
SpaceX aims to put man on Mars in 10-20 years - icey
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-spacex-aims-mars-years.html
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Jeema3000
I think I would prefer the upper atmosphere of Venus if I had to choose
between the two for a one-way trip:

"At an altitude of 50 km above Venusian surface, the environment is the most
Earth-like in the solar system – a pressure of approximately 1 bar and
temperatures in the 0°C–50°C range. Because there is not a significant
pressure difference between the inside and the outside of the breathable-air
balloon, any rips or tears would cause gases to diffuse at normal atmospheric
mixing rates, giving time to repair any such damages. In addition, humans
would not require pressurized suits when outside, merely air to breathe, a
protection from the acidic rain; and on some occasions low level protection
against heat."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Aerostat_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus#Aerostat_habitats_and_floating_cities)

Just don't fall off the edge... :)

~~~
TheEzEzz
That is the most interesting bit of space knowledge I've ever read. It
certainly seems like the potential in Venus is much greater than on Mars. I
wonder why the space industry is so fixated on Mars?

~~~
rbanffy
Keeping the habitat 50 Km from the surface for decades isn't a trivial task.

Mars also has easily accessible water and a lower gravity. All you can get
from Venusian high atmosphere are the gases you capture. On Mars you can mow
rocks to get stuff like, say, steel.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Indeed, there's not a lot to recommend a Venusian floating habitat over a pure
space station, for example.

However, if you look at what's possible with Mars, things get interesting
quickly. Firstly, the CO2 atmosphere and local sub-surface water ice can be
used to generate rocket fuel with a very low level of infrastructure, making
initial exploration dramatically more efficient. Secondly, Mars has plenty of
Sun and near-Earth day/night cycle, making it straightforward to grow food
there. The day/night cycle also makes relying on solar power much more
feasible, and makes direct communication with Earth more reasonable (since a
location on Mars and on Earth will generally have line-of-sight to each other
on the order of once per day). Thirdly, local martian materials can be used to
maintain a self-sufficient industrialized civilization over an indefinite
period of time (local metal ores, water ice, CO2, even Uranium ores, ability
to grow food, etc.)

~~~
rbanffy
Doing some fact checking, you could build automated processing stations on
Venus that could process atmospheric CO2 and water vapor (the former is most
of Venusian atmosphere and the latter about 20 ppm) into methane and O2. There
is plenty of sunlight as a power source too and an abundant source of heat.
The gravity well is much worse than the one you find on Mars, but, as far as
an automated facility goes, it's conceivable just to leave it there for
decades, let it fill itself to its full capacity over decades and just ship a
couple tanks coupled to engines to low orbit (or a cycler one) where a passing
spacecraft could pick them up. The empty vehicle could then return to Venus
and start its cycle again.

Mars is easier, but there is a lot of Carbon on Venus and it would be nice to
be able to ship it elsewhere. Maybe then we could somewhat reduce the
greenhouse effect and make it more comfortable over a couple hundred thousand
years.

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ck2
There is a brilliant "new" engine in the works that will make travel to Mars
possible in days instead of months.

It's called VASMIR
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magne...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_Specific_Impulse_Magnetoplasma_Rocket)

It's not really "new" since it was conceptualized in 1977 but recent
technological advances have made it a real prototype (2005) and it will be
tested on the space-station in 2013.

The guy who designed it, Franklin Chang-Diaz, is incredible as well as his
lifestory - literally made his farfetched startrek-inspired dream to become an
astronaut come true by sheer willpower and he went to MIT.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Chang-Diaz>

~~~
rdoherty
Days? The current existing version can tow 7 tons from LEO to LLO in 6 months,
so I don't think we'll get to Mars in days.

~~~
tsotha
Days is ridiculous. A few months instead of the years chemical rockets would
take is probably a better estimate. The big advantage to VASMIR is that,
unlike the Deep Space 1-style ion engine you can get reasonable thrust and a
high specific impulse at the same time.

~~~
ck2
When they say days they mean 40 days, not a "few" days.

~~~
tsotha
That's kind of misleading, isn't it? I mean, by the same token days could mean
400 days or 4000.

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mechanical_fish
_[SpaceX] has won $75 million from the US space agency NASA to help its
pursuit of developing a spacecraft..._

I was wondering what possible economic rationale a "private" mission to Mars
could have, given that there are a limited number of billionaire space
tourists whose ultimate dream is to be locked in a space the size of a bus for
six years.

Now I know. They're in the traditional, lucrative business of collecting
government grants.

What I'm seeing here is a contractor. Big deal. Exactly what is the difference
here between SpaceX and, say, Grumman Aircraft Engineering in 1962?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module>

Grumman wasn't part of the government. It was a corporation.

The point of "private" space ventures is that they're supposed to have a
different _business model_ , not just a different approach to branding
themselves. Thus far their big business-model innovation is to collect checks
from NASA without ever using the words _contractor_ or _NASA_.

~~~
FrojoS
Since I'm not a US tax payer I should be careful. Its true, SpaceX would not
be where they are today without massive government support.

But consider the following. First, they are a lot more cost efficient. The
Falcon Heavy is supposed to be 6 times cheaper per ton to LEO than the Delta
IV Heavy. This can save the US government as well as many companies around the
world lots of money.

Second, the ability to jump in, just when the, expensive, shuttle program runs
out seems to be very helpful for the USA as a - if not the - space nation.
Without SpaceX the US would depend on Russia to send astronauts to the ISS and
anywhere else in space for many, many years.

Also, I would be careful about dissing "space tourists". Many of the so called
tourists have actually done scientific experiments in space. I believe most of
them did not fly, so they can show the "I was there" pics at home. No, they
wanted to be astronauts since they were little boys, more than anything else
in the world! This is pure speculation, but if NASA would auction their
astronaut positions to people who match the minimum requirements, they might
be profitable tomorrow.

Same goes for Elon Musk and Mars. I've read many times, he is a betrayer and
just wants make money at the SpaceX IPO. I know you didn't state this and
maybe its actually true. But I don't believe it. I think he and others really
want to have humans on Mars and if possible they want to fly by them self. I
find it totally plausible that the first manned mission to Mars will be
financed by the crew and their private supporters. Just consider how much
people pay to be the XXXth person to be on Mount Everest. And thats arguable
not less dangerous, let alone the hardship in the death zone. How much would
be the final prize on a auction that determines who will likely be the first
human in history on a different planet?

Last but not least, whats wrong about Grunman and the Lunar Module? From the
wikipedia article you cited: "Though initially unpopular and plagued with
several delays in its development, the LM eventually became the most reliable
component of the Apollo/Saturn system, the only one never to suffer any
failure that significantly impacted a mission,[1] and in at least one instance
(LM-7 Aquarius) greatly exceeded its design requirements."

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cletus
This is a great headline-grabber but I still see landing a man on Mars as
being an awful long way off.

I heard Jerry Pournelle talking about this and he said something like landing
a man on the Moon and establishing a lunar colony is an engineering problem.
Landing a man on Mars is a science problem.

The difference? We can already do the former. it's simply a question of money
and the will to do it. The problems are basically solved.

Landing a man on Mars has far bigger problems. The round trip (or even one
way) journey with current propulsion technology will take an incredibly long
time (upwards of 2 years). How do you keep someone alive that long? What about
the psychology of isolation? Sustained radiation exposure is a real problem.

Personally I see manned spaceflight, particularly to other planets, as being
largely a propaganda exercise until:

1\. The cost of lifting into orbit (per kg) goes down. Way down. Like 2 or
even 3 orders of magnitude; and

2\. We have a much faster means of propulsion to make journey lengths
manageable.

(1) is probably the easiest to solve. SpaceX's launch prices are actually
quite low (but those are fairly low orbits; launching to another planet is
more expensive). Virgin Galactic and other private suborbital efforts will
(hopefully) lead to a dramatic cost reduction of getting into orbit.

(2) is a fundamentally hard problem. Ideas such as solar sails and the like
are far from being practical (plus with a solar sail, how do you get back?).
Magnetic fields as solar sails is an interesting idea but has a whole bunch of
other problems.

Otherwise you need to eject mass to give you velocity. That mass is something
you have to carry. The more mass (fuel) you carry, the less effective each
gram is (in delta-V terms).

What I think will probably drive this is the coming earthbound resource
shortages (inevitable unless we drastically reduce population; it's simply a
question of when) that will drive a permanent presence in space. Once you have
a huge industrial manufacturing capacity in space, the economics completely
change.

EDIT: I agree with other comments in that a one-way (colonization) mission
makes far more sense but I'm still unconvinced this will happen anytime soon,
probably not in my lifetime.

Mars does have some interesting properties though if a colony can become self-
sustaining:

1\. Lower gravity. This actually makes the idea of a space elevator far more
feasible [1]; and

2\. Mars has features that extend beyond the atmosphere. The atmosphere is
~11km thick. Olympus Mons is 25km high.

I've read seemingly informed speculation that if we (the human race) had
evolved on Mars, we'd already be heavily spacebound since it would be far, far
easier.

This is what might justify colonizing Mars. Not that that is an easy problem.

[1]: <http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=95924>

~~~
drm237
I'm not sure we need to dramatically reduce the population in order for the
Earth to sustain us, we just can't let it continue to grow unchecked forever.

According to the FAO, the earth could feed up to 12 billion people:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger#World_statistics>

~~~
cletus
Food is the least of our problems.

Energy is a bigger problem. While we can make energy from renewable sources it
is far more expensive (which has ramifications for our entire way of life) and
not yet established that we could provide it on the scale necessary to replace
our non-renewable sources.

But the biggest problem is resources. Metals, rare earth elements and the
like. These are largely irreplaceable in the sense that we can produce so much
of them by (typically) digging fairly shallow holes in the ground. We're
already going to some fairly inhospitable places to meet our insatiable demand
(eg the Arctic in northern Canada and Europe, the Andes).

If we're not careful we may well find our own answer to the Fermi paradox.

~~~
evgen
Actually, food is the _only_ problem when it comes to whether or not a
population is sustainable. Enery and resource usage determine if a particular
lifestyle is sustainable for a given population. Given sufficient energy other
resource problems tend to go away (e.g. the amount of various minerals that
are in solution within the oceans is mind-boggling but it takes energy to get
them out). In the end the lifestyle any particular population can sustain will
come down to an energy production/capture and management problem.

~~~
cletus
> Energy and resource usage determine if a particular lifestyle is sustainable
> for a given population

And maintaining a particular lifestyle tends to be a strong catalyst for war
as a means of solving population problems. The problem is we're now at a point
where such a thing could be truly devastating.

While the threat of mutually-assured destruction has kept the specter of
nuclear war at bay, I believe you'll see the means of destruction migrate to
more fine-grained methods, most notably genetic engineering and
nanotechnology, both of which will become increasingly accessible on a scale
nuclear technology never has.

> Given sufficient energy other resource problems tend to go away

I agree but all the energy replacements in the foreseeable future will make
energy more expensive not cheaper.

Fission-based energy has the same fuel problem fossil fuelds do (the
unfulfilled promises of thorium reactors notwithstanding).

Fusion-based energy has huge problems, some of which are fairly fundamental
and not likely to be solved anytime soon.

The most obvious problem (containment of plasma) is probably solvable with
magnetism.

The bigger problem is neutrons. You currently can't leave a fusion reactor on
for very long before it starts destroying its container.

He-3 (Helium-3) is one possibly solution to this but that stuff is incredibly
rare and may well present the same fuel problems as any other energy source.

Interestingly there's a supply of it on the Moon due to billions of years of
solar wind on an atmosphere-less body.

> In the end the lifestyle any particular population can sustain will come
> down to an energy production/capture and management problem.

With some fairly nasty corrections that may have undesirable consequences for
the rest of us.

Anyway, that's why I say food is the least of our problems. We can already
produce enough food for the present population. It's unclear how much longer
we can support the lifestyle of that same population.

Energy factors in here too as we're now fairly distant from our food (given
how urbanized the developed world generally is) but population redistribution
will occur naturally as the energy equation changes.

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szany
_"We'll probably put a first man in space in about three years," Elon Musk
told the Wall Street Journal Saturday. "We're going all the way to Mars, I
think... best case 10 years, worst case 15 to 20 years."_

He didn't say it's necessarily man on Mars.

~~~
hugh3
Now a SpaceX probe on Mars in ten years, that I can definitely believe.

~~~
rbanffy
Ten years for an orbiter? Feasible. For a lander? Very, very hard.

They can do it, but they'll need some luck.

~~~
hugh3
Do you think so? A Martian lander is an easier job than an Earth lander, and
they've already built one of those. In fact, there was the story here the
other about how a Dragon can theoretically land on Mars, so if they just
manage to build a big enough booster it should be well within their
capabilities.

Still very expensive, of course... they'd need to talk someone into paying for
it.

~~~
JshWright
Why would a Martian lander be easier? On earth you get to use parachutes. The
Martian atmosphere is too thin to use parachutes for any significant payload.

I know SpaceX is planning on a thrust-based landign system for Dragon, but the
"lander" they've "already built" relies on parachutes.

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BenSS
Targeting 10-20 years is basically wishful thinking. The time horizon is too
long to make serious estimates. Look at fusion! Workable fusion has been 10-20
years off as long as I can remember.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It took 7 years to go from a primitive orbital capsule to a manned lunar
landing.

With 1960s technology.

Don't use the pace of NASA progress within the last 2 decades as some sort of
benchmark, it has no meaning and no correlation to anything other than
government handouts to important congressional districts.

What is possible and what will be possible within 10-20 years is a great deal
more than what has been done.

SpaceX is seemingly capable of building a Saturn V class launch vehicle in
less time and for far less money than was done historically. Given that I
don't doubt that they'll be able to do amazing things.

~~~
BenSS
I'm not looking at NASA's progress at all here. I'm sure SpaceX can accomplish
a lot in that time frame, but saying they'll definitely be on Mars then is
simply wishful thinking. Lift capacity is not the sole limiting factor.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Certainly. But look at the simple facts. From 1961 through the 1990s only 2
organizations (the US and Soviet governments) had developed or flown manned
spacecraft. Since then 6 organizations have developed, built, and flown such
spacecraft: China, Scaled Composites (a sub-orbital flight), SpaceX (an
unmanned test flight of a crew capsule), ESA and Japan (ISS modules and re-
supply craft), and Bigelow Aerospace (unmanned tests of inflatable space
habitats). It's especially notable that half of these achievements are from
non-governmental activities.

The point being: the ability to build manned spacecraft is much less difficult
and much less rare than it once was, and no longer restricted to governments.
Given that, it's no small stretch to imagine impressive increases in lift
capacity coupled with equally impressive reductions in launch cost
facilitating even greater fluency with manned spacecraft design, construction,
and operation.

It is not so terribly difficult to mount a manned mission to Mars as some
people seem to imagine. Read Zubrin's "The Case For Mars" to see how it can be
done rather efficiently. Given the projected payload capacity of the proposed
Falcon XX launcher it would really only take a few launches to get things
running.

Given that SpaceX has already built a seemingly functional crew capsule will
it really take much more than 20 more years to build and test all of the
necessary pre-requisite components of a manned Mars mission? I don't think the
timeline is so terribly optimistic really.

------
Fargren
Does this sound believable for anyone that knows something about the current
state of the art in space traveling?

~~~
NickPollard
I think so. I was talking to a friend at ESA the other day and he seemed to be
pretty positive about getting to Mars soon.

Of course, getting /back/ from Mars is an entirely different proposition
altogether. It's pretty likely the first man on Mars will be taking a one-way
trip (and there are definitely people willing to do this).

~~~
Fargren
Yeah, I read something about that being the opinion of Buzz Aldrin. But a on
way trip seems like a hard sell. Doesn't the government have to approve
something like that? Immigration, maybe? And it just doesn't some like a good
PR move to approve that.

Here's the article: <http://buzzaldrin.com/a-one-way-trip-to-mars/>

~~~
ams6110
Thanks for that link. After reading it, I agree: a one-way mission would not
be a "suicide mission" but more like a high-risk adventure. History has proven
that many people relish these opportunities.

And it's not even that there might never be a chance for return; just that
it's not part of any of the current planning. Would be attractive to the same
sorts of people who in the 14th and 15th centuries sailed in wooden ships to
the "new world"

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bfirsh
_"We're going all the way to Mars, I think..."_

Compared to:

 _"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him
safely to Earth."_

Doesn't sound like they have a whole load of confidence.

~~~
tylerhwillis
Elon Musk is not Kennedy. His default style of speech is less political and
usually not aimed at inspiration.

You can draw no inferences about his confidence from this comparison.

What you could take from this comparison, if you were so inclined, is that
when it comes to inspiring Americans about space travel, Musk&Co. are less
motivational than what worked in the past. Time will tell if you need the same
motivational leader to accomplish something like this in the private sector.

~~~
Mz
Kennedy was also assassinated. There is likely a direct link between how
inspirational he was and the fact that he was assassinated: Jesus was
crucified, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, and Dr. Martin Luther King was
shot. If Elon Musk wants to get the task done without ending up dead for it,
speaking in a less inspirational style may be the better path.

Edit: It's a completely serious observation, not intended as funny at all.
Anyone care to explain the downvote? Or argue the point?

Thanks.

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kmfrk
Thinking about all this, maybe kids will no longer want to be astronauts when
they grow up, but entrepreneurs who get to send people to the frontiers of
space.

It's so fascinating to see a private enterprise undertake these inspirational
endeavours.

------
nazgulnarsil
no canned primates in space. all of those billions need to be in radical life
extension and brain mapping.

I want to send my upload to mars.

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melling
Put men on mars or launch hundreds of robots and satellites to survey the
solar system? Which will produce more knowledge? Which will be more cost
effective? In 100 years, which path will lead to more increased human space
travel?

Sending robots is agile space exploration. Release early, release often. We
can lose a few robots and use more experimental technology quicker. Sending
humans sounds cool but we shouldn't go until it's as safe as commercial
aviation then we can do it frequently.

~~~
rflrob
> Sending humans sounds cool but we shouldn't go until it's as safe as
> commercial aviation then we can do it frequently.

That's almost asking for it never to happen at all. Air travel has a safety
rate of 1 fatality per 2 billion passenger miles, making it one of the safest
modes of transport out there. When Europeans first started exploring the
Americas, the fatality rates were much higher, and people simply went in
knowing that what they were doing was risky, but also fundamentally _really
cool_.

~~~
biot
Fatalities per distance isn't a very good metric for safety. Otherwise, you
could send 3000 humans 1 light year away and as long as 1 passenger survives,
it's safer than air travel per billion passenger miles. Fatalities per trip
makes for a better comparison as the vast majority of the risk for space
travel, like with air travel, is on takeoff and landing.

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tsotha
A manned mission to mars is a great idea. As long as they don't intend to use
tax dollars.

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Clue
This site thinks it will be later: try 2037
<http://future.rouli.net/?query=man%20will%20land%20on%20mars>

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ccarpenterg
People talks about "the rocket" but who's building the other stuff to survive
and then come back from Mars?

~~~
drm237
Coming back isn't required if the goal were to create a settlement on mars.

~~~
hugh3
Creating a self-sustaining settlement, though, is even harder than creating a
return rocket.

As a first step we should see if we can create a self-sustaining colony in
Antarctica.

~~~
rbanffy
A self-sustaining settlement on Mars is not that difficult. Mars is not nearly
as barren as the Moon.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Creating a self-sustaining colony _anywhere_ is hard. Especially, if it has to
work the first time.

~~~
rbanffy
You can stockpile supplies before humans get there. It doesn't have to self-
sustain for as long as the supplies last. You can also send machinery to
extract materials from the environment.

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jasonmcalacanis
#winning

