Posted on 09/19/2024 12:48:14 PM PDT by aquila48
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday that the rocket manufacturing company intends to offer a trip to Mars to anyone who volunteers in the future but warned that the journey might be uncomfortable.
What Happened: “In all seriousness, SpaceX hopes to offer travel to Mars to anyone who wants to go…” Musk wrote on social media platform X in response to former European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton with whom he has a history of sparring now and then.
However, the journey to Mars, Musk warned, will be like a “long sea voyage.”
“….it will be like a long sea voyage in centuries past – dangerous and uncomfortable, but great adventure!” Musk said.
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Earlier this month, Musk said the first Starships will head to Mars in two years once the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens.
The first launches to Mars in 2026, Musk then said, will not have a crew onboard and will be aimed at testing the flight's ability to land intact on Mars.
"If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years," Musk wrote, pegging the first crewed Starship flights to the neighboring planet for 2028. A self-sustaining city, he said, should be ready in about 20 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at benzinga.com ...
“By that time IF that woman gets in the WH, we’ll all be volunteers for the trip”
LOL! I was just about to say that!
“With AI and robots becoming more and more sophisticated, I don’t believe there will ever be a reason to risk any human lives beyond the moon’s orbit.”
There probably never was a good reason to cross the oceans and risk you life or climb Mt Everest, Jump off a plane, or a hundred other things people risk their lives for.
I’m not one of those, but I’m glad there are people like that. They expand man’s horizon.
When people arrived in ships on the shores of the New World 500 years ago, they could use the local materials to build houses, could breathe the atmosphere, and could grow crops in the soil.
I’m no astrophysicist, but it MAY be a bit different on Mars.
How would the ship be protected from meteor storms and the like?
A sad story .
I think that means its a one way trip .
Can you imagine using a vacuum device every day for almost two years on a spacecraft? And drinking water reclaimed from such waste? And what are you going to eat? I bet there won’t be any fresh fruit or meat. Some adventure!
You mean like the “Marching Morons”.🤔
Elon Musk has a lot figured out already. Send a Boring Company tunneling machine to dig a tunnel. It will find underground water, and make bricks for building housing in the tunnel for homes. The tunnel will protect people from harmful radiation (not all, since our magnetic poles create fields to repel radiation, but Mars has very weak magnetic poles). It will be a problem to grow any food because of dead soil. I think they should send humanoid robots for the first few years to build a settlement, with only a few humans to supervise construction.
I would not bet against him!
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The SpaceX Starship is a sight to behold with 33 Raptor engines and 16 million pounds of thrust, twice as much as the Saturn V rocket that sent men to the Moon.
The estimated transit time is less than 80 days, like a trip to the New World in the 17th century. The limiting factor for survival (after landing safely) is radiation exposure on Mars. If they could find a nice lava cave, that would extend their stay. God Speed.
Spock: Don’t grieve, Admiral. It’s logical. The needs of the many outweigh—
Kirk: The needs of the few?
Spock: —or the one. I never took the Kobayashi Maru test until now. What do you think of my solution?
Kirk: Spock!
Spock: I have been, and always shall be, your friend. Live long and prosper!
It is more like a voyage by a submarine. When that hatch opens and you breath in fresh air and feel the warm sun it is almost like a religious experience.
When people arrived in ships on the shores of the New World 500 years ago, they could use the local materials to build houses, could breathe the atmosphere, and could grow crops in the soil.
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Elon Musk has a lot figured out already. Send a Boring Company tunneling machine to dig a tunnel. It will find underground water, and make bricks for building housing in the tunnel for homes. The tunnel will protect people from harmful radiation (not all, since our magnetic poles create fields to repel radiation, but Mars has very weak magnetic poles). It will be a problem to grow any food because of dead soil. I think they should send humanoid robots for the first few years to build a settlement, with only a few humans to supervise construction.
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The environment is hostile on Mars, the surface pressure is ~10 millibars (your blood would boil at room temperature), >95% carbon dioxide. But there are large caches of frozen water-ice just below the surface.
One of the landings on Mars recorded a large block of water-ice about foot down, exposed by the landing thrusters. It was definitely water, not CO2. It didn’t take long for the water to sublimate away into the atmosphere. But it’s there (a source of hydrogen and oxygen). You would need a pressurized containment tent for growing crops. Then there is the radiation exposure problem. Finding and navigating a lava cave would be best.
Send Haitians. They can eat each other on the way.
Props to anyone who recognizes the verse.
I think I read that in a Heinlein book. Don't recall which one.
Mars is a sterile wasteland, always has been. Always will be.
Musk wants to put a million people on Mars. I'm pretty sure there will be someone going to Mars and returning. Musk is talking about sending ships there in 2 years, and perhaps a manned mission in 4.
I think that's overly optimistic, but maybe in 12 years or so we might see a manned mission.
But Matt Damon was there. He grew sh*t potatoes. Can we send leftists there yet.
I’ll go.
I try to keep up with the topic.
Mars soil has perchlorates, and plants cannot grow in such soil unless the perchlorates are removed. (Which they can do, albeit it requires all soil to be processed.)
The radiation on the surface of Mars is deadly, and people would have to be underground the vast majority of the time.
The temperature is freezing, as in like 70 below zero much of the time. I believe it occasionally rises up above the melting point of water during a heat wave.
The pressure is like 3% of earth's atmosphere, and it's all Carbon dioxide. You can't breath it, and the pressure is too low for a human to breath it anyway.
Lots of problems with Mars, but all this stuff can be overcome eventually.
A magnetic deflector placed in the Lagrange point between Mars and the Sun would block the solar wind and an effect I believe is called "magnetic reconnection" . Mars would then slowly start to reacquire an atmosphere.
I've also seen ideas to wrap a coil of wire around Mars and create an artificial magnetic field.
In the future, perhaps they can bombard it with ice from the moons of Saturn or Jupiter.
But first they need to stop the loss of atmosphere.
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