Musk dreams of launching five Starships to Mars in two years We regret to inform you that Elon Musk has been using his social media orifice, X, to make some impressively outlandish claims once again. This time, the billionaire stated that SpaceX plans to launch a bunch of uncrewed Starships to Mars "in two years." Starship, which has yet to make it to orbit and land without exploding, …
"considering SpaceX is still a private company, I don't know what stock it's supposed to be hyping."
SpaceX lives off of fresh investor capital raises a couple-three times each year. The hype is to keep the existing investors from suing and bringing in a new batch that have dreams of sending people they don't like to Mars.
"though it was close for Starship given that the flaps were well on the way to being melted off."
Not really in reusable condition, that's for sure. The video of the booster simulating a landing showed it on fire. The retrieval of the booster let's us see that it looks a bit worse for wear too. Granted, it was a really hot thing being dunked in sea water, but the outer ring of engines had a chunk missing that could have been the side that was burning and that "anomaly" might be why they thought they ought to fish it out to see what happened. It hadn't been said beforehand that they were going to dredge it back up.
Judging by the expected amount of damage to the human body caused by cosmic rays and other radiation during a passage to Mars, there won't be anyone left alive enough to return.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/jun/would-astronauts-kidneys-survive-roundtrip-mars#:~:text=The%20structure%20and%20function%20of,led%20by%20researchers%20from%20UCL.
Strangely it appears that there are three different regulators at work in the USA. FAA licenses commercial spaceflight, NASA licenses governmental missions, and the DOD licenses it's own spook launches. Which is why the FAA are concerned about booster falling over after landing, but not involved with Starliner stranding astronauts on the ISS. NASA Spaceflight has a good video on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TobeGL4Ma8
Perhaps SpaceX can persuade NASA to reclassify them as government tests and override the FAA's authority...
"NASA licenses governmental missions"
Ahhh, no. NASA commissions launches for their projects and the spooks buy launch services as needed, but neither "license" launches.
NASA doesn't want Starship at any of their facilities with the attitude of just touching off the blue paper and see what happens.
From an interview with an FAA guy the other day, yeah, they do. FAA may consult on DoD or NASA launches, but they don't licence them. As I understood it, DoD licences its own launches, NASA licences launches for "experimental" craft from its launch facilities, but once they are "production ready", the FAA licences the launches. Happy to be corrected, but that's pretty much what the FAA guy said as I understood it.
It kinda makes sense that FAA do commercial licensing, DoD does military stuff. That’s how it works with airplanes. It’s also how it works in the UK, with the CAA and MoD and I expect in most western democracies too.
Of course they likely coordinate a lot - eg the military still have to be able to work with civilian ATC norms and systems. The separation allows militaries to do things that you’d really not want a commercial outfit doing.
"NASA licences launches for "experimental" craft from its launch facilities,"
Technically, nearly every rocket is going to be "experimental" if you hold them up to a aircraft regime of type certificates. NASA and the military (Vandenberg, Cape Canaveral) will "approve" vehicles to be flown, so in a sense it's a license, but again, not technically and those craft must still be licensed by the FAA with payloads possibly licensed by the FCC since they'll be transmitting radio signals. Military aircraft are a wholly separate thing. They do need to be interoperable with the civilian air traffic control, but they don't get type certifications nor are they required to have the same inspections. In practice, they do get the inspections and sign offs, but usually by the branch of the military that has ordered them. This is really a problem when you want to buy something like an Mig 15, L39 or a Fouga CM-170 and get it licensed for private use. You can and they will always be "experimental" aircraft. They usually have to go through a comprehensive tear down and inspection by a licensed facility.
"What amazes me is that there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of people who believe him."
Agreed, but in terms of SpaceX, most of what he's promised has happened, eventually. Just not to the claimed timelines :-)
"apart from the waste of money attempting it. It's ego, not logic."
That's the big thing that people don't stop to think about. Where's the value? Science? Yep, I'll go with science, but pure science at that cost level isn't going to have any ROI. Even if Mars were coated in precious metals, the shipping cost kills the deal.
Stuff on the moon, OTOH, could have the potential to see a commercial return. The ability to do science on ISS in micro-G has been very useful and led to advances in processes on Earth. The back side of the moon may wind up being the only place in the solar system to do radio astronomy in 5 years. It might also be possible to create materials useful in quantum computers in 1/6G that are difficult to do on Earth. A step by step process is indicated. There's no point in building infrastructure for 100 people if it's going to be some time before the "killer app" is sorted. A hab for no more than a dozen with a useful lab might be a decent goal. Not that it would be fully staffed immediately, but a bit of space to grow in the short term is not a bad thing.
I can't actually think of any tech that has actually benefitted in a significant way from the ISS. I see a lot of research, but it all looks like the research trip I took to the Antarctic: justification to do it.
Can anyone give real examples of something that has made a difference?
The ISS has hosted a lot of science experiments that couldn’t be done on earth. Some of its early design iterations were down to the realisation that they hadn’t got its self-gravity field low enough.
The value of that science? Well you pays yours money and takes one’s chances on that when you start these projects.
Indirect benefits? I guess we’ve learned a lot more about sustaining a vehicle and crew long term in orbit.
The way these things go is that ultimately the politicians want to see a return on investment, and their patience is limited. The problem these days is that we’ve actually done quite a lot of the things that are reasonably accomplishable. Eg Particle physics wants a bigger LHC but can’t express why…
> The back side of the moon may wind up being the only place in the solar system to do radio astronomy in 5 years.
Not after we coat the moon in 4G satellites - no doubt Musk will want to put Starlink in too.
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century early years of the twenty first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
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"I don't believe either of them, but I think EVENTUALLY SpaceX will get something to Mars."
NASA already has and found a bleak landscape. NASA has the advantage that the product they need to provide is knowledge and that doesn't have to pay off this quarter to keep shareholders happy. Putting people on Mars is a pleasant fantasy, but it breaks down pretty quickly with a short lifespan as part of the cost. Just getting people there will be a major chore with the chemical propulsion we use now. The trip time of 9 months needs to come down substantially for both the physical and mental health of the travelers. An immense amount of robotic work needs to be done to prove out things such as harvesting water, creating soil that can be used to grow food and finding a cost effective source of Nitrogen. Oxygen doesn't seem to be an issue other than the "cost" to free it, but 70% of what we breath is N and the plants need it as well. I've never seen anybody uphold an argument that it's impossible, just that we don't know how to do it at the moment so working on a rocket is premature.
True. The only marginal benefit of building a Mars colony instead of a Moon colony is that there is a some small tenuous atmosphere and *maybe* a lot of water, quite deep under the surface, as in Km deep, Far deeper than any commercial drilling on Earth. I imagine Musks only reason for colonising Mars instead of the Moon is he thinks that will be safer from nuclear attack if WWIII goes full nuclear.
"I'd like to know how you acquired this zillion acre plot?
"
oh, that's easy. Just sell something with a EULA and put in a clause that grants you the customer's rights along with all of their heirs and assigns to any claim they have regarding Mars. You might own the land, but Elon has beaten everybody to be the sole member of the aristocracy on Mars. Not really a problem if you know the boss is never going to show up.
A heavily filtered version of reality mind you. It starts with Musk's actions and then the Reg journalism which itself always comes with a glorious dose of cynicism (the day that stops is the day I stop reading it). Then there is the echo chamber effect of the readers and the subset of readers that will post comments.
I wouldn't call it negativity, just wonderful, amusing cynicism. Please don't stop everyone.
If BigCorp borks a Windows product update when there's a lot of prior art on how to do it properly, then go for the cynical reporting.
If a company is genuinely trying to do something new and innovate (and that is definitely difficult), is the negativity really warranted? Personally I think 5 Starships to Mars during the next travel window is quite feasible - they're pretty much at the point of having a reusable design, and knocking out 5 of them won't take 2 years, though the in-orbit refueling is yet to be done.
The question is not whether it is theoretically possible to manufacture five Starships and fire them at Mars. People who have watched these more might have some idea how possible it would be to attempt and what would happen if you tried. It can be interesting to discuss. It is not the right response to this. The reason is that they're not going to manufacture five Starships and fire them at Mars. That would cost a lot of money and get you nothing at all. Not only are they not going to do it that quickly, they probably won't try to do it at all. They'll do actual tests on Starship, tests that don't involve going anywhere near Mars, because those have some conceivable benefit. Thus, promising to do something that is not going to be tried will get the cynicism because we know it's not an honest expression of expected actions, and we know that because we've seen it over and over again from the same source.
I sure hope they successfully force him to be as thorough about cleaning/disinfection of everything going to Mars to prevent contamination with Earth organisms as NASA has been. That's something I wouldn't be shocked to see Musk cutting corners on, especially if he's up against that hard deadline of the transfer orbit.
I could just see Musk announcing "life has been found on Mars" and then down the road it is discovered they were Earth microbes that hitched on a ride thanks to Musk doing a substandard job on things he considers less important than serving his massive ego.
> discovered they were Earth microbes that hitched on a ride thanks to Musk doing a substandard job on things he considers less important than serving his massive ego.
But any humans we send there will be packed full of them, and a that point anything left on Mars will be toast (or maybe the colonists....)
"to prevent contamination with Earth organisms as NASA has been. "
I know somebody whose DNA is on Mars.
Whether the measures NASA takes in decontamination are useful or not remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen if any earthly organism could survive on the surface of Mars even if it was lodged in a shady spot somewhere.
With a bi-annual launch window we should remember that in 2016 Musk was promising a man on Mars in 2022.
He missed that one - by a long way
And he's missed 2024 too
So the next date he can promise is 2026 - and this time he is already setting up the pesky FAA as his excuse when he misses that one
[quote] "We want to enable anyone who wants to be a space traveler to go to Mars! That means you or your family or friends – anyone who dreams of great adventure. "Eventually, there will be thousands of Starships going to Mars and it will a [sic] glorious sight to see! Can you imagine? Wow.
[end]
I seem to remember another innovator, who recently tried to design and build an experimental craft, which was designed to open up (commercially) the environment in which it travelled.
That company was OceanGate and a certain Stockton Rush, who sweet talked people into thinking they could pay to travel in an un-certified craft which had others ringing alarm bells about it's construction and yet he refused to listen to reason and put peoples lives in danger by going ahead anyways.
RIP to the 5 who perished
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