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.
Why the political ending? (Score:3)
From the article:
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.
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Elon Musk, God Emperor of Mars, doesn't really see Earth politics as all that important.
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Please. He's clearly the Fabricator-General of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
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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
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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
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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
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They don't, but in Oregon every election is vote-by-mail. If you are registered, you get a ballot. It will be interesting to see if compulsory registration + vote by mail increases turnout, and also if it affects the very left leaning population areas at all (Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Marion, Linn, Lane, Lincoln counties)
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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Real change to the movers and shakers, campaig
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Perhaps that's why he is so adamant about colonizing mars he is tired of earth politics...
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Only to bring Earth's Politics to mars ;)
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Don't forget Trump's "university" fraud lawsuit.
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Don't forget the legacy of Sanders' wife on that other university. But since that was pie in the sky progressive logic that failed there, we'll ignore it. Besides, Bernie had nothing to do with it (being his wife and all that). Of course, Bernie's wife, Hillary's Husband are off limits, but Trumps Wife is fair game.
No, I am not voting for Trump, just pointing out that hypocrisy abounds in this election cycle.
I predict.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Can't we just use warp speed, light speed or ludicrous speed?
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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.
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Re:I predict.... (Score:4, Funny)
Preferably ALL of them.
Re:I predict.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:I predict.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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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
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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
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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.
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With the one-way trip across the Atlantic, there was always the chance that you'd find fertile land on the other side. With Mars, we know there is nothing but a desolate wasteland. Still, there are probably still people who'd be willing to go on a one way trip to Mars, but I feel like a lot of people would end up regretting it once they got there. You get to sit in a tin can for 6 months while you wait to get there. You land, radio back, confirm that it's a desolate wasteland with no liquid water and no sig
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You land, radio back, confirm that it's a desolate wasteland with no liquid water and no signs of life, and wait a few months until the supplies run out and you starve/asphyxiate.
Somebody should let Musk know about this. It'll be terrible for marketing.
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and you starve/asphyxiate.
It's a small price to pay for the end of these stories. But what will people cling to next?
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After sending people to Mars, I don't expect anything less than plans to colonize Jupiter and Saturn!
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And lots of shit.
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1) Launch supplies to Mars every 3 months.
Nice idea, except that orbital mechanics makes this more difficult than it sounds. Over a two year period, the low energy trajectory varies from 6 months to 18 months. (And when you get there, this flips the other way unless you stay on Mars for a year!) Not to mention, how do you deliver supplies "every 3 months" to a spacecraft that takes 6 months to get to Mars? I guess you could launch them ahead of time on trajectories where the crew module or Mars would catch up later.
The fuel factory is the basic pr
Things left unsaid (Score:4, Funny)
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The "water on Mars" joke is getting old. (Score:2)
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 ?
Dead or alive? (Score:2)
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I prefer the videogames [wikipedia.org] with the amazing boobs physics! Especially the swimsuit editions! [wikipedia.org]
Stupid predictions (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Stupid predictions (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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]
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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
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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.
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You're pretty sure you're not a turing machine yourself.
Let's ask the computer what it thinks it is.
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I don't see us colonizing mars any time soon but we can put things on it including humans although it would be costly and hazardous.
Some of us are looking at this from a very different perspective, as a kid I saw space flights and watched the original star trek thinking wow that's amazing in world where the home computers and internet didn't exist and phones where still landlines. Today I look back and think that the technological world I live in now didn't even exist when I was that young kid or even a you
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If you think AI should look like something from I, robot or ex machina then you are correct. It's kind of like UFO it doesn't stand for aliens. I saw a UFO... "Do you think it was aliens?" Hell no I don't... I think I couldn't make out what the hell it was.
One way ticket? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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The more he talks, the more I start to think of the Smug Alert, fart smelling episode of Southpark at this point.
Re:One way ticket? (Score:5, Insightful)
"We aren't ever going to live anywhere else but the Earth. We evolved on Earth."
We aren't ever going to live anywhere else but East Africa. We evolved on East Africa.
Re:One way ticket? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Um... not sure if I should point this out or not, but there are people living in Antarctica year round... so maybe I'm not getting your point? Or maybe I am! :)
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Re:One way ticket? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then your point is lacking... because when something isn't routine, it's only a matter of time until it is, and the only way to make going to mars routine is to do it first in a non-routine condition, and do it so often that it becomes routine. People flying in airplanes used to not exist... then it was novel... then it was routine. Antarctica is a piece of cake compared to space, you realize that, right? And people have been successfully living in space for a while now.
Are there dangers on mars? Yes. Are people willing to face those dangers to achieve something important to them? Yes. There has always been two kinds of people in this world: Those who value discovery above human life, and those who value human life above discovery. You are obviously in the latter group. I'm also in the latter group... but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate someone who has the vision and huevos to try.
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nicely put
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Flying in aircraft is interesting. I still find it interesting, even after 25 years of doing it. When it takes 10 hours though, it's boring, and I want it to be over. Going to Mars, and being on Mars, is like a long flight, but with worse food, and mindless, repetitious work to do as you schlep through your 6-12 months. So when the novelty of it wears off and it becomes routine, who is going to go willing?
Mars is boring. Humans have evolved to roam about and forage for things. We l
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Our binary friend is having a lot of fun today, isn't he?
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Ok, let's try a little substitution and see it still rings true: ""We aren't ever going to live anywhere else but on land. We evolved on land."
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We don't know that yet. Yes, someone who stays on Mars for a substantial amount of time will have physiological changes in response to the lower gravity, similar to what the astronauts who are on the ISS go through in micro-gravity.
But those ISS personnel are up there for months at a stretch, and it didn't automatically kill them. (To note, Scott Kelly was up there for almost a full year, and he's been back on Earth since March 1st. We're still studying the effects on his health.
Are there physiological chan
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In fact we have almost no idea what Mars gravity will do to a person. The worst case is that it'd be ISS-like, but it's possible that there are no significant impacts from 1/3 gravity, or that the impacts will only be problematic if returning to Earth.
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Ok, now you're trollin'. I'm sure it's just rhetoric, as even you know that no "space nutter" is going to claim that we'll create a gravity machine, that's just nonsense.
Everyone knows that we'll have to create an *anti*-gravity machine first.
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According the space nutters on Slashdot all you need to fix those issues it is some tinfoil and to watch more Star Trek. The idea of sending people to Mars is a joke. We aren't ever going to live anywhere else but the Earth. We evolved on Earth.
There is a lot of room between zero and approximately zero when we're talking about a population of billions. Your statement would still be approximately true even if the population of Mars would grow to a million.
I think it's likely there will be at least one small base with scientists and space tourists on Mars in the second half of this century.
It makes sense to send some geologists there to bark orders at the robots without the time lag between Earth and Mars. AI is going to get a lot better over time,
People can live where they want to live (Score:2)
I hate to break it to you, but people have already lived off of Earth for extended periods. They have also lived under water, despite the fact that they can't breathe water without technical assistance. They have brought what we need of Earth with them.
Yes, we are evolved to live on Earth. But it is no sure thing that Earth will continue to fit the conditions that we evolved for.
I'm quite happy for you to stay on Earth and for your genetic legacy to die off whenever Earth becomes uninhabitable. Regardless o
Maybe, but not likely to be NASA (Score:2)
Re:Maybe, but not likely to be NASA (Score:4)
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Musk timeline and planet Earth (Score:2)
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
Well, contrary to other blowhards ... (Score:2)
... 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.
I Await Musk's September Plan But... (Score:2)
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
Mars 2018 (Score:2)
At this point I half expect the SpaceX 2018 Mars trip to end with video of Elon popping out after it lands.
It's not implausible. It's actually very likely. (Score:2, Funny)
I don't think it's implausible. This morning we learned that Apple has released the first preview of Swift 3.0 [slashdot.org]. This is an important step in getting to Mars. After all, software will be crucial for any manned mission there, just like software was crucial to landing humans on the Moon. Swift is just the sort of language that's needed in order to write the complex and critical software needed for such a mission. So now that the software probably won't be an issue, it's just a matter of getting the rocketry an
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You got modded down for this, but this is actually the sort of visionary thinking that I have come to expect from top executives.
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BS!
I don't think the article said live, intact people...
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live, intact people
This would make a better headline!
Mars to Be Overrun With Circumcised Zombies in 9 Years!
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There's nothing really technically or even economically preventing it,
The extended 0-G time and radiation exposure is a real hurdle. I don't see us setting foot within a decade unless those who go are just accepting lifelong disability as a consequence.
Other than that, though, it does seem to be a problem we could solve with a large enough budget. I doubt that budget will materialize, however, unless Gates and Buffet also take an interest in Mars.
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Cause, effect, causality, preserving the timeline and the human race. How hard is that to understand?
Re:And this is news how? (Score:5, Insightful)
And who cares what religious idiots say in 2016?
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They guy plays a long game. Both technically and financially. I suspect Tesla and Solar City are just means to get himself to Mars, where he will retire. [vanityfair.com]
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That's some excellent entitlement you've got there... Because Tesla offered a car with free supercharging, that it follows that ALL cars made by Tesla will have free access to supercharging? I'm actually relieved to see that they won't offer it with the Model 3 because I always thought the math was misleading when they tell you the cost of the car includes the savings on not buying gas... It always sounded to me like you'd be "pre-paying" for your gas on a gas-free car. Plus Musk is dead right that the i
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In the early 1900s there where battery changing stations used mostly by businesses but there was a period when electric was preferred over gas people tend to forget that.
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He can be the president of an ENTIRE planet.
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Yeah, I would never travel there, after all it would mean I would never be able to first post on slashdot again.
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Darned speed of light delay!!!!!