling and foundation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @11:34AM
Early European travelers to the New World did in fact have a great deal of trouble growing food and keeping warm, and the ships they traveled in were extremely cramped. Breathing wasn't a problem, at least. But then, breathing isn't a problem on Mars either, so long as your habitat doesn't break down. Either breathing is fine, or everyone just dies immediately. It's not a thing they're going to *struggle* with. Radiation will be a problem, but at least it's a pretty well understood one. I don't know what solution they'll choose.
Most of the plans for going to Mars involve having a container full of provisions and fuel waiting there for the return trip. You want them waiting there so in case the rocket with the provisions and fuel blows up, you know that before you launch the manned mission rather than after. Probably, SpaceX is planning for Starship to be cheap and efficient enough that some small fleet of unmanned ships can just carry the needed provisions and fuel and not have to worry about manufacturing them on-site. Of course, for the long term, that's still what you do - but I think Elon will definitely take a "flags and footprints" mission for the first one because he's planning to launch a thousand and he doesn't care about doing everything at once.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2020, @09:21PM (19 children)
I don't see any evidence that an occupied Starship is going to be spinning to provide some artificial gravity. So you can count on bone and sight problems.
The health problems overall are overblown. But it does make you wonder who exactly will be sent on a first crewed trip. Employees? Will they spend two years or a week there?
Also, look out for estimates of Starship travel time to Mars. With in-orbit refueling, Starship could get to Mars very quickly and cut down on those health problems.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Wednesday December 02 2020, @09:30PM (12 children)
At least we have research on zero-gravity health effects. IIRC, the record for duration is over a year, and there's a Russian cosmonaut who holds the record with about two total years in space with one stint over a year.
The radiation is the real challenge. We only have a few man-weeks of experience outside the Van Allen belts. The Apollo crews who experienced it definitely reported unusual things, like bursts of light when their eyes were closed. Without adequate radiation shielding, Mars could be a slow painful death sentence.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2020, @09:49PM (11 children)
There's the potential to put a lot of mass in the Starship upper stage. Estimates of 100-150 tons to low Earth orbit and Mars don't even count the Starship itself, which is apparently 120 tons dry. The volume is also large, and the number of astronauts on a first trip would be low (probably around 4 instead of 20-100), so there is some potential for optimization there.
We have seen hints that Starship could be made wider than 9 meters for additional volume and payload capacity. I'm skeptical that we will see it scaled up anytime soon, but maybe it will become necessary for sending thousands of people to Mars.
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(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday December 02 2020, @09:54PM (10 children)
Do you mean to imply that the large mass would be between the Sun and the crew, acting as a radiation shield? While that will help for Solar radiation, I'm given to understand that a significant part of the radiation flux is galactic cosmic rays which come in from all directions.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2020, @10:12PM (9 children)
The shielding can be omnidirectional, a mix of additional layers of metal and plastic. Except the bottom of the spacecraft would need less since it has the Raptor engines and fuel tanks.
The ship is probably large enough to have "rooms", like a circular hallway on the outside with inner walls separating different quarters. Crew can sleep towards the very center of the spacecraft.
If none of this shielding is enough, cutting down the travel time is more important. Which is why in-orbit refueling is a necessity. 2-4 months is expected.
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(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 02 2020, @10:41PM (8 children)
I wouldn't put any faith in plastics for radiation protection. It's mass you're looking for, not lightweight materials, even if they are stronger (in some ways, at least) than metal.
IMO, an inner metal hull is what should be counted on more than anything, kinda like a strong room on a ship for protection from pirates. That, plus the mass of cargo brought along to complete the mission, and as has already been mentioned, the engines etc of the spacecraft.
I realize that configurations are limited, but the crew really wants to be at the center of mass, exactly as you say. They don't want to be sitting in the very front of the ship, exposed to whatever comes their way.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2020, @10:47PM (7 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Expandable_Activity_Module#Radiation_shielding [wikipedia.org]
If it's less dense, you add more of it.
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 02 2020, @11:13PM (1 child)
Drape it over the outside of the vehicle? I might buy into that idea. Or not . . .
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2020, @11:32PM
Nope, just covering the interior, forming/covering internal walls, etc.
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 03 2020, @12:40AM (4 children)
Right - it's pretty much the total mass between you and the radiation source that determines how much gets blocked - doesn't really matter whether it's lead, rock or air. Well, except that lead is a lot more likely to create radioactive byproducts when shattered by cosmic rays. And apparently hydrogen is particularly effective - so things with a high hydrogen content like water and plastic make particularly good shielding options.
But it's the cosmic rays that really complicate things. One of the reasons that the ISS has only light radiation shielding is that as radiation shielding gets thicker, it starts blocking cosmic rays. And that's a problem, because when you block a cosmic ray it shatters the nucleus it hit, creating lots of high-speed shrapnel that shatters the nuclei they hit, and so on, creating a particle cascade that's extremely unhealthy for anyone in its path.
Basically, if your radiation shielding is thick enough to block a significant number of cosmic rays, it needs to be thick enough to block the resulting particle cascade or it's worse than nothing. And the thicker it gets, the more higher-energy cosmic rays it will block* (though there's fewer as energy increases) Which means there's a really wide "no man's land" of acceptable shielding thickness. And I fear that may present a serious problem for interplanetary voyages. If you have enough shielding to cross the no man's land, it starts seriously interfering with acceleration.
* While failing to find information on the size of that gap in space, I did come across an interesting tidbit that research done in the 60s determined that, of cosmic rays that reached Earth's surface, 50% of them can penetrate a meter of lead. And, again on the Earth's surface, the electron cascade was at its worst at 15mm of lead. Unfortunately I don't think that translates to space applications since the vast majority of cosmic rays have lower energies and don't penetrate through the Earth's atmosphere (whose shielding mass is equivalent to roughly 10m of water) http://physicsopenlab.org/2016/04/12/cosmic-rays-cascade/ [physicsopenlab.org]
(Score: 1) by Socrastotle on Thursday December 03 2020, @01:10PM (2 children)
Yip, the term there is Bremsstrahlung Radiation. Words like that are why we don't let the Germans discover things anymore.
There was a lot of great research on this in the sixties trying to decide how to best deal with the Van Allen Radiation Belt on the trip to the moon. That's one the people who think we did not go to the moon often resort to. They believe, intuitively, that we'd have needed some huge lead shielding for protection - when in reality the resultant Bremsstrahlung radiation from beta particles would likely have ended up frying the astronauts had we gone that route! Instead some nice light aluminum and GTFO as quickly as possible was the strategy. And the astronauts lived nice long lives for the most part.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 03 2020, @01:59PM (1 child)
Not quite. Bremsstrahlung Radiation is electromagnetic radiation caused by the powerful accelerations of near misses, and is definitely also a problem, but it generates photons, not particles, and thus no particle cascade.
Cosmic radiation particle cascades in contrast are cascades of fission fragments caused by the fact that a cosmic ray can easily contain energy equivalent to dozens or even hundreds of iron atoms worth of nuclear binding energy in a single proton. When that proton hits a nucleus, the nucleus will shatter, and the fragments will be carrying enough energy that they'll shatter additional nuclei in a chain reaction that can last though many generations of collisions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @10:14PM
In addition to the nuclear spallation secondaries you mention, your Bremsstrahlung x-ray photons do pair-produce and create electron/positron pairs that create electromagnetic cascades, not to mention just the x-rays themselves that penetrate the shielding. It all comes down to what particle energies you're talking about because it all comes down to the particular interaction cross sections under consideration. For a single high energy cosmic ray particle, no shielding can be better than some shielding for the reasons you mention because as charged particle energies increase, they deposit lower amounts of energy in the material they traverse (there is a minimum value--see the Bethe-Bloch curve--but above this minimum value it only rises logarithmatically, cf. Fig 27.2 [lbl.gov]). However, no shielding would be a poor design choice when you consider that the charged particle spectra all generally follow a power-law with energy [lbl.gov], so you have orders of magnitude more particles at lower energies than at higher energies.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday December 03 2020, @01:33PM
Nice write-up! The article you quoted was interesting as well.
Since the cascade consists of charged particles, I wonder if imparting a magnetic field across the absorber would influence the charged particles? A sufficient field in the correct orientation would make the particles spiral inside the absorber until they are unable to instigate pair production or emit Bremsstrahlung radiation.
Has anyone investigated what happens to high energy electrons/positrons when they're shot into a superconductor? Something odd is bound to happen.
(Score: 2) by rigrig on Wednesday December 02 2020, @10:41PM (1 child)
What I took from the Mars trilogy: it will be people who are crazy enough that they want to go, and devious enough to hide most of that crazy from the psych evaluators.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @04:28AM
Psychs will be crazy too…
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @11:28AM (3 children)
My guess is the first manned trips to Mars - which right now does seem fairly likely that they will be aboard Starship - will probably work by tethering two Starships together nose to nose and spinning them around their common center of gravity. The force of gravity will be adjustable by changing the spin rate, and the vertigo gets smaller the longer the cable you use. Even if the cable breaks that's not a fatal accident or a mission ender - the ships just make basically the same burn they'd use to stop the spinning on arrival, except they have to do it unscheduled. Passengers and loose items might hit the ceiling, but airliners hit worse in clear air turbulence fairly regularly, and nobody ever needs more than a few stitches.
I don't think a crewed mission will be ready to launch in 2026, but I think 2030 is plausible. Look at how much longer Crew Dragon took than expected. Human-rating a rocket isn't so much about the technology, it's mostly about the fussing. On the other hand, unlike Falcon, Starship is designed from the start to be human-rated, and they've already done it once.
Radiation, now, that's a problem. Maybe SpaceX will come up with a clever solution. Or maybe they'll just count on brave volunteers who aren't terribly concerned about cancer.
(Score: 1) by Socrastotle on Thursday December 03 2020, @12:59PM (2 children)
The initial trips are not going to be a proof of concept - there and back. The idea is that the first trip will be the first settlers. They may eventually choose to come back but after the trip they are landing on the surface and getting to work - of which there will be an immense amount to do. And due to the nature of planetary alignment, those guys are going to be there on the order of years before they even have the option of coming back.
So the problem you're looking to solve is basically ensuring they'll be able to get to Mars, depart, and get to work in 0.3g. We already know we can safely survive a year in 0g with relatively little therapy needed even returning to 1g. Whereas for the trip to Mars we're aiming for ~4 months and 0.3g. So no artificial gravity should be unnecessary.
Now the return to Earth is another interesting question. Will working in 0.3g in for years eventually result in a point of no return where the physiological changes make returning to 1g life simply impractical if not impossible? To say nothing of the first Martians born on the planet who spend their developmental years in such an environment. Whatever the specifics, Martian humans and Earthen humans will undoubtedly come to have markedly different characteristics on an extremely rapid time scale.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 03 2020, @04:19PM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_program#Mars_early_missions [wikipedia.org]
I don't think the very first trip in 2024 or whenever will be true settlers. It will be about the prestige of stepping on Mars first (with the 4-12 crew drawing straws to see who becomes this century's Neil Armstrong), and work in the form of setting up structures, particularly a propellant plant. There will be enough propellant to return one ship to Earth, even without the plant. Large amounts of building materials will be landed up to 2 years in advance. If Starship is as cheap to build and launch as expected, 20+ loads could be landed in the area for relatively little money. Many of the ships could be torn apart on site to use the scrap steel, although there might be a desire to load up one of them with removed Raptor engines and return that.
Mars is about 0.38g, over 25% more than 0.3g for what that's worth. Humans born on Mars will probably be screwed up, but everyone else should have an easier recovery time than long term ISS patients. Except that they will also experience a months long return trip at 0g.
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(Score: 1) by Socrastotle on Friday December 04 2020, @09:29AM
My main issue was one of orbital timelines. I was and remain somewhat uncertain about the exact timeframe to enable a group to launch, transit, work, and return without having to await the next orbital alignment. E.g. if we assume Musk can hit the 4 month transit time, what sort of a window for return in a reasonable period of time (let's say ~8 month return trip) exists, as dictated by the orbital mechanics alone?
(Score: 1) by Socrastotle on Thursday December 03 2020, @08:21AM (9 children)
Even if you try to account for every single possibility, we're going to lose people. Many people. There are an infinite number of ways that things can go wrong, many of which we cannot even imagine, and will not be able to imagine until we experience them. I think it is *extremely* important that we accept this fact ahead of time instead of lying to ourselves. Two main reasons are to ensure informed consent and to avoid reactionaryism. The people going, at least early on, are going to be smart enough to know what this journey entails. But the rest of society also needs to know that they know, or knew. But the real danger is one of reactionaryism. The loss of 7 lives aboard Challenger was an terrible incident. But the true catastrophe is how those 7 lives basically ended government driven human space endeavors in America. If they could speak from the beyond, not a one of those 7 would have ever wanted what followed the incident.
By contrast we lost dozens of lives just learning how to get into orbit, which is many orders of magnitude easier than colonization will be. Yet, we kept pushing forward. And because of this we went from orbit to putting a man on the moon in 8 years! There is also an amusing anecdote there that emphasizes the point of this all. Yuri Gagarin was that first man who made it into orbit in 1961. As the Soviet Union feared he might be killed in a future mission (which would be damaging to propaganda efforts), they permanently banned him from future spaceflights. 5 weeks after completing his training for piloting regular aircraft, Gagarin would die at the age of 34 when his training jet crashed. Death takes us all eventually. All we can choose is how we live. And there seems no greater pursuit than interplanetary colonization which, even after all of today's issues are long forgotten, will permanently define (and cement) mankind's place in the universe.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 03 2020, @02:06PM
>Even if you try to account for every single possibility, we're going to lose people. Many people. There are an infinite number of ways that things can go wrong, many of which we cannot even imagine, and will not be able to imagine until we experience them. I think it is *extremely* important that we accept this fact ahead of time instead of lying to ourselves.
Agreed. And keep them in perspective - there's no shortage of ways that things can and do go wrong in the course of everyday activities right here on Earth. An early Martian settler may face considerably higher risks, but they're also laying the groundwork for a much greater endeavor. How does the risk/benefit ratio compare between the first Martian settlers and the first front-line soldiers in a war?
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday December 03 2020, @09:06PM (7 children)
I disagree. There's a lot that we do know already, and a good FMEA [wikipedia.org] can tell you a lot about what might go wrong and the relative probabilities. Combined with a good simulation, these can be very useful. I learned a bit about that sort of things years ago in the nuclear industry.
Having said that, accidents happen and people do unfortunately die, but that's no excuse for deliberately and recklessly endangering people's lives.
Again, I agree, but we shouldn't be planning on sending them on one-way suicide missions, where they will effectively be living out the rest of their (now short) lives confined to a tin can or inflatable structure in the middle of a barren desert the size of a planet. People are not disposable and we shouldn't be planning to use people in this way just to say, "Look, we set foot on Mars!"
I don't know what point you're trying to get at here. The Challenger disaster was an avoidable accident. People knew ahead of that launch that there was a risk of an explosion with the entire loss of the crew. That came out in the investigation. Those seven good people lost their lives needlessly. What did their deaths gain?
Similarly, another seven died on Columbia. That also might have been avoided.
I don't think it was dozens who were killed.
Different activities have different risks. We can chose not to take stupidly irresponsible risks. They're a waste of lives and a waste of money. We are allegedly intelligent. We should use our intelligence to ensure that our endeavours have the greatest probability of success.
I agree, but colonisation is not the same as Kamikaze missions to another planet. Colonisation should be done in incremental steps. I think it will take a century from the first boots on the Martian ground until there are self-sustaining colonies there, let alone people who want to live their entire lives there.
We evolved on planet Earth. We need fresh air, blue skies, grass, trees, flowers, rain, rivers, lakes, seas... Try cutting yourself off from these things for a few days. See how you feel. See how your cognitive abilities bear up. Can you still function to the best of your ability, or are you merely surviving?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by Socrastotle on Friday December 04 2020, @09:25AM (6 children)
The problem you run into here is that people assess risk and the value of an activity in different ways. Most people would declare a bike maker, "who read some books" as his primary qualification, deciding to try to make a flying machine, something proven over centuries to end in little more than death and disfigurement, to be a reckless and pointless risk. Indeed, I suspect if you injected our current mindset to just 120 years ago, there's a very real chance that we could -even today- still be grounded! How many people have to die trying to make flying machines before you ban the fruitless activity altogether?
73% [wikipedia.org]. That is the success rate of NASA missions to Mars. That includes missions of all types, including even just sending orbiters. And that is one of the highest rates of success there is. Russia/Japan/UK are at 0%, EU/China are both at 50%, etc. And getting humans to Mars is going to be exponentially more difficult than anything we've ever done. It goes without saying that we need to do everything we practically can to ensure success, but ultimately you're never going to get these missions' risk down to the level that'd make most people comfortable with them. And as we look at things on a big scale, many colonists are going to lose their lives colonizing Mars.
This is one reason I suspect that the Chinese will ultimately come to rule space. They view human lives in a way much more similar to how we used to. And that has downsides when it comes to basic human rights in society, but it also has upsides when it comes to engaging in activities on the forefront of what a species is capable of. Whether in things like this, or in taking skyscrapers horizontal [theguardian.com].
As for timelines, try to take yourself back to just 10 years ago. How long would have expected before we'd have a private company sending humans to the ISS on rockets with entire reusable first stages that autonomously land themselves? As it can be hard to imagine how quickly things have progressed, back in 2010 all of these things were optimistic wishes with the biggest companies in the industry and most credentialed experts suggesting they were impossible. The only main argument otherwise came from some guy who got relatively rich selling some financial software related stuff, and decided he wanted to go try to make rockets because nobody would launch his greenhouse to Mars.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday December 04 2020, @09:37AM (5 children)
We're far more enlightened and better educated than we were 120 years ago. Many of the early attempts at flying machines were by people who didn't even have a rudimentary understanding of the physics involved in what they were trying to do, therefore their efforts ended in disaster. We know better now. We shouldn't be repeating the mistakes of the past.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by Socrastotle on Friday December 04 2020, @01:16PM (4 children)
Ah, but where do you think the great advances in the understanding of flight came from? The progress is a direct result of our experimentation. And this is a recurring pattern. After flight became well understood, we then started to pursue the next 'great frontier' which was breaking the sound barrier. And, once again, the bodies started to pile up as learned by experience. And then, once again, as we achieved successes (along with many failures) we were able to develop a much greater understanding of the forces (hur hur) in play, to the point that we are today where supersonic flight is now completely normal and was even briefly a part of commercial flight.
And so too will happen with sending humans first to Mars, then other less hospitable planets (or moons [wikipedia.org]) and then eventually on multigenerational journeys to other stars. Each step of progress we make will result in immense danger and inevitable loss of life, only to gradually become more safe as we learn more and are able to start formalizing the ideas, concepts, and science involved.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday December 04 2020, @03:11PM (3 children)
People who educated themselves and applied the Scientific Method. The others were crackpots and often became the casualties.
Nowadays we would do those sorts of dangerous experiments remotely, with the pilots sitting in shirt sleeves in an air-conditioned office sat at a computer, drinking coffee.
No. First we will send the machines (spacecraft and ground habitats, landers and launchers) and we will validate them remotely from the comfort of an air-conditioned office safely on Earth drinking coffee at a desk, When we are sure that they work properly, then we will send the people.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by Socrastotle on Sunday December 06 2020, @01:26PM (2 children)
That's rather bigoted. Fools don't spend their time trying to build, they spend their time drinking or wasting away on the internet in more contemporary times. The people who pursued flight were invariably doing all they could given the knowledge of the times. The scientific process is not some magical path forward. It's literally just a formalization of trial and error.
You are also making a common mistake in dramatically overestimating what we're capable of achieving remotely. Making robust, error tolerant, and dynamic machinery is unimaginably difficult when you're talking about making a robot you're going to be operating in your immediate vicinity. Doing so from tens of millions of miles away with a time delay of ~12 minutes, in conditions you know next to nothing about?
Curiosity cost $2.5 billion and had some of the most credentialed folks working on it. After managing 15 mostly superficial uses of Curiosity's drill (over 4 years!) it broke. The feed mechanism stopped working. It's a problem that an on-sight engineer could have solved in about 30 seconds. But given the nature of remote development, we spent the better part of a year, countless resources, only to come up with an improvised solution yielding a half ass drill. But it's absolutely a testament to NASA's brilliance they were able to get something like a drill working at all.
And that's not an isolated incident, just one of my favorites. Achieving *anything* at all remotely in new conditions is unimaginably difficult, and that's not changing. The first humans on Mars will likely be able to achieve more in a few weeks (if not days) than we have in the past 60 years of rovers and probes. And this is not only in terms of knowledge, but also undoubtedly in terms of making each subsequent human trip that much more safe.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday December 06 2020, @05:09PM (1 child)
But getting those people there and keeping them alive, healthy and happy while they're there is very important and the systems must be built, tested and debugged before humans are added to the mix. It's stupid arbitrarily wasting lives when it's not necessary. Like I said before, it'll be at least a century until anything like a sustainable colony on Mars will be possible. It will need support from Earth and the people should not spend their entire lives there. They'd go mad.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by Socrastotle on Sunday December 06 2020, @06:27PM
Somebody engages in an endeavor that will help accelerate humanity forward and, even if worst comes to worst, their life is fulfilled in a way that they were more than happy to accept. There is no waste to be seen there.
As for timeframe, one issue makes it impossible to rationally discuss: exponential growth. Once viability is shown, I expect an exponential growth interest from military, industrial, and of course civilian interests. You may be correct that it may take 100 years. And I may be correct that 20 years from today the world will be resemble the one of today about as much as the world of today resembles the world before the internet.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2020, @09:03PM (6 children)
Wonder who will reach their target first!
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/11/29/2311256 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 02 2020, @10:04PM (5 children)
Conveniently, it's far enough in the future that odds are pretty good that neither organization will be held responsible for their claims in any meaningful way. Manned Mars missions seem to be much like fusion power - always close enough that it's worth committing lots of money and other resources to it, and always far enough away that they don't actually have to pull it off.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 02 2020, @10:45PM (3 children)
If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Elon Musk. Fortunately, I'm not a gambling man, so I won't lose my fortune either way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @02:59AM (2 children)
Your pop tab collection is safe.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday December 03 2020, @06:39AM (1 child)
We use bottle caps here.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Thursday December 03 2020, @01:17PM
You use bottle caps for radiation protection?
Surely shag pile carpet would be better.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Socrastotle on Thursday December 03 2020, @02:05PM
Musk first set 2024 as the goal in 2014, and gave the first somewhat more detailed presentation [youtube.com] about it in 2016 and now continues to stick to the timeline.
Like you're alluding to, when most organizations set a timeline for something it's mostly a proxy for a fundraising. We're going to achieve [x] in [y] if you give us [z]. But SpaceX's timeline is self imposed and far from raising money, it's the deadline to start spending money like there's no tomorrow on something where there's no solid and immediate path to revenue. And the progress they've been making for the better part of a decade now gives ever reason to believe that they're going to be hitting the deadline or awful close to it, at worst.