In a Tweet on his X platform Saturday evening, Elon Musk announced unmanned Starship flights to Mars will begin two years from now in the next Mars launch window coming in the 4th quarter of 2026. These will be test flights and test landings to ensure the Starship can land on Martian soil in chosen areas.
"These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years."
Note the remainder of the quote in the top tweet:
"Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet."
Musk went on to say (in the “show more” link at the bottom of the second tweet), “It currently costs about a billion dollars per ton of useful payload to the surface of Mars. That needs to be improved to $100k/ton to build a self-sustaining city there, so the technology needs to be 10,000 times better. Extremely difficult, but not impossible.”
Making it cost 0.0001 times the current price is difficult but not
impossible? Since he has run the effort to get there with the Falcon 9
we have to consider he's sitting on or gets better access to the information
than anyone else on Earth. I'm more likely to believe it coming from Elon than
from pretty much anyone else.
Wow. Someone with actual vision, instead of the limited scope thinking we are so often served.
ReplyDeleteWho knows. I may actually see interplanetary cities in my lifetime.
I'm 70 so while it's not etched in stone, my chances of seeing real settlements on Mars is probably pretty much zip. OTOH, I'd really love to make it long enough to see the first people on Mars. I was 15 when Apollo 11 landed, so seeing the moon landing "on the way in" and Mars landing "on the way out" has a certain symmetry to it.
DeleteLOL. Sure.
ReplyDeleteHabitations on Mars will probably need to be underground to limit radiation exposure to the inhabitants. Unlike Earth, Mars has a very limited magnetosphere, if any, and next to no atmosphere. I bet this can be worked out, but I can’t imagine that it’s trivial. Those first Martians will be risking quite a bit, beyond just the travel risk, which is also likely to expose them to significant solar radiation.
ReplyDelete-Rob Muir
Even Heinlein had, in "Red Planet," habitations underground with surface locks, or surface buildings that were very thick. It's a known issue, and there are lots of ways to get around it.
DeleteOne is to use magma tunnels, but those are subject to marsquakes.
Another is to do domes, but those are very 'waste-space-ful' though they do allow for a large air volume which means the main dome is perfect for processing and mixing gasses.
Another is not a dome, but a flat, inflatable tent with support columns. Less wasted space and you can bury the 'tent' in dirt as an external shield, and run water through the bladder/tent skin matrix for the rest of the radiation shielding. And, funny, SpaceX has years of using tents as manufacturing buildings.
Does anyone know how a human gamete or zygote is affected by low G?
ReplyDeleteRadiation is another question.
The best answer to both halves of that question is to minimize the time in Zero G. The best approach to that is currently nuclear vessels to accelerate the entire trip. Accelerate half the way there and decelerate the second half. After all, the current trajectories to Mars, the way our rovers and landers have gotten there, is almost a full-term pregnancy.
DeleteSiG, I meant the low gravity on Mars.
DeleteWe'll just have to find out. We can hypothesis, but until we do it it's all moot.
DeleteRick - got it.
DeleteAfter government self-ends by destroying its logistics through overspending, you'll probably pick up an efficiency factor of 1E5 from reduced red tape.
ReplyDeleteSpace manufacturing facilities can be automated and are probably much more profitable than just going to another gravity well. Shirley he's going to put in a spaceport; how much is that going to cost? Does the dreamed-of $100k/ton landed include chopsticks and fuel dumps?
ReplyDeleteI waited 10 years for the Pluto probe to arrive, so my space patience is space legendary.
And once a city is there, what are they doing? Besides constant neverending farming (how much per pound will food imported from Earth cost?), what's your job? You can't export anything off-planet. Will SpaceX be their non-stop sugar daddy? What if Elon is put in gaol by President Harris or another democrat? Where is your energy coming from? Don't you need whole new solar panel tech to deal with temperature extremes and continent-sized ionized dust storms, tech that can't be tested anywhere else?
ReplyDeleteIn between that earth mars window, if it was me, would send a continuous line of cargo Starships on long duration Holmon orbits, simply sling a line of ships, that way the non-perishables, construction supplies and fuel/water/oxygen producing machines, are ready for large numbers of new Martians colonization.
ReplyDeleteIt seems plausible because of the present rate of R&D/construction of the SuperHeavy and stage Zero has built in scalability. And certainly SpaceX's present rate of production never-mind history of manufacturing, leans towards a kind of mass production strategy, or should that be built in strategy.
Holmon orbits solve a lot of the fuel issues with their minimal use burns plus gravity assists using the moon for it's slingshot effect, except for minor correction burns, most of the fuel goes towards translunar insertion and mars entry burns, it's the slingshot that saves fuel and adds for more cargo.
I mean that seems just common sense approach to getting ready to send people and other precious cargos.
I thought of something similar a while back. How about a string of 'structures' in an orbit that continually passes by Earth and Mars; put enough of them in the orbit so that one will pass by each planet every X months. In other words, build a Earth/Mars 'bus' line. They would have some manner of propulsion control but their main purpose is to provide a means of regularly transferring materials. I'm sure there are issues to this I'm not aware of.. orbital mechanics isn't in my skill set...
DeleteAldrin proposed a Mars Cycler that would do something similar. The orbital mechanics apparently work and it saves lots of fuel.
DeleteWonder if Elon's commentary regarding a high rate of launches required to occupy Mar's has something to do with the current deteriatiin/destruction of the US as a technological power, and it's indebtedness that looks like it is not stopping till we are completely strip mined of any appreciable wealth. I ain't Elon, but I think its practical and realistic to have such concerns, because frankly, what other civilization has the inherent capability required to undertake such an endeavor?
ReplyDeleteIIRC, it's the 3rd book in Asimov's trilogy which answers those questions. Or maybe the 2nd, IDK.
DeleteWith Super Heavy, SpaceX is building stripped down Chevy sedans with the highest HP engines possible, compared to legacy aerospace spacecraft. Particular to that is the use of common 304SST as the material of choice, plus its pragmatic open architecture and iterative manufacturing, very common sense, as the axiom Elin repeats, how "no part is a good part." I remember years back there was a senior engineer, can't remember his name, but he always said the same about no part is a the best part for Chevrolet vehicles, and that certainly proved out say with how durable and simplistic the 74-98 Chevy pick-ups are, just look under the hood, the excellent HEI all in one ignition system, the very plain bullet proof TBI injection system, compared to other competitive manufacturers. Using that with space vehicles makes all the sense in the world getting off planet earth more easily. Cheaper too, by orders of magnitude. I mean if i was on the engineeribg staff at SpaceX, every StarShip going to Mar's would have a simple minimalist ladder up the side of the ship to an special egress hatch, so it was assured people coming later could get inside and at cargo regardless of the situation. Build some of the Starships in such a way, including metal fab tools/supplies, so after emptied of cargo, you turn it into habitat, left upright or laid down. Remove the engines, they have many uses, from power generation to sweeping an area of dust and sand, even building say small ships, for asteroid mining. Essentially given the tools, an empty StarShip is like a big parts and material supply depot. A 1001 and one uses, mostly due to the great 304 SST alloy its constructed from, and all the handy thickness sheet metal, piping, tubing, wiring, modular electronic components, flap actuator motors, even the heat tiles, you could make a lot of handy things with those, such as metal smelting equipment, say lining simple iron melting tyuers and furnaces, solar furnaces for power gen, take sections of the ships skins, give them a fne polish, presto! Solar oven reflectors. Lot of uses with those, squeezing water for water bearing rock, domestic heating/hot water, low power electric say for everyones individual habitats, saves have need for power transmission lines. Those StarShips are a practical mechanic's/engineer's dream come true.
ReplyDeleteYou mean like sinter pumice from lava fields. Or maybe space dust. Just launch an engine, build the module as you go.
DeleteGuessing, the test flights will include exploratory / preparatory robots and equipment. Sending empty ships and then waiting two years would be silly.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought of it, but my first guess is that whatever goes on the first flights has a pretty good chance of being lost, if the lander topples over or it isn't secure enough. It's a "how much do you wanna bet?" decision.
DeleteElon time. Very optimistic. Maybe (maybe) the next transfer orbit.
ReplyDeleteWell, of course SpaceX has to test how Starship handles long duration in storing of fuel, in doing a cold start to engines in space for 6 months or more, and so forth. Nice thing is if they pancake a bunch of Starship prototypes, there'll be lots of material to remelt and reuse.
ReplyDelete