
Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video] - tilt
http://www.spacex.com/Mars?
======
mikeash
Some of the comments here make me think of crabs in a pot pulling down the
ones who try to climb out.

Nobody's making you participate in this venture. If you don't like it, then
you're free to go do whatever it is you do like.

You might think Musk could better direct his efforts and resources elsewhere,
but most other billionaires don't do anything all that interesting, they just
invest their money in mundane stuff, outsource jobs, build hotels, run for
President, etc. So why are you upset with this one and not all those others?

~~~
wmccullough
You're my hero! This attitude is why I quit regularly contributing to this
site. Any time any single person does something positive, some armchair
"expert" comes out the woodworks to tell you how it won't work or can't work.

~~~
benevol
I would never say "it won't work", but I do think we humans have a tendency to
turn to technology to solve our most basic problems, while the real solutions
lie within us (where most people never look).

I believe we should first learn to clean up our act on planet Earth before we
export anything of our existence and what we do.

To me, the real revolution that needs to happen is a spiritual one - a
statement that will only be understood by those practicing meditation. Our
brain has so many "undiscovered" capabilities. Discovering them will change
our behavior and ultimately allow us to survive on Earth.

~~~
kolinko
Meditation can go hand in hand with space exploration.

Besides that, Musk is doing two things at the same time. He tries both to
protect the earth (Tesla, solar power), and initiate a base in case something
happened to our home.

Spirituality alone won't help you survive winter, regardless of how developed
your mind is.

~~~
benevol
> Spirituality alone won't help you survive winter, regardless of how
> developed your mind is.

It's funny that you would say that - you may want to take a quick look at
this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6XKcsm3dKs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6XKcsm3dKs)

(The main site is:
[http://www.icemanwimhof.com/](http://www.icemanwimhof.com/))

~~~
jdietrich
There is no good scientific evidence that Hof's breathing techniques account
for his ability to withstand cold temperatures, rather than some kind of
genetic difference. Four people have died while attempting to follow his
'technique'.

[http://www.parool.nl/binnenland/-iceman-oefening-eist-
opnieu...](http://www.parool.nl/binnenland/-iceman-oefening-eist-opnieuw-
leven~a4332186)

~~~
lettergram
On a related note, you might find this story about a frozen guru who is still
"meditating" after several years of attempting to withstand the cold...

[http://loweringthebar.net/2016/09/frozen-guru-update-
iii.htm...](http://loweringthebar.net/2016/09/frozen-guru-update-iii.html)

~~~
hx87
I'm becoming more and more convinced that these magical guru stories are the
south Asian equivalent of the National Enquirer, except more aimed towards
gullible foreigners.

~~~
lettergram
Probably. In this case, it seems the group is claiming he is meditating to
keep using his money

------
anexprogrammer
I'd really like to see us taking space seriously. While I'm still here.

One of my earliest strong memories was the last moon landing. This was
followed by years of "Tomorrow's World" and "Horizon" telling us about the
Moon bases, Mars bases and orbital platforms that would soon follow. We got
Skylab and some very interesting probes. I'm a tiny bit disappointed in that.
We were meant to be en route to Starfleet Command and global cooperation
(which always seemed a big ask as we were at the height of the cold war).

However, I can't help thinking if we _do_ become a multiplanetary species
before resolving the issues of this one a few things are just a matter of
time. That some politician claims we don't need to care about emissions as we
now have a spare, so he's going to build loads of new coal. That Esso wants to
know if there's oil. That we have an interplanetary falling out (OK that's
probably a while away). That we start littering and buggering up the rest of
the solar system.

~~~
maerF0x0
This brings up a good point. Why mars first? Why not a moon colony first?

~~~
cbau
Musk just addressed this. Mars has an atmosphere of CO2 and Nitrogen, so we
can grow plants, a day length similar to Earth's (24.5 hours), and is larger.

~~~
winter_blue
> and is larger

Mars is much smaller than Earth. From Wikipedia: _" Mars is less dense than
Earth, having about 15% of Earth's volume and 11% of Earth's mass, resulting
in about 38% of Earth's surface gravity."_

See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars)

~~~
lallysingh
I wonder if the 1-way ticket to mars would appeal to older folks who can
survive the trip, but don't have the physical strength for much adventure on
earth.

Ref: Old man's war.

~~~
jpindar
Nice idea, but I assume anyone recruiting for space travel is going to insist
on people who are very fit and in 100% good health, which usually means fairly
young people. Certainly there could be some older people, but probably not a
majority.

~~~
azeotropic
Which is why the ISS is populated by PhDs in their 40s?

Of course you want the first colonists to not be sickly, but they won't need
to be Olympic decathletes in their 20s. Equipment for lifting heavy objects
can be sent more cheaply than people (it can go slowly and doesn't need life
support).

I think for a venture like this maturity and patience is going to be more
important than physical strength. There will be a lot of tedious tasks with
long checklists that need to be followed near exactly to succeed. There will
be a lot of disappointment and frustration when things fail or timelines slip.
There will be the irritations of being stuck in a small social circle with a
few people you intensely dislike but have to depend on for survival.

Add in the fact that your sperm or eggs will probably get exposed to large
doses of radiation until they figure out how to get to Mars faster, and it
will be far less attractive to anyone who is planning to have kids someday.

~~~
lallysingh
With substantially less gravity, you can lift 2.6x the weight as you can on
earth. People in their 40-50s in good health with moderate strength, good
maturity, advanced skills, and already-grown children are good candidates. And
yes, with the radiation they'll get hit with, it's better than kids burning
away their lives.

------
MarcScott
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and
new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all
people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no
conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends
on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can
we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new
terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected
against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against
the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and
mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that
man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet.
Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all
mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again.
But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well
ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why
does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the Moon! ...We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and
do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard;
because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies
and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one
we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.

~~~
aaron695
I'm finding this quotations without referencing the source or using quotes a
real annoying trend on HN atm.

It's a form of in-joke/group which is very Reddit and is used to get upvotes
because everyone loves being in with the cool kids.

But not everyone has read or watched every classic and knows every famous
person of countries X speeches, hence why you attribute the source or even
just the speaker, fictional or not.

~~~
bagacrap
I didn't know who produced this quote but I was able to tell from context that
it was a speech (or press release) regarding the moon landing. I feel like I
got more out of it then someone who's familiar with it.

Is it really that hard to Google the source?

------
dudus
Watching live the announcement and presentation by Elon on
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YxNYiyALg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YxNYiyALg)

Where the hell did they get this audience from? Is this hosted on a frat house
with some academic invites?

There's a dude jokingly saying that burning man felt like mars with a lot of
shit and no water, there's a guy plugging his comic book, there's a guy making
a joke on how we should send Michael Cera to Mars, a girl complaining about
Space X not hiring people from other countries, a girl asking to go on stage
and give him a kiss, a guy that identified himself as a local idiot that I'm
pretty sure is completely drunk, ....

There are some good questions too, but I just can't understand it.

Elon just went on stage and delivered a plan so ambitious you couldn't even
imagine. I have thousands of questions, and astonished these people couldn't
think of anything else.

~~~
ChicagoBoy11
I actually think this underscores the importance of doing what he is doing. If
he were delivering some address about optimizing mobile websites for mobile,
you wouldn't have had those questions. That market is incredibly saturated,
with lots of expertise, a well-defined pecking order of companies and
celebrities, and filling a packed house just with very competent and technical
people would be a breeze.

But how many people do you know ACTUALLY working in Aerospace tech? For better
or worse, that constituency is what today probably makes up a good chunk of
people caring about this space, which just goes to show how little it is
compared to what it probably SHOULD be.

I had some of the same reaction when I went to a lecture at NYU Law on
interplanetary legal issues. There was the same mix of people with genuinely
interesting and thoughtful questions, and people who I'm pretty sure did not
know what Apollo was.

This kind of outreach is one of the many things to admire about Elon's work.
Yes, he's kinda dorky and often touts timelines that are woefully inaccurate,
but boy, does he get people fired up!

Just a pretty clear example: Yes, the audience there had some pretty awful
questions, but think about the debate that the SpaceX telecast alone helped
spur on HN!!! Yes, a lot of that audience was pretty unhelpful, but I think
that especially by doing things like this, Elon is helping the proportion of
those people diminish significantly.

~~~
listentojohan
Excellent point! If more people would get interested in this field - and this
mission/vission, we should be able to endure a little (a lot actually) cringe-
worthy questions. That burning man guy though...

------
davidw
This is so pleasant to see after being bombarded with US presidential
politics. Science, hope and progress!

~~~
AndrewKemendo
What about going to a different planet makes you think we won't just be taking
those same problems with us?

The earth isn't the problem - The problem is the human brain. We aren't
genetically capable of processing the world we have built.

Expect there to be Trump IV vs Clinton IV 2117 hosted live on Mars if we
haven't made significant improvements in human engineering.

~~~
aerovistae
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but you seem to be saying "Let's not be excited
about colonizing another planet-- life will be just as depressing there."

~~~
AndrewKemendo
That's actually not a bad way to put it!

Think about it this way. What if there was an uninhabited island out in the
Pacific that was hard to get to. What makes it worth trying to get to? There
isn't anything any more special there than here. In fact from all we've seen
so far it's much less special. Same goes for Mars.

What is the value in being "multi-planetary?" I mean the idea that this is a
hedge against some existential threat to humanity is silly. Mars is more
hostile to human life TODAY than earth would be after a massive ELE asteroid -
and the likelihood of an ELE asteroid is actually higher for Mars as it does
not have a stable barrier atmosphere as good as Earth's - meteorites are more
frequent as a result.

So best case scenario is that we have a group of people who put 75% of their
time into just surviving because there is no atmosphere or biome to support
them. On top of that these people have the same biological makeup - including
cognitive limits, biases etc...as the rest of us on earth so even if they
sorted everything out, tribalism and the rest of our hardwired heuristics
would just make them behave like the rest of us.

The better approach is to start engineering our faults out using data to make
us better, more resilient processors of information and discovery. Improve
humanity and everything is easier.

~~~
raizinho
If humanity lasts, in about a billion years the Earth will be no longer be in
the Sun's habitable zone. Might as well start preparing from now.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Better (probably easier too) to start transitioning humans to a different
being. Make the merge with AGI and move out of traditional biology.

~~~
andars
I don't believe that AGI and transhumanism is any easier (or better, but I
accept your opinion) than making a spacecraft that can carry people to Mars.
The task is well understood, unlike artifical intelligence.

~~~
im_dario
We have lots of brains in this planet. We can work in both efforts or even
more than these two.

There is no point in arguing which one is easier. Feasibility and difficulty
shouldn't be reasons for discarding long term efforts. Many current ideas were
seen as impossible or extremely difficult.

~~~
andars
I agree. I also noted in another comment that these things aren't mutually
exclusive. Rather than "why try any of these things?", we should ask "why not
try all?"

------
beloch
This new launch vehicle has a realistic chance of getting people and materials
to Mars in sufficient quantities to build an outpost. I'd like to hear more
about how they plan to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars though. There
are some pretty big challenges to overcome, such as the relative lack of
Nitrogen. A colony is going to have to grow plants but, to do that on Mars,
we're going to need a way of fixing Nitrogen for those plants from an
Atmosphere where it's just not very plentiful.

Please note that this isn't an argument against going to Mars _now_. There's a
lot we can learn by building an outpost on Mars that is supported heavily by
Earth, including _how_ to build a self-supporting Mars colony. I'm just asking
what the current state-of-the-art opinion is on the challenges of building a
self-supporting Mars colony.

~~~
Debugreality
I noticed Musk tentatively mention nuclear - I think that's because it will be
the only logical way to generate enough power to support a city in such an
inhospitable climate. There is going to be a huge and ongoing energy need just
to survive.

Unless we build a battery/solar panel factory there is no way solar is going
to cut it.

~~~
novalis78
Sadly - but it just tells you that he is acutely aware of the public opinion
aspect of his vision. Nuclear - especially a firm grasp and experience in
Thorium reactors - would be a perfect energy solution for all industrial
processes on Mars. One can only hope that a massive project as the one he is
proposing here will lead to a renaissance in thinking big - colonial in its
ambition - and with it in challenging the Unenlightened modern anti-nuclear
phobia.

------
robertocarlos
I created an account just to post this.

The Q&A was the worst Q&A I have ever seen. Truly awful. I usually am a pretty
calm person but watching that made my blood boil. This venture could well be
one of the most important things to happen to humanity, and those were the
questions that people asked. The questions were awful at all levels. Featured
self promotion, ignorance and plain stupidity.

I just needed to get this out there. Seriously, what the actual f.

~~~
epidemian
Absolutely. I was watching it live and couldn't believe how bad that Q&A
section was. Felt bad for Musk standing there, having to somehow respond
politely to all that stupidity.

~~~
shkkmo
I thought Musk did a great job at salvaging the lower brow questions.

> Send Michael Sera to mars because we don't want him back >> Elon talks about
> the importance of offering return trips

> Where do we put the shit on mars with no water >> Elon talks about how the
> critical shortage is power, not water.

> Are you thinking about interstellar travel >> Creating a colony on mars
> creates the incentives to spur us to create the dramatic improvements in
> space travel that will one day give rise to interplanetary travel

While I understand the frustration, including the general public in this
discussion in critical to build the support and good will needed for this
project to succeed. We need more people to be willing to address questions
like this.

The only time I felt bad for Musk was when that girl asked him if she could
take him upstairs and give him a kiss. He mumbled something like "I don't have
that here" and moved on.

------
Rezo
SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA)

~~~
Gravityloss
Unconventional design.

The rocket looks very large and they mention 120 million newtons takeoff
thrust so the weight is about 10 million kg, 3 times Saturn V size.

The first stage lands back on launch stool, the tanker stage is put on top of
it and it launches again. This implies a relatively fast turnaround.

Both the second stage and the tanker seem to have complete heat shields and
stub wings and ability to re-enter either Mars or Earth.

So all parts

    
    
      1) big
      2) landable and 
      3) short turnaround time 
    

This would imply they will launch them a lot, so they're really ramping up the
traffic to Mars, not just a few missions?

I don't understand the 100 000 km/h which is 30 km/s speed for the Mars
cruise. Would be really hard to achieve with chemical propulsion. With 4 km/s
exhaust velocity and delta vee of say 20 km/s you get a required mass ratio of
e^(20/4) which is 150. And they lug the upper stage engines all the way, and
there's heatshield and wings. Impossible.

Also the 200 kW electrical power advertised is puny for electrical propulsion.
With an ISP of 1000 (exhaust 10 km/s) you get an 20 Newtons of thrust
[correction from 200N], which is nothing for their ship size. If they only
have ten tons of mass, then it takes 200 days to accelerate to full speed.

Typically you might need 10 to 20 km/s speed for Mars.

Their plan does not compute for me.

EDIT: So it can work if they only go for 10 km/s.

~~~
pinewurst
Speed to Mars though is really relative speed along whatever orbit (Hohmann
transfer or the moral equivalent) that you choose. Only in SF stories do we
have fully powered propulsion to Mars.

I am very curious what the selected family of orbits is, and even more
importantly how long & how much life support for the large passenger number.

~~~
twoodfin
Yeah, transit time & payload mass seem to be the major missing numbers in a
video that wasn't shy about including them.

~~~
codeulike
Average 115 days, payload to Mars 450 tonnes. 100 people he reckons.

------
bsdetector
We won't really be an interplanetary species until we can get _back_ from
Mars.

Imagine being colonists on Mars without the ability to be totally self-
sustaining without technology and supplies from Earth and nuclear war breaks
out. It's going to be a long time before any Mars colony can survive on its
own.

~~~
djsumdog
The first colonists will most likely not come back. Make no mistake, people
are going to die in the first several runs. This will be one of the most
dangerous endeavors mankind can attempt.

As far as war breaking out, we're not going to make it to Mars in our current
state. I don't think Mars is viable until we enter a post scarcity world. I
find it unlikely we can even attempt it if we're still in a money based
economy.

I highly recommend The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's one of the
most believable and well thought out sci-fi novel about what populating Mars
would be like conceptually.

~~~
3pt14159
Why can't we be money based and have relatively high redistribution and taxes?

~~~
gallerdude
Something something socialism /s.

------
tw04
This Q&A is painful... it's a combination of people shamelessly plugging their
own products (Funny or Die you just lost a viewer with that stunt) and people
who sound like they may be (literally) mentally unstable.

There are scattered in somewhat normal questions... but not by anyone I would
consider qualified to even be asking questions.

~~~
aws_ls
_> and people who sound like they may be (literally) mentally unstable_

I wonder what kind of people accompanied Columbus and other explorers on their
ships. If you also noticed there was one woman questioner, who wanted to kiss
Elon Musk. Perhaps that's the kind who would take such risks, to be the first
crew. So I didn't mind those questions so much. By and large the crowd was
very excited - thunderous applause several times.

------
kumarski
I wrote a brief blog post on some of the major challenges to get this going.
Musk's hesitancy to a deadline is great. :) It makes sense, hard to predict
the future.

[http://engineersf.com/12-reasons-spacex-wont-fly-a-manned-
mi...](http://engineersf.com/12-reasons-spacex-wont-fly-a-manned-mission-to-
mars-by-2030-2/)

There's a ton of cool problems lurking around the corner. I hope humanity
backs the public part of this public-private partnership.

1\. Cargo Capacity — Scaling is Hard.

2\. Proper Maintenance — Accessibility is Important

3\. MTBF Expectations are too high.

4\. Jet Fuel is Corrosive and Methalox engines are a tough design proposition.

5\. Cosmic Radiation — Impedes human interoperability.

6\. Solar Panels —Mars Dust Storms impede sunlight.

7\. Living Module — 7 month duration for a living module.

8\. Microbial Realities — We rely on microbes to live.

9\. Parachute Design — Size vs. Thrust vs. Jettisoning Fuel

10\. Electronic Protection — Shielding is Resource/Weight Intensive.

11\. Eye Sight — Your ability to see diminishes in space and we don’t quite
know how this works fully. (This one is huge)

12\. Muscle Loss- you lose muscle mass as you stay longer in space.

To give some context around how difficult it is to build mega engineering
projects in the hey day of innovation, just think about Steel. There's over 3K
different types of steel and 70%+ were invented in the last 20 years.

Timing, sequence, funding, and focus are going to be such a huge part of this.

5,8,11,12 are really tough. I think the other ones are solvable in some way
right now, but will take some configuration/tinkering/experimentation for
sure. Plenty of engineers are motivated to work on this kind of thing though,
so that's a good signal.

~~~
Symmetry
It looks like SpaceX is choosing a high delta-v trajectory specifically to
reduce the danger of 5, 11, and 12. Particularly muscle, bone, and eyesight
loss would be a big problem on a Hohmann tranfer orbit to Mars but not on the
trajectory SpaceX is proposing. 8 is silly since nowhere people live is going
to be microbe free but the long term health effects of Mars gravity are still
utterly unknown and that's something we need to get a hold on.

~~~
djokkataja
I agree about the long term health effects of Mars gravity. I think with
adults you'll probably see some bone density loss, similar to what happens to
astronauts on long space missions. But arguably that will be offset by gravity
at 39% of Earth's.

The bigger concern I have is for children that are born on Mars -- if you want
to have a self-sustaining population there, you're going to be raising
children there, and physical growth in a low-g environment isn't something we
can test in the timeframe Musk has in mind.

------
jpm_sd
I'd like to see humans establish self-sustaining colonies in the Gobi Desert,
the Laurentian Plateau, and the equatorial Pacific first. All much easier
environments.

~~~
wyager
That would have none of the advantages of a Mars colony.

~~~
rtpg
what are the advantages of a Mars colony? It's not like we'll be shipping
things back to Earth.

I'm for exploration and all that but there's a pretty good point. Figuring out
how to make the desert habitable on this planet is a pretty good test run for
the Real Deal.

~~~
peeters
> what are the advantages of a Mars colony?

Survival of our species. Protection from an extinction event on Earth.
Stepping stone to further expansion (interstellar).

~~~
yread
Hey underwater would check two of those boxes

EDIT: or moon surface

~~~
wyager
It wouldn't check any in the event of a large asteroid impact.

It's a lot harder to build a self-sustaining colony on the moon than on Mars.
Mars is rich in carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen. The moon is not.

~~~
Pinckney
Asteroids don't cause extinctions by coming in and blowing everything to
smithereens. Rather, the ejecta causes firestorms, and an impact winter can
wreck the biosphere and prevent sunlight from reaching the surface. But even
during the worst of this, Earth will remain more hospitable than Mars.

There's no reason for a self-sufficient (nuclear?) underground or underwater
habitat to notice global firestorms or impact winters. They would notice a
direct hit, but you can hedge against that by building them in multiples
around the globe.

------
amgin3
They really need to screen people for the Q/A. Half these people are idiots
just trying to promote their own BS and trying to tell stupid irrelevant
stories.

~~~
iplaw
So I was at Burning Man ... shit, shit, shit.

------
thght
I might be wrong, but I expect Elon Musk to become one of the most exceptional
hero's of our times. No other billionaire is creating sustainable businesses
like Tesla and Power Wall for the good of as many people as possible. He risks
pretty much all he has for his ultimate dream to enable humans to start
exploring the universe, and by doing so preventing the looming extinction of
our species.

The amount of talent and power this guy has while being so humble is just very
rare. As soon as I can afford a Tesla I will definitely buy one, not only
because it's a great car, but even more to support these kind of people.

------
artursapek
God, my lifetime would be so boring if it wasn't for people like Elon.

~~~
a_thro_away
OMG; he says is going to build it, exactly like his demo. As a youth I
received a brand new Matt Mason for birthday; it has been a very, very long
time.

~~~
nothis
Oh, wow! I put the video in my watch-later-list, until then: What's the time
frame, roughly? Are we talking 5 years or 20?

~~~
snuxoll
Take any estimate from Musk with a pound of salt, but his ideal estimate was
2023.

------
mixermf
"The argument [for building a civilization on Mars] that I actually find most
compelling is that it would be an incredible adventure. I think it would be
the most inspiring thing that I can possibly imagine. And life needs to be
more than just solving problems every day. You need to wakeup and be excited
about the future, and be inspired, and want to live." \-- Elon Musk

(1 hour 31 minutes)

------
justrossthings
Required reading: [https://www.amazon.com/Red-Mars-Trilogy-Stanley-
Robinson/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Red-Mars-Trilogy-Stanley-
Robinson/dp/0553560735)

~~~
kchoudhu
I just finished reading these books for what seems like the millionth time,
and Mr. Musk hasn't even begun to answer the questions they raise. What is the
legal structure going to be on the 1MM person colony? Who gets to go? What are
the transplants allowed to do there? Who rules? Who do the rulers answer to?
Are we going to Terraform Mars? If yes, under whose auspices and with what
restrictions?

FTR: this is Elon Musk's show and I don't trust his ability to keep his pet
project from turning into a corporate dystopia.

Edited to add: Guys, I'm not against Mars exploration and colonization at
scale -- I just want us to put our best foot forward. That means not rushing
the process, and doing it in a democratic and non-chaotic manner.

~~~
wyager
> Who gets to go?

According to Musk, whoever pays.

> Who rules?

Not to be flippant, but who cares? The worst case scenario is that we repeat
British colonialism and the martians overthrow the despotic earth government
in a few generations. Same as always, the colony is too far away for the
motherland to effectively maintain control. The important thing is getting
humans to Mars; all the short-term stuff is important, but it's just small
beans in the long run.

> Are we going to Terraform Mars?

Musk clearly wants to. It is not clear how feasible this is with current tech.

~~~
kchoudhu
> Whoever pays

So Mars is going to be a colony of the developed world elite.

> Who cares

A million people generate is not short term or small scale. Property rights,
criminal law and all of these other things that make civilization
_civilization_ will need to be hashed before we get out there.

> Musk clearly wants to

This is pristine, unspoiled nature we're talking about. There are immense
ecological concerns here that aren't simply mitigated by Musk throwing cash at
the problem.

~~~
wyager
> So Mars is going to be a colony of the developed world elite.

Sounds awesome! Decreases the chances of them being politically abused.

> will need to be hashed before we get out there.

They probably will be for the most part, but why do you say "need" to? Should
we screw around here on earth until we figure out some utopian system that's
going to make everyone happy (good luck), or should we accept that it's OK to
be adaptive and figure some things out as we go?

> This is pristine, unspoiled nature we're talking about.

That's one way of putting it. Another is "lifeless, barren, frozen, useless
desert".

~~~
kchoudhu
> Decreases the chances of them being politically abused.

Isolation and distance do terrible things even to supposedly well educated
people. I wouldn't count on people to not drop straight into barbarity after
prolonged exposure to the truly alien environment on Mars.

> Why do you say "need" to?

Because the first time someone murders another person in a tent city of a
million people with no air, you want to have some way of prosecuting and
punishing that doesn't involve sectarian violence and lynching.

You vastly underestimate the social aspect of this endeavor.

> lifeless, barren, frozen, useless desert

I'm impressed: in this short internet exchange, we have pretty much rehashed
the entirety of the conflict Kim Stanley Robinson sees playing out on Mars.

------
whothunkdit
Seems great for all the basic research it will require.

But I'm unsure about the morality of it. I think the drive to expand and
discover new things is perhaps a direct cause of the deeper problems we have
on Earth. Would humanity be better off just becoming a sustainable population
of monks? Or are we morally equivalent to a virus, reduced to survival of the
fittest and always seeking out the next host to reap?

~~~
erikpukinskis
I think from a morality standpoint it is an excellent reality T.V. show at
best.

But we are in such a critical moment right now in terms of our ability to
really destroy the ecology we depend on. It's like there a small fire started
in the bathroom and some of us have chosen this moment to start planning a new
vacation home.

For Elon Musk personally, he's so involved in the shift away from carbon
through his work at Tesla that it feels like it balances out. He's a leader in
fighting the fire and also spending half of his time on the new house. But in
general I can't really commend the aerospace engineers working on problems
like this when we are so close to being able to fix so many age old problems
on Earth.

This is such a critical couple of decades for Earth technology.

~~~
JBReefer
Fires burn too fast for this analogy to work. Even in the worst climate change
cases, we have a very long time to work out how to get off the planet.

It would be great to avoid, but moving people out of coastal cities certainly
has a precedence, and there's plenty of land in Kansas, the Taiga, etc. Life
would be tougher than today, but it's not an existential thread.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I think there's a pretty high probability that such a migration would be
accompanied by quite a lot of genocide and war.

~~~
JBReefer
What, NYC vs Rockland county? That wouldn't be a genocide, it would be a
zoning argument. Same as Miami vs Georgia.

If waves lap up against my place in Queens, I'm not going to start killing my
neighbors. I'm going to move to a Minnesota with better weather.

~~~
imron
You and how many other millions of people?

Would the Minnesotans be happy with that?

------
bluebeard
Paraphrasing: "I see two paths for the human species, extinction event or
multi-planetary species." Then Elon shows the picture of the O2 tank: "and
this is the size of the payload we could deliver to anywhere on Earth in 45
minutes, please fund us." Well played Musk, well played.

------
dasmoth
While this remains a paper rocket for now, its engine (which looks to be a
pretty big deal in its own right) was test-fired for the first time yesterday:

    
    
        https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/780275236922994688

~~~
ygra
A scale model of the engine. It's not full-size yet.

~~~
dasmoth
Are you certain of that? It's mentioned in a few places (including Wikipedia),
but I've not seen any SpaceX sources saying this was a sub-scale test article.
On the contrary, we've heard Elon say that because of the very high chamber
pressure, you can get the thrust they're looking for out of an engine about
the size of a Merlin. And while it's hard to be 100% sure, from the pictures
I've seen the unit tested at the weekend looks kind-of Merlin sized. Not
conclusive, of course, but likewise I've not yet seen any hard evidence to
support the idea that it is sub-scale.

~~~
ygra
Admittedly, I was going by Wikipedia and r/SpaceX. The latter tended to imply
that the source was conversations with employees, but I don't know of a
quotable source either. So might in fact be wrong. Elon tweeting something
that might imply the same size of the engine, albeit with a qualifier
(»Chamber pressure is almost 3X Merlin, so engine is about the same size for a
given area ratio«). Naïvely dividing booster diameter by the number of engines
across the diameter yields 1.2 m for Merlin 1D and 1.7 m for Raptor (although
the ITS seems to have a bit of space around the center cluster since only
those gimbal).

------
sssparkkk
I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that Elon's presentation
ends with requests to throw comics onto the stage and ask him to allow
receiving a good luck kiss from a girl in the audience.

To be honest I think it's a really bad fit to have these kind of questions
during such an event; but hey, because of them I'm pretty sure this is all
really honest and not at all orchestrated... Which is good, I suppose.

------
hinkley
A number of years ago, around or shortly after the time I read the Mars
Trilogy, I remember seeing an article about how the three largest populations
of high altitude humans (Peru, Nepal, Ethiopia) all use a different biological
process to deal with the effects of hypoxia.

The lower the pressure, the safer the structure, so one imagines you could
have a colony where many of the workers from these three population groups,
nature taking its course and we end up with legitimate Martians. People who
could live in cheap structures or deep canyons with no suits for generations
before the rest of us.

------
TheShadowRunner
Someone more knowledgeable then me can probably answer this, but under ITAR,
can SpaceX contract a Mars launch with another nation on friendly terms with
the USA?

~~~
extrapickles
SpaceX can buy an off the self launch from someone. They are prohibited from
giving them any rocket tech or anything else that falls under ITAR (quite a
few things).

As far as ITAR is concerned there are no friendly nations (there are a few
that have reduced paperwork needs, but still fall under ITAR).

------
phodo
The quality of the Q&A seems grossly sub-par compared to the incredible
quality of the vision / content / presentation.

------
edem
If you are interested there is an article series on Wait but Why here:
[http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-
raddest-m...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-
man.html) about Elon Musk and his goals with SpaceX (and much more).

------
partycoder
Due to a lower atmospheric pressure (0.087 psi compared to Earth's 14.69 psi),
water in mars begins to boil at 10 degrees Celsius, or 50 Fahrenheit.

Gravity in Mars is 3.7 m/s², compared to 9.8 m/s². In a way, it's convenient
since it would take less effort to reach Martian escape velocity.

Mars does not have a magnetosphere, and therefore little protection from
radiation. The technology to induce a planetary magnetosphere does not exist.
If Mars does form an atmosphere, it can be lost to space during increased
solar activity.

What I think is that our best chance is to send robots to prepare an habitat
for the first manned visits.

~~~
jandrese
All that says to me is underground living. Hydroponic gardens with artificial
light (powered by the solar panels on the surface).

We would absolutely need to start designing and testing prototype colonies on
Earth first. Probably in old mineshafts. The only similar experiment I can
remember is the two attempts at Biodome, and they were both failures. There is
a lot we don't know about making a self sustaining sealed habitat.

------
jimjimjim
Hope! To be honest I don't think it matters if mars will be any better but at
least it's progress.

and in a totalitarian sort of way, which would be better for the human race,
getting off this rock or having the world upgrade from an iphone 11 to an
iphone 12?

~~~
twoodfin
If everyone in the world could _afford_ an iPhone 12, that would be a net gain
dwarfing anything we'd get from a Martian colony.

It would also imply a world economy that could easily support the development
of such a colony. It's not an either/or.

------
devy
Can someone with expertise to compare Musk's plan vs. Robert Zubrin's Mars
Direct plan proposed in the early 90s?

~~~
nickik
Musk defiantly knows about the Mars Direct and he has ideas from it in his
presentation.

Mars Direct did not do any refiling in orbit, but rather does multible direct
launches. That allows them to use smaller rockets. Zubrin worked under the
assumption that the best he could get was a modified version of Shuttle
(pretty similar to SLS actually).

Mars Direct assumed a rocket with a normal upper stage that then deployed its
payload to mars.SpaceX makes the spaceship itself the 2nd stage.

Mars direct leaves large the hab behind and does a direct fly back with the
MAV. In the SpaceX plan you fly back with the hole ship, this gives you the
same comforts in both directions.

Mars Direct assumes continually new HABs, MAVs and rockets to be built to keep
up the exploration or base building. Its a very good plan if you have a space
agency that has a budget every years and wants to continue doing what they are
doing.

The SpaceX plan want to massively decrease price and thus makes more extrem
choices such as re-usability to not waste anything.

Basically, SpaceX makes a spacetruck that can transport a lot for cheap. Mars
Direct aims to deliver what you need for long exploration in the simplest way.

Both are great plans.

~~~
elsonrodriguez
Watched the video finally and I think this is a good explanation.

Mars Direct is all about the cheapest, simplest way for a state-sponsored
space agency to send 4 people at a time to Mars, with a slow build up towards
permanent settlement via increasingly concurrent missions.

SpaceX is trying to start a permanent settlement within the first 5 or so
missions, with the first few hundred people being uber-qualified astronauts,
and everyone thereafter being whoever can put up $200k for a trip, potentially
one-way.

It's like a fusion of Mars Direct and the very plans Zubrin was opposed to
(Elon acknowledged this by making a reference to "Battlestar Galactica", which
Zubrin used many times as a pejorative in The Case for Mars). The only reason
the multiple in-orbit refuelings and re-usable rockets makes sense is the
ridiculous scale (100 people per trip) and the ultimate goal (Mars Trips for
anyone who wants to go).

------
oli5679
Why is the plan to start off with so many fragile, resource-greedy people
before the planet is improved? Wouldn't it be better to send a robot factory
capable of building more robot factories using materials available on Mars and
minimal operating oversight (possibly combined with some plants and bacteria)?
People could possibly move there much later after we've mastered the really
complicated mining, geoengineering and farming problems needed to sustain
people there.

------
shurcooL
Did anyone else notice the title of the presentation PDF [0]? It is:

    
    
        NINA_5_ FINAL_draft_MarsTalkRevised_v4_17_nm_112716 copy 12
    

I just thought that was an interesting bit of meta information. Looks like
they're not using VCS for it, hehe.

[http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars_presentation.p...](http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars_presentation.pdf)

~~~
JMCQ87
That actually gives a neat amateur-ish impression. ^^

------
giarc
I wish someone would have screened these people asking questions for
personal/commercial interests.

------
syntex
I wonder what would be people's daily routine on mars. How colony with of
thousands people will be organised? Would they have as much freedom as we have
on earth, or the whole colony needs to be organized from bottom to top as the
anthill colony.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Bootstrapping the local infrastructure.

Think of it like a game. You start off with a lathe and a CNC mill and some 3D
printers and a bunch of other stuff. You now need to grow crops on Mars. You
need to refine Iron ore and produce high quality steel. You need to
manufacture plastics, glass, concrete. You need to mine water ice to make
water. You need to use electrolysis to make Hydrogen to feed the Sabatier
reactor that makes Oxygen/Methane from the atmosphere. You need to explore,
you need to maintain and expand the habitat, you need to facilitate future
flights to make them as easy as possible and to build capacity for offloading
passengers and equipment smoothly and quickly. And then you need to figure out
how to use locally produced steel, aluminum, concrete, glass, plastics, etc.
to build more machine tools, to build more habitats, to build more farms, more
life support equipment, etc. How would you build a backup generator system
that ran on LOX/Methane using local machine tools and locally produced
materials, for example? How would you build high pressure gas containers for
life support systems in habitats using the same?

All of this is like The Martian times a million. It'll be go-go-go every day,
because the amount of work remaining will basically be infinite for your
entire life. Once you "solve" one "problem", once you advance the state of
Martian industry, agriculture, technology, etc. by one step, you're really
just opening up the problem space further. The kind of people who will do best
in this environment and those who are extremely capable, self-reliant,
inventive, goal oriented people (basically workaholics).

They could have plenty of freedom, but if you're not 100% dedicated to working
to build and advance the colony you probably won't get along with the rest of
the colonists. If you don't obviously bring something valuable to the table
(which doesn't need to be industrial/technological/agricultural elbow grease,
and could easily be things like being a musician, artist, reporter, chef, even
a poet, etc.) you'll probably have a bad time. But on the plus side, if you
are a very results-oriented, goal oriented person, you'll likely have a lot of
freedom. You'll be able to build, experiment, "hack", and explore to your
heart's content. For the most part you'll be able to have your pick of
interesting problems from day to day, you'll be immersed in a sea of experts
in various technologies, all of them eager for apprentices to come learn and
help. And at the end of the day (well, years anyway) you'll be able to look
back and say "I built that, and that, and that, and that" for values of "that"
equal to significant parts of the local industry and ecosystem. Imagine being
part of the team of people who built the first structures to house the first
Martian forests. Imagine having your name stamped in the side of the first
iron foundry or steel mill on Mars. Imagine having your hand prints in the
concrete of the first habitat built using local materials on Mars. That's what
being a colonist will be like. It'll be some of the toughest work, but also
the most rewarding.

~~~
qwtel
> even a poet

since there is a ~10 minute delay when accessing the internet, I think any
form of entertainers would be quite sought after :)

~~~
InclinedPlane
Likely they'd have some local "LAN" with lots of cached materials (like all of
netflix, for example). However, the delay would be closer to 30 minutes most
of the time (round-trip travel), so definitely local entertainment would be
desirable.

------
zerooneinfinity
I wish there was local groups or meetups with people to talk about and maybe
even potentially contribute to this effort. I kind of feel this way in general
about science. I'd love to go somewhere after work and experiment in labs.

~~~
mulcahey
That's part of how SpceX started.

Tom Muelller, SpaceX employee number 1 and current VP of propulsion was part
of a liquid fueled rocket club and was building what became the Merlin engine
in a garage. Elon came by and asked if he wanted to start a rocket company.

------
danilocesar
OMFG. I guess that mr Musk won't have any problems in finding manpower to
execute his plans. HN is full of experienced deep space and terraforming
specialists. =)

------
40acres
Elon mentioned that there is no physical frontier left to explore on Earth,
what about deep water exploration?

~~~
goatlover
If exploration is the goal, wouldn't you get a lot more bang for your buck
with a swarm of robots and probes around and on Mars? Sending people is very
expensive in contrast.

~~~
elsonrodriguez
Reading a NOAA report about Hawaii's weather is much cheaper than going there,
yet people still go.

A total waste, I say.

------
ender7
I'm all for colonizing Mars, but is it possible to do large-scale terraforming
of the surface without a magnetosphere to protect it?

~~~
hyperion2010
I was thinking about this the other day, and the best solution that I came up
with was to hit Mars with Ceres in hopes that the collision will be sufficient
to restart geological activity on Mars. Sure we have to wait a while for
things to cool down again and coalesce, but it seems a much more feasible
solution than living in bubbles or trying to create an artificial
magnetosphere.

~~~
snuxoll
Wonder if a nuclear bomb "The Core"-style would work? (Yes, I realize this is
a shittt sci-fi movie, but if you are taking about smashing a dwarf planet
into mars to generate a huge explosion it doesn't sound too out of the realm
of workable.)

~~~
imron
Musk has already considered this: [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-
style/gadgets-and-tech/elo...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-
style/gadgets-and-tech/elon-musk-plans-to-drop-nuclear-bombs-above-mars-to-
give-it-two-new-suns-so-it-can-keep-warm-a6679736.html)

------
giarc
I've never listened/watched the Q/A session from any of his talks, are the
questions from the audience usually better?

~~~
nickik
Yes. Far better. Usually it seems to by mostly journalists.

This is conference everybody can go to, and it seems the people who really
wanted to ask questions were not the space nerds.

To compensate he made a Q&A with journalist right after, he answered some
great questions that the community was already wildly speculating about, I
don't have a very good link, see:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/54j2y4/rspacex_offi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/54j2y4/rspacex_official_mars_architecture/)

------
mvrilo
"Waiting for everyone to reach their seats and get settled. Starting in 5 to
10."

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/780838839644483586](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/780838839644483586)

------
nappy-doo
It looks from the videos that the boosters return to land using strictly
thrust from the rocket. Can someone explain why it's done that way and a
parachute isn't used for at least part of the descent? Seems like an awful
waste of fuel.

~~~
sfeng
The answer is the same as why the Falcon 9 uses propulsive landing. Parachutes
are heavy, and generally require a water landing which seriously damages the
booster (not to mention requires a recovery operation). The vast majority of
the weight in these spacecraft is fuel, so when it's time for it to return to
the pad it requires a comparatively small amount of fuel (as most of the
weight has been burnt up). The fuel itself is also a tiny percentage of the
total cost of the craft, at interplanetary scale $10k for a little extra fuel
is nothing.

------
mtrn
Impressive. I just wished some engineers could take at least a single day off
to regenerate -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YxNYiyALg&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YxNYiyALg&feature=youtu.be&t=1h22m51s)
\- especially when they are on a world changing mission.

------
EdSharkey
I think Musk must be a founding member of the Human Admiration Society. He's
so positive on the achievements, adventures, survival of our species. And,
he's on the watch too, warning us about possible looming threats like
extinction events or AI run amok.

I want to join Musk's society! Let's keep humankind going!

------
banach
Finally, colonization without genocide. Maybe humanity is making progress
after all?

------
gauto
It's really starting to feel like we "live in the future" more and more
everyday. The stuff we used to dream about as kids is becoming reality. Amid
all the doom and gloom that seems to pervade the news cycle, stories like this
are so refreshing. Simply amazing.

It seems like in the longer term, it would be more efficient to take a shuttle
to orbit, and then dock with at a space station to get on the interplanetary
ship. Cruise ships and military ships use this method in places where docking
is infeasible. It would be a much higher initial cost, however.

Six months on ship isn't so bad. Six months is the length of a WESTPAC, though
you get to leave the ship periodically. I think the longest we went without
docking was a month, and the guys in the submarines often go for even longer
stretches.

~~~
craigds
What's a WESTPAC? Googling it only finds the Australian bank for the first
three pages.

~~~
gauto
Yeah, that wasn't clear at all. I should have just said "deployment on Navy
ship".

If you are curious:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expeditionary_Strike_Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expeditionary_Strike_Group)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_expeditionary_unit#The_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_expeditionary_unit#The_MEU_Cycle)

------
JabavuAdams
I love the "questions, not essays" shut-down. It's not rude, but it quashes
this tendency people have to try and impress rather than to ask a question.

Next time I'm giving a talk: one question per person (want to ask more, go to
end of line), and ask your damn question.

------
banach
The SpaceXes of the age of colonization, such as the East India Company, used
to sell shares to fund their voyages. I was a bit surprised not to hear Musk
mention this as a funding option, since he just delivered the greatest
Kickstarter pitch of all time...

~~~
hyperion2010
The various * Companies weren't exactly going into uninhabited areas, they
were calling at ports that had been involved in global sea trade for many
centuries albeit at a slightly lower volume. Despite this there were still a
series of disastrous bubbles due to speculation on the various * Companies
[0].

0\. [https://ericrossacademic.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/mapping-
th...](https://ericrossacademic.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/mapping-the-
mercantilist-world-economy/)

------
jotato
Any reason why you couldn't put a tanker in geo-sync orbit connected to a very
(very) long fuel pipe somewhere on earth? The idea being you can pump fuel up
instead of launching it?

Kind of like a space elevator for fuel! :)

~~~
Voloskaya
Probably the same reason we can't build a space elevator :)

~~~
jotato
In didnt say it would be easy, but neither is sending 100 people to mars.

I'm not engineer, but wouldn't a pipe be easier to build than an elevator?

~~~
Pinckney
The problem with space elevators is that the cable (or the pipe, as you
propose) needs to be able to hold itself together. Imagine taking a 4000 __km
__long elevator cable and holding it up by one end: it would snap under its
own weight instantly. That 's about what your cable material needs to be able
to take. The weight of the car is trivial in comparison.

~~~
jotato
Does it have to support its entire weight? At some point, won't the pipe have
enough centrifugal force that would be supporting it?

~~~
azernik
The uppermost parts of the pipe (up past GEO) would; that's why it doesn't
fall down. However, unless your pipe is strong enough, it'll rip in two, and
the part above GEO would fly away and the part below will fall down.

------
dba7dba
45:25 Elon says he will leave detailed technical questions to QA after his
presentation. Lol. His presentation was far more technical than any of the
questions.

I think I would prefer more presentation from him than any QA.

~~~
jandrese
Maybe next time they won't invite burnt out stoners for the QA?

------
watermoose
I'm incredibly excited about this.

I would actually like to hear more about what happens on Mars: the steps to
generate oxygen, food, energy, water, and the fuel for the return trip. What
are the various ways that Mars could be terraformed, and what are the ethical
and practical considerations?

I know that this comes on the heels of an unfortunate accident, but I'm in the
camp that accidents and mistakes can lead to better process with less risk,
and sometimes simpler solutions.

And, I'd like to invest in SpaceX. Whether it's in stocks or bonds, I just
want to help.

------
codeulike
_The Mars colonial fleet would depart en-masse - about 1000 ships_

~~~
grkvlt
> As of 17 September 2016, there have been 310 manned spaceflights [...] 8 of
> which were sub-orbital [1]

There have been 302 manned orbital launches according to [1] and from adding
up the successful launches in [2] there seem to have been a total of 5057
orbital launches so far, in the 70 or so years of spaceflight.

Apparently the Mars fleet needs from 3 to 5 tanker launches per manned craft,
so this program will require between 4000 and 6000 orbital launches, so around
5000 - which is about the same number as the total number of (successful)
human rocket launches to date!

Looking at the table in [2] we can see that the best success rates for manned
launch systems are 97% for both Soyuz and the Space Shuttle. using this as a
worst-case estimate, out of those 5000 launches we can expect 150 to fail.
Assuming one in five are crewed, with 100 crew per vehicle, that means 3000
deaths over the life of the program.

I guess that we can expect improvements in reliability with a program this
size, and using a mass-produced vehicle which is re-usable is not something we
have safety data for in the space-flight arena yet. You would hopefully expect
reliability and safety to improve, getting towards the standards of modern
aircraft, or at least experimental aircraft or military systems perhaps. But
even three nines (99.9%, or one failure per 1000 lanches) is still multiple
orders of magnitude better than we can achieve with spaceflight right now, so
SpaceX are setting a pretty tough goal for themselves here. Still, I really do
hope they succeed, and it will be exciting to watch them try...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights)
[2]
[http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/logsum.html](http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/logsum.html)

~~~
nickik
> Assuming one in five are crewed, with 100 crew per vehicle, that means 3000
> deaths over the life of the program.

A failure in the rocket does not mean everybody dies. There is a launch abort
system for that. Musk has confirmed this after the presentation.

~~~
dredmorbius
Launch abort should provide a safety margin on launch. It does less well in
other segments of the mission, such as deep space, reentry, or landing. If
you're looking at deep space missions, there've been issues at all of these.

There are also the instances of missions (Japan fairly recently in a Venus
probe) where issues affecting an unmanned flight but not causing failure of
the mission, would result in failure of a manned flight (expenditure of all
life support resources).

The estimates here do suggest some significant loss of life will be expected.
That's not unheard of in voyages of discovery, colonisation, and exploration.

~~~
nickik
I agree, I just wanted to say that during the actual launch, two major systems
need to fail before you start losing lives.

That makes it different from the Shuttle for example.

------
MrZongle2
Enjoyed Elon's presentation.

The Q&A, however, seemed to be straight from a second-rate Comic-Con panel.

Clearly, we've already identified some of the folks who should be left on
Earth.

------
DiabloD3
After having read all several trillion comments in this, I can summarize:
everyone shits on Elon because he's doing new shit, and they either
misunderstand the gravity (ha ha) of the situation or are just salty as fuck,
and almost everyone here in the HN community is essentially repeating this ad
infinium.

In short, King Elon for World Emperor 2016.

~~~
internaut
The name 'Elon' already comes from a book in which it was the title for the
Leader of Mars. It was written by Wernher von Braun...

Here is evidence:

[http://imgur.com/a/yhvDH](http://imgur.com/a/yhvDH)

I wouldn't have believed it if I had not seen it.

~~~
DiabloD3
That is amazing.

------
norea-armozel
My greatest fear is that space will become the playground for the rich and
powerful where the rest of humankind is left to suffer on an overpopulated,
polluted Earth. We as a society can't live on the kindness of individuals to
achieve a better future and that goes double for leaning on SpaceX and Elon
Musk. They are a for profit venture and that means unless you're rich enough
to pay your way then you have to pay with labor which may or may not be
pleasant. I know it seems silly to imagine the future like that but the way
the rich and powerful have been running the world so far I can't see them
giving a flip when they can have safe, sanitary habitats in space which
separate them from the existential threats on Earth. At that point they could
just say "fuck it" and cut the rest of humankind off from space easily with
threats of asteroid bombardments or worse.

~~~
ythl
Don't worry. If anything, space will become the graveyard for the rich and
powerful once they realize how poorly the human body fares in high-radiation,
low gravity environments.

~~~
gkya
Oh, at last, a bit of reality... I'm sad that maybe we'll have to watch
hundreds of people die for a completely unrealistic endeavor, and they'll
never have a grave for their loving ones to visit.

~~~
boznz
Reality check. _EVERYONE_ who signs up to this will know the very real risks
involved.

------
nixos
Did he talk about the future land ownership/governmentship of his colony?

Will it be a personal dictatorship of Elon?

Unlike Earth, once you're there, there's nowhere to go without his blessing.

You can't just "move next door".

And knowing how "locked down" his Tesla cars are, it'll be interesting to see
how he'll deal with a rebellious colony.

~~~
kirrent
He didn't, but the outer space treaty would make any claim to ownership of
land invalid.

In the past he's discussed direct democracy as a preferred form of governance
for smaller colonies with all/most laws having sunset provisions requiring
them to be debated/voted upon on renewal.

~~~
nixos
The Outer Space treaty doesn't prevent one from owning property in space.

But that's not the main issue. The main issue is that until another company
opens up shop on Mars, you literally have nowhere to go, and the colony will
be dependent on earth for quite some time.

What will happen if Elon doesn't like what they're doing and threatens to
withhold supplies? rockets? Internet?

------
simonh
I'd expect the first rocket, or several rockets to actually stay on Mars at
least for a while.

1\. It means you have somewhere to live and even if you set up habitats it
acts as a fallback habitat.

2\. You'll need a return to Earth option if things go potato shaped.

3\. It can manufacture fuel in advance for future visiting ships so acts as a
backup to their Sabatier reactor and other important systems.

4\. Once you have several, you can afford to risk using one to travel to other
parts of Mars and back to get science from other biome... er.. I mean prospect
for resources.

I wonder if these will be capable of operating automatically. It would be nice
to be able to prove out the system by sending an automated cargo only mission
there and back, or maybe with a skeleton crew. It's fascinating that they're
aiming to go directly to this without any less ambitious manned vehicles and
missions first.

~~~
grecy
> _I wonder if these will be capable of operating automatically_

They have said many times the F9 lands itself completely autonomously, because
when it's happening on Mars the signal delay will be too great for them to do
anything from Earth anyway.

Given that, I'm going to take the leap and say the whole thing will be
autonomous. I also think it makes sense so you don't need trained "pilots".
You can pack the thing with 100 people that have no clue.

~~~
simonh
I'm thinking about things like operation of the Sabatier reactor, refueling
operations, inspection and cleaning of the engines prior to re-launch from
Mars? There's an awful lot more to a round-trip mission that just automated
launch and landing.

~~~
grecy
All of those things for a modern airliner used to require humans all the time,
then as we got better at it, humans are used less and less in the loop.

Refueling is an easy autonomous one.

Eventually you'd only need to inspect and clean the engine every x flights,
etc. and maybe you just do that each time it's back on Earth.

~~~
simonh
Sounds good, thanks.

I wonder if a scale model test launched on Falcon Heavy would be viable or
useful?

------
jimmcslim
I thought the plans might include a Mars-Earth cycler [1] but possibly that's
a science-fiction pipedream for the near future?

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

~~~
malanj
He actually talk about this in the Q&A. Filed under possible "future
optimisation".

They didnt think it'll add that much in practise.

------
stevebmark
I don't mean to nitpick but is Elon always this bad of a presenter? He sounds
sickly and hungover and unpracticed. A strange performance for probably one of
the most important ventures in recent human history.

~~~
iamcreasy
Quote from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12592996](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12592996)

"I think its kind of encouraging to see that you don't have to be a great
public speaker to get people to listen to you, as long as you are able to
accomplish things off the stage."

------
opiuse
Does anyone know what the music is during the first 20 minutes?

~~~
ChampCrawDaddy
Looks like it's made in-house. The tracks they use for webcast intros are
apparently collectively known as Spacex FM. I like it. It reminds me of the
Eve Online soundtrack.

~~~
opiuse
Thanks! Looks like there's an entire site dedicated to the soundtrack:
[http://www.spacexfm.com](http://www.spacexfm.com)

------
intrasight
I've considered the question before, and I considered it again while watching
this - would I go? I've decided that I would, if given the opportunity. I'm an
engineer. I'm in excellent physical health. I have a family, but they are at a
point where they can get along without me. But then I consider that there are
or will be hundreds of thousands of others who are in the same situation and
also wish to join the queue.

------
cs702
To the US Federal Government:

PLEASE. FUND. THIS.

Loan the money to SpaceX, or partner with private investors, or increase
NASA's budget and have NASA pay for it. Just make it happen.

Even if this project fails, the benefits from having a lot of smart people
trying to get to and establish a colony on Mars will pay dividends for a long
time.

Please make it happen!

~~~
hmate9
If I recall correctly Elon said they have the money. That the project is
costing them <5% of SpaceX.

~~~
jandrese
The 5% of SpaceX was what they're willing to put into the project, but that
only covers a few million of the tens of billions this project needs.

I wouldn't look to the Public sector for funding this. Governments have grown
increasingly hostile to long term projects. Just ask NASA how much fun it is
to have senators constantly threaten to cut your funding and the need to build
things in an incredibly inefficient (expensive) way just to keep Congress
happy. Plus you get all sorts of curveballs as administrations come and go and
want to juggle the priorities. As a government project this would just be an
endless money pit and if it ever got off of the ground it would be decades
late and severely cut back in scope.

------
erikb
Since I've read more about Elon Musk I'm not sure any more that he really is
the person who will bring humankind one step further. However, I really like
that slogan "making humans a multiplanetary species". It really hits the spot
for me. Something I also want to work towards.

------
encoderer
I expect the "no children" rule to apply for roughly 9.25 months. What then I
wonder?

~~~
cwkoss
What is the "no children" rule? (Didn't watch the whole video)

~~~
encoderer
No children bc you must be willing and able to face death.

------
MrBra
Witnessing the future, chill bumps!

------
ben49
One Race the human Race,We all have the same origin ,last I checked it was
2016, I abhor those who play the race card and more so theSHEEPLE who feel
that"I DOHAVE SOME PART AND SHAMEON ME.WE THE PEOPLE.

------
tim333
While it would be good fun going to Mars you wonder if we want to concrete
over a fair portion, ship 1000s of people over and change the climate a
opposed to preserving it as it is.

------
jlebrech
Elon needs to build this first
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbase)

------
orky56
I'm excited with Musk's grand vision. However I want to know why this can't
happen even sooner. Here's a breakdown of what was discussed that may lead to
a faster timeline:

1) Funding: Current SpaceX resources are tied up in creating the basic
infrastructure that will lead to interplanetary travel. SpaceX is still
private leading to Musk prioritizing these awesome ventures but still tied to
revenue from contracts and limited funding. Going public will destroy the
vision but give him the cash reserves to pull in the timeline.

2) Competition: NASA, other government space organization, and the private
sector have or will have plans for interplanetary travel. Healthy competition
often leads to more innovation and constant motivation. At the same time, it
leads to competition for shared resources such as...

3) Talent: Musk mentioned in the Q&A that he can only hire green cards and up.
The international talent pool is and will remain untapped unless something
drastic changes. Assuming this talent goes to the competition and capitalizes
into the positive effects, then it will be worth it. Unfortunately, we have
yet to see another private sector company like SpaceX push the envelope as
much so I'm not as hopeful that someone has the ability to utilize talent like
Musk has. At the same time, SpaceX is known to drive employees into the
ground. 7 days a week, tough hours, and impossible timelines is not
sustainable for employees. The allure of SpaceX, similar to gaming, keeps
talented individuals in line to get a shot at working for SpaceX. As mentioned
due to the limited talent due to immigration issues, SpaceX may run into the
talent shortage sooner than later.

4) Non-Transport Issues: Transportation is necessary but not sufficient for
interplanetary travel & habitation. We don't have a SpaceX/Musk for the other
non-transportation related issues. The political/cultural/international issues
will be big and then there's terraforming and everything involved with that.
Musk may get ahead of schedule but these other issues may push the timeline
further and further out.

5) Public Interest: Space travel is not as sexy as it used to be for the
public as compared to the Moon landing with the backdrop of the Cold War and
arms race. Yes, this is not using direct public funding (if/until NASA decides
to pitch in) but the public needs to make this objective be top of mind for it
to become a reality. Musk and the science enthusiasts will not be enough. We
need to develop a few "X Prize" equivalents for the non-science community to
progress on the non-transport issues and show why it matters for the rest of
the world.

~~~
lallysingh
For #1: he could sell a minority share publicly. I think a lot of people could
see a successful spacex make quite a bit of money on the current plan.

For #2: We'll see about that. Mars has sat there for a long time, and nobody
else has done much about it. By the time others get interested because of (a)
SpaceX showing that it can be done (b) Popular interest due to SpaceX's work,
SpaceX may be too far ahead for anyone else to help (outside of being
customers).

For #3: Agreed. I think this may naturally occur as the company stabilizes a
bit and the "living on the razor's edge" feeling dissipates. At some point
they'll focus more on getting it right then meeting deadlines.

For #4: You can control political/cultural/international issues on mars by
controlling who gets on the ship from earth.

For #5: a bit of hero worship for the future marstronaughts will do plenty, I
think. There's a lot of innate interest in whoever becomes the first human to
step foot on another planet.

------
icc97
Just a minor mention for the novel use of a ? in the URL, amused me at least.

[http://www.spacex.com/Mars](http://www.spacex.com/Mars)?

------
oli5679
Elon's Simpsons episode

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM)

------
XCSme
Musk for President! Make Mars great again! :D ... (sorry)

------
z3t4
If you are going to have a gigantic ship able to carry a hundred people there
will be exponential costs. And 90% of the cost would be getting it into orbit.
And then there will be maintenance costs.

I think it would be better to just launch many small and cheap ships, then
just leave them in space or let them crash into mars after dropping cargo by
parachute with some air cushions. They could be carried into low orbit by a
jet airplane, then use "dumb" rockets like water under high pressure in cheap
lightweight tanks. And heat it up to vapor temperature using then sun.

------
randomsearch
Can we start again here, please.

How has this announcement and Elon's dream in general excited or inspired you?

Any ideas for how the plan could be developed, improved, augmented?

~~~
orky56
The exciting part is going from science fiction to a feasible path of reality.
A path filled with milestones that I can experience, learn about, and
continuously be filled with wonder.

~~~
randomsearch
I really like the thought of looking back at the end of my life and saying
"what did my generation achieve?" And one of the answers being "Mars" will
make me very happy, even if only to congratulate those in my cohort who made a
difference.

------
wwarner
I'm skeptical for two reasons. Living on Mars won't be like living in
California at all. And two, building a colony there will be very, very, even
catastrophically costly, so yes it will hurt everyone else who chooses not to
participate. There are only so many platinum mines. Resources should be
focused here. Think about it: how much water and air have left Earth to date?
A miniscule amount, all due to space exploration. This project would change
that, and for the worse.

~~~
beau26
>Earth Loses 50,000 Tonnes of Mass Every Year. According to some calculations,
the Earth is losing 50,000 tonnes of mass every single year, even though an
extra 40,000 tonnes of space dust converge onto the Earth's gravity well, it's
still losing weight.

scitechdaily.com/earth-loses-50000-tonnes-of-mass-every-year/

~~~
wwarner
10 tons lost a year. Point taken, and very interesting. But it's still small
compared to 100 tons of cargo going to Mars 1000 times to build a new
civilization on an uninhabitable planet.

------
beardicus
Is SpaceX trying to simulate the long, tedious trip to Mars with this
scheduling delay and "endless space" intro graphic?

~~~
rtkwe
People are still filling in the seats. There's a reddit live thread that's
gathering some of the tweets from people there.

[https://www.reddit.com/live/xnrdv28vxfi2](https://www.reddit.com/live/xnrdv28vxfi2)

------
syntex
The sociological difficulty is as big as technical one. He hired one of the
best engineers available to solve technical problems. Probably the same work
should be done on the sociological part of the project. Otherwise, we may see
bad events unfolding on mars. Would be interesting to see open source project
taking sociological issues as target.

------
damaru
Talk about going on Mars, Can't get proper light for the conference...

~~~
abrkn
"We can put a man on Mars, but ..."

------
LeanderK
i was wondering if we want to permanently inhabit mars, can we create an
magnetic field to reduce radiation? Can they be scaled down to a local one
just spanning the habitat?

------
k__
Cost of a medium sized house? I see Red Faction happening here.

~~~
jandrese
For what it is worth, his costs look outrageously low to me. We don't even
know what we don't know on building manned interplanetary reusable spacecraft
and making indefinite term extra-planetary habitats.

Musk's promises that they'll travel in comfort sounds too close to what the
Jamestown colony residents were promised. Life on Mars is going to be a
hardscrabble existence where you have to solve problems that you don't have on
Earth. Probably a mostly subterranean existence.

Musk's video seemed to imply that people would terraform Mars, but we aren't
even close to attempting that yet. We can't even keep the atmosphere of Earth
in balance. Elon Musk's biggest problem may be that he was born 100 years too
early.

------
staticelf
Elon Musk is clearly the greatest man in my lifetime. What he does and has
done for the world is insane. I really admire him for his work and sacrifices.

I really wish him to succeed and if he asked me to donate money I would.

------
Animats
Great video. Is the plan really a one-way trip?

~~~
iamcreasy
No, the spaceships will be coming back. If somebody wants to come back they
can hop in any of the returning spaceships. Elon doesn't want Mars to be
graveyard of spaceships.

------
mtgx
I missed most of the livestream. Why did they just close it? I thought it was
possible to simply go back on it. Did they not want people to do that before
editing it first?

------
boznz
Better get the popcorn out for this thread...

------
tdaltonc
He can have Mars. I want Ceries.

Mars will be nothing more then a research station for 500 years. Ceries and
the space stations at L1-5 will be economic powerhouses before 2100.

------
perilunar
1000 comments! Is that a record?

~~~
Pinckney
The Brexit thread broke 2500.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11966167)

------
ryanSrich
Hm. It either hasn't started yet or its not working for me. I just see the
logo and hear music.

------
_audakel
cool part starts at about 31m:30s from the end of the clip

------
macawfish
elon musk debuts his foray into electronic music

------
DrNuke
Miserable sods are not an exception in the human history but, until now, doers
have always had the last laugh. Steps may be faster without them but, you
know, the higher the target, the more substantial the effort to get rid of
miserable sods. It must be noted that it often happened that miserable sods'
arguments helped improve the process overall, so I'm pretty sure SpaceX is
taking note of the most intelligent arguments over here to improve their
products.

------
davidw
Jeez, they should have done some vetting of the people asking questions. Some
of these are horrible and a waste of time.

~~~
daeken
Yeah, all questions should've gone into a queue for review as the talk was
going on. I had to shut off the Q&A; this was just cringeworthy.

------
lucb1e
"Livestream starting soon". Does anyone know what time they're starting? (And
please use a numeric timezone, I'm not a walking timezone database.)

~~~
massel
I've never watched an Elon Musk livestream that started on time. Not sure if
I'm spoiled by Apple keynotes always starting on time, or if live stream start
times at SpaceX are just as loose as the company's other timelines

~~~
madamelic
I guess time is hard to measure when you deal with fast things???? (Terrible,
non-sensical joke)

------
sickbeard
I'm not convinced there's some urgent need to be multiplanetary in 6 years.
There's so much we can do to make this planet better and it is by far the best
planet in our solar system.

------
marvindanig
Can't believe we're in _that_ moment here.

------
ommunist
Well, technically its a one-way ticket, right? And no FRS is going to check
your spendings in outer space, right? I'd like to see whether this guy has
some vested interest in VR. Just paranoid.

------
40acres
I'm surprised Elon has not improved his public speaking abilities.

~~~
giarc
He is likely very efficient with his time. Improving public speaking skills is
not an efficient use of his time for someone in his position.

~~~
microtherion
Since his "position" involves advocating for a whole bunch of literal and
figurative moon shots, investing in public speaking skills is a HIGHLY
efficient use of his time.

~~~
giarc
And yet there are two companies that live stream product launches and get lots
of media attention. Apple and Tesla/SpaceX. So I would say his public speaking
skills don't matter to the crowd of engineers and geeks. Maybe, just maybe the
product speaks louder than the words?

~~~
intrasight
I totally agree. The first couple of times I heard him speak, I was like "get
some skills". But now I can filter out the stutters and delays. And the payoff
is huge - the guy is totally brilliant and inspirational. I can see why his
employees give it 150%.

------
drcross
As much as I love everything about what Elon is doing I wish there was a way
to remove all the "um"s and "eh"s from his diction.

~~~
jpindar
I think its kind of encouraging to see that you don't have to be a great
public speaker to get people to listen to you, as long as you are able to
accomplish things off the stage.

------
btcboss
YUGE INTRO

------
dom96
Thank you for posting this. Have been excited about this all week!

------
Esau
Yup, time to move to other planets - the virus has almost killed its current
host.

------
callmeatroll
This is either:

A) the most revolutionary venture of this century

B) the largest Ponzi scheme ever

~~~
zik
Not sure how it could be seen as a Ponzi scheme. By definition a Ponzi scheme
has to return money from its later investors to earlier investors and I don't
see anything like that here.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme)

------
novalis78
Expect a job application as soon as I receive my Greencard, Elon :-)

------
dsabanin
What are we going to do on Mars? Live in a plastic box? Send in a bunch of
slaves to mine minerals in insufferable conditions? I don't get it.

~~~
codeulike
Watch the end of the video. I think he intends to terraform it.

Edit: looks like he's aiming for a city of 1m people in the short term,
Terraforming in the long term.

~~~
dsabanin
We can't solve simplest problems on Earth (like re-capturing CO2 for example),
but believe we'll be able to terraform a planet to which we haven't even been
able to send a human yet?

~~~
spdustin
We don't need the permission and cooperation of every major world power and
polluting industry to go to Mars. I'd go so far as to say it's vastly more
attainable than fixing our atmosphere.

~~~
dsabanin
I understand that. But if we as people can't even solve these simple problems
of intercommunication in the system that we ourselves created, how are we
going to be solving problems of terraforming which involve a lot more complex
systems that we have absolutely no clue about?

We can't stop desertification on this planet, yet plan to turn a planet-sized
desert into a hospitable place. Crazy.

~~~
nitrogen
As the parent commenter implied, things get a lot easier when you only bring
people who agree.

~~~
spdustin
Indeed. We could argue the tragedy of the commons as it pertains to climate
change (it's a tough argument for both sides, honestly) but when colonizing
Mars means bringing along colonists vetted by scientists and not politicians,
keeping from wrecking the place would be a lot easier.

I do recognize that it wouldn't solely be scientists to choose colonists, I'm
not that naive, but I'm confident that there would be enough controls in place
to ensure that _the right thing_ is the default answer to _what do we do now?_

------
daveheq
Why are we thinking about going to other planets when we can't even take care
of our own?

How many industry leaders see planets as merely resources to be exploited like
they do people?

------
suyash
We should not be colonizing foreign lands instead making our own planet better
in all sense. Elon Musk and company are well known for big promises, I'm still
waiting for 35K Tesla that was supposed to come out last year.

------
Your_Creator
Forgive me but I love this stuff, thinking about how much quantum mechanics
has taught us about the universe makes me absolutely giddy. I haven't even
watched this yet and I can tell you this:

To achieve multi-planetary status, we need to make ourselves less fragile than
we currently tend to be. What I mean by that is that if we devoted half as
much time, money and resources as we do to wage endless wars and collectively
shifted our focus to medical advancements such as the technology we need to
keep ourselves alive in the hostile environments we'll encounter in space, our
astronauts very likely could be traveling in self contained, iron man-like
suits by now.

Aside from that, we may have to upgrade our own physiology so;

We NEED nanotech that can repair us, keep us healthy and help us adapt
OURSELVES to new environments that have enough of the proper elements. Can you
imagine being able to Evolve On Demand so that you can breathe a different
atmosphere and derive whatever your body needed from it? I can.

If relativity holds then planets that are either bigger or moving faster might
have a very different local space-time from what we're used to, so imagine if
jet lag was so severe it hospitalized you.

We need artificial intelligence capable of both supervised and unsupervised
learning to run and monitor our environments, our medical conditions - both
physical and mental. The 'quantified self movement' actually has a very, very
useful purpose here.

We need to be able to repair a ship while it's in space. We need to be able to
repair an environmental suit while standing or perhaps trapped in a volcano
that ejects molten Dihydrogen Monoxide on Titan.

We need real, functioning, scanning, recording, data-analyzing Tricorders.
Yes, if if weren't obvious by now, I AM a total Star Trek nerd and if we want
to explore space, we need those mobile forensic labs that will allow us to
truly see the universe and ALL of its wonderful colors. I could go on, but
then someones' R&D department is gonna have to pay me.

------
ravenstine
I have a better idea:

Let's focus all the money and effort we would spend on getting to Mars and
living on its wasteland, and use it to understand the human mind and digitize
it into a realm not individually constrained by physics? I actually think that
may be a more realistic and practical goal, and our quality of lives could be
much better. I mean, what do we really get from living somewhere like Mars? A
storage compartment for excess humans? To what end? What will happen to it
when we cure aging?

The idea of terraforming Mars cracks me up. Maybe when Musk completes his
hyperloop will also be when I start taking him more seriously.

~~~
BurningFrog
Humanity can work on more than one project. We're 7 billion people.

~~~
ravenstine
That point is not in dispute. What I think would be better than spending the
amount of effort and time to get to Mars, which I am unconvinced solves our
long term problems in any way, would be to better pool those resources into
solving the root issues that afflict humanity like aging, pathogens,
degenerative diseases, the need for so much food, the pollution we create, and
the resources we consume. Working towards changing the human into something
better, whether it be through improving our own hardware(biology) or bringing
us into a digital realm(cognition). If we don't do that sooner, we're more
likely to continue to suffer from the problems we are inevitably facing and
end up, as I said earlier, turning planets into mere storage compartments. We
can certainly do multiple things at once, but resources are not infinite, and
I don't think all avenues of spending those resources make sense.

~~~
Hondor
Just about all human effort is directed towards things which aren't curing
disease and downloading our brains to a computer. So it's not SpaceX to
complain about. It's the corner store and the hairdresser down the road.
Collectively they're all wasting far more effort on far more useless
activities than SpaceX ever will.

More directly to your point - Mars solves the risk to our species of a comet
strike. Musk mentioned extinction events in the video. They've happened before
and will happen again. All the health and cognitive improvement in the world
won't save us from that.

