
Elon Musk SpaceX AMA - baq
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/590wi9/i_am_elon_musk_ask_me_anything_about_becoming_a/
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1457389
I am so glad /r/spacex had the chance to host the AMA. Even this thread shows
a pretty depressing lack of understanding (so far) of what Elon has claimed
and what SpaceX has actually demonstrated. A bunch of tilting at windmills,
virtue signalling and strawman construction efforts while the people who have
a clue have a real discussion elsewhere.

~~~
thelambentonion
I personally don't think that I have a lack of understanding of what Musk has
claimed or SpaceX has demonstrated, and I'm incredibly skeptical of their
ability to safely deliver on their promises within his proposed timeline.

I'd quite like to be proven wrong, spaceflight is an area very near and dear
to my heart, but from my point of view Musk's reach appears to vastly exceed
his grasp.

EDIT: I did enjoy the AMA though, as it provided some interesting insight into
their plans for all of this.

~~~
marze
thelambentonion, I can't help but notice your numerous posts expressing
skepticism regarding SpaceX in this thread. I see a post in your comment
history where you included a disclaimer, saying that you worked for a
competitor to SpaceX.

Does the fact that you aren't including any disclaimers in your posts now mean
you no longer work for a competitor to SpaceX?

~~~
thelambentonion
Ah yes; I sold out not-too-long-ago to go work in commercial software :)

I suppose it might be worth it to keep including the disclaimer, as it'a
possible I may be biased in some way that I'm not consciously aware of.
Although it bears mentioning that if my former employer made half of SpaceX's
promises, I'd be twice as skeptical! So a point in their favor.

I hope I'm not coming off as too much of an asshole in these threads; I really
do want to see commercial space flight grow and succeed going forward. It's
just that my experience and the conversations I've had with current and former
SpaceX employees gives me an unhealthy dose of skepticism regarding a lot of
their claims.

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pmoriarty
One serious danger I haven't heard anyone mention mention in regards to the
Mars colonization project (though it was considered to some extent in Carl
Sagan's "Contact" and probably some other science fiction) is the possibility
of terrorism against either the fragile spacecraft or colony.

Musk has said there will be no screening of the Mars colonists, and that
anyone could go. That means someone who's mentally unstable and/or wants to
make a name for himself (ala Herostratus[1] or any number of modern publicity-
seeking terrorists and murderers) could go and attempt to harm the spacecraft
or colony, both of which would be incredibly vulnerable to such intentional
attempts at destruction and are guaranteed to get massive publicity were they
to be destroyed or even merely attacked.

This could become even more likely if living on Mars long-term actually
becomes viable, and people wind up spending decades on there. Some people will
likely go stir-crazy and attempt to harm themselves and/or others.

People who are allowed to go live in Antarctica or out in to space are
currently screened very carefully to be compatible with each other and able to
psychologically withstand the rigors of life there, and the relative
isolation. But there will be no such screening for the Mars colonists,
according to Musk, and the isolation and danger on Mars will be even worse
than it is in Antarctica.

The isolation and danger will be hugely stressful and difficult to deal with
over the decades people will live on Mars. I've read that even in Antarctica,
people are rotated out within a year or so because of the psychological
difficulties of living there, and no one's been in space for much more than a
year.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herostratus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herostratus)

~~~
judahmeek
Any claim that there will be no screening of colonists is highly dubious at
best. All you need to make some form of screening mandatory is to have more
applicants than open positions.

Even if all you do is accept applicants as they apply, that immediately biases
the selection process to better informed and connected individuals.

~~~
pmoriarty
It's one thing to have a fist-come-first-served system, where the more
informed, connected, wealthy, or eager individuals get to go first. It's quite
another to psychological screening, background checks, and perhaps even
rigorous training to make sure they can withstand the great psychological
pressure that will be present on the trip and on Mars. There are no plans to
use these latter measures, as far as I know.

Even if there was such screening or training, that alone won't be enough if
despite it someone onboard the spacecraft or in the colony decides to act out
anyway.

I really hope someone at SpaceX is seriuously thinking about these issues and
coming up with practical solutions, as that's the only hope of preventing some
unhinged or politically motivated individuals from turning a promising
colonization effort in to a tragedy.

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thelambentonion
I'd encourage everyone reading the AMA to take a lot of what Musk is saying
with a grain of salt. The Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) is a wildly
ambitious project that is attempting to accomplish more things in a shorter
period of time than the Apollo program (and on a substantially smaller budget
to boot).

Check out Robert Zubrin's article, which presents a much more salient critique
of SpaceX's current plans than I could [0].

[0] [http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/colonizing-
mars](http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/colonizing-mars)

~~~
M_Grey
It's good to see that the initial nearly religious fervor has worn off, and
comments like yours can survive the voting process here. There are a number of
issues with the "colony" concept, even beyond that excellent article, but
until recently such a point was met with some version of fury. The general
theme seems to have been that getting people excited, even with empty
promises, was somehow virtuous and might lead to something good (for parties
other than Musk's and SpaceX's bottom line).

~~~
pm
I think people getting excited about space and space travel again is a good
thing. It's the first step to getting people involved again, even if only to
remember what we're capable of as a species, despite all our flaws and all the
other problems we've yet to solve. Whether you agree with Musk's methods or
not, I enjoy living in a time where we dream about the possibilities of new
worlds, rather than reminiscing about a golden age of space travel long past.

~~~
M_Grey
I think that's a little sad, because it implicitly gives up on the notion of
real progress in favor of PR and imagination. I'm excited about SpaceX, but
not because of their "Mars Colony" PR. I don't think the situation is so dire
that we need to suspend our skepticism and become mindless cheerleaders in the
name of "dreams".

~~~
kitsunesoba
It's definitely a good idea to keep expectations grounded, but at the same
time there's no reason why the current mind-numbingly slow crawl that space
travel has come to should be taken as some kind of rule or requirement or
inevitability. Musk's timeframes are overwhelmingly optimistic at best, but
the current pace of development is also unacceptably slow.

~~~
M_Grey
...And when people realize that this was PR and hype, you think there won't be
a cynical backlash?

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0majors
The leaders of the most powerful nations on Earth are barely starting to talk
about some small human missions to Mars and then there is Elon, casually
discussing glass domes and tunneling drones creating underground networks on
Mars. Truly incredible.

~~~
thelambentonion
I would say that the leaders of the most powerful nations on Earth are a
little more grounded in reality than Musk in this regard. Glass domes and
underground Martian tunnels make for some very interesting science fiction,
but I'm concerned about the engineering challenges that he seems to be
ignoring in favor of his grand statements of intent.

To pick a specific example, he seems to have very little concern for radiation
shielding both during the trip to Mars or on the Martian surface. Both of
these present incredibly harsh radiation environments for humans, and we need
to develop solutions before we even consider sending explorers, let alone
colonists.

~~~
Gustomaximus
> he seems to have very little concern for radiation shielding both during the
> trip to Mars or on the Martian surface.

I find it hard to believe his team have not considered something so obvious.
This seems like one of those statements that assumed the experts are a bit
stupid. Just because he hasn't specifically mentioned it doesn't mean it is
not considered. And sure somethings are probably not considered, but something
as obvious as this...

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thelambentonion
> "The radiation thing is often brought up, but I think it’s not too big of a
> deal"

AFAIK no one else within the community would think of saying that.

I'm sure that there are people within SpaceX studying this and taking it into
consideration, but my concern is mostly with Musk's cavalier attitude towards
individual safety.

~~~
1457389
I don't think you have looked very hard then. Here's Zubrin on the topic:

>However, we already have data that shows that the accumulation of slow rates
of cosmic ray radiation received during long duration spaceflight is not a
showstopper for human Mars exploration. GCR dose rates in low Earth orbit are
about half those in interplanetary space. Thus, there is a growing number of
cosmonauts and astronauts who have already received Mars mission equivalent
GCR doses during extended space missions without any radiological casualties.

~[http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2749/1](http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2749/1)

He mentions in a recent speech that the most deleterious effect of time spent
in space is related to zero gravity, not radiation - and that can be fixed
with resistance training.

~~~
wott
You talk about a Mars _exploration mission_ , hence a relatively short time
duration, not about settling and living one's whole life on Mars.

~~~
nickik
How about one problem at the time. If we can actually go there with lots of
stuff, stay for a long period and come back we will already have made more
progress then most people thought possible.

We know most of the physics needed to deal with the situation, if we can get
equipment to mars. Radiation is a problem, but its not Problem Nr. 1.

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4ad
I am sure Elon Musk won't get the chance to answer my reddit question, since
apparently the reddit mob downvoted me to death, so I am asking here, perhaps
anyone knows.

1) What RTOS does SpaceX use for the embedded hardware on board? I know they
use a lot of Linux, but not for hard real time stuff. What are they running on
their microcontrollers?

2) Is it programmed in C, or some other language?

3) Is the embedded equipment on board running on a switched network? If so,
does it use TCP/IP or some other protocol?

~~~
ranman
former SpaceX employee: There are a couple of YouTube videos around where they
talk about the nature of the systems. I'm pretty sure I can't talk about it
but I'll try to find the videos.

~~~
Zucal
I think there's also some software engineer AMAs.

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Animats
There's a lot of hand-waving about how a base on Mars would operate. Remember
the Biosphere II debacle, an attempt to build a closed ecosystem in a big
dome. That was intended partly as a test for a Mars colony. They had a
terrible time trying to stabilize their little ecosystem. They had far more
resources at start than a Mars mission could carry, and were only trying to
support eight people.

~~~
Loic
The one difference is that for Biosphere II they tried to be cut out of the
Earth atmosphere. They tried to be totally autonomous. For Mars, they will
mine the local resources so they will not be "sustainable" at first.

~~~
Animats
Mining will be tough. Water, if it can be found, will be in the form of brine
ice mixed with perchlorate. It's going to take a lot of energy and equipment
to get usable water out of that. Reverse osmosis and ion-exchange resins will
work, but they have consumables which must be brought from Earth.

The atmosphere of Mars, such as it is, is mostly CO2. It takes a lot of effort
to get oxygen out of that. Sunlight intensity on Mars is about a quarter of
what it is on Earth, so solar panels and plants will have about a quarter of
the effectiveness.

There are no easily exploitable resources on Mars. It's going to be more like
an Arctic base - you have to bring almost everything.

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javiramos
Elon has a fantastic image. He is just an amazing PR machine.

~~~
matt4077
He has also, you know, achieved stuff. Actual rockets, actually going up.
There's a tendency of people to devalue the successes of others by attributing
it to marketing. But for the life of me I can't find a way that would work to
sell rockets to governments. Musk has also started at least three somewhat
successful businesses, and at this point I don't think either marketing or
luck are sufficient explanations.

It reminds me of someone else. I hope Musk gets his pancreas checked often
enough.

~~~
javiramos
Didn't mean to demean Musk's achievements! He is indeed an amazing individual
and I hope he continues to push space/cars/solars etc. forward.

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forgotpwtomain
Curious, is reddit penalized by the hackernews algorithm (I don't see reddit
links here often); this post is quite a bit lower on the main-page than older
posts with fewer votes?

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paulsutter
Are Elon's mining/tunneling droids discussed anywhere? He's said in the past
the Earth cities need to "go 3D", putting cars in tunnels underground.
Something needs to be done to cut the cost of tunneling, so I'm interested to
learn more.

> Initially, glass panes with carbon fiber frames to build geodesic domes on
> the surface, plus a lot of miner/tunneling droids. With the latter, you can
> build out a huge amount of pressurized space for industrial operations and
> leave the glass domes for green living space

From:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/590wi9/i_am_elon_mu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/590wi9/i_am_elon_musk_ask_me_anything_about_becoming_a/d94t2bv/)

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andygates
For me, mining robots were the biggest handwave of the session. They'd need to
operate _on Mars_ , at least semi-autonomously, and the current state of the
art needs a fair bit of nursemaiding (and a local machine shop) to keep
running.

Still, nothing spurs development like the prospect of a juicy colony contract!

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Tempest1981
Right now, it still feels like the "brainstorming" phase of the project. I
guess it's OK to criticize various ideas, but it would be more interesting if
alternatives were offered, then have a discussion of pros and cons. That is,
assuming the goal is to make it happen, vs. prove it's infeasible.

Since it's such a blue-sky project, I'm hoping more to enjoy the design
process -- the discussion of science and ideas. I wonder if that process will
bring engineers together... or drive them apart?

~~~
nickik
They have showed actual prototypes of multiple different aspects. Usually you
start rocket design with a engine, and build the rocket on top. The engine in
testing already and they seem to have nailed down the basic specs and all the
important parts.

That's more then brainstorming, thats actually prototype testing of specific
sub-components.

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marktangotango
I missed the AMA but I'll ask this here since people seem to be in the know.
In the beginning, Spacex and the original merlin seemed to be all low tech,
get it done (ie the merlin was ablative cooled chamber and nozzle). Now the
ITS engine is super advanced.

I always wondered, why the turn around, and has Musk ever written or said
anything about Truax's Sea Dragon[1] concept?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_(rocket)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dragon_\(rocket\))

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mspradley
I can't believe no one asked about the status of the Atmos 6 investigation.

~~~
andygates
This was an AMA about the Mars stuff. People did ask, and he didn't answer,
because it was off-topic.

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pugworthy
You can keep yourself sane and find his replies by looking at his profile page
at
[https://www.reddit.com/user/ElonMuskOfficial](https://www.reddit.com/user/ElonMuskOfficial)

~~~
samuelb
You can sort the comments by Question & Answer to have not only the answer
[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/590wi9/i_am_elon_mu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/590wi9/i_am_elon_musk_ask_me_anything_about_becoming_a/?sort=qa)

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pugworthy
Ah nice, didn't know that!

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kilroy123
Odd. So far he hasn't answered a thing.

[https://www.reddit.com/user/ElonMuskOfficial](https://www.reddit.com/user/ElonMuskOfficial)

~~~
drakonka
It has been 15 minutes since the AMA officially started (he tweeted that it
was starting at 3pm), so it's not that odd.

