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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Predicts People On Mars In 9 Years (cnn.com) 224

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says his company should be able to land humans on Mars in nine years from now. "If things go according to plan, we should be able to -- we should be able to -- launch people in 2024, with arrival in 2025," Musk said. "That's the game plan," he added. CNN Money reports: Musk said he's planning to share an architectural plan for the colonization of Mars at a conference in September. The tech conference audience was enthralled by Musk's comments. He told interviewers Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg that plotting travel throughout the Solar System, and "ultimately other star systems," provides the kind of inspiration that makes life worth living.
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Predicts People On Mars In 9 Years

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  • by garcia ( 6573 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @11:07AM (#52233405)

    From the article:

    Much closer to home, Musk was also asked about the U.S. presidential election, a topic on which he was noticeably less animated.

    Without saying anything about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton specifically, he said, "I don't think it's the finest moment in our democracy."

    I wish there was more context given here. Does he feel this way because of their stance on space exploration/funding/etc or simply because he doesn't like their other political stances?

    If it is indeed, the latter, if it's going to be included in an article, I really wish they had dug in deeper and published his response, rather than just including Hillary and Trump in the article for their SEO value.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Elon Musk, God Emperor of Mars, doesn't really see Earth politics as all that important.

    • or simply because he doesn't like their other political stances?

      People don't make statements like that when they simply disagree with the candidates. They make such patently absurd statements when they have an emotional reaction to them.

      Or they are trying to pander to those who have emotional reactions by pretending to feel the same way. Note carefully that by not saying which of the two he's talking about, both sides can assume he's talking about "the other nitwit" in the race and feel a sudden kinship or connection with him. It's playing politics for commercial succ

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • The danger with these two is that the people will do nothing of the sort, with only a minority bothering to turn up to the polls.

          There is always only a minority turning up at the polls. The numbers that are reported are always "percent of registered voters" and never "percentage of citizenry." From memory, the number of people who vote in the presidential elections is around 100 million (about 47 mil for each side, on average, plus a few mil for third parties.) There's 300+ million people in the US.

          If you don't vote, you don't get to complain about how other people voted. Even if you do vote, remember that at least half of the peopl

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • I was responding to your comment implying Clinton and Trump were "good for democracy" because somehow people will vote for them, not making a general comment about how awful elections are in the US.

              I made no reference to Trump or Clinton when I said that when the people elect someone it is a good day for democracy, so there was no such implication. I spoke about the people.

              And yes, steps should be taken to improve turn out.

              Don't pretend you are agreeing with me on that, because I never said anything close to that. In fact, I don't think there should be anything done to "improve turn out". I think if you don't care enough to vote, that's just fine. I think there are already too many people who are lured into voting by emotional means ("hey, it's the fi

          • If you don't vote, you don't get to complain about how other people voted

            First Amendment. Yes, in fact I DO get to complain about how other people voted. Just as I can complain right now about the candidates, in spite of being neither Rep nor Dem and so skipped the whole primary vote thing.

            • 1) I do vote, so my condemnation of the two major parties are fully justified on that alone
              2) Even if I didn't vote, because I refuse to vote for lessor of two evils, doesn't mean I can't complain (1st Amendment)
              3) Even if the first two don't apply, Liberty requires me being able to have my own mind, and be able to voice it. This is a HUMAN right.

              Now, the people who say "You can't complain because of ________" are tyrants, pure and simple. They need to be confronted as such, in exactly those very terms. To

              • Now, the people who say "You can't complain because of ________" are tyrants, pure and simple.

                No, they are the ones who understand colloquial English and don't think every statement needs to have three thousands words of qualification attached. "You don't get to complain ..." means, in three thousand word format, that your complaints are irrelevant because you have chosen not to participate in the process and therefore have no significant input to the result of that process. Not quite three thousand words, but you get the idea. I hope.

                To the GP, "YOU ARE A TYRANT!".

                Nonsense. You need to read English in conversational mode and not

            • First Amendment.

              I'm sorry, but the colloquial meaning of "you don't get to complain" is not countered by the First Amendment, it is a statement that your complaints are meaningless and irrelevant. The First Amendment changes nothing about that.

          • You have every right to complain about how people vote when there isn't a "no confidence in either candidate" option. Not voting is a growing sign of discontent which will hopefully result in violent revolution. We've proven consistently that grassroots and other forms of non-violent revolution make little long term change (e.g. the Tea Party) with minor exceptions for obvious, and frankly trivial from a legal standpoint social policy (suffrage, civil rights).

            Real change to the movers and shakers, campaig
            • You have every right to complain about how people vote when there isn't a "no confidence in either candidate" option.

              Do you really live somewhere that puts only two candidates on your ballot and has no write-in option? I'm not convinced that such a state exists in the USA.

              For an extreme example, we have 34 candidates on the ballot for senator in California this year... and if you still can't find anyone you agree with, you can write yourself in.

        • It would be quite interesting to see some exit polling data in November showing who pulled a lever with the intent to vote *for* a candidate, or who voted *against* the other candidate.

          With this election, I have a feeling we're going to see a whole lot of the second option. Both candidates suck shit, and have record high unfavorable ratings. Even GWB is starting to look good compared to these two.

          • Never vote "against" someone. Always vote for the person who closest matches your priorities. If the two party's can't represent you, find someone else. I highly recommend listening to the Libertarian Party (LP) candidate. Unless you're a committed statist that is.

            • Exactly. This is what those preferring to vote for the 'lesser of two evils', instead of the 'good, but unelectable' always miss: you can't push the party closest to your preferences closer to your preferences by voting for someone that's moving the party away from your preferences, even if the opposition is worse. You must be willing to lose in the short term to gain in the long term, or you'll just keep repeatedly losing in the short term while complaining that your vote doesn't matter. (not referring

          • It would be quite interesting to see some exit polling data in November

            Exit polling data will be particularly bad this year, I predict. And for this specific question in particular. Will people be willing to admit they voted as a hate vote (anybody but X) instead of a fully-informed high-information vote?

            Even GWB is starting to look good compared to these two.

            I thought it was silly when a hatred for Bush appeared on bumper stickers in a year when he was constitutionally prohibited from running for re-election, it's even sillier to see that name pop up years later.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      He's saying that the choices are so bad, people will emigrate to Mars at the earliest opportunity. First person there gets to be king/queen.

      • From experience, people generally move, and take their baggage with them. It is their own baggage they are fleeing, and yet they take it with them. We'll find that Mars ends up looking exactly like what they were fleeing here on earth, only with minor variances.

        Or, you can watch http://www.imdb.com/title/tt03... [imdb.com] which touches on that very topic.

    • Perhaps that's why he is so adamant about colonizing mars he is tired of earth politics...

  • I predict.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @11:21AM (#52233533)

    If this is true, I predict we'll have dead bodies on Mars in 9 years and 6 months. I don't for a second doubt we could get people there in a decade, but getting them back is a whole different story. As is keeping them supplied with needed items if they plan to stay there. the ISS currently gets a resupply mission about once every 3 months. The longest it's ever gone has been 128 days without a resupply. To do the return flight, you basically have to wait three months for the planets to line up properly. So the people will have to be up there (in orbit or on the surface) for a significant period of time.

    Also, there's no bail out plan. Once you are half way there, if something goes wrong, too bad. You basically have to carry out the mission. With a moon mission you can always skip the landing and return right away like they did with Apollo 13. But with Mars, you have to wait for the planets to be in the right spot so you that you can actually take a short path home. If the planets are in the wrong position, the trip could take a whole lot longer.

    • Can't we just use warp speed, light speed or ludicrous speed?

    • COULD we put a man on Mars in 10 years? Yes, if the U.S. Russia, China, et. al all got together and cooperated, the governments all threw a huge amount amount of money in to the program, all the contractors agreed to forgo their usual over-promise-then-delay-to-get-more-money schemes, the public completely got on board, etc.

      WILL this ever happen? I would rate the chance of that at slightly lower than the odds of there ever being a decent Fantastic 4 movie.

    • Re:I predict.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Robotbeat ( 461248 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @11:59AM (#52233983) Journal

      Nothing in what you just said suggests why you think the mission will certainly end in death. That's a bold prediction, and not one anyone can make.

      For some stupid reason, many people seems to conflate "some risk of a bad thing happening" to "it's a certainty that the bad thing WILL happen and will happen to everyone every single time." It's how NASA's 3% cancer risk from space radiation from a Mars mission becomes "your organs will be boiled! and it's impossible because you'll die during the mission from space radiation." This is just dumb. Space radiation isn't even as bad as smoking, and except for well-characterized and easily mitigated problems with acute doses (the biggest risk is if you have electronics which can't withstand the radiation and so fail, but that's easily engineered away), you're not going to die during the mission at all.

      The first Shuttle flight, for instance, had a, I don't know, 10% chance of failure. It worked, because if you have a 10% chance of something happening, that means that you also have a 90% chance of it not happening.

      I predict that getting to the surface of Mars in 9 years is much more realistic technologically today than getting to the Moon in 1969 (just 7 years after JFK's 1962 Rice University moon speech) was.

      And the first flight probably won't kill anyone.

    • Re:I predict.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wbr1 ( 2538558 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @12:03PM (#52234033)
      And how many dead bodies did we litter the bottom of the ocean with exploring it? Exploration is risky stuff. You mitigate what you can, but you are doomed to failure if you never start.
    • Re:I predict.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by werepants ( 1912634 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @01:03PM (#52234645)

      The ISS hasn't gone an extended period without resupply because it wasn't designed to and there's no reason to. So that's an invalid datapoint with respect to what mission duration modern technology can achieve.

      Admittedly, the astronauts will be more cut off from support or bailout options than on previous missions, but that can be remedied with a conservative mission profile. For instance, have a fully-fueled and checked out return vehicle (or better yet, multiple) and contingency supplies ready to go at Mars before the astronauts even leave Earth. This mission is far less dangerous than sailing voyages that were commonplace in the 1800's. We will never have a 100% guarantee of success, but if humans should never do anything risky, we should never do anything at all that involves leaving the house.

      A reasonable estimate will show that the risk of death associated with a trip to Mars is about the same as or less than the risk from being a smoker. If we have no problem allowing people to make that choice with their lives, why can't we tolerate that same risk for a far more worthwhile cause?

    • Also, there's no bail out plan. Once you are half way there, if something goes wrong, too bad. You basically have to carry out the mission.

      The phrase "Earth Return Trajectory" is probably what you were searching for. In the case of an Earth-Mars trip, you inject the spacecraft into a two year orbit that, left to itself, comes back to Earth. Requires more reaction mass than a Hohmann Transfer, but it has a (reasonably) fail-safe element.

      Note that an Earth Return Trajectory uses more reaction mass to put i

    • the ISS currently gets a resupply mission about once every 3 months.

      I did some googling and tried to figure out what was in those missions and how much the resupply (versus experiments) weighed, but I can't seem to find anything. Just how much 'stuff' is needed very 3 months? What if we had to make it a year? Or 3. Now assume that we spend a more time making things last indefinitely / renewable, a la recapture of O2, using waste to generate methane for fuel, growing some of the fresh vegetable / fruits. Now, spend 5 years worth of launches sending the inflatable base

    • The real problem is that even if there's a 99% survival rate, the first death will delay the project for 5 years. For some reason we're willing to accept a 2% death rate for climbing Mount Everest and continue sending tourists there by the boat load, but we won't accept that kind of mortality rate for rocketing into space.

  • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @11:22AM (#52233537)
    Notice Musk just said landing people on Mars. He never said anything about whether they would be livingwhen they got there.....
    • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
      I imagined someone sending a capsule of cremated remains. Fulfils the wording as given in TFS.
  • Is he planning to ask Mars, Inc. to produce big chocolate bars, launching people with parachutes Dec. 31th 2024 23:59, arrival Jan. 1st 2025 a few minutes later ?

  • This is almost as dumb as Bill Gates predicting AI will take over. We are no closer to AI than we were 40 years ago, and no closer to putting people on Mars than we were 40 years ago either. It may not even be physically possible to create an AI or live on Mars.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @12:07PM (#52234105) Homepage Journal

      We are no closer to AI than we were 40 years ago

      I don't recall computers 40 years ago being able to beat grand masters at chess or dominate gameshows by answering natural language questions. Practical, useful AIs are available on demand to anyone with a phone these days. Sure, they aren't pure artificial brain types, but they are capable of viewing and understanding the world.

      no closer to putting people on Mars than we were 40 years ago either

      Except perhaps for all the practice we have had at living in space for long periods of time, developing lighter and more agile space suits, getting many more countries on-board, that sort of thing. Oh, and the small fact that we have explored Mars in much greater detail, from satellites and from rovers, which is a precursor to landing there just as exploring the moon was.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        AI is not chess playing programs or Go playing programs. Ridiculous.
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          In computer science, an ideal "intelligent" machine is a flexible rational agent that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at an arbitrary goal.

          Modern examples of AI include computers that can beat professional players at Chess and Go, and self-driving
          cars that navigate crowded city streets.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • AI is not chess playing programs or Go playing programs. Ridiculous.

          So what is? Seriously, can you answer that question?

          People have tried for a long time to define what artificial intelligence is/will be. Turing defined it as a chatbot, essentially. Whether or not the Turing test has been passed is a question for debate, but if it hasn't it will be pretty soon. For a long time many people used chess as the gold standard. When that was beaten, Go looked like a good tool to measure AI.

          So far, the skeptical definition of AI seems to be "Whatever a human can do that a comp

      • computers 40 years ago being able to...

        Computers are turing machines and with little effort would run the same modern software that beat grand masters and game shows. It would just take a billion years and need millions of replacements as parts wore out.

        • You're pretty sure you're not a turing machine yourself.

          Let's ask the computer what it thinks it is.

  • One way ticket? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Thursday June 02, 2016 @11:36AM (#52233697) Homepage

    That's what I foresee with the current technology.

    Jokes aside, do we have to send human beings to Mars? What about sending robots first to build at least partially self-sustaining habitats? What about finding ways to protect people from the cosmic radiation during at least three years (x2) long journey to and from the planet? What about ways of bringing them back? What about the storage of supplies, more importantly food, for six years and the mass of a rocket? What about the loss of muscles and bones mass? Last time I checked currently we have no means of creating artificial gravity in space.

    Dozens of very hard to resolve question and somehow Elon claims we'll have them resolved by 2024. Unbelievable.

    • If you send people first, they report back how much it sucks and kills the desire for those other things.
    • What about finding ways to protect people from the cosmic radiation during at least three years (x2) long journey to and from the planet?

      A Hohmann transfer orbit to Mars only takes 9 months [wisc.edu]. 3 years is the time it would take to launch from Earth and travel to Mars via a Hohmann transfer orbit, wait for Mars to be in position for a Hohmann transfer back to Earth, then launch and travel to Earth.

    • The more he talks, the more I start to think of the Smug Alert, fart smelling episode of Southpark at this point.

  • The way Congress appears to view NASA funding, it's more likely that private enterprise will be responsible for the first humans on Mars.
  • No we have have finally have a theory to explain the conundrum. Musk is obviously a bright guy, visionary in fact, actually delivered incredible products that amazes people. Upends decades of conventional wisdom etc etc

    At the same time almost all the deadlines he predicts are missed and he is hopeless in constructing timelines that approach reality. How can it be?

    The theory is this, his mind is traveling at some relativistic speed and the time dilation sets in. It will only take 9 years in Elon's mind. Bu

  • ... Elon Musk actually tends to deliver - to put it mildly - so I'm quite hesitant to blow this off as mere standard ceo/corporate drumming.

    My 0.02 Euros.

  • Here is what we currently know about Musks's plans for going to Mars:

    "He intends to send SpaceX's Dragon Version 2 spacecraft to Mars in 2018."

    "It has the interior volume of a large SUV"

    The trip takes six months.

    There is no way to ever return.

    Survival depends on a never-ending stream of resupply missions.

    This is pretty grim stuff. It is Matt Damon all alone in a a container the size of an SUV, with no chance of ever returning to Earth, for the rest of his life.

    But it won't be a very long life in a

  • At this point I half expect the SpaceX 2018 Mars trip to end with video of Elon popping out after it lands.

The person who can smile when something goes wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.

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