Discussion Elon Musk's Martian Fantasy

[Muse]

To ME, the idea that we start and end on this rock is unacceptable. In a sense it makes existence meaningless. Using earths resources to maximize our collective dopamine and serotonin levels until it all goes boom is exceedingly missing the point of why we're here .

Maybe you should discuss this with your therapist. You have an issue there that can and should be resolved.

 

[cytg111]

Maybe you should discuss this with your therapist. You have an issue there that can and should be resolved.

Lol, you two guys. Whatever it is. Get over it. Move on. Both of you .

 

[Number1]

It is for people like Musk. Musk doesn't give a shit at all about world hunger. They haven't even pretended that has anything to do with any of this so I don't know why the fuck so many of you keep holding it up like duh obviously its just going to be magically solved by Musk sending his giant gleaming metal dicks into space to ejaculate wealthy people on other planetary bodies.

That's not really true as its not the government that is the issue there. Its private companies that corrupted politicians. Something Musk is actually very keen on enabling and continuing. He just wants the money himself. It won't long term, especially considering some of the nonsense he's intent on wasting money on. He'd gladly burn billions (probably trillions) on a solution that everyone knows won't work because he's so convinced he's right above all else.

Ah yes, just like cryptocurrencies are going to cure world hunger, income inequality, and all the other bullshit.

Hell, you people wanna bring up sci fi bullshit? How much sci fi is about space exploration bringing back some germ that devastates life on earth?

😂 😂 Yaouch, you OK there darky. It's hard to take you seriously after a statement like that. Like him or hate him, Musk has changed the world for the better. It's the way of the future, better, more advance capabilities. Did you dump your twitter account yet?

 

[Heartbreaker]

Like it or not these programs drive innovations that then help life down here.

When spaceflight started you get about 20 teletype words an hour from various ground stations. At the end of Apollo worldwide telecommunications and the semiconductor industry had lept forward.

Correlation does not equal causation. NASA didn't develop semiconductors.

Reality is that we had plenty of ground based reasons for semiconductor industry pushing ahead, NASA just took advantage of the new products.

You could make similar arguments about all the semiconductors used making all the nuke bombs during the cold war. Are you going to laud the building of nuclear bombs?

Plus I'm not arguing against going to space, just against, Musk Vanity project: Flag Planting on Mars, followed by permanent base on Mars. This is endless black hole of sinking funds into supplying them.

NASA is going back to the moon, and setting up a base there, and the technology requirements are very similar.

Beyond that I prefer development of cislunar space, and asteroid mining. There is much better bang/buck, than a Mars vanity project.

 

[Zorba]

Correlation does not equal causation. NASA didn't develop semiconductors.

Reality is that we had plenty of ground based reasons for semiconductor industry pushing ahead, NASA just took advantage of the new products.

You could make similar arguments about all the semiconductors used making all the nuke bombs during the cold war. Are you going to laud the building of nuclear bombs?

Plus I'm not arguing against going to space, just against, Musk Vanity project: Flag Planting on Mars, followed by permanent base on Mars. This is endless black hole of sinking funds into supplying them.

NASA is going back to the moon, and setting up a base there, and the technology requirements are very similar.

Beyond that I prefer development of cislunar space, and asteroid mining. There is much better bang/buck, than a Mars vanity project.

NASA and the DOD drove the early sells of semiconductors, which allowed the massive acceleration in economies of scale and innovation. Without NASA driving massive demand, costs be damned, the industry would've had a much slower ramp up.

MIT did two things to solve the problems of those first integrated circuits. Working with early chip companies—Fairchild Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Philco—it drove the manufacturing quality of computer chips up by a factor of 1,000. MIT had a battery of a dozen acceptance tests for the computer chips it bought, and if even one chip in a lot of 1,000 failed one test, MIT packed up the whole lot and sent it back.

And MIT, on behalf of NASA, bought so many of the early chips that it drove the price down dramatically: from $1,000 a chip in that first order to $15 a chip in 1963, when MIT was ordering lots of 3,000. By 1969, those basic chips cost $1.58 each, except they had significantly more capability, and a lot more reliability, than the 1963 version.
MIT and NASA were able to do all that because for year after year, Apollo was the No. 1 customer for computer chips in the world.

In 1962, the U.S. government bought 100% of integrated circuit production.
In 1963, the U.S. government bought 85%.
In 1964, 85%.
In 1965, 72%.

Even as the share dropped, total purchasing soared. The 1965 volume was 20 times what it had been just three years earlier.
Inside the government, there was only NASA using the chips, and the Air Force’s Minuteman missile, a relatively small project compared with the Apollo computers.

How NASA gave birth to modern computing—and gets no credit for it

The space agency and MIT’s bet on the integrated circuit kicked off the digital age.

www.fastcompany.com

 

[Paratus]

Correlation does not equal causation. NASA didn't develop semiconductors.


Reality is that we had plenty of ground based reasons for semiconductor industry pushing ahead, NASA just took advantage of the new products.

You could make similar arguments about all the semiconductors used making all the nuke bombs during the cold war. Are you going to laud the building of nuclear bombs?

I never said NASA did develop semiconductors. NASA’s technical need and money did. DOD and nuclear weapons projects did too. Lauding is not required. It’s just the facts and causation = causation

How the Government Helped Spur the Microchip Industry

Demand from NASA and the Air Force gave a major boost to the fledgling semiconductor industry in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

fedtechmagazine.com

Plus I'm not arguing against going to space, just against, Musk Vanity project: Flag Planting on Mars, followed by permanent base on Mars. This is endless black hole of sinking funds into supplying them.

NASA is going back to the moon, and setting up a base there, and the technology requirements are very similar.

I’m intimately familiar with NASA’s plans for going back to the moon. That’s currently my day to day job. NASAs long term lunar mission goals are to use it as a stepping stone to Mars.

Beyond that I prefer development of cislunar space, and asteroid mining. There is much better bang/buck, than a Mars vanity project.

SpaceX has a contract to provide lunar lander capabilities using Starship. The same system Musk wants to use to go to Mars.

 

[Heartbreaker]

NASA and the DOD drove the early sells of semiconductors, which allowed the massive acceleration in economies of scale and innovation. Without NASA driving massive demand, costs be damned, the industry would've had a much slower ramp up.

So it would have been a slower ramp up. That's doesn't make it a must do. You also include DOD because a lot of early chips were going into guidance systems for Nuclear Missiles.

Should we have more wars because a lot technology came out of the military industrial complex?

The project has to stand on it's own merits.

Plus we aren't exactly existing in a time where there is a lack of technology spending.

The world is facing shortages of nearly everything because chips are production limited, despite the floodgates being opened on new Fab building.

Let Musk fund his own vanity project.

 

[Zorba]

So it would have been a slower ramp up. That's doesn't make it a must do. You also include DOD because a lot of early chips were going into guidance systems for Nuclear Missiles.

Should we have more wars because a lot technology came out of the military industrial complex?

The project has to stand on it's own merits.

Plus we aren't exactly existing in a time where there is a lack of technology spending.

The world is facing shortages of nearly everything because chips are production limited, despite the floodgates being opened on new Fab building.

Let Musk fund his own vanity project.

You obviously didn't actually read the article.

I don't think anyone is saying we need to go to Mars to drive demand for chips. We are saying normal people on earth greatly benefit from the technologies developed for space travel. Semiconductors and integrated circuits being one huge example. Going to Mars would likewise create a lot of new and innovative technology that could be used on Earth.

Whether or not that justifies the mission is debatable of course.

Also humans have greatly benefited from the technologies developed and matured during WW2, but I don't think that justifies another world war.

 

[Heartbreaker]

You obviously didn't actually read the article.

I don't think anyone is saying we need to go to Mars to drive demand for chips. We are saying normal people on earth greatly benefit from the technologies developed for space travel. Semiconductors and integrated circuits being one huge example. Going to Mars would likewise create a lot of new and innovative technology that could be used on Earth.

Whether or not that justifies the mission is debatable of course.

Also humans have greatly benefited from the technologies developed and matured during WW2, but I don't think that justifies another world war.

But we are going back to the Moon anyway, so any extra benefit of going to Mars are much more likely to be tiny. It might be different if this was Mars or Stay on earth, but it isn't.

Much better bang for the buck to develop moon/asteroid resource extraction, that actually has clear tangible benefit, than flag planting on Mars.

 

[Zorba]

But we are going back to the Moon anyway, so any extra benefit of going to Mars are much more likely to be tiny. It might be different if this was Mars or Stay on earth, but it isn't.

Much better bang for the buck to develop moon/asteroid resource extraction, that actually has clear tangible benefit, than flag planting on Mars.

We are going back to the moon as a stepping stone to get to Mars. I agree with you about asteroids vs Mars, though.

 

[Heartbreaker]

We are going back to the moon as a stepping stone to get to Mars. I agree with you about asteroids vs Mars, though.

It will be interesting to see how it unfolds. IIRC NASA to Mars is appropriately conservative targeting late 2030's to Early 2040's for manned Mars landing, but it's easy to see that getting pushed back, and funding priorities changing in the intervening years as cost projections rise, I really can't see them funding a long term base on Mars.

I wonder if Musk gets impatient and tries to go it alone. This doesn't seem like a good candidate for his typical "Move fast and break things" method.

 

[pmv]

NASA and the DOD drove the early sells of semiconductors, which allowed the massive acceleration in economies of scale and innovation. Without NASA driving massive demand, costs be damned, the industry would've had a much slower ramp up.

How NASA gave birth to modern computing—and gets no credit for it

The space agency and MIT’s bet on the integrated circuit kicked off the digital age.

www.fastcompany.com

But all that surely amounts to an endorsement of state-intervention and strategic government spending? That's a seperate argument, about the pro-s and con-s of big government projects in developing key parts of an economy. It's not about 'space' per se, so much as about spending tax money on encouraging particular industries. The defence industry involves similar things. I think there are arguments both ways about that sort of thing, I'm still undecided, myself.

I don't see any comparison with what Musk is doing. He's just a businessman, shuffling existing private-sector resources around while, along the way, pocketing as much of them personally as he can.

 

[Brovane]

It will be interesting to see how it unfolds. IIRC NASA to Mars is appropriately conservative targeting late 2030's to Early 2040's for manned Mars landing, but it's easy to see that getting pushed back, and funding priorities changing in the intervening years as cost projections rise, I really can't see them funding a long term base on Mars.

I wonder if Musk gets impatient and tries to go it alone. This doesn't seem like a good candidate for his typical "Move fast and break things" method.

One reason that SpaceX is deploying Starlink was to help fund hardware for SpaceX going to Mars. It gives SpaceX a revenue stream beyond what just providing launch services can achieve.

Once Starship is flying regularly we might see a initial un-crewed demonstration mission to Mars with a Starship landing on the surface. Probably with a launch in 2026. Once SpaceX seriously starts planning to land a Starship on Mars there will need to be a serious conversation between the FAA, NASA and SpaceX about planetary protection and how you sterilize a lander the size of Starship.

Once Starship demonstrates a soft landing on Mars look for a follow-up crew mission in 2028 or 2030. At this point NASA and SpaceX will need to have a conversation around how much NASA wants to participate.

 

[Zorba]

But all that surely amounts to an endorsement of state-intervention and strategic government spending? That's a seperate argument, about the pro-s and con-s of big government projects in developing key parts of an economy. It's not about 'space' per se, so much as about spending tax money on encouraging particular industries. The defence industry involves similar things. I think there are arguments both ways about that sort of thing, I'm still undecided, myself.

I don't see any comparison with what Musk is doing. He's just a businessman, shuffling existing private-sector resources around while, along the way, pocketing as much of them personally as he can.

I agree, doesn't have to be space. Space just provides endless technological and interesting challenges. And it is something both sides like, so you can actually get funding for it. We should be dumping massive resources into alternative energy, but that is a much harder sell.

 

[Brovane]

But all that surely amounts to an endorsement of state-intervention and strategic government spending? That's a seperate argument, about the pro-s and con-s of big government projects in developing key parts of an economy. It's not about 'space' per se, so much as about spending tax money on encouraging particular industries. The defence industry involves similar things. I think there are arguments both ways about that sort of thing, I'm still undecided, myself.

I don't see any comparison with what Musk is doing. He's just a businessman, shuffling existing private-sector resources around while, along the way, pocketing as much of them personally as he can.

Has SpaceX advanced the space launch industry for the US? Is the space launch a key part of the US economy? I would answer Yes to both of those questions, would you?

 

[pmv]

Has SpaceX advanced the space launch industry for the US? Is the space launch a key part of the US economy? I would answer Yes to both of those questions, would you?

I'd answer "don't know" to the first and "possibly, but possibly not" to the second. I don't really know.

And even if one concludes the answer to the first is "yes", it's still not obvious to me that Musk personally is central to that. Did he, as an individual intellect, think up the technology and do the physical labour required?

 

[Heartbreaker]

We should be dumping massive resources into alternative energy, but that is a much harder sell.

It's shouldn't be when the majority of people, seem to recognize CO2 emissions as a significant environmental threat.

Even polling in GW denying USA indicates more people onside for environmental/climate concerns than putting people on Moon/Mars:

Nearly Half the Public Wants the U.S. to Maintain Its Space Dominance. Appetite for Space Exploration Is a Different Story

In a Morning Consult survey conducted Feb. 12-15 among 2,200 U.S. adults, 33 percent said sending human astronauts to the moon or Mars should be a “top” or “important but lower” priority for the U.S. government’s space efforts -- about 30 percentage points lower than monitoring key parts of the...

morningconsult.com

33 percent said sending human astronauts to the moon or Mars should be a “top” or “important but lower” priority for the U.S. government’s space efforts — about 30 percentage points lower than monitoring key parts of the Earth’s climate system (63 percent) or monitoring asteroids and other objects that could strike the Earth’s surface (62 percent).

 

[Zorba]

It's shouldn't be when the majority of people, seem to recognize CO2 emissions as a significant environmental threat.

Tell that to the people that keep electing republicans.

 

[Muse]

Lol, you two guys. Whatever it is. Get over it. Move on. Both of you .

All 3 of me?

Actually, cheaper and maybe more effective than therapy are Alan Watts videos on youtube. Watch them enough and you should be cured of the problem.

 

[Brovane]

I'd answer "don't know" to the first and "possibly, but possibly not" to the second. I don't really know.

And even if one concludes the answer to the first is "yes", it's still not obvious to me that Musk personally is central to that. Did he, as an individual intellect, think up the technology and do the physical labour required?

What Musk did was assemble the funding($100M came from Musk personally) to start SpaceX and guide SpaceX during it's startup years to reach orbit. Musk also hired the team that developed the Falcon-1 and Falcon-9. Without Musk, no SpaceX.

There is a good book out there by Eric Berger called Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX. Goes into detail about how SpaceX started and Elon's role in all that.

As far as advancing the US launch industry, the Falcon-9 has proven itself to be a remarkable workhorse rocket for the US launch industry. Every year, access to space has been shown to be a increasing importance to the US economy.

 

[cytg111]

All 3 of me?

Actually, cheaper and maybe more effective than therapy are Alan Watts videos on youtube. Watch them enough and you should be cured of the problem.

Just keep punching Apollo

 

[Number1]

The $93-billion plan to put astronauts back on the Moon

Detailed article on how NASA plans to return to the moon. It even has a poll asking if you agree with the program. Personaly, Starship looks a lot more promising and not just for landing on the moon. It will revolutionise space exploration like the Falcon 9, the Starlink global internet access, and the Tesla's electric car did. Future of space exploration is looking better than ever.

 

[Number1]

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will launch on a crucial NASA test flight today. Here's how to watch live.

Liftoff is scheduled for 6:54 p.m. EDT (2254 GMT).

Hopefully all goes well.
More manned space exploration capabilities. What's not to like?