
Elon Musk's mission to Mars - susanhi
http://m.guardiannews.com/technology/2013/jul/17/elon-musk-mission-mars-spacex
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arethuza
_' If he dies there, what should be engraved on his tombstone? Musk frowns a
moment, then grins. "Holy shit, I'm on Mars, can you believe it?"'_

Of the people alive today, I suspect Elon is probably one of the few who will
be widely remembered a thousand years from now.

Perhaps most of all by the inhabitants of Mars.

NB I freely admit it having a romantic fascination with the colonization of
Mars after reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy and Robert Zubrin's The
Case for Mars:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Mars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Mars)

~~~
morganwilde
This is easy to overlook, but if he's correct and will be able to achieve his
goals, those 80,000 plus people will have one man to thank. Although it is
still so unbelievably hard to imagine that, with so many obstacles ahead.

As with any highly risky enterprise, I think he should be increasing his odds
by raising one or more prodigies of his own, that would be able to carry on
with his work, if he himself wasn't able to.

~~~
arethuza
When you say "raising" \- I hope you mean mentoring rather than other
options...

~~~
prawks
Cloning? I think we know Musk's next venture...

~~~
DiabloD3
Immortality, actually.

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InclinedPlane
The best thing about SpaceX, in my opinion, is how absolutely stunningly
ordinary their basic business strategy is. Build stuff that's valuable using
designs that are known to work, iterate on those designs as much as you can to
improve them, charge people money for the stuff you build, and just continue
doing that.

The Falcon 9 is a dead-simple 2 stage LOX/Kerosene rocket that effectively has
a heritage back to the 1950s, as does the capsule based Dragon spacecraft. But
SpaceX is continually trying to tighten their OODA loop and doing quite a good
job of it.

It's a good model for a lot of startups. Build something, iterate on it,
charge for it if for no other reason than to pay for continuing R&D, and just
keep getting better until you change the industry.

~~~
Retric
I think the secret to Space X is there an engineering company in a bureaucracy
heavy industry. It reminds me of a technical problem a friend was dealing with
he had a basic design for a toy that he was trying to get manufactured and
spent a few weeks emailing back and forth why the design was impossible, until
he went over and discovered the issue was a base he said should be about 1
inch thick needed to be 1/4 an inch thicker and they just looked at the
constraints and said impossible.

It's great for rockets to have more effecency, be lighter, and carry more
cargo, but it's hard to balance the design around what is overall cheaper and
more efficient rather than just chasing better specs.

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speeq
"SpaceX's focus on reusable technology has slashed costs – the company says it
can get an astronaut to the space station for $20m, versus $70m charged by
Russia for a seat on a Soyuz rocket. SpaceX is testing reusable prototype
rockets that can return to Earth intact, rather than burn up in the
atmosphere. If successful, rockets could be reused like aeroplanes, cutting
the price of a space mission to just $200,000, for fuel."

This is amazing.

~~~
throwmeaway33
I wonder what the Russian's cut is. Since they are the only people that can
send astronauts to space right now, they can charge basically any price they
want.

~~~
anovikov
They used to have a huge markup some 15 years ago. No longer. It's hard to
determine price of a crewed Soyuz mission, but an unmanned Proton rocket, when
ordered to launch Russian military satellites (which obviously can't bear much
markup because it is the parts of the same system buying from each other,
large markup only means increasing taxes) is 1.5x the price of a Falcon 9
launch, with a low orbit payload about 1.5x Falcon's and GEO orbit payload
about 1.1x Falcon's. So any and all price advantage Russian rockets used to
have over American is now eroded due to increased salaries (an aerospace
engineer got about $500-$1000 a year 15 years ago and about $10K a year now)
and lower SpaceX prices.

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znowi
_In order to get support they compromised and agreed to pay for essentially
anti-environmental ads for a couple of key conservative senators. And that was
not right. You should fight on the merits of the cause, not play some
Machiavellian game where you agree to support things that are bad in order to
get some things that are good passed._

Says a lot about integrity of our beloved Internet giants. Among the key
supporters of FWD.us initiative, apart from Facebook, are Google, Microsoft,
Yahoo, etc. And also, HN's own PG :)

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jkn
An old argument for going to Mars is that spreading beyond Earth is necessary
for survival in the very long term. It makes sense, but it always seems like
there are so many other causes, more urgent, to spend our resources on. Musk's
answer to that:

"The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You
can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by
the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We're obviously in a very upward cycle right
now and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not. There could be some
series of events that cause that technology level to decline. Given that this
is the first time in 4.5bn years where it's been possible for humanity to
extend life beyond Earth, it seems like we'd be wise to act while the window
was open and not count on the fact it will be open a long time."

I find it really hard to imagine our society going back to a dark age
though...

~~~
rfnslyr
>I find it really hard to imagine our society going back to a dark age
though...

Do you though? World War I, World War II, etc.

I firmly believe there will be a WWIII in my lifetime. The US government is
already a big boys club. You have money? You can join, we have money too. Look
at how much the US is capitalizing off of student loans. Where do you think
that money goes? It sure as hell ain't social services.

I really think that there are a few people running the country to completely
militarize it at some point from a long time ago and their plans are finally
coming to fruition.

All spending is going to the army. Police forces are more than equipped to
fuck up nearly every city if they wanted to. At some point, the
military/police will have so much force that the "people" no longer matter.

One day a switch will be flipped and it will become an entirely military
country.

Once that happens, combined with Chinese forces, nuclear warfare, and global
tension, I doubt anyone would survive a WWIII.

This is all just off handed bullshit-theorizing though.

~~~
salemh
You may enjoy the short novel "A Canticle for Lebowitz", which chronicles the
cycles of humanity re-birthing through dark ages post-nuclear war, surpassing
prior technology and...

[http://www.amazon.com/Canticle-Leibowitz-Walter-Miller-
Jr/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Canticle-Leibowitz-Walter-Miller-
Jr/dp/0553273817) _In the depths of the Utah desert, long after the Flame
Deluge has scoured the earth clean, a monk of the Order of Saint Leibowitz has
made a miraculous discovery: holy relics from the life of the great saint
himself, including the blessed blueprint, the sacred shopping list, and the
hallowed shrine of the Fallout Shelter._

 _In a terrifying age of darkness and decay, these artifacts could be the keys
to mankind 's salvation. But as the mystery at the core of this groundbreaking
novel unfolds, it is the search itself—for meaning, for truth, for love—that
offers hope for humanity's rebirth from the ashes._

It follows 3x periods: post nuclear, "rebuild" and discovery, and "surpass"
technology.

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jaxytee
Between running Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, and conceptualizing the hyperloop,
Elon is the yang to Steve Job's "Focus on one thing" yin.

~~~
k-mcgrady
But then Jobs had Apple and Pixar/Disney. You can have more than one company
as long as you have the right people running it for you.

~~~
Pwnguinz
I think the point is that Jobs himself only ran one company at a time, though
he had many successes. Elon is doing at least three things at once (Chairman
of the board of Solar City. CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX), and the Hyperloops
looks to be a fourth.

~~~
hkolek
FWIW, in the case of Solar City he consistently emphasizes in his interviews
that he has to basically "just show up at board meetings and hear the good
news" and that most of the credit goes to the guys in charge there. But
anyway, I'm deeply impressed by this guy, especially since he is not only CEO
but also Chief Designer at SpaceX and Product Architect at Tesla.

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michaelraven
Here's my input on the subject: [http://www.michaelraven.me/nasas-new-fusion-
driven-rocket-co...](http://www.michaelraven.me/nasas-new-fusion-driven-
rocket-could-cut-travel-time-to-mars-from-6-months-to-under-30-days/)

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qwerta
We can not survive in outer space in our current form. Human body requires too
much resources, is sensitive to radiation and needs gravity. But this may
change in near future :-)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
We can simulate gravity in space with centripetal force. The other problems
are definitely present. The ISS is a good testbed for developing solutions to
these problems, and I'm optimistic about our future deep-space travel
capability.

~~~
tehwalrus
there's way more radiation outside earth's magnetic field, and then even more
outside the solar system - I don't think the ISS is a particularly good
example.

Hmm, perhaps you're more right on a second reading - _" as a testbed for
developing solutions"_ might work.

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elmindreda
> _inspiration for Iron Man 's playboy superhero Tony Stark_

...except Iron Man was created eight years before he was born.

~~~
Lambdanaut
They're referring to the re-invented character from the recent Paramount
Pictures films. He was their "model" that inspired the character.

That's what they say, anyways. Elon Musk isn't nearly as socially heroic as
Tony Stark, he's a stuttering nerd. Not that that's a bad thing. He's a
genius, but they're really nothing alike except for them both being overly
ambitious and successful entrepreneurs.

