SpaceX Will Take Humans To Mars Within 10 Years, Elon Musk Predicts (nypost.com) 207
Elon Musk predicted this week that SpaceX will be able to fly humans to Mars within the next 10 years. From a report: Musk made the bold prediction during an appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast. The Tesla founder reiterated his view that humanity should become a "multi-planet species" and detailed SpaceX's plans to develop the necessary technology for the trip. "Best case is about five years. Worst case, 10 years," Musk said. He noted that "engineering the vehicle" required for the trip remains a key factor in establishing a timeframe. "Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket that's ever been made by, I don't know, an order of magnitude or something like that," Musk added. "It's a lot. It's really next level." SpaceX has ramped up its operations in recent years as part of Musk's long-term goal to establish a colony on Mars. Earlier this month, Musk revealed SpaceX has begun building a launchpad in Florida that can accommodate Starship rockets. SpaceX has begun testing prototypes of the 400-foot rocket ahead of a planned orbital launch. During the podcast interview, Musk said his private aviation firm is still working to optimize its Starship design and cut down on the projected cost of a Mars trip.
Musk can do it. (Score:2)
He's more likely to put a man on Mars than any government.
Elon tends to get shit down.
Re: Musk can do it. (Score:2)
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If anyone can do it Elon can. Will he do it in 10 years. I'm going to say no.
Re: Musk can do it. (Score:4, Funny)
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Elon Musk's companies have indeed done some amazing things, but he has famously been way behind schedule on his optimistic statements of how fast things will happen.
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Re:Musk can do it. (Score:4, Informative)
That depends on your definition of "reused". The space shuttle cost over $450M to refurbish for each flight - disassembling and replacing large chunks of the orbiter. So, while you are technically correct (the best kind of correct), it was horribly inefficient in comparison to what SpaceX is currently doing. In fact, to refurbish a single orbiter, you could launch literally 4 fully loaded Falcon 9s, and throw them away afterwards and still come out on top.
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I'll bite. Do you even know what the hell you are talking about? I'm going to go with no. How many people have been lost during the space shuttle program? How many again has SpaceX lost?
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I extremely doubt the timeline.
He seems overly optimistic when entering new frontiers (FSD for example).
Re:Musk can do it. (Score:4, Insightful)
You underestimate the difficulties. So does he, clearly.
A manned mission to Mars is logistically infeasible in our lifetime. It's going to be the proverbial "ten years out" for at least the next several centuries. Go on vacation sometime, and try to go a whole week, away from home, without buying or using anything that you didn't bring with you. Now multiply that difficulty by about a billion.
Fundamentally, the problem is that it's a ridiculously long round trip to Mars: several years long. (If you go when the relative positions of Earth and Mars are ideal, a spacecraft can make the one-way trip in about six months, but then the planets are not correctly aligned for a similarly quick return trip, even if you just do a fly-by without landing.) And even if you could make the tround trip in a year, that's MUCH longer than we can actually go with no way to top up supplies along the way. It's not just logistically problematic: it's logistically impossible at our current level of technology. We have never developed the ability to take everything we might need with us for a trip anywhere near that long, even within Earth's atmosphere, let alone in space.
The problem is cargo space: there's literally no such thing as enough cargo space, to take everything you need for a trip that long. You always end up needing something you didn't bring. Always. The research bases on Antarctica, for example, have orders of magnitude more storage space than an interplanetary spacecraft, but they have never been able to go a whole winter without resupply, let alone multiple years. They consistently have to have stuff air-dropped in partway through the winter, even though conditions are frequently too harsh for a plane to actually land. Sometimes the wait time on an important air drop can be several weeks, due to severe weather, and even that several-week wait time can be life threatening on occasion (see e.g. Ice Bound). Same thing with the international space station, or any other space station: they get supplies brought up from the surface every couple of months. A several-year wait time means people are definitely going to die, almost certainly the majority of the people involved (in the actual trip, not support staff at home of course) and quite possibly everyone.
The colonization of the Western hemisphere by Europeans was only possible because society was far, far more tolerant of death back then. *Most* of the first several thousand colonists, died in the attempt. And they only had to make it across the Atlantic (maybe three months) and then survive in a place that was rather a lot more hospitible to human life than Mars or (scarcely worse) interstellar space. The New World had useful resources: building materials (not least, trees), edible plants, game animals, fresh water, air for crying out loud. Mars has dust and maybe rocks, and the space between here and there has jack diddly squat.
How long can the people on a space station in Earth orbit survive without new supplies being brought up from the surface? I guarantee, it's not several years. If it were even one year, we'd be able to keep a manned outpost on the Moon. We can't: everyone would die. And the Moon is much closer than Mars, and it would be much easier to send over a few needed supplies, but not easy enough to make the manned base feasible.
We're so used to being able to get more things partway through a project, that the need to take absolutely everything we need with us is just not a mode of operation we've got any significant experience exercising. We're only just barely beginning to explore this area, with things like the Antarctica bases and space stations in Earth orbit. We need decades before we'll be ready to attempt a manned outpost on the Moon, or in one of the Earth/Sun LaGrange points. We're centuries from being able to send people to Mars. Unless you count dead bodies as people.
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Ah, but we will attain the technological singularity [wikipedia.org] in 2045. Once that hits, tech that seems centuries away will be mere days away.
So, humans living on mars will be "ten years out" until 2055, tops.
Same goes for curing aging. Though I am still planning on jumping on board with the "digital consciousness" crowd and uploading my mind to a supercomputer. This mortal coil is entirely too....goopy....
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They don't need to bring everything on one rocket. The plan is to send a number of unmanned rockets with supplies in advance of the manned trip.
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"it's a ridiculously long round trip to Mars: several years long" Who said "round trip"?
Who said alive at the end? (Score:2)
Sending Musk's mummified corpse to Mars should very doable. Does not even need a soft landing.
The Soviets could have won the space race this way. A one way ticket to the moon. They had already landed a robot before Apollo 11, a man is just a different payload. The hard part was returning, but that is likely to be lost on the media. If millions of dead Ukrainians did not bother Stalin, I doubt whether a single cosmonaut would even register.
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Go on vacation sometime, and try to go a whole week, away from home, without buying or using anything that you didn't bring with you.
I'm 55.
Must have done that about 30 - 35 times in my life.
Next?
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Elon tends to get shit down
Up, more importantly.
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The good part is that he does both: he gets boosters and people up AND back down, and in one piece.
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He's more likely to put a man on Mars than any government.
Elon tends to get shit down.
Same guy who said he'll get people to Mars for $100k a pop? Hahaha.
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Sure thing. Hey, is Tesla FSD still a couple quarters out, as it has been for the past four years?
Ok, how about Robotaxis?
Fine, but that sweet Tesla Semi is totally happening right?
Oh, no? What about the Cybertruck then?
Aha. Well, at least the Tesla Robot will be out any day now. It's not like they presented a guy in a suit or something!
Sure (Score:2)
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A fully self-driving Tesla is much more straightforward than sending humans to mars and back. I imagine the self-driving car is possible in 10 years, Mars less so.
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And they will be driven to the launch site with a fully self driving Tesla.
I get that you're making a stupid joke about Musk's past claims, but on a closed track at the launch complex, that should be pretty easy for them to do with the technology they already have.
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We need to adjust risk (Score:2)
Of course (Score:5, Funny)
These are not calendar years - they're Elon Years.
Martian or Terran? (Score:2)
These are not calendar years - they're Elon Years.
Mars year = 1.88 Earth year. So, 10 years to land humans sounds about right to me.
Any guesses on how long until any survivors are returned?
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No one will return, they are settlers.
Why the funk would an internet junky return from Mars?
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Maybe they're Martian years, where 10 MY = 18 EY.
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There is no weapons development utility in a manned Mars mission. So no.
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There is no weapons development utility in a manned Mars mission. So no.
No military utility in a "super heavy" rocket to orbit? Pretty sure that lifting something as heavy as a main battle tank to orbit has military application. I could keep going on the technologies needed to go to Mars and their military utility. Apollo was a means to develop rockets capable of dropping the very heavy nuclear weapons of the time anywhere on Earth in plain sight, and that was quite clear to most anyone paying attention at the time. Today there's plenty of things that Artemis and a Mars mis
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You were obviously not paying attention. Beginning the late 1950s or early 1960s, ICBMs were quite capable of dropping a nuke anywhere on the planet--the Russian ICBMs were bigger and more powerful because the Russian nukes were (at one point) heavier than the American ones. Given what it took to build and launch an Apollo's rocket (whether you're talking about the Saturn I that launched Apollo into low earth orbit, or the Saturn V that launched it to the Moon), there was absolutely no utility in putting
Yeah Right (Score:3)
I'll admit to not being an expert on the subject but a "worst case scenario" of 10 years seems completely absurd to me. My money would be on an absolute best case scenario of 20 years.
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I don't know if I'd say 20 is the best case at the moment, but it's certainly more realistic that fever-dream Musk is predicting. He's always predicting massive change in short times, but that's just not the way our world works in practice. Hell, we were supposed to have seen an orbital launch of Starship by now, but it's been bogged down by both practical / engineering problems and legal and bureaucratic problems. It wouldn't shock me if it takes our government agencies another full year to even think a
Why unlikely? (Score:2)
10 years seems completely absurd to me. My money would be on an absolute best case scenario of 20 years.
What about this seems unlikely?
We know absolutely everything we need to know to get people there in one piece.
The only thing missing from the equation is the vehicle that can handle launch and landing. But StarShip is that vehicle, and it's very very close to making full flights (hampered only bu the FAA dragging its feet at the direction of a pissed-off senator).
Musk even has a reasonable plan where sup
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The reason even ten years is ambitious is that it would basically involve sending people out without thoroughly testing the hardware. To do an unmanned round-trip test flight to Mars and back, you have to wait for the launch window (once every two years) and the mission itself will take almost two more years. How many tests will make you confident it's safe enough for people? You also need to develop a self-contained habitat/spaceship that will reliably work for several years without resupply (which has nev
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20 years seems pretty unlikely when nobody has yet put forward a use-case for the trip.
Moon base in 20 years? Maybe. Manned Mars trip? Not gonna happen.
Musk's use case is, "Say something wild, get on the news." Which he does more often than every 10 years.
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Musk is keeping SpaceX private so that there's no fiduciary duty to maximize profit. That means they can launch a private Mars mission that is self-funded simply because they want to. Musk certainly has the money to do so, and he also clearly has the intention of doing so. They'll try to get some NASA funding, which is what the moon landing contract is all about. If SpaceX simply wanted to send astronauts to the moon, they would enhance Dragon's thrusters and have it ready in a year. Instead, they're g
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10 years isn't impossible. Starship is close to flight ready, and with a few years of using it as a transport to the moon should allow it to be sufficiently debugged that a Mars trip would be in the range of possibility.
I'll agree it's an optimistic assessment, but it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
20 years or more. (Score:3)
Considering the levels of radiation (and the duration) that are going to be in play for just a trip to Mars, there is a significant amount of work that need to be done for this to become a reality beyond sending walking corpses to Mars. We have lots of good ideas about how to do it but none of them are implemented. Building a rocket that can make the trip is but a single step in our journey to Mars.
You'll know we're close when they start talking about exactly what supplies they are sending ahead of the humans and how long those supplies will last.
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You'll know we're close when they start talking about exactly what supplies they are sending ahead of the humans and how long those supplies will last.
I disagree completely. I don't think we'll see a manned Mars mission even in 50 years, but I do think Elon will drop a bunch of crates of supplies there, maybe even within 10 years.
The fucker sent his old car into space instead of selling it. He wouldn't have any mixed feelings about a bunch of complete bullshit cargo that supports a narrative that gets him a lot of attention.
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If you spent the same energy you waste on hating him on actually thinking about it then you would have a clearer image of reality and not seem like some permanently offended fool.
Lifting Mass (Score:2)
I suspect how Elon is thinking is that he has already worked out the amount of mass the project will need to boost and how many Starship boosters he is going to need to do it. And then how to pay for it.
The Space Shuttle was originally projected to perform over 50 launches/year but fell well short of that. SpaceX is planning a much more aggressive launch capability and each boost will carry much more.
It is likely that Elon doesn't know what specifically he has to lift to get it done. That will be d
It's not religious- it's track record... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a lot of faith in Elon's vision and capability.
At every turn his track record shows he can do what he sets out do do, I used to be cynical about the guy. I used to sit back with my NASA engineer friends scoffing:
"You can't reuse a rocket!!"
"That launch schedule is impossible!"
"He's going to kill the first crew he sends up"
"That development schedule is too rushed!"
"Vertical landing/return is impossible... we tried it... it didn't work!!
Worse was said by the Blue Origin guys- as I've been told.
I've heard it all. And Mr. Musk.... just keeps moving forward. Sometimes like a slow clock... but he does what he says he's going to do.
The best you can say about Bezos is: "At least he didn't kill Shatner..."
Re:It's not religious- it's track record... (Score:4, Interesting)
> "You can't reuse a rocket!!"
I remember seeing that booster land itself for the first time, and thinking, "Holy cow, they did it! They did it!" I had a total nerdgasm, comparable to using an iPhone's navigation system for the first time in the late 2000's, or seeing a Mac & mouse for the first time as adolescent and using MacPaint, or my first ride in a Tesla, or making my first BASIC game. Those are the special "Jetsons are coming" moments.
Thus, maybe they can pull off a Mars-er.
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funding secured
It wasn’t.
Star ship will launch in July 2021
It didn’t.
1 million robotaxis by 2020
We’re coming on the second anniversary of that missed prediction.
the model 3 will cost $35000
Never sold a single one at that price
I got verbal permission to dig a tunnel from Baltimore to Ny
He didn’t.
red dragon will land on mars by 2017
That never happened.
coast to coast self driving
Yeah that never happened.
Tesla Semi will be in production in 2019
Nikola has actually delivered two of their semi.
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Strange, I thought he was behind all the Teslas I see driving around, and behind getting astronauts back and forth to the ISS, and behind re-usable boosters (not just recyclable ones, like the Space Shuttle's solid fuel boosters).
I guess I must have imagined those things.
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re: exactly (Score:3)
From the beginning, I was excited about Space-X because it seemed obvious to me that at some point, technology to build rockets and go into space no longer needed to be something that only governments held exclusive ability to do. Government agencies get created for tasks deemed SO massive in scale and SO costly, nobody in the private sector would attempt them. As soon as that changes, the right thing to do is begin transferring it to the private sector.
(Take our Internet for example? Started out a governme
Re:It's not religious- it's track record... (Score:4, Informative)
It is true he has achieved a lot technology wise...but the way he talks it is as if it is all private market based ... Government should not tax etc etc
SpaceX would not exist without grant and moneys from the NASA and DOD.
starlink will not be money making by itself but may be profitable because they will get billion of dollars from the rural internet government funds.
His solar company is teetering on failure despite of the tax rebate from government to install solar panels
His Tesla car company had 1 profit making year in 18 years of existence.
A lot of his projections are bolognas. but that should not matter.
If he keeps his mouth shut on governance, covid-19 etc ...may be he would be appreciated more.
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Full Self Driving. Hyper loop. His daft tunnels.
His predicted dates tend to slip. In this case he might have a spacecraft - might - but he also needs systems to live on it for the better part of a year, and then survive on Mars. 10 years is optimistic to say the least.
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One word-contraction:
Auto-pilot!!!
(coming to you five years ago!)
He predicts everything (Score:2)
Sure, gets people TO Mars, but.. (Score:2)
But what about getting people back?
Spirit Spacelines anyone?
lightbulb (Score:2)
Mission #1 survival studies needed (Score:2)
Example: Eager crew of 20 volunteers are each assigned (double blind) to one of 2 groups The "cases" group are assigned to receive a *real* radiation-proof space suit while the "controls" get an identical, but not really shielded, space. suit. Once landed on the surface of Mars, each participant's telemetry tracks SSA (subject still alive) over time. This will examine the data for at least 2 hypothetical outcomes: First is that cases' survival is somewhat longer, presumably owing to real suits, as compar
At least him saying it is conceivable (Score:2)
I think it's pretty optimistic, particularly as with Martian manned flights you can't keep iterating and blowing shit up like they do with automated launches until they got it right.
Even if you have a fully automated launch to Mars you're talking around 260 Sols to get to Mars and land, ideally performing the WHOLE MISSION remotely first.
If we assume that their development is perfect, that means let's say 100d from now to build the craft, 260d to get there...MINIMUM one year to get a test result, even if ev
Well (Score:2)
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I think it boils down to this: Musk's great talent as a tech visionary isn't creativity or special insight, it's convincing people to believe in things, *even when he is failing*. And that's far more important and constructive than most people realize.
We pay a lot of lip service to risk-taking, but we don't actually like it very much. We can't tolerate even a hint of failure, even though that's a logical consequence of habitual risk-taking. Accepting a reasonable measure of failure is the price of maxim
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Musk's great talent as a tech visionary isn't creativity or special insight, it's committing fraud and gettting away with it.
Fixed that for you.
Awesome news! (Score:2)
Musk can do it. (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that Musk can meet his ten year objective to take humans to Mars within ten years if he can round up enough money from rich folks who want their bodies to be interred on Mars. It will, however, cost quite a bit more than Forest Lawn typically charges.
In how many Musks again? (Score:2)
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And starlink will service my location mid/late2021 (Score:2)
No, wait...Mid 2022. ...
Stop giving him press (Score:2)
Musk predicted covid-19 would be over by the end of April 2020. There have been over fifty million new cases so far this month. Does that sound like it's over?
Musk may hire talented people who get things done, but putting any credence to his off-the-cuff predictions on a podcast is foolish.
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Mars is not gravity-less, it is one third G. Where is your proof that is not enough for people?
The answer to that is "nobody knows how much gravity is needed".
The question is, would you bet your life on Mars gravity being enough?
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There's no particular reason to assume Martian gravity isn't enough for humans to survive long-term. The catch is that once you're adapted to it, coming back to Earth will be tough. People born on Mars may not be able to live on Earth at all. For example, your cardiovascular system has to deal with the pressure difference between your head and feet, which is a function of gravity. Humans are only barely able to do this to begin with (many people feel faint when getting up too quickly) - Growing up on Mars w
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If we stoop down as low as Mars, why not build colonies in the ample deserts we have on this planet? That would still be massively easier than to do it on Mars.
Re:Probably not a good idea to go to Mars. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the point isn't about trying to stuff ever more people onto our own planet's surface. The point is to diversify humanity's living arrangements so that when the inevitable happens and one environment becomes no longer sustainable, as we seem damned determined to do to our own planet at the moment, there's something left of us.
Yes, it's a massive challenge on multiple levels, but just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not worth doing. Elon's overly optimistic timeline aside, his basic premise is 100% on point. We either make ourselves multi-planetary, or eventually we disappear. And while some make the argument that we deserve to disappear entirely, I tend to think that the billions of years that were spent getting us here shouldn't be wasted on a future where we wipe ourselves out or the universe does it for us with a calamity and all of our past suddenly amounts to a dust particle on the winds of time.
Re:Probably not a good idea to go to Mars. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mars is already "no longer sustainable," we missed that by a couple billion years.
If Earth life isn't sustainable, Mars colonists already died when the supply ships stopped getting launched.
There is nothing that Mars brings that an orbital station doesn't have except water, which will be available on Earth regardless.
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Yes, pretty much. A moon colony may actually be better and get to self-sustainability much earlier. It will still take a long, long time.
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I tend to think that the billions of years that were spent getting us here shouldn't be wasted on a future where we wipe ourselves out or the universe does it for us with a calamity and all of our past suddenly amounts to a dust particle on the winds of time.
Why? What is so significant about the human race compared to the rest of the universe?
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Outside of us ourselves, probably nothing. But if, as a human being, you find we have no redeeming qualities that should endure, then that's a you problem, not a me problem.
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Outside of us ourselves, probably nothing. But if, as a human being, you find we have no redeeming qualities that should endure, then that's a you problem, not a me problem.
There are some redeeming qualities, but I don't see why it would matter to the universe. I care about people as specific living and breathing people, not as a conept. If an asteroid took out 10 billion people on Earth, having 12 on Mars wouldn't be much of an improvement to me.
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Which is why the entire concept is to get sustainable populations in more places. Whether that be stations or planets or moons or whatever.
We can run, but we cannot hide (Score:2)
The robots are already on Mars. They'll get us there even more easily than on earth.
When, over the next 100 years or so, robots can do artificial research by themselves, why would they want humans around?
We are the penultimate human generation. What follows us may be even greater, but probably not biological in any normal sense.
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I find humans to be the most interesting thing in the universe. Humans certainly exhibit some of the most complex and varied behavior that I've ever seen. Spreading humanity to places currently devoid of life will be a reward in itself.
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And chasing irreal fantasies helps with that how? Multi-planetary is not in the cards for at least the next century, probably much longer.
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Global warming isn't going to wipe out all humans. Maybe most humans but not all of them. It likely won't ever destroy our civilization. We will adapt and likely more of us will survive then don't.
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Global warming isn't going to wipe out all humans. Maybe most humans but not all of them. It likely won't ever destroy our civilization. We will adapt and likely more of us will survive then don't.
Not in any ways sure. We already have something like 2.5C committed. (The 1.5C goal is a fantasy.) At around 5C we may or may not reach extinction level for the human race. That is not so far off. Nobody is really sure what will happen then and we lack precedent to know either way. Civilization collapse is well before that.
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The article you posted mentions that Titan is better mostly because of its atmosphere, but it really glosses over the problem of temperature.
It’s really, really cold on Titan, around -180C (-291F), but thanks to its dense atmosphere, residents wouldn’t need pressure suits. Warm clothing and respirators would be enough.
Warm clothing does not make -291F hospitable. Living in Antarctica will expose humans to -40F, and even that is a very hard place for humans to live in.
If the argument is that Mars isn't a good place to live because humans will have to live underground or otherwise indoors, that shoots down any place other than some ideal planet in another solar system (which would be
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Warm clothing does not make -291F hospitable. Living in Antarctica will expose humans to -40F, and even that is a very hard place for humans to live in.
Especially with the high density of the atmosphere there. It's not impossible, but it would probably be a bigger challenge to deal with than vacuum. That said Titan would be a pretty good place for giant, insulated inflatable domes filled with earthlike atmosphere (albeit 1.5X as dense). It would be pretty cool to be able to strap on a wingsuit and fly by flapping your arms. Mars is obviously easier to get to than Jupiter and probably actually has a less dangerous surface than Titan though.
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If you look at it closer, that's not really a huge issue. If you snapped your finger and had a good atmosphere now, it would take millions of years for it to evaporate into space. The problem is simply the energy requirements of collecting and moving all that gas from another planet somewhere.
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It only becomes relevant when discussing Mya scales.
Mars loses 2-3kg/s of atmospheric mass, or 94Kt/y, or about as much as the CO2 emissions of 100GWh of natural gas electricity production.
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It took billions of years for Mars to lose its atmosphere. If there were a method to "generate more atmosphere" on a timescale that's at all relevant to human race (let's say merely ten thousand years to make it livable) if would already be many orders of magnitude faster than the expected loss. And if someone's still around when it's starting to get a bit thin many millions of years later, they could figure out how to re-run the process.
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It would be nice if some of the atmosphere from Venus could be transported to Mars. It would also have the benefit of reducing air pressure on Venus, improving the prospects for it's habitability as well.
Presumably the atmosphere would freeze when ejected from Venus, and could then be launched towards Mars.
Just don't ask me how to make that happen!
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Mars has substantial gravity, not "micro" gravity. Traveling to Mars would cause about 6 months of micro-gravity (well within what we currently have experience with), and then about 1/3 Earth gravity (not at all "micro").
And I never said that. What I said is we have studied the effect of micro gravity in periods of years. And there are already effects. What no one has studied is the effect of less gravity over decades. There will likely be effects.
There may be side effects to reduced gravity, but they aren't going to be anywhere near as severe as micro-gravity.
And I did not say that either.
And... once there are entire generations raised on Mars, their ability to live permanently on Earth will probably not be that important to them.
Based on what? You are predicting the wishes and desires of people in the future you have never met. I can tell you that I know people who have immigrated to other countries for decades then returned to their birthplaces.
At worst, they might need special accommodations (such as wheelchairs or extra oxygen) that are already required by millions of "earthlings" today.
And you know this, how? Bone l [ucsf.edu]
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Oh right, the human body suffered zero detrimental effects from lack of gravity and going years without it is perfectly fine. They can go out on mars with a tent and sleeping bag. So insightful!
Is deliberately misreading what another person wrote really the best you can do?
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I have no idea why Elon is not investing all of this effort on what really matters. [...]
You probably do understand the logic, you just don't agree with his values. Elon Musk has divulged what he feels are the five things which will most affect the future of humanity: The Internet, sustainable energy, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and modifying human genetics. I would put climate change and sustainable agriculture as being as important as anything on his list, but I don't disagree with the importance of anything on his list.
Even if we add my two items to this list (which from your
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A little perspective maybe? The yearly budget for NASA is equivalent to the yearly salary of about 448K average wage earners. Sure, that would be enough money to pay every homeless person in the country a salary just a little below average. Certainly enough to house and feed all of them and get them a healthcare plan. On the other hand, it's just half of what people spend on Nike products in a year. But USians, taken as a whole, don't want to provide for the homeless. Similarly, USians, taken as a whole, do