SpaceX and the prospects of Mars colonization.

[Trading]

The most serious problem SpaceX faces now is money. They didn't receive new funding from DOD's projects and it won't be easy to build the Starship from their current sources of revenue.

But Musk just wrote that they might be able to build it for less than what Falcon9 costed:

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ceo-elon-musk-says-that-bfr-could-cost-less-to-build-than-falcon-9/

This would be great news. But it's hard to believe, taking in account that the Starship will have to be able to endure a 6 months voyage to Mars and arrive there with its crew and passengers alive and "relatively" well of health.

[Artemis3]

The most serious problem SpaceX faces now is money. They didn't receive new funding from DOD's projects and it won't be easy to build the Starship from their current sources of revenue.

But Musk just wrote that they might be able to build it for less than what Falcon9 costed:

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ceo-elon-musk-says-that-bfr-could-cost-less-to-build-than-falcon-9/

This would be great news. But it's hard to believe, taking in account that the Starship will have to be able to endure a 6 months voyage to Mars and arrive there with its crew and passengers alive and "relatively" well of health.

NASA now appears to want a Moon base, and they will want cargo and people delivered from/to regularly. I think SpaceX has a chance to make more profit doing that before venturing further. And they can take the time to refine their vehicle and ship doing those Moon missions before Mars.

[Spendulus]

....

NASA now appears to want a Moon base, and they will want cargo and people delivered from/to regularly. I think SpaceX has a chance to make more profit doing that before venturing further. And they can take the time to refine their vehicle and ship doing those Moon missions before Mars.

NASA has really good designs for spacecraft that are Moon capable, both the transit and the lander etc. They exist.

Some missions to the Moon are plausible. Mostly when you see these PR releases from NASA, you kind of have to understand how to read them. NASA is always fishing, throwing out ideas, trying to see what will interest the people and politicians and secure funding.

However, last year Trump asked them to send the spacecraft with a couple guys out around the moon and back. They're on board with that, and this is really a huge thing. Money's always a problem with NASA, though. Politically it's very simple. Republicans are pro-space, Democrats are against space.

After Trump gets a second term, you'll likely see some really cool stuff. SpaceX is certain to be involved, but they will not be the only player.

Tourism is possible to the Moon as a business venture. Three to six months of training and two to four weeks on the Moon. It'd be expensive but possible.

[Spendulus]

Some details of the new generation of NASA Moon capable equipment. Would not surprise me if some of it launched on SpaceX rockets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlkjMnWNjic

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-experiments-for-possible-lunar-flights-in-2019

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/altair/altair_concept_artwork.html

[BADecker]

This is where we really need to be before the moon or Mars. From here we can build the Orion nuclear spaceship, and travel to Mars and the moon easily, fast and safely - https://newatlas.com/orion-project-atom-bomb-spaceship/49454/.


SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

The Von Braun rotating space station will be the first commercial space construction project in history. It will be serviced by the SpaceX Starship and be designed to accommodate national space agency laboratories, billionaires who want to own property in space, and space tourists.

SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTNP01Sg-Ss

[Spendulus]

This is where we really need to be before the moon or Mars. From here we can build the Orion nuclear spaceship, and travel to Mars and the moon easily, fast and safely - https://newatlas.com/orion-project-atom-bomb-spaceship/49454/.


SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

The Von Braun rotating space station will be the first commercial space construction project in history. It will be serviced by the SpaceX Starship and be designed to accommodate national space agency laboratories, billionaires who want to own property in space, and space tourists.

SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTNP01Sg-Ss

That is only 'where we need to be' if one can show valid business models that have profit in excess of expenses and fixed costs.

[BADecker]

This is where we really need to be before the moon or Mars. From here we can build the Orion nuclear spaceship, and travel to Mars and the moon easily, fast and safely - https://newatlas.com/orion-project-atom-bomb-spaceship/49454/.


SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

The Von Braun rotating space station will be the first commercial space construction project in history. It will be serviced by the SpaceX Starship and be designed to accommodate national space agency laboratories, billionaires who want to own property in space, and space tourists.

SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTNP01Sg-Ss

That is only 'where we need to be' if one can show valid business models that have profit in excess of expenses and fixed costs.

I didn't mean that we need to be in space. I meant that if we are going to space in a big way - whether or not we need to be there - the above (or something similar) is where we need to be next.

Are you trying to take all the fun and excitement out of life? Why not spend some of our wealth going to space? Not that I am against cleaning up this world, or against helping the poor or impoverished with out wealth.

[Spendulus]

This is where we really need to be before the moon or Mars. From here we can build the Orion nuclear spaceship, and travel to Mars and the moon easily, fast and safely - https://newatlas.com/orion-project-atom-bomb-spaceship/49454/.


SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

The Von Braun rotating space station will be the first commercial space construction project in history. It will be serviced by the SpaceX Starship and be designed to accommodate national space agency laboratories, billionaires who want to own property in space, and space tourists.

SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTNP01Sg-Ss

That is only 'where we need to be' if one can show valid business models that have profit in excess of expenses and fixed costs.

I didn't mean that we need to be in space. I meant that if we are going to space in a big way - whether or not we need to be there - the above (or something similar) is where we need to be next.

Are you trying to take all the fun and excitement out of life? Why not spend some of our wealth going to space? Not that I am against cleaning up this world, or against helping the poor or impoverished with out wealth.

The human race going in the directions of profit is not any different than plants going in the direction of sunlight, co2 and water.

[Artemis3]

This is where we really need to be before the moon or Mars. From here we can build the Orion nuclear spaceship, and travel to Mars and the moon easily, fast and safely - https://newatlas.com/orion-project-atom-bomb-spaceship/49454/.

SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

The Von Braun rotating space station will be the first commercial space construction project in history. It will be serviced by the SpaceX Starship and be designed to accommodate national space agency laboratories, billionaires who want to own property in space, and space tourists.

SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTNP01Sg-Ss

That is only 'where we need to be' if one can show valid business models that have profit in excess of expenses and fixed costs.

Perhaps. But what if a commercial entity lands a rover on the moon that deploys a giant advertisement banner? The UN says its no one's land...

It seems to me a space station at some Lagrange point would be more useful if there was something deeper that needed logistics, such as asteroid belt mining, or a Mars base.

I would rather picture an O'Neill cylinder instead of Von Braun's wheel.

[exemplaar]

Space(fake)x fanboys still blindly discussing about fantasy and fairy tales here?

When will you guys open your eyes and start learning the truth.



Every rocket launch is just another satanic ritual for them and deceit for the masses.

Bonus video/song - Space is fake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcqKUhU0WDc

[BADecker]

^^^ Interconnected hotlines between funny farms.      

[Spendulus]

This is where we really need to be before the moon or Mars. From here we can build the Orion nuclear spaceship, and travel to Mars and the moon easily, fast and safely - https://newatlas.com/orion-project-atom-bomb-spaceship/49454/.

SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

The Von Braun rotating space station will be the first commercial space construction project in history. It will be serviced by the SpaceX Starship and be designed to accommodate national space agency laboratories, billionaires who want to own property in space, and space tourists.

SpaceX Starship and The Von Braun Rotating Space Station

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTNP01Sg-Ss

That is only 'where we need to be' if one can show valid business models that have profit in excess of expenses and fixed costs.

Perhaps. But what if a commercial entity lands a rover on the moon that deploys a giant advertisement banner? The UN says its no one's land...

It seems to me a space station at some Lagrange point would be more useful if there was something deeper that needed logistics, such as asteroid belt mining, or a Mars base.

I would rather picture an O'Neill cylinder instead of Von Braun's wheel.

The big wheel has obvious problems which has led to the kind of stations we have today. for example, the ISS has enormous area of solar panels. Where are the solar panels or power generation of the Wheel?

The O'Neill requires millions of tons of construction material which would imply the PREVIOUS existence of a mining/railgun operation  on the Moon.

That's doable but copper is a rare element on the Moon as far as we know today, so electrical conductors of that scale and magnitude are a bit iffy. There are "high temperature" superconductors which are only a few degrees different than temps at lunar night, someone might figure out how to manufacture those locally.

BACK TO THE ARTICLE. It says ...

The Von Braun rotating space station will be the first commercial space construction project in history. It will be serviced by the SpaceX Starship and be designed to accommodate national space agency laboratories, billionaires who want to own property in space, and space tourists.

For >30 years, the soviets with Soyuz have reliably, repeatedly been doing people into space. So there's zero new with that, and any space station doesn't need SpaceX. The two concepts don't link.

[BADecker]

^^^ Sounds like you are going back to the old idea of separating all the sciences so that they are investigated independently of each other. That's just the thing that we are trying to get away from. All the sciences must integrate together, because any space approach need equipment designed using all of them.


If We Master Building in Space Then the Solar System Will Be Wide Open

A lot of the focus is on the massive speed, distance, and power challenges.

We Are Crippled Because We Cannot Really Build in Space
The most technically feasible ways to start making much faster progress to making travel around the solar system routine and fast and then to build a foundation for interstellar flight is to build large and light space structures.

Fully reusable rockets are the game changer that SpaceX is creating now. The next steps are robotic construction capabilities and megawatt and gigawatt power. No matter what the large power source is we have to build large in space to radiate the heat from the large power systems.

Going 400 Times Faster to Get to 10% of the Speed of Light

To convey the challenge of reaching 10% lightspeed, consider the improvements between the 1977 Voyager and the 2011 Juno missions. In roughly three decades there was a four-fold increase in speed. At that rate, it would take another 130 years to reach 10% lightspeed. The gap between achieved speeds and the goal of 0.1c is a factor of 400 (Juno achieved 0.00025c). The technical challenge is to increase spacecraft ?V by at least 400 times more than presently possible with chemical rockets.

NASA 360 Talks - Building in Space

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=hOHNtoCgQSU

[Trading]

It seems a fact that any astronauts going to Mars will return to Earth on a terrible health condition.

Just check the description of Scott Kelly on his own words:

"When I'm finally vertical, the pain in my legs is awful, and [...] it feels as though all the blood in my body is rushing to my legs, [...] they are swollen and alien stumps, not legs at all".
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/astronaut-scott-kelly-on-the-devastating-effects-of-a-year-in-space-20170922-gyn9iw.html

And he just spent one year on the space station, still protected by Earth magnetic field. Imagine 18 months in deep space with 0 gravity and solar and cosmic radiation bombardments and about 3 more months on Mars waiting for the return window: https://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/q2811.html

But when we think that from the initial crew of 237 men on the first world circumnavigation only 18 survived (a death toll of more than 92%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan#Survivors) we can understand why Elon Musk doesn't seem too much concerned with the health of the first Mars astronauts.

He knows he will find people willing to go and ruin their health for this historical opportunity. And he thinks that it will be worthy.

But SpaceX still lacks enough money to finish the Starship and sent it to Mars on a crewed voyage.

It's because of this that the news about the changing policy of NASA about using commercial rockets to go around the Moon next year can be financial decisive to SpaceX and to the Mars voyage:
https://www.space.com/nasa-eyes-private-rocket-orion-moon-trip.html

Because if NASA decides to contract SpaceX for this (ULA is still a serious candidate, since they built the Orion capsule; but they might not have enough time to prepare their Delta IV Heavy to do the trip), they probably will jump on board for Mars too.

If NASA accepted to sacrifice Scott Kelly health only for an experiment, they probably will accept even worst conditions to a few of their astronauts to be able to send them to Mars.

And even if they won't, Musk will have the necessary money to go to Mars, after all the money he will receive from NASA to send its astronauts and cargo to the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway and to the Moon.

[Artemis3]

What methods would you propose to overcome the lack of gravity? Would making the ship rotate on its own axis (perhaps at the point of the nose) be enough once en-route? Sure the view would suck, but you could get some gravity that way no?

[Spendulus]

It seems a fact that any astronauts going to Mars will return to Earth on a terrible health condition.

Just check the description of Scott Kelly on his own words:

"When I'm finally vertical, the pain in my legs is awful, and [...] it feels as though all the blood in my body is rushing to my legs, [...] they are swollen and alien stumps, not legs at all".
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/astronaut-scott-kelly-on-the-devastating-effects-of-a-year-in-space-20170922-gyn9iw.html

And he just spent one year on the space station, still protected by Earth magnetic field. Imagine 18 months in deep space with 0 gravity and solar and cosmic radiation bombardments and about 3 more months on Mars waiting for the return window: https://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/q2811.html

But when we think that from the initial crew of 237 men on the first world circumnavigation only 18 survived (a death toll of more than 92%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan#Survivors) we can understand why Elon Musk doesn't seem too much concerned with the health of the first Mars astronauts.

He knows he will find people willing to go and ruin their health for this historical opportunity. And he thinks that it will be worthy.

But SpaceX still lacks enough money to finish the Starship and sent it to Mars on a crewed voyage.

It's because of this that the news about the changing policy of NASA about using commercial rockets to go around the Moon next year can be financial decisive to SpaceX and to the Mars voyage:
https://www.space.com/nasa-eyes-private-rocket-orion-moon-trip.html

Because if NASA decides to contract SpaceX for this (ULA is still a serious candidate, since they built the Orion capsule; but they might not have enough time to prepare their Delta IV Heavy to do the trip), they probably will jump on board for Mars too.

If NASA accepted to sacrifice Scott Kelly health only for an experiment, they probably will accept even worst conditions to a few of their astronauts to be able to send them to Mars.

And even if they won't, Musk will have the necessary money to go to Mars, after all the money he will receive from NASA to send its astronauts and cargo to the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway and to the Moon.

This is extremely naive and frankly sort of an anthropomorphic solar system sized ego trip. It's similar to that of an individual climbing Mt Everest just to be able to say he did it, as opposed for some scientific or monetary goal.

It would be like basking in glory to recreate Apollo. We've been there, done that and done a pretty good job of it. The real question is what is today's equivalent push forward equal to the Apollo program of 1970?

What's required, no if ands or buts, is to create and place robotic equipment and materials production equipment on Mars and or the Moon and show that they can produce the raw materials needed to support THE JOB.

The biosphere habitat is only required to be delivered or manufactured if THE JOB to be done require men on site.

The question to be answered is simple. What is "THE JOB?"

I know what my answer would be, but what is yours?

[Xenrise]

Mars colonization is really impossible for us humans to pursue. We need to bomb a mountain on a part of Mars which contain a material than can be of use as water. And as we all know water is the main source of life. But here are some arguments that made colonization impossible to reach:

• The temperature of Mars

        -since Mars is far away from the Sun it can experience more cold season and due to the revolution of its planet prior to the sun is long due. It might have a lot of days and a lot of year.

• The natural phenomenon

        -have you ever watch the movie The Martian? If the speculation of the planet is true on that movie, then we can expect the natural phenomenon in Mars would be harmful to human beings.

• Lacks of technology

        -I believe in human knowledge to make technology that is far greater than we expect. A technology that can help us colonize Mars in the future, perhaps AI could help us. But that technology is non-existence                                     
during this time
[/list]

[Artemis3]

From what i know the plan calls for robots to start working before any humans arrive. I'm not sure if they will go with domes or underground, if they go underground there could be the materials (and shielding) needed for habitat instead of blasting a mountain...

Perhaps this might require some sort of manned space station orbiting Mars itself, to speed up operations on the ground. So if a proper space station with artificial gravity can be built near Earth, such object could be moved to Mars. Well you could practice doing the same thing on the Moon first, where landing and taking off is much cheaper.

AI does exist, it might not have attained full sentience yet, but it is real. You should take a search online, several impressive projects exist.

[Spendulus]

From what i know the plan calls for robots to start working before any humans arrive. I'm not sure if they will go with domes or underground, if they go underground there could be the materials (and shielding) needed for habitat instead of blasting a mountain...

Perhaps this might require some sort of manned space station orbiting Mars itself, to speed up operations on the ground. So if a proper space station with artificial gravity can be built near Earth, such object could be moved to Mars. Well you could practice doing the same thing on the Moon first, where landing and taking off is much cheaper.

AI does exist, it might not have attained full sentience yet, but it is real. You should take a search online, several impressive projects exist.

There's no need for AI for any of this.

There's simply a need for extensive stockpiles of materials and functioning gardens.

But that all still begs the question.

What is all this FOR? What does it DO?

[BADecker]

^^^ There are logical people, and those not so logical. Why did Columbus and others come to America? They wanted to seek wealth, but they also wanted to find freedom. Mars freedom is going to be a difficult thing, but people like Musk have been "herded" by governments so much, that they want freedom.