Elon Musk: What I really want to try to achieve
here is to make Mars seem possible. Make it seem as though it’s something we
can do in our lifetimes. Loren: Elon Musk finally told the world his
vision for colonizing Mars — and it proved to be one hell of a show. His talk in Mexico drew insane crowds. People actually stampeded into the hall where
he spoke to get a good seat. They were then treated to a one-hour breakdown
of all the vehicles Musk wants to build to take humans to the Red Planet. So let’s unwrap all of this, and talk about
what it means. It starts off like any science fiction: you
need a spaceship. A vehicle to carry up to 100 passengers, maybe
more, and 450 tons of cargo to Mars. First, the spaceship will be launched into
Earth orbit, thanks to a massive rocket booster. And I mean massive. When completed, this rocket would be bigger
and more powerful than NASA’s Saturn V rocket. The thing would be powered by a combination
of 42 Raptor engines. That’s the new powerful engine that SpaceX
has been working on. The company just did its first full-scale
test of the engine the other day too. But unlike the kerosene engines that power
the Falcon 9, these engines run on methane. More on why later. So the booster takes the spaceship into orbit. The two vehicles separate and the booster
comes back to land on Earth. It’s one of SpaceX’s signature moves,
similar to how the Falcon 9 lands post-launch. But once that booster lands, it quickly gears
up for its next launch of a propellant tank. That tank then docks with the spaceship in
orbit, filling it up with the “gas” it needs to get to Mars. Musk said it’d take maybe three to five
propellant tanks to fully fuel the spaceship’s trip. Then the spaceship is off to Mars. Once it arrives, the entire thing lands using
its engines to lower itself down to the ground. It’s a technique called supersonic retro
propulsion, and again it’s just like the Falcon 9 landings. It’s also a way of getting super heavy payloads
safely down to Mars, which doesn’t have a very thick atmosphere to help slow falling
objects. After letting out its passengers, eventually
the spaceship will lift off and come back to Earth. And where will it get the fuel for that return
trip? On Mars. That’s why SpaceX is using methane, because
it can be made from the carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere and possible subsurface
water. That saves SpaceX from bringing over all of
the fuel for the return trip beforehand. Will Pomerantz: Elon and the team at SpaceX
have showed really well that nothing speaks for itself quite like results. So I think the most important thing for Elon
and for everyone who backs Elon and the team at SpaceX who do it, is to go out and take
some of these technologies that that he showed off today like the giant composite tanks and
the raptor engines and just keep developing those and keep testing those. Loren: So sounds like he’s thought it through,
right? Well for all that he did say, Musk left out
a few key parts about his human settlement idea. Namely, how these people are going to survive. A good analogy for living on Mars is kind
of like living in Antarctica… but worse. Bill Nye: We have a science base in Antarctica
all the time, hundreds of people there, all the time. But you don't go there to raise a family,
you don't build playgrounds. I love SpaceX, I love what they are doing,
it is fantastic. They have changed the way people think about
space exploration. But I don't think you want a colony on Mars,
I'm open minded of course, but it... I just, if you've ever been to Antarctica
there's nothing to eat. There is nothing to drink. And, uh, you can breathe. On Mars you can't breathe. You can't breathe, everybody, that's serious. Yet Musk said nothing about the types of habitats
people would live in on Mars, and very little about how they would eat, drink, and breathe. And when asked about certain dangers to human
health posed by a space voyage — like deep-space radiation or solar flares — he had this
to say. Elon Musk: So, I actually think the radiation
thing is often brought up, but I think it is not too big of a deal. There's some risk of radiation, um, but its
not deadly. Loren: There was also little talk of in-space
life-support systems or perhaps the biggest issue of all: microgravity. Living in space can lead to severe bone density
and muscle loss. And things at Mars may not be much better. The planet has one-third the gravity of Earth,
which could also wreak havoc on the body. We don’t know yet. But for SpaceX, these problems aren’t the
company’s primary concern. In fact, Musk said that the first colonists
would need to be willing to risk death. Elon Musk: I mean, the goal of SpaceX is really
to build the transport system. Its like building the Union-Pacific Railroad. And once that transport system is built then
there's a tremendous opportunity for anyone who wants to go to Mars and create something
new or build the foundations of a new planet. Loren: But even some of the engineering claims
made by Musk were a little ambitious. For instance, he claimed that the spaceship
could eventually make the trip to Mars in just 80 days if accelerated fast enough. That’s an insane estimate given that most
trips to Mars take upwards of 6 months. Getting to such a speed would take a lot of
energy and then a lot of energy to brake. He also envisions not just one spaceship going
to Mars at one time, but eventually up to 1,000. Let’s do the math there. The launch window for Mars opens up every
26 months. So you need to launch 1,000 ships before that
window opens up. And since each spaceship requires three fuel
launches, that’s 3,000 launches in a 26-month time period. That’s more than 15 times the world’s
current launch rate. And then there’s the timeline and the cost
estimates — both of which seem super optimistic. Musk hopes to complete the first development
spaceship in four years and then send the first big spaceship to Mars as early as 2024. That’s ambitious given SpaceX hasn’t ever
launched people into space. He also says that factors like reusability
and propellant production on Mars means the entire thing can be done for way less than
current Mars estimates. The ultimate result: 1 million people living
on mars in the next 40-100 years. But that timeline is very tentative, especially
since SpaceX isn’t putting a lot of resources into the Mars plan just yet, though. Less than 5 percent of the company’s resources
are going to the development of this interplanetary transport system. And even with these lower cost estimates,
Musk says he can’t do it all alone, hinting at the need for either partnerships with NASA
or others in the private industry. So it’s clear: this is just the starting
off point. There’s a lot of problems to solve ahead. But Musk says there is only one way to solve
them. Elon Musk: Technology doesn’t automatically
improve. It only approves if a lot of really strong
engineering talent is applied to the problem that it improves. Bill Nye: Oh yeah, just join The Planetary
Society, don't forget that. No so, at the Planetary Society we have 52,000
members, and now after this meeting I hope we have 53,000, of people who love space and
want to explore space. And, uh, they are all running to the front
row today. I mean those people, just this um, its an
exciting time if we could lower the cost of getting to space, it would be great.
Here’s a list of the various technologies required for SpaceX’s Mars colonization plan:
Interplanetary Transit System
Mars Mission
Mars Colonization
Do it or dont. Be brave or be afraid. Exploration has historically been a very very deadly endeavor. As Bill Nye said in the video "We have a science base in Antarctica. All the time. 100s of people there all the time." Well, 100 years ago we DIDN'T have a base there and the explorers who wanted to travel around the area died just exploring. We have to go to learn. People will die. Matter of fact EVERYONE ON EARTH WILL DIE... One day...
There are risks... The people going know the risks... Not to say that these things should not be said (they should), but stop making it sound like a fool's errand. These explorers should be viewed as Heroes of Humanity, not simpletons with a deathwish.
Pretty good video. Technically accurate and very clear on the details.
I view this mostly as PR. Elon Musk wants public funding - of course he does.
A temporary science outpost on Mars? Sure - might work. But a self-sustaining colony? That's a different beast.
If you really want a self-sustaining colony somewhere, to protect a small piece of humanity for when the Earth goes kaboom, you first build a space-based colony. Not a moon colony, not a Mars colony. One in space that utilitizes asteroids for raw materials, and has rotating habitats to completely solve that low-gravity problem. This kind of colony can be build incrementally in low earth orbit. If you run into problems, Earth is right there. And the best part of it is that the technology would be movable - start sending bits of the colony into Lunar orbit, Solar orbit, Mars orbit, or attached to a large asteroid beyond Mars. A madman bent on destruction would have a hard time killing everyone if they are distributed in space.
What would be the benefit of being on Mars? It's not like you'd want to go out for a daily stroll - you'd be living inside structures just like you would if you were in space. Asteroids have all the raw materials you'd need for survival.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 17 acronyms.
[Thread #1588 for this sub, first seen 16th Apr 2017, 11:19] [FAQ] [Contact] [Source code]