Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Mars

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.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

SpaceX Will Take Humans To Mars Within 10 Years, Elon Musk Predicts

Comments Filter:
  • He's more likely to put a man on Mars than any government.

    Elon tends to get shit down.

    • Well, certainly. A snowball's chance in hell is greater than zero.
    • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      If anyone can do it Elon can. Will he do it in 10 years. I'm going to say no.

      • by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @02:27PM (#62125755) Homepage
        He'll build a fully self driving hyperloop powered by solar roof tiles with 1Tbps-10ms latency micro satellite Internet access to Mars within 3 years.
      • by XXongo ( 3986865 )
        "no" is a good bet for the timeline.

        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.

    • by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      I extremely doubt the timeline.

      He seems overly optimistic when entering new frontiers (FSD for example).

    • Re:Musk can do it. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jonadab ( 583620 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @03:30PM (#62125987) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • 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....

      • 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.

      • "it's a ridiculously long round trip to Mars: several years long" Who said "round trip"?

        • 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.

      • 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?

    • Elon tends to get shit down

      Up, more importantly.

    • 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.

    • 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!

  • And they will be driven to the launch site with a fully self driving Tesla.
  • people have explored because they were curious, thrill seekers, or desperate, what never changes is entering a new environment tends to be dangerous and often if not usually leads to death. Even the most famous and allegedly successful explorations often were not so. Most if not all of the Columbus expedition would have died if they had not stolen supplies from Hispaniola, resulting in the deaths of most of the native of the island. It Mars has nothing Humans need to survive. Getting there has never been
  • Of course (Score:5, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @02:19PM (#62125727)

    These are not calendar years - they're Elon Years.

    • 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?

    • Maybe they're Martian years, where 10 MY = 18 EY.

  • by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @02:23PM (#62125743)

    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.

    • 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

    • 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

      • 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

    • 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.

      • by crow ( 16139 )

        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

    • 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.

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @02:23PM (#62125745)

    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.

    • 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.

      • 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.

  • 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

  • by beheaderaswp ( 549877 ) * on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @02:52PM (#62125841)

    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..."

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @03:10PM (#62125907) Journal

      > "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.

    • Musks track record is promise big and fail to deliver. Let’s look at his track record.

      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.

    • 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

    • by tizan ( 925212 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @04:45PM (#62126185)

      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.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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.

    • One word-contraction:

      Auto-pilot!!!

      (coming to you five years ago!)

  • ...and then nothing happens (hyperloop, rocket teslas, matrix tunnels, solar roofs, self driving cars, travel by rocket, tesla trucks).
  • But what about getting people back?

    Spirit Spacelines anyone?

  • I have an idea what to do with all the unvaccinated people...
  • 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

  • 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

  • Yeah, yeah, he makes grandiose promises, but ... then he actually accomplishes more than anybody else too. (See, electric vehicles for example.)
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      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

      • 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.

  • I'm sure Elon will fill his ship with sexy soon to be corpses in no time.
  • 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.

  • Where one Musk is the period from the promise FSD to its actual arrival.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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.

Is knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know that?

Working...