
Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week and settle Mars - GraemeL
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/inside-elon-musks-plan-to-build-one-starship-a-week-and-settle-mars/
======
Ajedi32
The pace of innovation here is absolutely ludicrous. They designed and built a
custom welding machine _and_ a custom x-ray machine for building tank domes in
four _weeks_? They've gone from a production rate of one prototype in 8 months
to one prototype every 2 weeks in less than a year. They doubled the size of
their workforce in less than 48 hours. I'm gonna have to agree with the
article author here: this is absolutely mad.

~~~
CydeWeys
It's really helping them that they have some of the most motivated employees
on Earth. Their people absolutely believe in this vision of colonizing Mars
just as much as Elon Musk does. (Hell, I do too, I just don't work there.)

Meanwhile I'm working at an advertising company.

~~~
missosoup
> Meanwhile I'm working at an advertising company.

That's a funny way to spell Google.

~~~
virgilp
Or Facebook. Or heck, even Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe if you're in the "wrong"
department. I bet even some Apple employees might occasionally feel they work
at an advertising company.

~~~
viklove
Well, Apple is a marketing company.

------
peter_d_sherman
Excerpt:

"Just iterate, baby"

"I’ve spoken with plenty of the earliest engineers who worked at SpaceX, and
almost all of them have noted that Musk tackles the hardest engineering
problems first. For Mars, there will be so many logistical things to make it
all work, from power on the surface to scratching out a living to adapting to
its extreme climate. But Musk believes that the initial, hardest step is
building a reusable, orbital Starship to get people and tons of stuff to Mars.
So he is focused on that.

 _He knows he won’t get Starship right at first. He employs some of the
smartest engineers on this planet, and they’re still, in many ways, fumbling
toward solutions for the extremely hard problem of getting a super-large
vehicle out of Earth’s gravity well into orbit—then to land it and fly it
again. Musk has come to believe the only way to realistically achieve this is
through trial and error, by iterating closer and closer to the right design._
"

~~~
amelius
> for the extremely hard problem of getting a super-large vehicle out of
> Earth’s gravity well into orbit

Why does it need to be super-large? To simulate gravity?

~~~
petewailes
Tonnage. If you're wanting to move 7/8 figure tonnage loads over a period of
time, you're going to need a big trunk.

In space vehicles, that means everything gets really, really big.

~~~
jcims
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_fraction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_fraction)

Launch vehicles tend to scale payload capacity at a greater rate than dry
mass. So a small launch vehicle like RocketLab's Electron might have a wet
mass of 12,000kg at launch and an LEO payload capacity of 225kg (225/12000 ~
1.8% payload), the SpaceX Falcon9 has a wet mass of 550,000kg and an LEO
payload capacity of 22,800kg (22800/550000 ~ 4.1% payload).

This just tends to mean that, very generally and with exceptions, larger
vehicles can get mass into space with less fuel.

~~~
SEJeff
A Falcon 9 has a LEO payload capacity of 22,800kg in expendable mode,
something SpaceX does not like to do. The largest payload mass they've carried
to LEO was Starlink-2 at approximately 15,600kg (60 satellites at 227 kg
each).

~~~
labawi
Electron is not reusable, so expandable mode is a fairer comparison.

~~~
SEJeff
Maybe, but SpaceX strongly dislikes doing expendable mode, if at all.

------
martythemaniak
Slightly off-topic but apart from Mars-related things, I don't think are
appreciating how big of a deal Starship/Super Heavy will be.

Because space is hard and expensive, when designing payloads, they also have
to be over-engineered to make sure you're getting the most out of your ride,
which then makes the rockets over-engineered and expensive to make sure they
don't blow up carrying the precious cargo. It's a positive feedback loop. So
we end up with incredible telescopes like Hubble or James Webb, but it's
literally a once-in-a-generation event. There's no tolerance for failure, so
budgets and timelines ballon.

What if you knew you could get a cheap ride anywhere anytime? Why not mass-
produce slightly lower quality telescopes instead of these masterpieces. The
JWST's successor is LUVOIR, slated for sometime in the 2040s (!!), why not
build a dozens JWST-like telescopes and use interferometry to build giant
telescopes larger than the earth with higher light-gathering ability than even
ground-based telescopes? This is the technique used by Event Horizon Telescope
to capture the first picture of a black hole last year.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-
baseline_interferome...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long-
baseline_interferometry)

~~~
grecy
> _What if you knew you could get a cheap ride anywhere anytime?_

That's exactly the premise of Starlink. SpaceX know they can launch those
things 100x cheaper (1000x ?) than ever before in history, so they're churning
them out and throwing them up. Even though the ones going up right now aren't
"finished" it doesn't matter, because replacing them with new and better ones
is so cheap.

~~~
baking
400 Starlink satellites per Starship launch costing $2M is $5,000 per
satellite per launch. Basically nothing compared to the eventual mass-produced
cost to make each satellite which might be $100,000.

[https://youtu.be/Exd1IO52exs?t=361](https://youtu.be/Exd1IO52exs?t=361)

~~~
_Microft
Musk recently said that they need to get Starship working because the launch
cost on Falcon 9 is already exceeding the cost of the launched Starlink
satellites. With a launch cost of approximately $30M and 60 satellites, they
are already at $500k per satellite at most.

------
throwaway13337
It's quite inspiring to see a real goal and drive towards it.

Purpose is so hard to come by now because we all don't know what we want. When
we do know, we're constantly unsure about it.

Such a clear goal makes it easy to have greater purpose that you don't second
guess.

This isn't a scheme to get rich, a zero sum political movement, or a
narcissistic artistic endeavor. It's pretty unique there.

There's that whole danger of a cult of personality but the project is bearing
fruit.

~~~
nixpulvis
> It's quite inspiring to see a real goal and drive towards it.

I'm throughly uninspired... As a friend of mine once said: "progress when
you're going the wrong direction, is turning around".

The idea that we'll settle Mars while the Earth burns in borderline sinister.
It reminds me of the elite outpost from Kingsman (the movie).

We have a planet that is in dire need of this kind of motivated action, and
yet Elon would rather be distracted by this dream.

Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate the "cool" factor of expanding to other
planets. I too enjoy a good science fiction story. Who wouldn't want to escape
the problems we've inherited, and proliferated.

But escapism solves nothing for "us", and it's foolish to think Mars is
anything else. If we as humans can't live on Earth responsibly, we frankly
don't deserve to exist at all.

(Perhaps we should pull a Titan A.E., and preserve some DNA in the vast
wasteland of space. Just in case an alien species decides to give us another
go)

~~~
jcadam
> We have a planet that is in dire need of this kind of motivated action, and
> yet Elon would rather be distracted by this dream.

What? You see a motivated person with the resources and drive to pursue his
dream and you're upset that he's not putting his vision aside to pursue what
you think is important? Musk doesn't owe you anything.

------
cstross
This is a spectacular gamble, however Musk has a track record and I think
Superheavy/Starship will pay off with unpredictable dividends.

But the elephant in the room that Musk appears to be ignoring is the life
sciences side of things. Only 12 humans have sortied outside the Van Allen
belts (which protect us from the deep space radiation environment). Nobody has
spent more than 18 consecutive months in space or reduced gravity, and we
_know_ there are biological changes that affect astronauts. The same goes
triple for the plants and bacteria and fungi (never mind animals) we depend on
for agriculture, and a closed-loop agricultural system and air plant is
implicit in Musk's goal of a self-sufficient colony on Mars. We haven't even
repeated the (failed) Biosphere 2 experiment.

We need the giant payload capacity before we can test the life sciences
problems in a realistic manner (small and ferociously expensive lab
experiments on the ISS are useful but fail Musk's iteration test because the
lead time for running one is measured in years if not decades).

So we won't know if a Mars colony is even possible until some time after Musk
builds the ships to put one there.

~~~
carapace
Then we'll _merely_ go to the Moon. :-) (And LEO and the Lagrange points.)

You raise a good point IMO in re: _viability_ of space. In the limit it may
turn out that humans can't live anywhere but on or near the surface of Earth.
What is certain is that living in space will suck for many years, or likely
decades. It will be like living in a mine, but there are more things that can
kill you and you're much _much_ further from fresh air and safe ground. And I
suspect living on Mars would suck anyway just due to the ~0.4G surface
gravity. At least on the Moon you can go home (in a few days rather than lots
of months) or fly like a bird under your own power if your cave is big enough.
("The Menace from Earth", Heinlein; "Welcome to Moonbase", Bova)

But even if we can't live there it's still really useful and important to go:
micro-gravity manufacturing; robotic asteroid mining; _science_...

I hope we can live in space, I _want_ to colonize the galaxy. (The _green
galaxy_ on the cover of "The Millennial Project" book is one of the more
compelling images I've personally ever seen. A photosynthesizing galaxy...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Coloni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Colonizing_the_Galaxy_in_Eight_Easy_Steps)
)

But even if we can't go at all these rockets are really important!

~~~
cstross
This is why I like to draw a distinction between space _exploration_ and space
_colonization_. The former is definitely within the realm of possibility,
using existing technology (never mind the Superheavy/Starship system).

But Musk, with his talk of a self-sufficient city, is clearly targeting the
latter, and there are a whole lot of details we haven't worked out.

~~~
carapace
It's one of those things, robots are much less romantic than astronauts, but
they make so much more sense it's not even a contest.

I wonder how starry-eyed Elon Musk really is in re: Mars colonization? I know
for myself that it was _hard_ to admit robots make more sense (at least at
first).

------
justapassenger
Is it me, or does this article basically romanticize abusing workers and
glorifies running projects without a plan, just with a goal?

~~~
Florin_Andrei
If you want to change history, you'll put up with a brutal working schedule.

If you want a cushy 9-5 job, just apply to the nice big corporation down the
street. At the end of the day, you just go home and enjoy your comfy bunny
slippers.

~~~
rchaud
This sounds suspiciously identical to a tweet Elon posted last year that went
'viral', including the bit about how people working 9-5 (like that even exists
at most corps today) as somehow being 'weak'.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _suspiciously_

lol, you've found the nefarious element!

(It could be that I'm actually quoting from memory but, if so, it's not
conscious.)

------
nsm
This article from October 2019 also does a great job explaining the enormity
of vision.

[https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/the-spacex-
sta...](https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/the-spacex-starship-is-
a-very-big-deal/)

------
zshrdlu
Why Mars, specifically? Why not "settle" Antarctica or Marianna's trench?
Aren't these orders of magnitude easier?

~~~
KoftaBob
The overarching goal is to have a "backup" of humanity so to speak. Having
some of society living on Mars so that if something were to happen to Earth,
humanity wouldn't cease to exist. Settling Antarctica doesn't solve that
problem.

~~~
thu2111
I'm a huge Musk fan and would love to see us settle mars.

But. Really. What's the threat model here?

Mars is meant to be a backup of humanity. OK. Against what threat? We can
think of many, but a self-isolating base in the Antarctic would survive nearly
all of them with better conditions than a Mars base.

Nuclear armageddon? Not much fallout over Antarctica and OK, you can't go
outside of a while. Still better than Mars where you can't go outside ever.

Runaway global warming? The ice will melt but at a slow pace that leaves
plenty of time for adaptation, the climate will become _more_ hospitable at
the poles rather than less, and at least you will have lots of fresh water.
Unlike, say, on Mars.

Global pandemic? An Antarctic base can self isolate, no problem. Just lock the
doors and let anyone who tries to reach you freeze to death. A serious Mars
base would need some sort of border control policy too, if Musk had made it
cheap to get there.

Massive asteroid strike? I guess it'd wreck the atmosphere but ... well, then
you're no worse off than on Mars which doesn't have one to begin with. And
you're much more likely to get nuked by a 'roid on Mars where there's no
atmosphere to burn it up.

I dunno man. I'm trying to think of a problem that a serious Antarctic city
couldn't solve and coming up blank. Short of Earth getting sucked into a black
hole or something, what scenario is survivable on Mars that isn't at the
poles?

~~~
kybernetikos
Antarctic city is good. I like underwater cities personally.

A decent depth of water is very good protection against an awful lot of stuff,
including almost anything Mars would be good for, and if you still love space,
any technology we build to live deep in the ocean can probably be reused on
Europa.

It's also, to bring it back to the 'iteration' discussion way way easier to
iterate building underwater cities than building habitats on Mars.

~~~
thu2111
Yeah, exactly. Problem is 'underwater base' is probably too easy to build.
Within a few years you'd be asking people to actually live there and then ...
well good luck motivating employees with _that_ vision!

------
recusancy
Has he ever talked about how people would survive on Mars without a
magnetosphere?

~~~
scrumbledober
most likely using martian soil as a radiation shield. Either built up in
mounds around structures, or by tunneling under the ground (boring company?)

------
tectonic
Self-promotion:

If you want weekly updates about SpaceX's progress, and about space science
and the space industry in general, I write a newsletter for just that purpose:
[https://orbitalindex.com](https://orbitalindex.com)

------
londons_explore
I wonder how they handle differences in plans/knowledge/outlook between the 4
shifts. I can totally see the AM team working towards different quality
standards or designs than the Evening team because they never talk to one
another.

~~~
riffraff
usually people change across shifts over time, you don't always work with the
same people every time, so there would be a continuous sync up.

------
tpmx
This Musk quote from the article resonated with me:

> There’s plenty of forgiveness if you pass me the buck. There is no
> forgiveness if you don’t.

~~~
londons_explore
Next week, Musks inbox is flooded with "Weld 28467 is looking slightly bubbly.
It'll probably be okay, but wanted to pass the buck to you".

~~~
I-M-S
That was my first thought as well - how does the spiritus movens behind both
Tesla and SpaceX have the bandwidth to pull off that level of
(micro)management?

~~~
hef19898
He doesn't, plain and simple. So either it is propaganda or dilution or
hybris. Probably a combination of all three.

~~~
widowlark
People say he doesn't over and over - but he beats expectations over and over.
Hmm.

~~~
avmich
Once working on an important project (and the work went round the clock),
Sergei Korolev ordered people to literally wake him up at night if some
serious questions or problems surfaced up. His team took that literally, and
Korolev was woken up a few times at night. Later he said "you seem to
conspired to not let me get some sleep", but nobody was fired[1], and the team
still adjusted to a balance between importance of problem visibility and
importance of getting rest.

Sorry for no references, writing from memory :) .

[1] Firing in Korolev's team was a whole 'nother story entirely. For example,
Korolev used to fire people in the morning only to require them to work extra
hard in the same afternoon. The team got used to this feature. In reality,
nobody wanted to be fired - people saw the importance of their work.

------
justinclift
Wonder if friction stir welding would be suitable instead?

That seems to be used when very strong + predictable welding is needed.

Not sure if it's generally used for 4mm thick material though.

------
paulcarroty
Living without big plans & big dreams is bad, don't matter how crazy they are.
Why I support Elon.

------
pjc50
So we've accepted that we're never going to find life on Mars, and that
there's no concern of "contamination"? Or is this just a big plan to build a
city in the first bit of "unspoilt" wilderness we can find off planet?

------
superbrane
I hope he gets to solve the terraforming part of going to Mars, as well. Also,
maybe he sets his eyes on colonizing the ocean space on Earth - lots of empty
space in the water.

~~~
Cobord
Do a simple lower bound calculation, and you see that Elon is talking out of
his ass.

------
sam36
Curious, does spacex have any work from home software dev jobs?

------
nohuhu
So I guess this is how living in the 1960s felt like? :)

------
kerenua
godspeed

------
ballooney
Settle _on_ Mars

------
shoulderfake
Who da hell wants to go live there seriously??

------
chottocharaii
Humans are not biologically adapted to surviving on Mars, and for that reason,
any settlement to Mars is bound to fail in the long term.

~~~
daxaxelrod
Humans are not adapted to live in space either. But because of a couple brave
people, we now know a little about how to counteract zero gravity's
degradation on the body (Bone and muscle loss -> stricter workout regiment).
Bound to fail in the long term is quite the statement to make given our
ability to build tools based on data that could increase our chance of
survival.

~~~
bergoid
Low gravity is one thing. But the radiation outside the Earth's magnetic field
is quite another. People colonizing Mars will need to shield themselves from
several types of harmful radiation. Wich means in practice: living
underground.

~~~
daxaxelrod
Could be living underground. Water is also an effective radiation shield.
Combined with predictive modeling, we might have a chance.

[https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/spaceweather/ind...](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/spaceweather/index.html#q18)

~~~
bergoid
Agreed. You could cover your above-ground pressurized habitat with blocks of
ice. Or with a thick layer of dirt. But the subjective experience remains
about the same as living underground.

~~~
allannienhuis
There are a lot of people who live indoors almost 100% of the time in the
winter in northern climates. A lot of the larger northern cities have
underground walkways between buildings with subway access etc. No one wants to
even walk across the street when it's 40 below. :)

I expect that designs for 'permanently underground/inside' cities would need
to include some high-ceiling park-like areas with some bright UV lights, and
other considerations, but that sort of thing seems pretty doable. Whether it
would be enough to maintain a population's mental heath I guess would need to
be seen, but generally speaking I think humans are a pretty adaptable bunch...

~~~
bergoid
> I expect that designs for 'permanently underground/inside' cities would need
> to include some high-ceiling park-like areas with some bright UV lights, and
> other considerations, but that sort of thing seems pretty doable.

Definitely doable. But then there's no longer any special appeal to living on
Mars, as opposed to: living in rotating space habitats among the asteroids.

If we reformulate Musk's goal as being: "Create off-site backups of human
civilization", then I think asteroid mining & space habitats have a better
shot at bootstrapping this process than colonizing Mars.

Once we are leveled up this way in resources and technology, building
settlements on Mars can be a side-effect of this outcome. Just like the
burgeoning scientific outposts on Antarctica are a side-effect of our current
civilization.

~~~
allannienhuis
I like the idea - why waste all that energy going up and down, and missing out
on swimming in zero g? :)

But rotating space habitats might not be as good at replacing gravity as some
think. Even with the really-huge 'O'Niell cylinder' scale (8 kilometers
diameter), coriolis effects would be noticeable. I suspect a number of
industrial processes would be affected by it.

I expect some of the major industrial processes will still need/want to be
done on a big pile of rock or sand, rather than in a more fragile object that
inherently wants to explode and fling apart all the time :).

------
zerop
Steve jobs was super rude to Elon Musk! Right.

------
dangus
What is the benefit of settling on Mars?

Until we explain that in some kind of sane way that doesn’t just involve the
earth being a crutch for raw materials, it all seems rather stupid to me.

Settling an earth-like planet? Sure! Seems logical. Mars? Not really.

~~~
koboll
Ability to survive nuclear war. He doesn't just want to settle, he wants to
settle with a _self-sustaining_ colony. It's a contingency plan.

We've almost plunged the world into nuclear holocaust a couple times before.
India and Pakistan are at each other's throats, and rising ethnonationalist
populism and climate change are threatening to strain these tensions further.
This is a real risk.

~~~
giantrobot
I'd buy into Musk's Mars bullshit if he built a sealed self-contained colony
in New Mexico. We have experience with two long term space habitats, Mir and
the ISS. Despite all of the engineering know how that built both shit breaks
on them all the time and needs to be repaired. They also need regular resupply
because they're nowhere near self sufficient. They also need a Soyuz capsule
docked at all times in case they need to evacuate.

The Starship is an iterative design with seventy years of engineering
knowledge behind it. Keeping humans alive outside the Van Allen belts for a
long duration and then on a completely inhospitable planet has very little
engineering knowledge behind it.

Also to suggest a Mars colony is a contingency plan is ludicrous. In order for
a Mars colony to be a human civilization contingency plan it would not only
need to be self sustaining but self perpetuating. Otherwise a life ending
event on Earth would just give the Mars colonists a few months to come to
terms with their mortality. Then no kore humans.

There is nowhere in the solar system that can support humans in the way Earth
can. In fact everywhere else is _so_ hostile we need to take significant
amounts of Earth with us just to not die immediately.

If you want to live in underground colonies have the Boring company build you
tunnels here on Earth. At least when you need parts for the GECK you can go
above ground with just a gas mask and rugged clothes instead of a bulky space
suit.

~~~
__s
Arthur C Clarke opined that we should be building self sufficient settlements
under the ocean before moving on to space

Not really a reference, but related, [http://socialsciences.cornell.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02...](http://socialsciences.cornell.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02/Helen-Rozwadowskis-paper.pdf)

------
ratsimihah
Not a bad idea, it's a good way to save the few healthy/surviving ones if
coronavirus (or nature, or humanity itself) ends up wiping all of humanity.

------
WoodenKatana
Elon Musk is beyond obsessed with reaching Mars. I feel bad for his employees

~~~
detritus
They can always leave.

I'd presume that many of them are on-board in the first place because they're
engaged by the idea.

~~~
wolco
I suspect we have a few groups. Those who drank the kool-aid and liked it.
Those who used to believe in it but after abuse are now stuck in an endless
cycle where they have no time for job searches. And those that never drank the
kool-aid and will leave after getting time on their resume.

It takes a great mix of super smarts and super stupid to work there.

~~~
Melting_Harps
> I suspect we have a few groups.

I think that's pretty much accurate, and what I saw when I was at the Job
Faire in Browning last month, most were surprised by how extensive my
experience was before I applied to get there: I worked for one of Kimbal's
companies, I did a short stint at the Mars Desert Research Station, and got to
know the Director and was asked to come back under her on a crewed mission
etc...

Most were there to dip there toes and see what it was all like, but some of us
were kool-aid drinkers for sure.

I met a SpaceX engineer in S. OC at an inn/out years ago and struck up a chat
and the way he spoke about it was inspiring; despite the commute, long hours,
fears of possibly going bankrupt before every launch (this was before Falcon 9
was recoverable) he seemed very fulfilled: like this is what he was here to
do.

I got to stay after hours and hang out with some the crew in Browning as they
were having dinner-lunch and it was the same vibe--smiles everywhere and just
a really warm and inviting environment as you knew you among similar
'crazies.' I'm not sure if its cult-like or not but it was one of those rare
moments I've had in Life where people genuinely wouldn't want to be anywhere
else than where they are.

Money can't really buy that, and that is probably why I'm so drawn to it. If
you're there trying to have a cushy work-life balance in any Musk corp you're
deluding yourself.

~~~
jcims
There is some segment of the population that would pity your perspective as
the disillusionment of an abused spouse. I don't. I get it.

~~~
Melting_Harps
> There is some segment of the population that would pity your perspective as
> the disillusionment of an abused spouse. I don't. I get it.

Thanks, I often wonder if this is healthy practice myself as it can be rather
personally-abusive to be so mission-centric, but then I see the consequences
of the alternative: consider how many people in the US alone consume
psychotropic drugs just to cope with depression despite having access to so
much of everything but being so inherently listless and distracted.

I won't bemoan about the pitfalls about the Human Condition, but I will say
that despite the hardships and loss I still see this as a worthwhile endeavor
and wish to be part of it all, especially when you understand the implications
it may have for the Species if we get this right.

Which right now as we're seeing the blow-back of something significant (albeit
minor in the grand scheme of outbreaks) like Coronavirus is really alarming.

------
schaefer
A Linguistic Beef:

The word "Starship" means specifically that the ship is capable of traveling
between stars. At a minimum, it should travel from it's home star to the
nearest neighboring star.

What we're talking about here are "Spaceships". \-- The only way I can lighten
up and enjoy the name Starship in this context is to assume it's being used
ironically... like someone who's named their cat "Dog".

~~~
olex
There are other vehicles called "Starship" that aren't actual starships either
- the Beechcraft Starship (a twin-engined turboprop pusher aircraft) or "The
Starship" (a Boeing 720 used by Led Zeppelin and other bands). It's a proper
noun chosen as a name or model designation for the vehicle, as opposed to a
common noun describing the vehicle itself (a spacecraft).

------
immmmmm
I don’t get the point

1) we are plain in the middle of a mass extinction event, expected to get much
worst in a decade or two. Wouldn’t it be good to solve that first?

2) we need a 4th industrial revolution to survive global warming as a
civilization. Wouldn’t be better to fix that first? (No, electric cars won’t
suffice)

3) is it really necessary to spoil astronomy/night sky to finance one’s dream?
(No, vantablack won’t solve the issue)

4) our technology presently rely on mining 100+ elements. Does anyone here
believe one can mine all of those on an a planet that misses an atmosphere?
Using Earth ressources for a “colony” seems a dubious idea.

5) has anyone an idea of the CO2 equivalent cost of bringing one person to
mars?

6) there is growing evidence that there is life in the Martian underground.
Should we take the risk of destroying another biosphere?

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
1) we are plain in the middle of a mass extinction event, expected to get much
worst in a decade or two. Wouldn’t it be good to solve that first?

I don't see why we can't do both. Maybe if you come up with an actionable plan
you can start your own company like Elon and tackle that problem.

2) we need a 4th industrial revolution to survive global warming as a
civilization. Wouldn’t be better to fix that first? (No, electric cars won’t
suffice)

No electric cars won't suffice, but they are a start. As is an increase in
nuclear, and renewables in areas it makes sense. Again I don't see how this
detracts, especially looking at Elon's other ventures. Maybe you can create a
company that tackles the concrete problem, that's a big one.

3) is it really necessary to spoil astronomy/night sky to finance one’s dream?
(No, vantablack won’t solve the issue)

That's subjective and you don't know if it can be solved or not, seems they
are working on it. Why do you think a non-reflective coating won't work?

4) our technology presently rely on mining 100+ elements. Does anyone here
believe one can mine all of those on an a planet that misses an atmosphere?
Using Earth ressources for a “colony” seems a dubious idea.

We don't have to mine all of them at first. Look where we started here on
Earth, from scratch.

5) has anyone an idea of the CO2 equivalent cost of bringing one person to
mars?

I'm sure it's negligible relatively. Was that rhetorical or do you have a
number?

6) there is growing evidence that there is life in the Martian underground.
Should we take the risk of destroying another biosphere?

Are you talking about the ice found? The martian biosphere is already
destroyed, terraforming it would bring life to the surface and if there is
life it's underground and must be pretty hardy.

~~~
giantrobot
You can't start from "scratch" on Mars with respect to mining or industry.
Cavemen wearing mammoth pelts won't work on Mars. In order to simply _survive_
people would need high levels of technology. Even the most basic living on
Mars would need steel and glass and equipment to machine both.

Making a steel or glass plate requires a lot of industrial capability and a
capable supply chain to say nothing of raw materials. Both are cheap on Earth
because we've built that infrastructure over the past two hundred years. That
infrastructure was relatively easy to construct because the workers could wear
overalls and hard hats rather than space suits. Taking a lunch break doesn't
mean disrobing and piling into a pressure vessel.

Go camping for a weekend in the desert or in the snow sometime. Consider all
the crap you need to take with you to not die of exposure or thirst. In those
environments where you've got air for free and usually water if you know where
to look, you've still got a fair bit of equipment. If you forget anything or
lose it you could end up seriously injured or even dead. That's somewhere
that's lousy with breathable atmosphere, protection from most ionizing solar
radiation, and an average temperature high enough your lungs won't freeze.

Surviving inhospitable environments on _Earth_ requires effort and technology.
Surviving outside of Earth is several orders of magnitude more difficult.
_Thriving_ outside of Earth is more orders of magnitude beyond mere survival.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
You're taking it too literally. No one is suggesting we wear mammoth pelts,
only that our efforts will have to be gradual.

If we want to survive as a race in the long long term, we have to start
colonizing at some point.

I just don't see why you're so pessimistic. Let these people go after their
dream.

~~~
giantrobot
Colonization efforts off Earth _can 't_ be gradual. There is a baseline
infrastructure necessary for people to live. There are no readily available
resources on Mars that exist like they do on Earth. There's no safe places for
people on the planet.

Everything people need to survive needs to be brought from Earth. Every aspect
of life on Mars needs to be bootstrapped from absolutely nothing. There's no
working models for any of that on Earth. That means it all needs to be
designed, built, tested, and iterated upon before a single person boards a
SpaceX Starship.

Even with Elon Musk's billions that is a vast expense. Even if it was all
built, it's billions spent to send people to Mars to simply not die in case a
nuclear war wiped out Earth.

It's not pessimistic to point this out, it's realistic. Dreaming about
colonizing Mars and hand waving away every practical consideration is just
fruitless fantasizing. It's not a plan. It doesn't actually move towards a
colony anywhere.

The opportunity cost is billions of dollars and a lot of engineering effort
not spent on solutions to more immediate problems that might benefit more
people.

Musk talking about colonizing Mars is 90% PR for SpaceX and 10% ego stroking.
If SpaceX could build a Starship a week to send people to Mars it would be
Musk's friends and billionaires and millionaires. I doubt there's more than a
car load of people that work at SpaceX that would be able to afford a Mars
ticket. I can't fawn breathlessly over a billionaire describing his fantasy of
leaving all us poors to rot on a planet his fellow billionaires ruined.

~~~
s_y_n_t_a_x
I agree. I'm for the PR stunt of sending humans to Mars.

I really loved America's stunt of going to the Moon and I want a sequel.

Eventually I would like us to have some sort of habitat on Mars which I do not
think is far-fetched. I believe SpaceX will spur this movement.

------
kaycebasques
I respect the clarity of the vision and the drivenness to make the vision a
reality.

I disagree with the vision. The best analogy I can think of right now is high
school kids renting a hotel for a party and trashing it and then doing the
same thing next week. That’s humanity right now.

There is no Planet B until we build a mutualistic relationship with the one
that created us.

And yes when I say “there is no Planet B” I’m being vaguely spiritual. I
believe Earth is a creature and somehow won’t allow one of its creations to
explore the stars until that creation learns mutualism. But I’m also being
pragmatic: A) colonialism was a big motivation in our last 2 world wars and we
still have intense colonizer memes circulating through our societies B) we now
have the means to destroy ourselves thoroughly C) Mars is the crown jewel of
potential colonies right now.

~~~
_carl_jung
The pursuit of sustainable living and the pursuit of a multi-planetary
existence are parallel endeavours, not serial ones. Perhaps the view from Mars
will instil a renewed perspective on our dependence on Earth, and teach us
lessons on ecological management via terraforming.

~~~
kitsunesoba
I would argue that achieving self-sustainability on Mars forces the issue,
even. The problem we’ve had on Earth is that because the costs of being
wasteful, polluting, etc are externalized, which makes such behavior “cheap”
in the short term — on Earth, the environment is constantly handing out loans
that we rarely if ever repay.

That’s not an option on settlements beyond Earth’s surface. There, you’re
forced to live with every decision you make almost immediately, so if you’re
wasteful or stupid it’s promptly going to bite you in the ass and potentially
threaten the lives of everybody involved. You’re not given the option of
fixing things later, you have to do the correct thing now, and I think that’s
the type of environment it’s going to take for humanity to change its ways.

~~~
kaycebasques
“Forcing the issue” is an interesting perspective, thank you.

