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Mars

SpaceX Plans To Send Five Uncrewed Starships To Mars in Two Years (reuters.com) 105

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
SpaceX plans to launch about five uncrewed Starship missions to Mars in two years, CEO Elon Musk said on Sunday. From a report: Earlier this month, Musk had said that the first Starships to Mars would launch in two years "when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens."

The CEO on Sunday said that the first crewed mission timeline will depend upon the success of the uncrewed flights. If the uncrewed missions land safely, crewed missions will be launched in four years. However, in case of challenges, crewed missions will be postponed by another two years, Musk said.
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SpaceX Plans To Send Five Uncrewed Starships To Mars in Two Years More

SpaceX Plans To Send Five Uncrewed Starships To Mars in Two Years

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  • "2 years," which, due to Elon-Time-Dilation, means at least 7 years.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 )
      Absolutely. But it will still likely happen sooner than anyone else expects. The general tendency (with some exceptions) is that Musk says some highly optimistic time frame, pessimists say it won't happen at all for decades if ever, and then it ends up happening somewhere in the middle. As Musk has gotten to be more of a controversial figure for his political views and generally unpleasant behavior, that's also caused people to take even more negative views of SpaceX's work and prospects just as a matter

      • How many years overdue is full self driving? Actual full self driving would be level 5, Tesla does a bad job of level 3 with fatalities that could be solved by adding LIDAR.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          How many years overdue is full self driving? Actual full self driving would be level 5, Tesla does a bad job of level 3 with fatalities that could be solved by adding LIDAR.

          Tesla already has depth map data from their cameras. If they can't avoid firetrucks with that data, having a second set of depth map data isn't likely to make any difference. (Also, I'm pretty sure all of the fatal crashes were on the legacy highway stack, to within the margin of error, which makes them borderline irrelevant at this point.)

      • Musk acts like a micro manager, but isn't one. Like all CEOs. And like all CEOs you have to remain a bit skeptical about what they say at all times. The difference here is that Musk can't keep from talking, and while also owning a social media company the ability to talk endlessly is unchecked.

        SpaceX succeeds best when they push back against their boss and do things the right way. After all, the boss is not a rocket scientist, not even an engineer, despite the misleading title of "chief engineer", and o

      • The general tendency (with some exceptions) is that Musk says some highly optimistic time frame ...

        and then it ends up happening somewhere in the middle.

        I think this is the point. The goal is efficiency. In other words, if you give yourself more time than you need to finish something, not only will you likely take all of that time but you may think you have enough time for project goals that may not even be necessary.

    • In this case, I believe their timeline is accurate -- Starship is almost ready and their already showing the ability to pump out Starship rockets faster than the FAA can move a sheet of paper from one desk to another. Assuming the FAA doesn't block them for purely political reasons, 2 years is very doable.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
        I have no proof here, but I love a good conspiracy theory. In my (terrible) opinion, Jeff Bezos if behind all the recent FAA troubles for SpaceX. BlueOrigin wants a big cut of that sweet NASA money. Slowing SpaceX down is a good way to stay competitive for future government contracts.

    • Yuuup.

      This is a good thing, though.

      People are realizing that establishing property rights on Mars now will forever rule out terraforming.

      For instance pushing the asterioid belt into Mars over a few centuries would help with mass and heat.

      Can't do that if it's populated.

      We're better off mining the Taurids into a massive space station at a Lagrange Point, and remove the source of Tunguska-type impactors.

      • People are realizing that establishing property rights on Mars now will forever rule out terraforming.

        People everywhere aren't very bright at realizing anything, that's why there's so few people like Musk so far out ahead of the Jonny-come-latelies. "establishing property rights" is just more Old Historic Order bullshit from people who think they already own places but need to formalize it. Like wearing a crown. Kings don't need crowns; they're Kings. Subjects need crowns. Bradbury will have been correct; Mars will be decided 'by the barrel of a gun'. It's another planet FFS, what are you going to do, send

    • It is helpful to recall that in 2016 he predicted an unmanned Mars mission in 2018 [time.com] and a Mars colony by 2024 [dw.com]; and that in 2018 he predicted a Mars base by 2028 [space.com].

      Musk has always over-promised on his Mars obsession, so we may reasonably expect him to miss the 2026 window for even a Mars fly-by, but maybe in the 2028 window.

    • This particular effort won't work with Musk's usual time dilation, because there is a defined transfer window for optimal delta-V to get between Earth and Mars.

      If he misses the transfer window, he's either using WAY more fuel and time to get there, or waiting 26 months for the next window.

      If he doesn't hit the window in 2 years, he'll get another shot in a little over 4 years, with everyone mocking him for missing his stated goal for 2 years and nothing to be done about it.

  • Hopefully there's a payload (Score:3)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday September 23, 2024 @11:38AM (#64809929)

    Rather than just testing consistent landing ability, sending a fuel generator, some supplies, a rover, etc. would be nice to see. Make the rover remote deployable and operable and use it to prep some nicer landing space for the crewed mission.

    And one of those rockets should launch again, at least to Mars orbit.

    • Re:Hopefully there's a payload (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Monday September 23, 2024 @11:54AM (#64809975) Homepage
      There's been some discussion of putting a scaled up version of MOXIE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Oxygen_ISRU_Experiment [wikipedia.org] on board one. MOXIE is a very small scale tech demonstrator on the Perseverance rover which tested producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere by splitting CO2. A fuel generator would be good. As with a scaled up MOXIE, probably more on the working-out-kinks than actually making one with fuel one is intending to use on a large scale. But your point about rovers is a good one. The sheer tonnage they could land with these systems makes rovers look really appealing, especially because for standard rovers, a major part of the cost is just getting the mass down. So if mass is not as much of an issue, rover cost should start going down, and the rovers will start having more options for a lot of other technologies, like a scaled up version of the Ingenuity helicopter, possibly with enough solar power to not need to have to return to a rover to recharge.

      • Solar's pretty weak on Mars... But they're as likely to be cleaned by a breeze as cover with dust by one, so I think it would be interesting to send up some solar tarps and peg them down to the ground. Or just move rocks onto the corners. It would save a lot of mass on mounting hardware, and if you don't care so much about the mass, think of the volume. Either way you get more room to send more stuff.

        • Solar power on Mars is weaker yes, with light levels about 2.3 times as weak as on Earth, but it was strong enough to be able to use it to power Spirit and Opportunity. And solar panels now are about twice as efficient as they were since they were made, and modern batteries are also better. So the energy budget from solar is not bad as long as one is willing to use some time to just sit and recharge. The dust problem is I agree an issue, but from Spirit and Opportunity, we saw that cleaning events were muc

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Sloppy ( 14984 )

            Is it reasonable to just have a "robot dusting arm" with a brush on it? "Oh no, the panels are covered with--never mind, I pushed the button and they're clean again now."

            • This idea and some similar ones were suggested for follow-up missions to Spirit and Opportunity. At the time, they judged that the risk of scratching/damaging the panels was high enough and that they wanted high enough energy budgets for the big rovers, that it made sense to just go nuclear. I'm not sure how much research there's been since then. But presumably this sort of thing is one of the many things when one has this large a mass budget that one could go check with an early launch.

          • Standard solar panels are more efficient now.
            The high tech panels used on the rovers - or any other space technology - are the same.
            There is not much room in approvement in them.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tragedy ( 27079 )

              Higher efficiency is good, but the real question is surface area. It is hard to find information on exactly how big the panels on Spirit and Opportunity were. Everything just talks about how many Watts they produced. However one source says 2.65 meters in diameter. If they were actually a circle, that would be about 5.5 square meters. Looking at the shape though, and at how much is covered by instruments and other bits and pieces, it looks more like around 3 square meters. That's not really a whole lot. One

              • Space probes and landers and rovers do not use off the shelf silicium solar panels.
                They use serious high tech in the range of 45% efficiency. I think Gallium Arsenic, not sure.
                So 3 sqm in earth orbit would be close to 1.5kW. On Mars it would be probably only 500W (to lazy to make the Mars, erm Math)

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by tragedy ( 27079 )

                  The solar cells are more efficient than normal, but the real-world performance is still only about 30%. This is with theoretically 43.1% of the insolation as on Earth. However, that isn't the whole story, so it's not just a matter of multiplying those numbers. While Mars gets less total insolation, it also has much less optical depth to its atmosphere. It also has no clouds, or at least anything resembling a cloud is extremely rare. There are dust storms, but those are more of a seasonal phenomenon. So, ult

                  • Mars has clouds.
                    There are wonderful pictures about it.
                    About efficiency of solar panels. The atmosphere of Mars is very thin, and 90%++ CO2.
                    Frequency wise that should not affect solar panels.
                    No idea about your point about the poles. Are there really areas with sunlight all day all night? I know there are on Luna.
                    I guess the questions will be complicated. Around the equator are chasms, that are so deep, that the air pressure down there is half an earth atmosphere. But it is nearly pure CO2. And sunlight only

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by tragedy ( 27079 )

                      Mars has clouds.
                      There are wonderful pictures about it.

                      I know. That's why I qualified that with:

                      ...or at least anything resembling a cloud is extremely rare...

                      because there are clouds, but they are very rare, seasonal, and only sometimes made of water like Earth clouds. Like you said, rare enough that they make little difference to solar generation.

                      I guess the questions will be complicated. Around the equator are chasms, that are so deep, that the air pressure down there is half an earth atmosphere. But it is nearly pure CO2. And sunlight only goes down so deep occasionally.

                      Spots like that could be good for the radiation shielding and the higher pressure so that habitat walls don't have to be so thick. Power for something like that could come from a solar farm outside the chasm and you could just run transmission lines. With the lower gravity and

      • Better to have a rover there first, with actual science being done, than prematurely sending people who have no way to get home and no way to stay there long term. Ie, do something useful first instead of showing off.

    • Re:Hopefully there's a payload (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SmaryJerry ( 2759091 ) on Monday September 23, 2024 @11:58AM (#64809997)
      They will send much more than that. These ships are enormous, 37 stories tall with a 9 meter diameter. It is truly an incredible feat they have already launched to orbit and mock landed them in the water. Their payload for each trip is 100 to 150 tons. They could literally send 100 rovers in each ship and still have room leftover. They will start with things that are not expensive so as not to risk resources in the case of a failure at first but there will be thousands of different things sent on each ship. This is why they initially launched a tesla into space with the Falcon Rocket. They first offered NASA and others to launch things, but not one took them up on their offer given the risk of failure so they put Musk's personal Tesla Roadster as the test payload, and the flight succeeded and now the Tesla is still floating through space.

      • That's a lot of posting about what they could send, nothing definite about what they will send. If you're up on the latest and can provide links that are more comprehensive than the article linked to this discussion, it would be genuinely appreciated.

        I'm no fan of Musk, but I am a fan of space exploration and won't deny SpaceX has pushed things forward quite a bit.

  • How quickly will this get borked? (Score:3)

    by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Monday September 23, 2024 @12:10PM (#64810051)

    IIRC, in the documentary "Good night, Oppy", JPL had a hell of a time making sure that the thing worked while also being beyond squeaky clean. Some people are very concerned about "contaminating" Mars with Earth microorganisms. I'm guessing that elements of the government are going to try to bork SpaceX's efforts for political reasons while claiming that it's for biological reasons.

    • The same government that gave SpaceX a $2.89B contract (a sole contract at the dismay of the other bidders at the time) for Starship/HLS which is all but an official endorsement of the program.

      Do you not think contamination is a concern that should be addressed if they are going to attempt to land the ships? SpaceX already knows this is a requirement, I don't think the thousands of engineers who are working on this are so cynical or stupid to disregard it as you think they are.

    • Only a very tiny chance that politics are involved here, more it's about Musk with an outsized ego unwilling to cooperate with others. But there are conspiracy theories, and Musk fans, and Musk fans with conspiracy theories...

  • Uh, I kind of checked out on Musk's projects after the whole [gestures at everything], but as near as I can tell, the only Starship rocket that has managed to come back to earth in one piece splashed down in the ocean. Ain't no ocean on Mars, though.

    • You might be interested to know that Apples and Oranges are indeed different things.

      Mars has a thinner atmosphere, which is less deep, and the planet itself has quite a bit less mass. That means that entry friction will be less due to thinner air, last for less time due to less depth, and gravitational acceleration will be substantially less, causing far less extreme heating of the spacecraft.

      As it turns out - atmospheric entry on Mars is quite a bit easier than Earth. The problem is surviving the trip th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tragedy ( 27079 )

        I think that might be a slightly over-positive view of the benefits of a thinner atmosphere. For example, you say that it will last for less time "due to less depth", but you just pointed out that the atmosphere is thinner. A thinner atmosphere also provides less braking. To aerobrake on Mars, it seems like you would need an almost horizontal trajectory that slows the craft very gradually. You would hit the atmosphere at at least 7 km/s. From the point you actually hit the atmosphere, acceleration due to gr

        • There's lots of strategies for dealing with the thinner and shallower atmosphere. For example, they can do a slight aerobrake through the top of the atmosphere on several passes to shed velocity before going for the final landing. And they plan on doing a powered descent - I mean they spent all that time making Starship able to land on it's loud firey end for a reason - they aren't counting on aerobraking alone because they have smart people who designed the spacecraft to be able to do this.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tragedy ( 27079 )

            That was really the original poster's point though. Due to the thin atmosphere, you pretty much have to do a propulsive landing on Mars. There are some other options for small craft, but rockets are pretty much the only game in town for landing something big. I speculated that helicopter rotor blades might do it, but that's pretty iffy. Either that or having some sort of existing large infrastructure that can somehow "catch" the spacecraft. We're tallking about the first landings though, so no infrastructur

  • I think the chances of success would be so much higher if Musk would captain the first ship they send to Mars.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      I think the chances of success would be so much higher if Musk would captain the first ship they send to Mars.

      Even better, we could also send his preferred presidential candidate to be the first president of Mars Colony, and then we'll solve two problems.

  • Musk seeks publicity (Score:4, Informative)

    by Required Snark ( 1702878 ) on Monday September 23, 2024 @12:55PM (#64810203)
    Musk has always enjoyed being in the limelight, and making boastful claims has always been part of his strategy. He also likes to do stunts, which at times have been very creative; sending his personal Tesla to orbit the solar system, or selling flame throwers.

    However, since he has become more involved in politics, his public persona has become more provocative and extreme. He's said that rich tech bros like himself should have more votes the regular people, and he supports more radical and violent content on X/Twitter.

    When he is challenged he engages in retaliation. He's suing the FAA over regulations, which is not very useful most of the time. And he's suing advertisers who are leaving X/Twitter because they don't want to be associated with the more radical content. That's just stupid. He can't win under any circumstances, and it alienates the remaining advertisers even more.

    He's becoming more erratic. It's not good a good sign for him, and it's obviously bad for his business empire.

    • "sending his personal Tesla to orbit the solar system"

      It probably failed expensively and this was his way of hiding the evidence

    • He's becoming more erratic. It's not good a good sign for him, and it's obviously bad for his business empire.

      Rich guy syndrome. Surround one's self only with yes-men, nobody working for you dares to criticize because their job might end. And all those yes-men saying "that's brilliant, m'lord!" makes one start to believe it. Tack onto that a lot of fanboys posting gushingly on social media amplifies this. Eventually they end up completely removed from reality and common sense.

  • Musk haters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Monday September 23, 2024 @12:57PM (#64810215)

    Criticize all you want but SpaceX has done more for the space industry in its short existence than anyone could have imagined. Yes, Musk's timelines are rarely correct, but SpaceX does come through. I'm so happy I'll be alive to see people on Mars some day ... courtesy of SpaceX. Stop the hate and enjoy the show people, it's a great time to be alive.

    • SpaceX going to Mars affects my life positively about as much as the DOW going up. Neither one trickles down to me.

      • Humans (the tribe you belong to) are going to Mars. How does that not excite you? Just think, some day going to Mars will be as commonplace as taking a trip to another country. It will happen, sadly though after my life time. However, the moon may be somewhat colonized before I pass. I look forward to pointing my 90mm Meade at the Moon and seeing the lights from the settlements there. Amazing times!

        • Humans (the tribe you belong to) are going to Mars. How does that not excite you?

          It alarms me - that the first arrival of a human being (either personally or in spirit) would be a megalomaniac arsehole like Musk, one of the worst representatives of the human race you could find. If it is not Musk personally, it will be one of his idiot sychophants posing in his image.

          I am as excited about Musk's Mars colony project as I would have been about the Jonestown colony [wikipedia.org] if I had heard about it back then. They do sound very similar, and worth a bag of popcorn perhaps while it lasts.

      • Building a proper Mars colony would let us here on Earth upgrade from racism to planetism.

      • I support Musk and all his followers leaving for Mats as soon as possible.

      • SpaceX going to Mars affects my life positively about as much as the DOW going up. Neither one trickles down to me.

        No interest in keep the species of humanity alive at all?

        When you care about nothing larger than yourself, you are nothing.

      • ALL technological changes, and ALL large-scale financial changes in a modern society affect you, even if you do not understand how, or lack the patience or desire or ability to think stuff through enough to understand.

        You might THINK the DOW has no effect on you, but it DOES and it does so on a daily basis. The fluctuations in the DOW affect the investor class (even if YOU foolishly choose not to invest) and THEY in-turn affect corporate policies, interest rates, lending and borrowing in the overall societ

    • Criticize all you want but SpaceX has done more for the space industry in its short existence than anyone could have imagined. Yes, Musk's timelines are rarely correct, but SpaceX does come through. I'm so happy I'll be alive to see people on Mars some day ... courtesy of SpaceX. Stop the hate and enjoy the show people, it's a great time to be alive.

      The best thing to happen to SpaceX was Musk getting distracted by Tesla.

    • SpaceX currently is just NASA without the interference, and with the money to actually do what they want to do ...

      They have basically built what NASA should have been doing, but were prevented, by lack of funds and government interference

      They currently are not ahead of what NASA could currently do if the breaks were taken off, but are starting to get near ...

      • My counter-argument: SLS.

        NASA designed a big ass rocket that has 20x the launch costs, with no reusability, and no increased capability whatsoever. And they are 100% dependent on SpaceX for human spaceflight because Russia isn't a very good partner any more, and Boeing shit the bed again.

        There's absolutely no proof of what you claim.

        • SLS exists because of government interference. Namely, pork-barrelling. It's NASA's best attempt at keeping the lights on by keeping the politicians happy enough to keep the money flowing.

        • I agree. The best thing NASA could have done was tell the politicians a new Moon rocket couldn't be made with the budget and materials they had, but instead use the money they did have for further space exploration using robotic craft. It would not have been pleasing to porky the politician but would have been the truth.

  • I assume they're sending two so when the first one breaks down, the other can tow it. That's actually really smart, considering the engineering quality at everything Elon owns.

  • But it's Elon .. (Score:3)

    by JasterBobaMereel ( 1102861 ) on Monday September 23, 2024 @01:54PM (#64810433)

    So expect it sometime in the next 10-15 years like real rocket scientists predict

    Every single time based prediction of his has been delayed .... until it's when everyone else said they would probably do it ... or later ...

  • "SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket – collectively referred to as Starship – represent a fully reusable transportation system" https://www.spacex.com/vehicle... [spacex.com]

    This I wanna see! Maybe a simultaneous landing for show?

    • "I have 15 Starships landing, in just . . . err, I have 10 Starships landing, right after . . . oops, I have 5 Starships landing!"

  • The trick is to... (Score:3)

    by tiqui ( 1024021 ) on Monday September 23, 2024 @11:32PM (#64811713)

    Send several, scheduled to arrive days/'weeks apart from each other, so that if one fails and crashes, software changes can be worked and uploaded to the following ones to try different changes. The Earth-Mars transfer window alters the normal manner of development. This is the true advantage to Musk's approach to mass-producing starships and super-heavies and will enable him to be far more successful and sooner than any traditional defense aerospace giant would manage; the traditional space vendors would make one attempt, using a one-off hand-built multi-billion-dollar vehicle within each transfer window and the first successful landing using THAT method might take multiple decades.

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