Posted on 09/26/2016 12:20:44 AM PDT by aquila48
SpaceX has done its first test of the Raptor rocket engine that will take humans to Mars as early as 2024, Elon Musk said in a series of tweets. It was fired at the company's McGregor, Texas facility on a stand that can handle the extreme thrust. Pointing out the "mach diamonds" from the test (above), Musk said the "production Raptor goal is a specific impulse of 382 seconds and thrust of 3 MN [680,000 pounds]," more than three times that of the current Falcon 9.
With nine of the methane-fueled motors, the Red Dragon will be far more powerful than any current rocket. It'll eventually lift the Mars Colonial Transporter, loaded with 100 tons of cargo, toward the red planet. The company plans to launch an unmanned craft to Mars by 2018 and get humans there by 2024. That's an ambitious target, especially considering its recent launchpad mishap.
Elon Musk will give a speech tomorrow at the International Astronautical Conference in Mexico, titled "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species." He's expected to unveil the design of the Mars Colonial Transporter and overall plan for colonizing the red planet. Musk will also reportedly talk about the budget and try to convince government and the scientific community to help pay for the undertaking. After the recent disaster, a successful test-firing of the Raptor will no doubt help his cause.
(Excerpt) Read more at engadget.com ...
If Hitlery gets in - it's gonna be a race for survival - we're gonna NEED other planets.
Elon Musk is a certified lunatic and shyster... Eventually, somebody is going to figure that out. When they do his house of cards will crumble into dust and a prison cell will be waiting for him.
As for traveling to Mars, that will happen eventually, without Musk being involved of course, and we do get there we will find the same thing on Mars that we found on the Moon... Nothing. We can do space exploration, so we do. The question is... Why bother?
Sorry Elon (and others). There are no aliens. This big blue marble is it. Other life forms in the universe? Absolutely. Other life forms that build rockets and travel about needlessly in space ships and Tesla Cars... Nope!
If the creator has found it fit to never make one snowflake like another, why would he bother to make one world like another world? We are completely unique and therefor alone in this universe. Nobody is ever coming to save us, so we’ll need to save ourselves.
I never really got the interplanetary exploration thing. I guess it’s lack of oxygen and how to freight it there that gets in front of my logic for it.
Lunatics and shysters don’t reinvent multiple high dollar transportation industries from scratch. Yes he’s leveraging opportunities, but that’s why those opportunities exist.
Knowledge, and natural resources in the future. Besides, man is curious.
Your Luddism is showing. Not to worry, humanity will ignore you and move on, as will Musk. Musk has already done what NASA failed to do.
Hold on now. You mean the rocket is powered by greenhouse gas!?
The engine is one of the smallest issues. I’d like to know more about how they plan to sustain human lives during a couple years of unshielded radiation and micro to macro particle bombardment, and zero gravity induced atrophy and bone depletion. Not to mention air and water recycling and food supply for a journey with no possibility of resupply. An inhabited transit to, landing, exploration, and return voyage through interplanetary space will require a lot more than a reliable engine.
How long has the space station been up??? Do you think that just perhaps, science has learned how to handle most of the problems you postulate??? In multiple ways??
Whats Space X’s Mission Success rate ? This is not a payload mission its a Human mission. Big difference. Not sure how any astronaunts would sign up for Space X.
I'm not saying the problems are unsolvable, but it's not really clear how they're going to be solved without a radical jump in technology to maybe, for example, supply the power necessary to create an electromagnetic field around the spacecraft that performs the same function as our planet's. Or develop a water and food recycling system that will sustain the crew. Drinking and eating what used to be urine and feces, without Earth's gradual recycling through soil and sun that allows us to not have to think about it, is something the astronauts might have to learn to stomach. Bottom line, getting the astronauts there is one thing. Getting them there and back alive is something else.
I'm not saying the problems are unsolvable, but it's not really clear how they're going to be solved without a radical jump in technology to maybe, for example, supply the power necessary to create an electromagnetic field around the spacecraft that performs the same function as our planet's. Or develop a water and food recycling system that will sustain the crew. Drinking and eating what used to be urine and feces, without Earth's gradual recycling through soil and sun that allows us to not have to think about it, is something the astronauts might have to learn to stomach. Bottom line, getting the astronauts there is one thing. Getting them there and back alive is something else.
It's a lot easier when you are only 250 miles from Earth.
The ISS doesn't "fly", it orbits. Airplanes fly.
You might check your definition of what constitutes “orbit” and “flying”. They’re flying at around seventeen thousand miles per hour relative to Earth’s surface, which in near vacuum allows the craft to remain in orbit and not fall into the planet’s gravity well. So if they aren’t flying they’re soon going to be dying.
I’m not the one who believes we are being controlled by Aliens... Elon Musk is.
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