
Elon Musk Wants to Put Man on Mars in '12 to 15 Years' - littlesparkvt
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/elon-musk-put-man-mars-roughly-12-15/story?id=16940287
======
geuis
To everyone who asks questions like, "Why send people when robots are
better/cheaper" and "Isn't it too dangerous", I would reply, "Stay here".

It is only a recent phenomenon in human history, in the last few hundred
years, that all the places in the world are known. For hundreds of thousands
of years, there have always been new lands and oceans for our kind to explore.
Indeed, until the last ~20k years, we all existed in a near constant wandering
state. Thats how we survived, and the lifestyle is still practiced today,
albeit only in very tiny numbers in remote places.

Even with civilized life, i.e. villages, towns, and cities, for thousands of
years people have jumped on ships or made years-long treks across oceans and
continents to build new lives. Some of this was the desire to be free, or it
was forced, or it was from desperation, or it was simply to explore.

Simply because we almost all live in a vastly interconnected world now doesn't
mean that any of those reasons have disappeared, or that the kinds of people
willing to take such risks have died out. We're still here, if latent, amongst
the masses.

Many of us spend our youth traveling the world, climbing the next mountain.
Many others lose themselves in vast game worlds where we can, for short times,
satisfy the need to explore and build new lives. Some games such as WoW, Eve
Online, Secondlife, and Civilization are so popular in part of because of
these desires and needs.

So when you ask, "Why?", I say "Why not?". You are free to stay here. I want
to go see what's out there.

~~~
Cushman
For me, at least, it's only a small part of a greater question: Why do
_anything_ that robots do better and cheaper?

It seems to me that the best thing for us as a species is to let robots that
do the things robots are good at, like translating in physical space, moving
objects, manipulating matter, et cetera, and let humans spend their time doing
the things that humans are good at: art, culture, coming up with novel
behaviors for robots.

You get excited about exploration-- that's great. I get excited about post-
scarcity. Because that will mean that _everyone_ gets to do what they're
excited about.

~~~
InclinedPlane
No matter how hard they try you can't live on Mars via a robot. Ultimately
it's about adventure, experience, and colonization. Robots are great for
science, but there's more to space exploration than just science.

Edit: There will come a time in the near future, probably by 2050 but
certainly before 2100, when the idea of "space" evaporates away. Space is just
a place. Mars is just a place. It's just as much a place as the street right
outside your doorway or the grocery store just down the road. It's a place we
can visit, experience, and a place where we can live. Once people start living
off of Earth I think that artificial barrier will come down and people will
begin accepting the idea that the Earth is just a part of the Universe. We
have come to split up the Universe into two parts: the Earth, and everywhere
else. But this is a false dichotomy due only to the particulars of history,
there is only one Universe.

~~~
JackpotDen
They said that last century. We put a man on the moon. We haven't been back in
decades, at least thirty years.

The USSR planned on sending a man to mars to live, and die there. It was
feasible during the cold war, and we still haven't done anything about it.

~~~
duck
The difference now is it is no longer just governments looking into space, but
rather the private sector. That will drive things at a pace that hasn't been
seen in space exploration yet (SpaceX is a great glimpse into it though!).

------
Cushman
I hate to be that guy, again, but I still feel like I haven't seen a very
clear explanation of why this is a good idea. It'd be a great tourism
experience, but what's the ultimate value to humanity?

Especially in light of Curiosity, why is it assumed that the logical next step
after sending a robotic lab is to send a person, rather than sending a few
dozen more robots? For a fraction of the cost of sustaining human life on
another planet, we could construct a huge automated research complex capable
of doing everything a human would want to do -- even golf -- and that would be
valuable research toward developing the fully-autonomous robotic scientists
which are definitely the only way we're going to have real long-term
exploration of the outer solar system and beyond.

Basically, I can understand why someone might want to go to Mars, but I'm not
sure why someone else would want to send them.

~~~
acomar
> It'd be a great tourism experience, but what's the ultimate value to
> humanity?

Survival. We _will_ go extinct at some point if we stay on Earth. The more
spread out we are, the less likely any single catastrophe is to wipe out the
entire race.

In the more near term... Do we really need more motivation than "because it's
there"?

~~~
Cushman
Yes, but not in the next twenty years. Or the next hundred years. Or the next
thousand years.

A nuclear holocaust would not kill all the humans. A major asteroid strike
would not kill all the humans. A super-flu pandemic would not kill all the
humans. A single short circuit, puncture, or virus _could_ kill all the humans
on Mars.

The Earth is the perfect place for humans to live, out of the entire universe.
If we can't figure out how to survive long-term on this planet, that's why
we'll go extinct.

"Because it's there" is a great reason for an explorer to want to go
somewhere. But that doesn't automatically have value for the future of
humanity.

~~~
almost_usual
> A nuclear holocaust would not kill all the humans. A major asteroid strike
> would not kill all the humans. A super-flu pandemic would not kill all the
> humans. A single short circuit, puncture, or virus could kill all the humans
> on Mars.

Terraforming Mars would prevent a 'puncture' or 'short circuit' from wiping
out its population. The goal isn't to only spread human life but all of life.

~~~
Cushman
Terraforming Mars is a great long-term goal. But I don't see how putting a
human being on the surface of the planet gets us there any faster.

~~~
cryptoz
You don't? That assumption is extremely obvious to me. Most people don't care
about Mars right now - in fact, most Americans are against space travel
because they think it's expensive. So, terraforming Mars is seen by people
(including those with money) as ridiculous. But if SpaceX puts a team on Mars
for less money than, say, making a blockbuster film, an obvious result is
massive increase in space travel, colonization, etc.

Progress is progress. Choosing to make progress accelerates the process,
especially when the progress we're talking about would be the first humans on
another planet (and the first known life on Mars).

------
Sodaware
The common sense part of me says this is far too optimistic. After all, we
haven't put people on the moon in nearly 40 years.

However, the hopeful part of me thinks it's possible. In 10 years SpaceX has
gone from nothing to launching capsules into space and docking them with a
space station.

Even it it takes 40 years, it's good to have someone pushing things forward. I
really hope I live to see the first human walk on Mars.

~~~
InclinedPlane
2025 is 13 years from now. With any luck SpaceX will have proven its heavy
lift launcher within the next year and its manned capsule within the next few
years. More so, they are poised to rake in billions of dollars in profits from
commercial satellite launches and NASA contracts in the next decade alone.

Combine that capability plus R&D money and you have a potent mix.

Getting to Mars isn't actually that difficult, we already have a lot of the
technical details worked out. The biggest element that adds cost and
complexity is launch, which is precisely where SpaceX excels.

~~~
todayiamme
>>> Getting to Mars isn't actually that difficult, we already have a lot of
the technical details worked out <<<

What I'm worried about aren't the mechanics of going there. It is the
radiation. The Constellation program apparently planned to use high-density
polyethylene to act as a shield in the case of a solar flare or any anomalous
activity, but the trip would still expose any human being to large doses of
radiation and the best methods for shielding are too heavy and hence cost too
much right now.

Even if we set up a colony on mars that problem will be ever-present for
anyone living there and constructing any long term colony would probably
require large amounts of regolith, or maybe a tank of water repurposed as a
shield (which might cause processing issues)

Hopefully solving for cost should make a lot of schemes possible, but I'm not
so sure about that because there is an implicit requirement of other
infrastructure that needs to be solved which no one seems to be tackling. (I
might be wrong over here)

~~~
InclinedPlane
Radiation is by far the biggest concern. To some degree there's a bit of a
guinea pig aspect for any early Mars astronauts. We do have the ability to at
least ensure that the astronauts will survive the trip there and back. The
best way to do that is with a combination of shielding around the outer hull
as well as a "storm shelter" in the interior of the spacecraft surrounded by
lots of water (such as the crew's water and food supply as well as their
waste) for sitting out solar flare events. We can monitor solar flares quite
well these days so we can keep overall radiation doses in check.

Beyond that we could look at other technologies such as artificial
magnetospheres. That sort of thing would probably come into use by the time
there are dedicated flights between Earth orbit and Mars orbit.

~~~
todayiamme
That makes sense. I'm sure that plenty of people (including me) would still
sign up independent of such concerns.

Re: artificial magnetospheres; Wouldn't there be side effects for humans to
live within a powerful magnetic field? For starters blood is ferromagnetic...
I'm guessing shielding with either something diamagnetic or something like mu-
metal is an assumption, but either scenario would be difficult to implement if
I'm picturing it right.

What do you think needs to exist to make it viable? Because there is this
entire supply chain involved over here which people seem to assume will spring
up for such a program. I think that for something so audacious it's a limiting
reagent which needs to be taken into account and, hopefully, solved for.

I've read your comments and I hope you don't mind, but I have a silly question
for you, do you think it's possible to make a launch system by pumping
something cryogenic through a diamagnetic material and using a linear
accelerator to accelerate a pellet(large or small) to escape velocity? Such a
system would be extremely expensive to set up, but it would be very reusable
and it should pay itself back...

~~~
InclinedPlane
Here's a great paper on the topic:
<http://www.ess.washington.edu/Space/M2P2/rad.shielding.pdf>

The biggest requirement is power, though it's within the capabilities of a
large sized solar array. In terms of exposure to the crew, the actual magnetic
field experienced within the cabin would probably not be that high (since the
magnet itself would likely be on an external boom).

As far as bulk material launch, I don't think there's a ton of value in
launching unprocessed raw materials into orbit. There's only a narrow time
window where that's actually useful, because once you have built up even a
moderate off-Earth industrial base then it becomes easy to produce things like
bulk metals and whatnot. The biggest need will always be in complete,
manufactured items, and I suspect more or less conventional launch vehicles
will probably be the way that happens well into the era where off-Earth
colonization is underway.

------
rwhitman
I'd think its much more likely we'd be sending people to Mars on a regular
basis if we found out there is something valuable there. If space tourism was
sufficient to foot the bill for space travel, we'd be sending school field
trips to the moon by now.

~~~
danielweber
The people who colonize Mars probably won't make a profit off of it. It will
be consumption spending, like funding a yachting team. If it ever turns out to
be profitable in a pure economic sense, it will take a long time for that to
happen.

Yet they will still do it joyfully.

~~~
spking
The people who first colonize it will probably spend decades building the
atmosphere and heating it up (see:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming#Mars>)

------
elorant
Unless we invent a much faster engine, traveling to and back from Mars is
practically impossible. In the 16 months it takes to get there and return the
amount of radiation that will be received from humans could pose significant
health risks. It's not surprising that NASA's plans about a manned mission to
Mars talk about a one way trip and building some kind of habitat there where
they will stay permanently.

~~~
apendleton
It has long been Musk's contention that going to Mars would mean moving there,
at least initially. He places less value on the return trip than NASA seems
to.

~~~
MrMember
Yeah, unless something changes in the time it takes us to put a manned mission
together it's pretty much a given that the first trip will be one way only. It
greatly simplifies things not having to worry about how to get back.

------
jlgreco
I know the article isn't really the main attraction here, but what is up with
this?

 _"He also laughs that the biggest payload on the Dragon Capsule that flew a
mission to the International Space Station was a wheel of cheese."_

I am pretty certain that capsule was stuffed. Didn't it take them days to
unload it? Is this just a terribly worded sentence saying that the previous
load was cheese?

~~~
danielweber
There was a test launch of the Dragon capsule that had the cheese on it. That
was December 2010. [http://www.space.com/15799-spacex-dragon-capsule-fun-
facts.h...](http://www.space.com/15799-spacex-dragon-capsule-fun-facts.html)

~~~
jlgreco
Yeah, that sentence makes it sound like they are saying they only brought
cheese to the ISS though.

~~~
danielweber
I got the feeling that the segment with Musk was filmed a year or two ago,
despite the new stuff from the MSL landing. They talk about SpaceX
accomplishing the feat of taking a man-safe craft into orbit and back to
Earth, which would refer to the (unmanned) cheese mission, when SpaceX has
since done the bigger feat of docking with the ISS.

~~~
jlgreco
Aaah, that makes sense. I retract my complaint.

------
CodeCube
I'm already training for what it's going to be like -
<http://www.eveonline.com/>

------
sktrdie
I would personally rather see something like a space habitat before colonizing
Mars.

If we can artificially replicate Earth's environment in space, then we're set,
we could drift through space when our solar system becomes too hot and ensure
our race can live on . We wouldn't need planets anymore.

So, instead of having to adapt to Mars' conditions (low gravity and little
atmosphere), we would build something capable of sustaining life as we know
it.

Much more valuable if you ask me.

But still, going to Mars is great science and will give us very valuable
experience.

~~~
ceejayoz
> If we can artificially replicate Earth's environment in space, then we're
> set, we could drift through space when our solar system becomes too hot and
> ensure our race can live on . We wouldn't need planets anymore.

That's a few billion years off, so let's do the easier one first. Plenty of
time to learn space habitats (and presumably a few billion years from now
they'll seem pretty quaint).

------
andy_herbert
An extremely noble goal, but I'd say it was unlikely for a reason not
mentioned in the article, but heavily implied: this would be a one-way trip.

Whilst creating and maintaining a Mars base would be one of humanity's
crowning achievements, I don't the proposed journey would pass the moral and
ethical objections from the general public.

~~~
gyom
Many would have ethical objections, but I think a lot of sane people would
volunteer to be the first person on Mars even if it was understood to be a
one-way mission.

~~~
saraid216
I would certainly go, but I don't have the qualifications to be a first
expedition team member. =/

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Would you really? I see all these people say they would volunteer, but I have
my doubts. The novelty of being on Mars would wear off in a couple years and
the isolation and so forth ... I just don't buy that there are really many
people willing to do that.

~~~
saraid216
I'm not really interested in some new adventurous experience. I'd like to help
build something like a new colony on Mars, even if it's far down the line and
all I'm really doing is taking care of the first steps of on-the-ground
planning.

It's a claim that has the safety of there not actually being any plan or need
for me to prove my claim. But for what it's worth, I've also taken the same
attitude towards startups I'm impressed by. It's not really about me and what
I want, so much as there's this big thing that I want to happen and if I can
shovel some dirt and bring us a step closer, I'm in.

------
ungerik
Resources on Earth are limited, space has unlimited resources. So if we want
to have abundance for all humans we must expand into space. It's that simple.
And we can't bring everything back to Earth, so some have to leave Earth to
enjoy those space resources.

I have written a little bit more about that in this blog post:
[http://pioneersfestival.com/2012/04/contemporary-space-
pione...](http://pioneersfestival.com/2012/04/contemporary-space-pioneers/)

------
epscylonb
"If you look at something like a Boeing 747 -- that's over a quarter of a
billion dollars, buying a 747," he said. "You need two of them for a round
trip. But nobody is paying half a billion dollars to fly from L.A. to London.
It's a few thousand dollars, and that's because you reuse that aircraft
multiple times, you use it thousands of times."

Airlines have always been subsidised by taxpayers, in fact air travel has
never been super profitable even with the subsidies.

~~~
macspoofing
Subsidies to the tune of half a billion dollars per passenger per trip?

~~~
epscylonb
Probably not that high, but you may be surprised.

<http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001001.html>

------
ck2
Plausible but the timetable is too soon, maybe 2050.

I mean it's possible by then the USA still doesn't have healthcare as a right,
but the top 2% will always be able to do such trips as a lark (and write it
off on their taxes?) however there will have to be a revolutionary leap in a
powersource.

Personally I think the idea of hobbyists having their own bots on the moon by
2025 is more realistic and interesting.

~~~
wslh
Do you mean that we need an Elon Musk for health care? I think so.

~~~
pyre
The health care system is so complex that where would you even begin? With car
and/or space, you can just throw money at building something to compete, but
it would be difficult to disrupt health care by starting a new insurance
company or hospital.

------
FrojoS
Oh boy, the greatest adventure ever and 95% percent of the world's engineers
have to watch -and all they can do is root and hope, because they are not
american citizens. Heck, if only there was a new Operation Paperclip [1],
people would sign up to become "Nazis".

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip>

------
j_baker
Perhaps this is pedantic of me, but the article is mistitled. Musk is
_sending_ someone to the moon in 12-15 years. They're not going to have
someone _on_ the moon in 12-15 years. This makes a difference because I'm
assuming the trip to Mars won't be short.

~~~
ceejayoz
Mars Curiosity took 8 months travel time.

------
ef4
I bet that they not only do it, but do it at a price lower than the current
unmanned rover mission.

------
Kilimanjaro
Given the choice of an automated flying car or a trip to mars, I pick the
former.

~~~
jeiting
Its called an airplane.

<http://www.aopa.org/learntofly/>

------
EternalFury
I think Elon should get a car on the road first.

~~~
apendleton
Delivery of the Model S started in June.

------
kruh
It's really cute how you guys think this is even remotely possible. Heard
about peak {oil, coal, gas, phosphorous, rare earths, iron} and AGW? It'll
make his and your dreams short-lived. Sorry!

~~~
ceejayoz
None of those are expected to have any sort of effect by 2015 that'd prevent
SpaceX from launching a rocket.

------
Julianhearn
It wont happen. Spacex will just spend alk the government's money then say
oops. We missed the target date, can we have more money.

~~~
jlgreco
SpaceX's contract is unique among contractors in that they are responsible for
overruns.

Now, you could say they will change their mind when they run out of money, but
frankly I would respond by pointing out that Elon really doesn't seem to be in
it for the money, but rather _despite_ the money.

~~~
powerslave12r
I recall in one of the interviews he said he <inexact quote, summarized>

"I do appreciate money and it is needed to invest in ventures, but I
personally I'm not in it for the money. I can already buy everything I could
want."

EDIT: I am just supporting parent post's claim that

 _"but frankly I would respond by pointing out that Elon really doesn't seem
to be in it for the money, but rather despite the money."_

~~~
dkokelley
That would imply that in his personal life he does not need or want more
money, since he is already incredibly wealthy. However, personal wealth will
not be enough to fund SpaceX indefinitely. The system needs to be balanced.

~~~
jlgreco
SpaceX has been profitable since 2007.

<http://www.spacex.com/usa.php>

