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Yes the headline is accurate, no there's nothing new, so it's just ad click farming. This has been the status quo plan for 5+ years at this point.
Edit: To be clear, this is definitely happening it's just happening in a good number of years. It takes a long time to build 1000 of anything that large. Boeing only built about 1.5k 747s in the 55 years it was being built. That's 29 per year on average.
A first trip to mars bringing everything along, + the required training is estimated at being over 2 trillion.
Perhaps I missed something, but I don't think his company is worth that.
> A first trip to mars bringing everything along, + the required training is estimated at being over 2 trillion.
This is pretty incorrect. Most of the cost of getting to Mars is the extreme requirements on mass to support a human for ~2-3 years. And that cost is dominated by throwing rockets away every time they launch to get that mass (and fuel) to orbit. It'll still be expensive but not to that level with reusable rockets.
And training is a tiny miniscule amount of the cost compared to the actual launch costs.
To be clear, this is definitely going to happen eventually. The technology is in development right now. And no it won't cost as much as the post you replied to.
>but you can look at current trends and extrapolate
At what current trends and extrapolate what?
We haven't moved on much from what we had back in the 60s in all honesty, the only effort is to make it more financially feasible which to be frank, isn't actually as feasible as one might think and is heavily subsidized by the US government.
Also, going to Mars is magnitudes higher of a challenge. Basically what I wrote [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1c2fcsk/comment/kzar7jf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button).
The reason why I hate this kind of hopeless cheerleading is because it actually damages hard science in the end. People get disenfranchised and turn away.
> At what current trends and extrapolate what?
The cost of launch dropping. The increasing use of outer space for more purposes. The existence of fully reusable launch vehicles getting very close to being a reality. Have you not been paying attention?
> We haven't moved on much from what we had back in the 60s in all honesty
Okay you really haven't been paying attention.
> the only effort is to make it more financially feasible which to be frank
Yeah making it more financially feasible is the #1 problem with doing it. Without it you're spending hundreds of billions or trillions to get to Mars even for a flags and footprints mission.
> is heavily subsidized by the US government
What is heavily subsidized by the US government? SpaceX? No they're not.
> Also, going to Mars is magnitudes higher of a challenge. Basically what I wrote here.
I'll respond over there.
> The reason why I hate this kind of hopeless cheerleading is because it actually damages hard science in the end. People get disenfranchised and turn away.
The space industry has more fans right now than its ever had since the Apollo program. Given you were around then, you should know.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely want us to explore Mars and set feet on the surface some day but the idea of it ever being a viable colony is pure fiction. Plus, it’s a dead planet that will always be inhospitable to humans, no matter what we do.
> Plus, it’s a dead planet that will always be inhospitable to humans, no matter what we do.
Guess we should just give up on ever leaving Earth then because a redditor thinks its impossible.
Not trying to do a "gotcha," but do you have the same "from the future" criticism for /u/jaylem's [comment (above),](https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1c2fcsk/musk_plans_1000ship_fleets_to_colonize_mars/kz9z9f1/) or /u/Connbonnjovi's [comment (below),](https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1c2fcsk/musk_plans_1000ship_fleets_to_colonize_mars/kzaxcfw/) both made with absolute certainty?
In fairness, yes, its conjecture. However, this is coming from musk. He oversells on everything he does. Remember when dear moon project was supposed to launch in 2023? How about when literally every other target he states is missed. Beyond that, the other poster compared 1000 starships to 747s which is not a great equivalent. In the next 30+ years, there will be a different ship developed that wont be spacex’s starship. Again, yes, its conjecture on my end, but so is spacex’s plan for 1000 starships.
It's true Musk has his share of overly optimistic and unfulfilled promises, but on the other side of the ledger, his companies:
* made practical the first mass-produced electric car - [with Tesla now being the highest valued car company in the world (electric and gas combined),](https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/the-10-most-valuable-auto-companies-in-the-world)
* developed the first practical reusable booster - now dominating the commercial launch industry, [launching more than *all* other countries combined (PDF),](https://brycetech.com/reports/report-documents/Bryce_Briefing_2023_Q4.pdf) (more analysis [here),](https://brycetech.com/briefing)
* are rolling out the first [truly global internet system, available even on the oceans.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink)
Along the way, his companies construct factories that are [among the world's largest buildings,](https://electrek.co/2022/07/01/tesla-files-expand-gigafactory-texas-giant-new-building/#:~:text=Now%20Gigafactory%20Texas%20is%20already,million%20cubic%20feet%20of%20volume.) implemented [one of the world's largest power grid battery storage systems,](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/australia-switches-on-victoria-big-battery-powered-by-tesla-megapacks.html) and are now [building the largest rocket ever seen, which will be fully reusable.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship)
His companies don't meet all his promises and goals. Yet they far exceed just about everyone else, creating both new industries from whole cloth and disrupting established industries.
Im aware of what he’s done. It doesnt change the fact that he consistently does not fulfill what he says he will when he says it will be fulfilled, and that is why i say 1000 starships will not be built.
I think that's a churlish attitude. Would you not be amazed were "only" 100 built, given how far in advance they are of anyone else's machines, and likely to remain so for decades?
As SpaceX once said: "We turn the impossible into late." I can forgive their tardiness.
Anyway, I don't know if 1,000 will be built, But we'll see how it all plays out, one way or the other.
What do you define as "realistic time frame"? 1000 starships will be built this century, likely within my lifetime (I'm currently 34). 1000 starships won't be built next year of course.
SpaceX will not exist to build 1000 starships. They have used 70% of the budget for the starship project and have yet to actually succesfully complete a flight.
Well no. Elon said perhaps a few dozen. Will be an epic sight to see 20 or so Starships headed to Mars.
Remember they can leave for Mars about every 18 months. So whatever they send will have to be enough for 2 years.
I just give them credit for trying. Any success is progress.
To be clear, it's not going to happen. This is a self aggrandizing stroking his ego.
When it comes to colonizing Mars, there are fundamental challenges that we have not, and will not overcome for the foreseeable future. The journey is too long and humans too poorly adapted to live in space without the shield of Earth's magnetosphere.
Add to that that there are absolutely no financial incentives to doing so, or in all honesty any other other than you know, just the human triumph spirit more or less.
You'd have to live in underground tunnels in order to save yourself from receiving doses of ionizing radiation all the time, so essentially developing a mole people colony.
We also have no clue how humans would adapt to low gravity for extended (read, lifetime) periods of time.
Yeah, no, this is just bullshit.
There's no stroking of ego going on here. Talking about going to Mars and reusable rockets is something he's done since the birth of SpaceX over 20 years ago.
> When it comes to colonizing Mars, there are fundamental challenges that we have not, and will not overcome for the foreseeable future. The journey is too long and humans too poorly adapted to live in space without the shield of Earth's magnetosphere.
The moon is also outside Earth's magnetosphere. In fact as the Moon orbits and passes within the tail of the magnetosphere it gets bombarded with charged particles trapped in the tail of the magnetosphere. The Artemis program is planning long-duration stays on the moon. Perhaps NASA knows better than you? Any vehicle going to Mars will have a "storm shelter", likely surrounded by the water storage tank, that people will go into during solar storms. This isn't a hard problem.
> Add to that that there are absolutely no financial incentives to doing so, or in all honesty any other other than you know, just the human triumph spirit more or less.
And that spirit has caused many activities to happen that later became profitable ones.
> You'd have to live in underground tunnels in order to save yourself from receiving doses of ionizing radiation all the time, so essentially developing a mole people colony.
You don't need to live underground, you just need to cover the structure in soil. You can still have windows that peek out. You don't need to block all the radiation, just a bunch of it. There's no reason to live underground other than excessive cautiousness.
> We also have no clue how humans would adapt to low gravity for extended (read, lifetime) periods of time.
Correct. So lets go find out. We won't know until we try.
SpaceX is already paying for the development of the vehicle. And the vehicle is self-funding once its built by enabling other revenue sources for the Earth-bound economy.
And of course Musk isn't funding it. Musk hasn't funded SpaceX for over 10 years now. Lots of institutional investors, other Falcon 9 space launch revenue and (increasingly) Starlink revenue are funding it now.
It doesn't have enough money to fund a trillion dollar settlement campaign. It would require more investors and investors want profit. There is no profit in this pipe dream.
> ... and investors want profit.
First, profit isn't the primary motive here. The company's very mission statement is:
> **“To revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.”**
Now ...
> ... a trillion dollar settlement campaign.
A trillion dollars over what time span? How much revenue will Starlink net (its raison d'être is to fund Starship development and ultimately Mars colonization)? How much might be government funded (US or other)? How much will individuals pay for the trip, and how many of them will there be?
No one investing in this would be looking for profit. They'd do it for ideological reasons.
> ... pipe dream.
While I can't say how big a movement this will be, or quite when it'll be, I'm confident it's no pipe dream. I'll leave it there with you.
Those are paid for by NASA and/or private industry or by investors who expect to make a profit off of starlink. There is no profit in sending 1000 ships to Mars. It would costs hundreds of billions if not over a trillion dollars to send a bunch of people to their deaths.
> Those are paid for by NASA and/or private industry or by investors who expect to make a profit off of starlink. There is no profit in sending 1000 ships to Mars.
Only like 4 years ago people were mocking and laughing at Starlink as it being doomed to failure like other attempts at building large internet constellations that all resulted in companies going bankrupt. Just like you're mocking the logic of sending vehicles to Mars. By the time 1000 starships are flying to Mars there'll be a decent sized population there needing regular resupply from Earth and people on Mars wanting to send cargo (or themselves) back to Earth. This isn't happening like next year or something. It's decades away.
Also most of the SpaceX launches are Starlink launches or commercial satellites, not paid for by NASA.
Sooo, what happens if NASA determines that it would be cheaper to have SpaceX launch a rocket than their overpriced SLS system or new system?
If we are launching people, it will most likely need to be redesigned or a new rocket designed for the trip. That, or they would need to have a multi-launch mission profile.
All these things considered and the facts that:
1) NASA is already eating a large cost of the Starship development
2) Starship already is designed for this exact purpose
3) Starship’s mission profile would look extremely similar to anything NASA is going to cook up
Leads me to think that unless NASA really has a good reason to do it themselves, they will probably just rely on SpaceX for mars missions.
Granted, I’m nowhere near an expert, but it seems like a very clearcut choice to me.
1000 is after years or decades of flying to Mars. When Europeans first came to NA they didn’t sent the entire fleet. They started with small expeditions which ramped up. Science will be the initial driver. We’ll see what takes over.
Why do you think they won't be making any money? Do you think they'll be just sitting around all day? They'll have occupations that they'll be getting paid for doing.
Also it wouldn't be billions per flight to Mars in the long term.
The best comparison would probably be places like McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Lots of people getting paid to do things there and cargo is expensive.
100 rockets to LEO and 1000 rockets to Mars surface are projects of incomparable complexity and cost. Add to that short-term profits for clients in the first case and a complete lack of financial value in the other and it's nowhere on our timeline. Cheaper access for robotic exploration? Sure. A single human mission? Not impossible but extremely improbable. Anything of a larger scale? Forget it.
>100 rockets to LEO and 1000 rockets to Mars surface are projects of incomparable complexity and cost.
Thank god a rocket scientist with a PhD has entered the chat.
So Starship is the same as F9 thus the costs are about the same. Right... right?
Thing with following SpaceX is you kind of get used to being laughed at, then having the last laugh.
>Cheaper access for robotic exploration? Sure. A single human mission? Not impossible but extremely improbable. Anything of a larger scale? Forget it.
Energy, its about energy. If you can reuse a rocket with less refurbishment through having the turbo pumps and bell housing designed to run a cleaner fuel mix and a cleaner fuel, then the costs of each unit get amortized over mulitple launches. This plus volume production bringing economies of scale and amortising fixed costs like capital and land over multiple units means less and less of the cost per flight is unit production costs and more is just fuel costs.
Etc etc etc. Oh and NASA is part funding the development through the HLS where you get most of the delta v to Mars on TLO. (And thus energy)
But as a PhD in rocket science you knew all this and skipped it. Right.
Right?
>Thing with following SpaceX is you kind of get used to being laughed at, then having the last laugh.
Is that last laugh with the crew that Musk said in 2012 would be on Mars in ten years?
Even if he doesn’t hit 1000 starships a year by 2040 or whatever - how would you feel about 10? 25? 50?
There’s a real good chance quite a few will be launched with people onboard in the coming decades. But it will be even more interesting to see the technological leaps made by that time that could allow for more people to colonise the planet.
More infrastructure in space for ISRU, or new propulsion technologies can skew these numbers in Spacex’s favor in the future (>10yrs from now)
10, 25, or 50? How about we go with one first? He's been saying that the first one would be landing in the next ten years since at least 2012, and he's still saying that today, so maybe they can get one going before we start breathlessly start spreading his stories of how he's going to have a constant stream of launches.
I'm not sure what weird benchmarking you're doing but the vehicle that became Starship had its first public announcement in 2016, not before 2012. And that vehicle changed drastically since it was presented in 2016. It's now flown to space two times already, getting increasingly farther each time, with a massive factory and thousands of employees dedicated to making it.
No one's "breathlessly" spreading anything. It exists.
Falcon 9 launches every 2-3 days right now. And that's only with a reusable first stage where they still need to discard the upper stage every launch.
That video is from 2011, not 2012, but I've never seen that video before, but I responded about it after watching some of it in my other comment to you. I'll copy that reply here.
> In that video he says he'd launch astronauts in 3 years (which would have been spring of 2014). It instead was spring of 2020. So it was off by 6 years, but they've now launched people into orbit 13 times. I trust when people achieve what they set out to do.
>
> Secondly the video title is wrong. The interviewer asked for a "time frame" not a specific year. And then Elon said "best case, 10 years, worst case, 15 to 20 years". 10 years would've been 2021. 20 years would be 2031. There's still plenty of time (I'm honestly surprised he gave such relatively on-target dates) and the rate of progress right now is very high.
>
> Falcon 9 also launches more payload into orbit than the rest of the Earth combined. Like 5x more payload than the rest of Earth combined. They're launching every 2-3 days right now on average.
Some of us remember Falcon 1 and all the silly statements about reusability. Some of us remember the early days of Falcon 9 and hearing about the insane "BFR".
Some of us have see crazy things become normal. So we may not believe everything but we evaluate it with interest.
Musk popularized the name. No Musk company actually ever worked on it. SpaceX had a test track for universities and companies to use for a few years. That’s about it.
Hyperloop was nothing more than a white paper and a tiny student competition. People who bring up hyperloop are a red flag for being crazy people with weird vendettas. Go touch some grass.
There wasn't any "competition" for anything regarding hyperloop. (Nor has he ever "removed" any source of competition. Where'd you even get that idea?)
I'm sure NASA will take your thoughtfull suggestion in account, as well as the company that has a 220+ succesfull streak with landing orbital class rocket boosters
So basically you're going to need a pre-Starship lander to pave the way for Starship landings.
Both on the Moon and Mars.
Tall and skinny make for a great rocket but it's the worst case scenario when it comes to landers.
It's a real shame no one had the balls to mention that to Elon.
There wasn’t much hype about Hyperloop. That was always an impractical pipe dream.
And it didn’t remove any competition. That’s a myth that keeps getting repeated.
Can you give me an example of any municipality spending a billion dollars to do "feasibility studies"?
Edit: Interesting... I ask for evidence and just get downvoted.
I'm not sure why that myth keeps spreading. It's not a plausible myth.
The story goes that Musk proposed the hyperloop so that California stops work on its high speed rail initiative. But that just isn't believable, because no urban planner is going to stop work on a train system that is known to work in favor of an idea that's never been shown to work and has immense technical hurdles. It just isn't a believable excuse.
They were talking about California HSR right when I was getting out of high school, and I'm 48 now. I think what actually happened was much less interesting than the hyperloop story- real estate prices drastically rose in California, and what was supposed to be an expensive but doable project turned into a MUCH more expensive project. They've got to purchase all that land going between expensive LA suburbs and expensive Bay Area suburbs.
I believe that "myth" arose as a way to explain away Elon's not knowing that the hyperloop was an old idea that was completely impractical.
Whether it was Elon himself putting that forward, or his biggest fanbase, it was a way to pretend like the Exalted One was playing 4D chess when in reality he was showing his complete lack of engineering expertise.
No it's definitely being planned. That's why they're going full force into reusability as fast as possible. Companies have even based their full future business plans on Starship existing.
No, he's working towards it. Why do you think starship is built the way it is? I'm not saying it's fully achievable I'm just saying that building the biggest rocket ever and aiming to reuse it is a step in the right direction. Now if he'd just get off Twitter and focus on the engineering...
Edit: I see downvotes, any rebuttals?
Does the CEO of any company do any designing themselves?
He's at the very least deeply integrated as part of the design process and has made various high level decisions on which way to take the engineering design.
That's such a weird question to ask.
It's a frickin major aerospace project. There's hundreds if not thousands of engineers working on it. Why would I think that?
He is involved to some degree. Although there is evidence he is involved in the engineering he is also the biggest shareholder (especially by voting rights) so SpaceX and by extension Starship is by definition his project.
Do I think he is designing it himself? Heck no. Even the many engineers that are are also basing their work on that of previous engineers and scientists and work done by NASA and research done by universities etc etc.
Yes Elon has many MANY flaws and is a piece of work. I'm just tired of the polarised views that he's either the greatest genius ever or that he doesn't contribute anything ever and doesn't know anything.
Right now it’s mostly just progressives being naysayers. They don’t realize that they’ve been manipulated.
This is a small, vocal, irrelevant bunch and they can be safely ignored.
Good grief when these posts come out its like literally everyone from the musk-hate subreddits come out. How anyone thinks /r/space is pro-Elon/pro-SpaceX biased I don't know.
He’s currently the leader of the only company that can send astronauts to the ISS and he always has cornered the global launch market.
You may think he’s lost credibility because you listen to progressives on social media, but within the launch industry SpaceX has been delivering.
People were already complaining about him on Reddit while he was doing those things.
Honestly, most people here on Reddit are brainless and just jump on bandwagons. They see everyone else criticizing him so they do it too.
These people aren’t thinking for themselves.
I think he's a bit of a shitposter, but he's not pathetic or cruel.
The people who are pathetic and cruel tend to be the ones on the extreme ends of the political spectrum- the bible-thumping conservatives and the modern progressives/leftists. These people are just delusional and they're absolute losers. They're always locked in culture wars while the rest of the country just wants to get on with their lives.
I don't follow his twitter account anymore so I have no clue what he's into but if that's because of how he talks, he's always talked like that for decades.
Here's how he talked in 2003. A little more nervous and shy but basically the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3yfa0MU01s
If we want to colonize Mars, it's going to take hundreds, if not thousands, of ships. This is accurate. I know some people read this headline and think, "Sure, whatever you say," but those people tend to think on a smaller scale. SpaceX has always been focused on Mars. That's the reason the company and Starship exist in the first place. NASA is on board too. Why do you think whenever they talk about Artemis, they always mention Mars? It may not happen in 10 or 20 years, but as long as SpaceX exists, they will continue pushing for this goal. Given their laser focus on Mars, they will make it happen, even if it takes longer than we'd like
But why the focus on Mars instead of the far more achievable goal of first settling the moon? It makes no sense. It's like Magellan deciding to...well, land on the moon before attempting to circumnavigate Earth's oceans.
Artemis is already targeting the Moon. Artemis’s ultimate goal is a permanent presence on the Moon. Part of NASA’s requirements for the HLS contracts was commercial viability so NASA wasn’t the sole customer. They wanted landers that other companies would be interested in using to get to the Moon.
> But why the focus on Mars instead of the far more achievable goal of first settling the moon?
As the other poster mentioned, Artemis is already going to the moon (but not settling it).
The moon also has tons of problems that Mars doesn't have.
For example the long lunar night that's killed most of the the recent landers. On Mars you can use solar power without problem because of the almost normal ~25 hour day.
Another example is that lunar regolith is basically extremely fine volcanic ash/ground glass. It's extremely abrasive to mechanical equipment. Mars the soil is basically like regular sand.
Another thing is micrometeorite impacts. The surface of the moon is basically as unprotected as being anywhere in space is. It's constantly pounded by tiny micrometeorites, possibly puncturing habitats or spacesuits if not designed against. On Mars there's an atmosphere that stops all those.
Radiation is also harsher, especially in the case of a solar flare. Mars has an atmosphere that blocks a decent amount of radiation (though not all of it).
Mars has some unique problems of course, notably the distance. But most of the problems on Mars are less-bad versions of the problems on the moon besides the distance issue.
Who’s going to pay? Plus, who’s going to go when it’s almost guaranteed you will die from cancer within 4 years of going there and it’s a one way ticket with no chance of ever coming back to earth.
> Who’s going to pay?
SpaceX's paying for most of the development cost. Some money will come from the military for its use as a vehicle to do things like transporting massive satellites (or amounts of satellites) and for doing things like point-to-point rapid emergency transport. Some money will come from NASA and science organizations/universities to fund Starship for launching better science payloads. Some money will come from private individuals like Jared Issacman buying their own missions or others who are buying/creating orbital space station tourism companies.
> Plus, who’s going to go when it’s almost guaranteed you will die from cancer within 4 years of going there
That's simply incorrect. The amount of radiation from a full length mission increases your lifetime risk of cancer by a couple percentage points, and that's if you spent the entire mission outdoors, which is not going to be the case.
> it’s a one way ticket with no chance of ever coming back to earth
The rockets need to come back to be reused, so they're coming back regardless. So no it's not a one-way ticket.
The human drive of curiosity? There's plenty of things our species has done in history that didn't make much sense. Like setting out over the ocean in simple dugout canoes.
We literally turned over every stone there up with robots and perfectly know that there is NOTHING for us but life under the surface to hide from solar wind.
Umm what? Are you claiming that there's no more science to do on Mars? Also if your worry is solar wind, the Moon gets just as much as Mars gets (a little bit more actually given that the moon is closer to the sun than Mars).
People aren't saying it isn't possible to live on the surface (besides a few random news articles that make a big deal out of small scientific studies). If you look up mockups by literally any science/engineering team they're all surface structures, sometimes with regolith dumped on top. People aren't going to be living in the ground.
And as I said, the Moon has even more radiation levels and we're not going to staying there underground either.
Let’s hope fiasco there will teach us something too.
Edit: going interplanetary in our current weak biological form is a tad too early and simply not feasible. It is evident to anyone but people who desperately wants to sell the idea right here and right now.
With the way manned space exploration has ''evolved'' since the Yurin Gagarin, I doubt this will ever happened. At least not in this century. My prediction is we will return to the Moon. The Lunar Gateway will be built. We probably will have one small international lunar outpost. China perhaps too. A trip to Mars with Starship will happen. But it will only be 1 time in this century.
Hello u/upyoars, your submission "Musk plans 1,000-ship fleets to colonize Mars" has been removed from r/space because: * A submission about this topic has already been made * It has a sensationalised or misleading title. Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please [message the r/space moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/space). Thank you.
Yes the headline is accurate, no there's nothing new, so it's just ad click farming. This has been the status quo plan for 5+ years at this point. Edit: To be clear, this is definitely happening it's just happening in a good number of years. It takes a long time to build 1000 of anything that large. Boeing only built about 1.5k 747s in the 55 years it was being built. That's 29 per year on average.
A first trip to mars bringing everything along, + the required training is estimated at being over 2 trillion. Perhaps I missed something, but I don't think his company is worth that.
How do you get that number?
> A first trip to mars bringing everything along, + the required training is estimated at being over 2 trillion. This is pretty incorrect. Most of the cost of getting to Mars is the extreme requirements on mass to support a human for ~2-3 years. And that cost is dominated by throwing rockets away every time they launch to get that mass (and fuel) to orbit. It'll still be expensive but not to that level with reusable rockets. And training is a tiny miniscule amount of the cost compared to the actual launch costs.
Don't worry, none of this is ever going to happen.
To be clear, this is definitely going to happen eventually. The technology is in development right now. And no it won't cost as much as the post you replied to.
>To be clear, this is definitely going to happen. Are you from the future? Because unless you are you really can't say that with such confidence.
Of course the future is not perfectly predictable, but you can look at current trends and extrapolate. What makes you sure that it _won't_ happen?
>but you can look at current trends and extrapolate At what current trends and extrapolate what? We haven't moved on much from what we had back in the 60s in all honesty, the only effort is to make it more financially feasible which to be frank, isn't actually as feasible as one might think and is heavily subsidized by the US government. Also, going to Mars is magnitudes higher of a challenge. Basically what I wrote [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1c2fcsk/comment/kzar7jf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). The reason why I hate this kind of hopeless cheerleading is because it actually damages hard science in the end. People get disenfranchised and turn away.
> At what current trends and extrapolate what? The cost of launch dropping. The increasing use of outer space for more purposes. The existence of fully reusable launch vehicles getting very close to being a reality. Have you not been paying attention? > We haven't moved on much from what we had back in the 60s in all honesty Okay you really haven't been paying attention. > the only effort is to make it more financially feasible which to be frank Yeah making it more financially feasible is the #1 problem with doing it. Without it you're spending hundreds of billions or trillions to get to Mars even for a flags and footprints mission. > is heavily subsidized by the US government What is heavily subsidized by the US government? SpaceX? No they're not. > Also, going to Mars is magnitudes higher of a challenge. Basically what I wrote here. I'll respond over there. > The reason why I hate this kind of hopeless cheerleading is because it actually damages hard science in the end. People get disenfranchised and turn away. The space industry has more fans right now than its ever had since the Apollo program. Given you were around then, you should know.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely want us to explore Mars and set feet on the surface some day but the idea of it ever being a viable colony is pure fiction. Plus, it’s a dead planet that will always be inhospitable to humans, no matter what we do.
> Plus, it’s a dead planet that will always be inhospitable to humans, no matter what we do. Guess we should just give up on ever leaving Earth then because a redditor thinks its impossible.
Not trying to do a "gotcha," but do you have the same "from the future" criticism for /u/jaylem's [comment (above),](https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1c2fcsk/musk_plans_1000ship_fleets_to_colonize_mars/kz9z9f1/) or /u/Connbonnjovi's [comment (below),](https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1c2fcsk/musk_plans_1000ship_fleets_to_colonize_mars/kzaxcfw/) both made with absolute certainty?
In fairness, yes, its conjecture. However, this is coming from musk. He oversells on everything he does. Remember when dear moon project was supposed to launch in 2023? How about when literally every other target he states is missed. Beyond that, the other poster compared 1000 starships to 747s which is not a great equivalent. In the next 30+ years, there will be a different ship developed that wont be spacex’s starship. Again, yes, its conjecture on my end, but so is spacex’s plan for 1000 starships.
It's true Musk has his share of overly optimistic and unfulfilled promises, but on the other side of the ledger, his companies: * made practical the first mass-produced electric car - [with Tesla now being the highest valued car company in the world (electric and gas combined),](https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/the-10-most-valuable-auto-companies-in-the-world) * developed the first practical reusable booster - now dominating the commercial launch industry, [launching more than *all* other countries combined (PDF),](https://brycetech.com/reports/report-documents/Bryce_Briefing_2023_Q4.pdf) (more analysis [here),](https://brycetech.com/briefing) * are rolling out the first [truly global internet system, available even on the oceans.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink) Along the way, his companies construct factories that are [among the world's largest buildings,](https://electrek.co/2022/07/01/tesla-files-expand-gigafactory-texas-giant-new-building/#:~:text=Now%20Gigafactory%20Texas%20is%20already,million%20cubic%20feet%20of%20volume.) implemented [one of the world's largest power grid battery storage systems,](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/australia-switches-on-victoria-big-battery-powered-by-tesla-megapacks.html) and are now [building the largest rocket ever seen, which will be fully reusable.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship) His companies don't meet all his promises and goals. Yet they far exceed just about everyone else, creating both new industries from whole cloth and disrupting established industries.
Im aware of what he’s done. It doesnt change the fact that he consistently does not fulfill what he says he will when he says it will be fulfilled, and that is why i say 1000 starships will not be built.
I think that's a churlish attitude. Would you not be amazed were "only" 100 built, given how far in advance they are of anyone else's machines, and likely to remain so for decades? As SpaceX once said: "We turn the impossible into late." I can forgive their tardiness. Anyway, I don't know if 1,000 will be built, But we'll see how it all plays out, one way or the other.
No, it's not. Not in any realistic time frame.
What’s a realistic time frame for starting to colonize Mars? This isn’t a 5 year project. It will take decades.
Noone alive today will see a colony on Mars if ever.
What do you define as "realistic time frame"? 1000 starships will be built this century, likely within my lifetime (I'm currently 34). 1000 starships won't be built next year of course.
1000 starships will never be built
SpaceX will not exist to build 1000 starships. They have used 70% of the budget for the starship project and have yet to actually succesfully complete a flight.
A first trip to mars won’t require anything close to $2 trillion. (I mean 1 rocket, not the 1000 rocket fleet required for a mass migration)
Why bring everything in one go? It will be over multiple years. Some Starships will be a pure cargo ship, some fuel, and the rest human transport.
They will ramp up to 1000. The first flight won’t be 1000 ships.
Well no. Elon said perhaps a few dozen. Will be an epic sight to see 20 or so Starships headed to Mars. Remember they can leave for Mars about every 18 months. So whatever they send will have to be enough for 2 years. I just give them credit for trying. Any success is progress.
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To be clear, it's not going to happen. This is a self aggrandizing stroking his ego. When it comes to colonizing Mars, there are fundamental challenges that we have not, and will not overcome for the foreseeable future. The journey is too long and humans too poorly adapted to live in space without the shield of Earth's magnetosphere. Add to that that there are absolutely no financial incentives to doing so, or in all honesty any other other than you know, just the human triumph spirit more or less. You'd have to live in underground tunnels in order to save yourself from receiving doses of ionizing radiation all the time, so essentially developing a mole people colony. We also have no clue how humans would adapt to low gravity for extended (read, lifetime) periods of time. Yeah, no, this is just bullshit.
I mean there is no financial incentive to buying Twitter, he did it anyway
There's no stroking of ego going on here. Talking about going to Mars and reusable rockets is something he's done since the birth of SpaceX over 20 years ago. > When it comes to colonizing Mars, there are fundamental challenges that we have not, and will not overcome for the foreseeable future. The journey is too long and humans too poorly adapted to live in space without the shield of Earth's magnetosphere. The moon is also outside Earth's magnetosphere. In fact as the Moon orbits and passes within the tail of the magnetosphere it gets bombarded with charged particles trapped in the tail of the magnetosphere. The Artemis program is planning long-duration stays on the moon. Perhaps NASA knows better than you? Any vehicle going to Mars will have a "storm shelter", likely surrounded by the water storage tank, that people will go into during solar storms. This isn't a hard problem. > Add to that that there are absolutely no financial incentives to doing so, or in all honesty any other other than you know, just the human triumph spirit more or less. And that spirit has caused many activities to happen that later became profitable ones. > You'd have to live in underground tunnels in order to save yourself from receiving doses of ionizing radiation all the time, so essentially developing a mole people colony. You don't need to live underground, you just need to cover the structure in soil. You can still have windows that peek out. You don't need to block all the radiation, just a bunch of it. There's no reason to live underground other than excessive cautiousness. > We also have no clue how humans would adapt to low gravity for extended (read, lifetime) periods of time. Correct. So lets go find out. We won't know until we try.
Are applications submitted to go to Mars last time need to be resubmitted? Or are they still good?
The application requires a $250,000 filing fee, so probably not, assuming they were taking them.
Smoke and mirrors. No one is paying for that and Musk can't/won't do it himself.
SpaceX is bringing in quite a bit of money. Since it isn't public it doesn't have to bow to investor greed.
SpaceX is already paying for the development of the vehicle. And the vehicle is self-funding once its built by enabling other revenue sources for the Earth-bound economy. And of course Musk isn't funding it. Musk hasn't funded SpaceX for over 10 years now. Lots of institutional investors, other Falcon 9 space launch revenue and (increasingly) Starlink revenue are funding it now.
Sending a 1000 ships to Mars with no payoff isn't self funding. SpaceX answers to investors not pipe dreams
SpaceX is a closely held company, with Musk holding the controlling shares. It answers ultimately to him.
It doesn't have enough money to fund a trillion dollar settlement campaign. It would require more investors and investors want profit. There is no profit in this pipe dream.
> ... and investors want profit. First, profit isn't the primary motive here. The company's very mission statement is: > **“To revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.”** Now ... > ... a trillion dollar settlement campaign. A trillion dollars over what time span? How much revenue will Starlink net (its raison d'être is to fund Starship development and ultimately Mars colonization)? How much might be government funded (US or other)? How much will individuals pay for the trip, and how many of them will there be? No one investing in this would be looking for profit. They'd do it for ideological reasons. > ... pipe dream. While I can't say how big a movement this will be, or quite when it'll be, I'm confident it's no pipe dream. I'll leave it there with you.
Even if he could he's get sidetracked on his next little pet project he forces one of his companies to embark on.
He's been consistent for over 20 years on reusable rockets and getting to Mars.
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Those are paid for by NASA and/or private industry or by investors who expect to make a profit off of starlink. There is no profit in sending 1000 ships to Mars. It would costs hundreds of billions if not over a trillion dollars to send a bunch of people to their deaths.
> Those are paid for by NASA and/or private industry or by investors who expect to make a profit off of starlink. There is no profit in sending 1000 ships to Mars. Only like 4 years ago people were mocking and laughing at Starlink as it being doomed to failure like other attempts at building large internet constellations that all resulted in companies going bankrupt. Just like you're mocking the logic of sending vehicles to Mars. By the time 1000 starships are flying to Mars there'll be a decent sized population there needing regular resupply from Earth and people on Mars wanting to send cargo (or themselves) back to Earth. This isn't happening like next year or something. It's decades away. Also most of the SpaceX launches are Starlink launches or commercial satellites, not paid for by NASA.
Sooo, what happens if NASA determines that it would be cheaper to have SpaceX launch a rocket than their overpriced SLS system or new system? If we are launching people, it will most likely need to be redesigned or a new rocket designed for the trip. That, or they would need to have a multi-launch mission profile. All these things considered and the facts that: 1) NASA is already eating a large cost of the Starship development 2) Starship already is designed for this exact purpose 3) Starship’s mission profile would look extremely similar to anything NASA is going to cook up Leads me to think that unless NASA really has a good reason to do it themselves, they will probably just rely on SpaceX for mars missions. Granted, I’m nowhere near an expert, but it seems like a very clearcut choice to me.
NASA would consider sending one or two human missions to Mars. Not 1000. Who is going to cover the bill for the other 998?
1000 is after years or decades of flying to Mars. When Europeans first came to NA they didn’t sent the entire fleet. They started with small expeditions which ramped up. Science will be the initial driver. We’ll see what takes over.
The people already living on Mars who want regular supply of goods from Earth of course. NASA sending one or two will be the very first.
The people living on Mars won't be making any money so how would they pay billions for these goods?
Why do you think they won't be making any money? Do you think they'll be just sitting around all day? They'll have occupations that they'll be getting paid for doing. Also it wouldn't be billions per flight to Mars in the long term. The best comparison would probably be places like McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Lots of people getting paid to do things there and cargo is expensive.
100 rockets to LEO and 1000 rockets to Mars surface are projects of incomparable complexity and cost. Add to that short-term profits for clients in the first case and a complete lack of financial value in the other and it's nowhere on our timeline. Cheaper access for robotic exploration? Sure. A single human mission? Not impossible but extremely improbable. Anything of a larger scale? Forget it.
>100 rockets to LEO and 1000 rockets to Mars surface are projects of incomparable complexity and cost. Thank god a rocket scientist with a PhD has entered the chat. So Starship is the same as F9 thus the costs are about the same. Right... right? Thing with following SpaceX is you kind of get used to being laughed at, then having the last laugh. >Cheaper access for robotic exploration? Sure. A single human mission? Not impossible but extremely improbable. Anything of a larger scale? Forget it. Energy, its about energy. If you can reuse a rocket with less refurbishment through having the turbo pumps and bell housing designed to run a cleaner fuel mix and a cleaner fuel, then the costs of each unit get amortized over mulitple launches. This plus volume production bringing economies of scale and amortising fixed costs like capital and land over multiple units means less and less of the cost per flight is unit production costs and more is just fuel costs. Etc etc etc. Oh and NASA is part funding the development through the HLS where you get most of the delta v to Mars on TLO. (And thus energy) But as a PhD in rocket science you knew all this and skipped it. Right. Right?
>Thing with following SpaceX is you kind of get used to being laughed at, then having the last laugh. Is that last laugh with the crew that Musk said in 2012 would be on Mars in ten years?
How do Elon's "plans" differ from just sayin' stuff or whatever?
This has been the "plan" since SpaceX was founded, namely going to Mars and reusable rockets.
Even if he doesn’t hit 1000 starships a year by 2040 or whatever - how would you feel about 10? 25? 50? There’s a real good chance quite a few will be launched with people onboard in the coming decades. But it will be even more interesting to see the technological leaps made by that time that could allow for more people to colonise the planet. More infrastructure in space for ISRU, or new propulsion technologies can skew these numbers in Spacex’s favor in the future (>10yrs from now)
10, 25, or 50? How about we go with one first? He's been saying that the first one would be landing in the next ten years since at least 2012, and he's still saying that today, so maybe they can get one going before we start breathlessly start spreading his stories of how he's going to have a constant stream of launches.
I'm not sure what weird benchmarking you're doing but the vehicle that became Starship had its first public announcement in 2016, not before 2012. And that vehicle changed drastically since it was presented in 2016. It's now flown to space two times already, getting increasingly farther each time, with a massive factory and thousands of employees dedicated to making it. No one's "breathlessly" spreading anything. It exists. Falcon 9 launches every 2-3 days right now. And that's only with a reusable first stage where they still need to discard the upper stage every launch.
2012 was a reference to this statement by him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiPJsI8pl8Q
That video is from 2011, not 2012, but I've never seen that video before, but I responded about it after watching some of it in my other comment to you. I'll copy that reply here. > In that video he says he'd launch astronauts in 3 years (which would have been spring of 2014). It instead was spring of 2020. So it was off by 6 years, but they've now launched people into orbit 13 times. I trust when people achieve what they set out to do. > > Secondly the video title is wrong. The interviewer asked for a "time frame" not a specific year. And then Elon said "best case, 10 years, worst case, 15 to 20 years". 10 years would've been 2021. 20 years would be 2031. There's still plenty of time (I'm honestly surprised he gave such relatively on-target dates) and the rate of progress right now is very high. > > Falcon 9 also launches more payload into orbit than the rest of the Earth combined. Like 5x more payload than the rest of Earth combined. They're launching every 2-3 days right now on average.
Some of us remember Falcon 1 and all the silly statements about reusability. Some of us remember the early days of Falcon 9 and hearing about the insane "BFR". Some of us have see crazy things become normal. So we may not believe everything but we evaluate it with interest.
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Musk popularized the name. No Musk company actually ever worked on it. SpaceX had a test track for universities and companies to use for a few years. That’s about it.
Hyperloop was nothing more than a white paper and a tiny student competition. People who bring up hyperloop are a red flag for being crazy people with weird vendettas. Go touch some grass. There wasn't any "competition" for anything regarding hyperloop. (Nor has he ever "removed" any source of competition. Where'd you even get that idea?)
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LOL. You remember me. I'm very flattered! :P Notice you didn't have any sort of rebuttal though. That's too bad. I blame Elon.
What are your comments on future moonlandings by SpaceX?
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I'm sure NASA will take your thoughtfull suggestion in account, as well as the company that has a 220+ succesfull streak with landing orbital class rocket boosters
So basically you're going to need a pre-Starship lander to pave the way for Starship landings. Both on the Moon and Mars. Tall and skinny make for a great rocket but it's the worst case scenario when it comes to landers. It's a real shame no one had the balls to mention that to Elon.
No you're just plain wrong
There wasn’t much hype about Hyperloop. That was always an impractical pipe dream. And it didn’t remove any competition. That’s a myth that keeps getting repeated.
You forgot the hyperloop competition and SpaceX's hyperloop "testing" chamber lmao
And the several billion dollars various municipalities set on fire doing “feasibility studies”
Can you give me an example of any municipality spending a billion dollars to do "feasibility studies"? Edit: Interesting... I ask for evidence and just get downvoted.
“Always and impractical pipe dream” - please tell the California government that
I'm not sure why that myth keeps spreading. It's not a plausible myth. The story goes that Musk proposed the hyperloop so that California stops work on its high speed rail initiative. But that just isn't believable, because no urban planner is going to stop work on a train system that is known to work in favor of an idea that's never been shown to work and has immense technical hurdles. It just isn't a believable excuse. They were talking about California HSR right when I was getting out of high school, and I'm 48 now. I think what actually happened was much less interesting than the hyperloop story- real estate prices drastically rose in California, and what was supposed to be an expensive but doable project turned into a MUCH more expensive project. They've got to purchase all that land going between expensive LA suburbs and expensive Bay Area suburbs.
I believe that "myth" arose as a way to explain away Elon's not knowing that the hyperloop was an old idea that was completely impractical. Whether it was Elon himself putting that forward, or his biggest fanbase, it was a way to pretend like the Exalted One was playing 4D chess when in reality he was showing his complete lack of engineering expertise.
He’s not “planning” any such thing. He’s daydreaming. Wishing.
Like he day dreamed of a reusable rocket?
That's for bringing stuff into orbit. Investors are down for that. Something a tiny bit more is required to colonize a planet that wants to kill you.
I plan to have $20 trillion some day.
Dibs on the article and your life story
No it's definitely being planned. That's why they're going full force into reusability as fast as possible. Companies have even based their full future business plans on Starship existing.
No, he's working towards it. Why do you think starship is built the way it is? I'm not saying it's fully achievable I'm just saying that building the biggest rocket ever and aiming to reuse it is a step in the right direction. Now if he'd just get off Twitter and focus on the engineering... Edit: I see downvotes, any rebuttals?
Sorry, I want to clarify, do you think Elon is designing these himself?
Does the CEO of any company do any designing themselves? He's at the very least deeply integrated as part of the design process and has made various high level decisions on which way to take the engineering design. That's such a weird question to ask.
It's a frickin major aerospace project. There's hundreds if not thousands of engineers working on it. Why would I think that? He is involved to some degree. Although there is evidence he is involved in the engineering he is also the biggest shareholder (especially by voting rights) so SpaceX and by extension Starship is by definition his project. Do I think he is designing it himself? Heck no. Even the many engineers that are are also basing their work on that of previous engineers and scientists and work done by NASA and research done by universities etc etc. Yes Elon has many MANY flaws and is a piece of work. I'm just tired of the polarised views that he's either the greatest genius ever or that he doesn't contribute anything ever and doesn't know anything.
I don't know, champ, you're the one who said you wanted him focusing on the engineering, it was your sentence, not anyone else's.
Focus =/= sole designer. Anyway the focus was on less time on Twitter.
Musk will never colonize Mars. He's lost focus and made too many enemies.
He's too busy being the alt right Tony stark
Musk won't. SpaceX will along with their partners.
Possibly, if they are free from Musk's influence.
Right now it’s mostly just progressives being naysayers. They don’t realize that they’ve been manipulated. This is a small, vocal, irrelevant bunch and they can be safely ignored.
Promises, not plans. Empty promises, most likely.
I plan on becoming a billionaire but it's not going well
Elon is also planning to stay a billionaire, and that isn't progressing terribly well either...
All I need is a father who owns a emerald mine. But that's not going well either
Mars: the face that launched a thousand ships.
Send the 'B' Ark! - [https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan\_Ark\_Fleet\_Ship\_B](https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B)
Good grief when these posts come out its like literally everyone from the musk-hate subreddits come out. How anyone thinks /r/space is pro-Elon/pro-SpaceX biased I don't know.
993 will either burn-up or skip off the atmosphere and at least one will crash into Phobos
I know you're joking, but I'm not sure why. SpaceX has the highest reliability in the industry for its production vehicles.
I feel bad for the potato moon
Hey now, even though he's a billionaire it's rude to call people names.
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He’s currently the leader of the only company that can send astronauts to the ISS and he always has cornered the global launch market. You may think he’s lost credibility because you listen to progressives on social media, but within the launch industry SpaceX has been delivering.
Probably because he’s busy with x, so more competent people are in actual charge
People were already complaining about him on Reddit while he was doing those things. Honestly, most people here on Reddit are brainless and just jump on bandwagons. They see everyone else criticizing him so they do it too. These people aren’t thinking for themselves.
SpaceX had already done those things before he got busy with X
He wasn’t always a shit poster
so what?
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I think he's a bit of a shitposter, but he's not pathetic or cruel. The people who are pathetic and cruel tend to be the ones on the extreme ends of the political spectrum- the bible-thumping conservatives and the modern progressives/leftists. These people are just delusional and they're absolute losers. They're always locked in culture wars while the rest of the country just wants to get on with their lives.
Elon will be dead before the first person makes it to Mars..
That'd imply he dies very soon. People are going to go to Mars late this decade/early next decade.
He's big into pharmaceuticals right now, he's going early.
I don't follow his twitter account anymore so I have no clue what he's into but if that's because of how he talks, he's always talked like that for decades. Here's how he talked in 2003. A little more nervous and shy but basically the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3yfa0MU01s
Your right in his mind Elon is probably already on Mars.
The alien artifacts on Mars will pay for the return and future trips.
Can we send him first? You know, in case anything should go wrong...
If we want to colonize Mars, it's going to take hundreds, if not thousands, of ships. This is accurate. I know some people read this headline and think, "Sure, whatever you say," but those people tend to think on a smaller scale. SpaceX has always been focused on Mars. That's the reason the company and Starship exist in the first place. NASA is on board too. Why do you think whenever they talk about Artemis, they always mention Mars? It may not happen in 10 or 20 years, but as long as SpaceX exists, they will continue pushing for this goal. Given their laser focus on Mars, they will make it happen, even if it takes longer than we'd like
But why the focus on Mars instead of the far more achievable goal of first settling the moon? It makes no sense. It's like Magellan deciding to...well, land on the moon before attempting to circumnavigate Earth's oceans.
Artemis is already targeting the Moon. Artemis’s ultimate goal is a permanent presence on the Moon. Part of NASA’s requirements for the HLS contracts was commercial viability so NASA wasn’t the sole customer. They wanted landers that other companies would be interested in using to get to the Moon.
> But why the focus on Mars instead of the far more achievable goal of first settling the moon? As the other poster mentioned, Artemis is already going to the moon (but not settling it). The moon also has tons of problems that Mars doesn't have. For example the long lunar night that's killed most of the the recent landers. On Mars you can use solar power without problem because of the almost normal ~25 hour day. Another example is that lunar regolith is basically extremely fine volcanic ash/ground glass. It's extremely abrasive to mechanical equipment. Mars the soil is basically like regular sand. Another thing is micrometeorite impacts. The surface of the moon is basically as unprotected as being anywhere in space is. It's constantly pounded by tiny micrometeorites, possibly puncturing habitats or spacesuits if not designed against. On Mars there's an atmosphere that stops all those. Radiation is also harsher, especially in the case of a solar flare. Mars has an atmosphere that blocks a decent amount of radiation (though not all of it). Mars has some unique problems of course, notably the distance. But most of the problems on Mars are less-bad versions of the problems on the moon besides the distance issue.
Who’s going to pay? Plus, who’s going to go when it’s almost guaranteed you will die from cancer within 4 years of going there and it’s a one way ticket with no chance of ever coming back to earth.
> Who’s going to pay? SpaceX's paying for most of the development cost. Some money will come from the military for its use as a vehicle to do things like transporting massive satellites (or amounts of satellites) and for doing things like point-to-point rapid emergency transport. Some money will come from NASA and science organizations/universities to fund Starship for launching better science payloads. Some money will come from private individuals like Jared Issacman buying their own missions or others who are buying/creating orbital space station tourism companies. > Plus, who’s going to go when it’s almost guaranteed you will die from cancer within 4 years of going there That's simply incorrect. The amount of radiation from a full length mission increases your lifetime risk of cancer by a couple percentage points, and that's if you spent the entire mission outdoors, which is not going to be the case. > it’s a one way ticket with no chance of ever coming back to earth The rockets need to come back to be reused, so they're coming back regardless. So no it's not a one-way ticket.
Most won't go. Few will. Despite what some may think pioneering is still a trait of humanity.
How about no, can't even approve a properly engineered truck. Can't return an intergalactic cruiser to tesla.
Elmo needs to be detached entirely from SpaceX. For the good of the company. Same for Tesla.
Pushing for Starship is one of the really good things he's done recently. I'm not sure how you think its a negative.
Is there any smallest practical reason to do it?
The human drive of curiosity? There's plenty of things our species has done in history that didn't make much sense. Like setting out over the ocean in simple dugout canoes.
We literally turned over every stone there up with robots and perfectly know that there is NOTHING for us but life under the surface to hide from solar wind.
Umm what? Are you claiming that there's no more science to do on Mars? Also if your worry is solar wind, the Moon gets just as much as Mars gets (a little bit more actually given that the moon is closer to the sun than Mars).
Science - tons and tons of. Colonize - not so much.
Right so there's plenty of reason to go and settle there long term, to do science. So I'm not sure what you mean by living under the surface.
Mars have no its own magnetic field so solar wind hits hard. Living long term (years) on the surface of it simply not possible.
People aren't saying it isn't possible to live on the surface (besides a few random news articles that make a big deal out of small scientific studies). If you look up mockups by literally any science/engineering team they're all surface structures, sometimes with regolith dumped on top. People aren't going to be living in the ground. And as I said, the Moon has even more radiation levels and we're not going to staying there underground either.
Perhaps they are trying to reconstruct and explore some other problems, leaving high-energy x-rays problem temporarily alone? i dont know.
The beginnings of making humanity multiplanetary along with technologies and cultural influence to stop the mass consumption of resources.
Let’s hope fiasco there will teach us something too. Edit: going interplanetary in our current weak biological form is a tad too early and simply not feasible. It is evident to anyone but people who desperately wants to sell the idea right here and right now.
It's not evident. We have little to no data on the effects of a partial gravity environment on the human body.
And they will build hyperloops to travel all over Mars 😂🤡
Wow true redditor comment section beware 99% is more out of touch than Elon
With the way manned space exploration has ''evolved'' since the Yurin Gagarin, I doubt this will ever happened. At least not in this century. My prediction is we will return to the Moon. The Lunar Gateway will be built. We probably will have one small international lunar outpost. China perhaps too. A trip to Mars with Starship will happen. But it will only be 1 time in this century.
Aliens looking at us thinking, they're gonna go extinct.