Human mission to Mars by 2024 ?

JunkMonkey said:
Musk is out to lunch on a lot of things.
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Having said that, he is in at the beginning with commercial spaceflight. And he has the cash and influence to stay the course.

He'll be the first trillionaire, and his legacy in spaceflight will last long after he has gone. Whatever else he has done, his decision to invest in space is one of the most astute. And one that he apparently seems determined not to mess with.
 
I expect he wants a nice space station to live on when he's finished "improving" the Earth.
 
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And now I'm thinking the Elon would make a perfect Bond villain...
 
Bezos has no idea how to get out into space. "Designed to open multiple new markets in space, Orbital Reef will provide anyone with the opportunity to establish their own address on orbit. This unique destination will offer research, industrial, international, and commercial customers the cost competitive end-to-end services they need including space transportation and logistics, space habitation, equipment accommodation, and operations including onboard crew." That is simply business speak, lots of words, nice artwork and no details. He also has said that a vibrant space based society will insure a good Earth environment for spacers to vacation at in the future.

Elon Musk may talk about his dreams about going to Mars but his companies day to day work are insuring that other people's dreams of just getting into orbit and to the Moon actually happen in the foreseeable future. If all he did was talk about going to Mars and did nothing but build things to get to Mars, then his talk about going to Mars would indeed be frivolous.

He's not giving anything away. NASA will own the world's most powerful spaceship, the ISS deorbiter ship, but they can't keep it because it will be destroyed along with the International Space Station.
 
Fascinating that this thread started in 2017 with Musk saying he would get people to Mars in 2024. Much speculation ensued over whether he knew what he was talking about. I think we have our answer now. No, he had no clue what he was talking about, not then, not now, not ever. He is a fool and a charlatan who rides on the backs of indisputably clever people who work for him. Whether those clever people are happy to continue working for him, as ever more details of his flawed persona and world vision emerge, remains to be seen (but there is increasing evidence that they are not).

The frustrating thing about Musk is that his companies achieve incredible things, but fall short of his ridiculous promises. The trouble is the public don't seem to understand the massive gulf between the achievement and the promise. A car driving itself through busy city traffic for 15 minutes before human intervention is incredibly impressive. Having said that, many humans drive for 50 years without intervention. The gulf between these things is huge, so why do so many people believe Tesla is 'close' to achieving a robotaxi? Its not so much that we overestimate the machine, its more that we underestimate the human. Catching a booster in chopsticks is great, but Space X was given $3 billion to prepare a platform for a Moon and then Mars trip. That money is nearly gone, and how close are they really? I'd put it at less than 10%. That is a dramatic underperformance! No wonder Musk is trying to ingratiate himself with a possible future administration; its an all-or-nothing attempt to keep the money flowing.
 
The entire industrial world is a mixture of lies, exaggerations, lucky breaks, bad breaks, and hard work, mostly by underpaid people. He's just playing the game. Money allows people to do what they can't do, to pave over mistakes, to maintain normally untenable, sometimes ridiculous positions. The other billionaires have the same money, the same access, and have little to show for it when it comes to accomplishments in space.
 
Believe me, I'm no lover of Musk but I think that's some pretty unfair criticism. Did Kennedy personally put men on the moon? Did the head of NASA personally put men on the moon? Of course not. They directed the people that did all the real work. Space X might not have achieved all Musk said it would back then, but it has still achieved an awful lot, regardless of whether it's leader is a scumbag! Indeed it does seem to have achieved more than any of the other private space enterprises.
 
Vertigo said:
Believe me, I'm no lover of Musk but I think that's some pretty unfair criticism. Did Kennedy personally put men on the moon? Did the head of NASA personally put men on the moon? Of course not. They directed the people that did all the real work. Space X might not have achieved all Musk said it would back then, but it has still achieved an awful lot, regardless of whether it's leader is a scumbag! Indeed it does seem to have achieved more than any of the other private space enterprises.
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Well, you can achieve a lot with $3 billion of taxpayer's money. But don't forget there is an actual specification; there are deliverables. Ask yourself how close Space X is to achieving any of this:

NASA and SpaceX have a contract to develop a Human Landing System (HLS) to return astronauts to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis program:

  • Contract
    NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract in April 2021 to develop the HLS. The contract includes an uncrewed test mission and a crewed lunar landing and return mission that could launch as early as 2025.
  • Vehicle
    SpaceX will use a specialized version of its Starship rocket as the HLS. SpaceX has been developing a large interplanetary vehicle since the 2000s to colonize Mars.
  • NASA's goals
    NASA's Artemis program aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon. The program also includes the Space Launch System rocket, the Orion spacecraft, and the Gateway lunar space station.
  • NASA's rationale
    NASA chose SpaceX because of its ability to transport a large amount of cargo to and from the moon.
Edit: Actually, I think I was being generous earlier when I suggested Space X was 10% of the way there. I think the above targets were so unrealistic, so ridiculous, and so much taxpayer money was involved, there may be a reckoning.
 
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In relation to overspend HS2 is apparently going to run £50 billiion over initial estimates - and that's just a train.

In all honesty in space terms $3 billiion isn't that much. Google says that NASA's budget this year is $25 billiion.

I think Musk will get a workable - reusable - rocket that can get to the Moon and back, and whatever the cost it will have been worth it, as it will open many doors in the future.

Talk of Mars is (and was) just crazy, and I think it's stuff like this that gets people accusing him of being a snakeoil salesman. He's also done a questionnable number of other things, but that's who he is, like him or not.

I'm not a fan of Musk, but one good thing I will say is that he's at least put space travel on the table, and hasxpeople thinking and talking about it. And the more it is in the public conciousness, the more likely it is to come about. I wonder how many other countries around the world are promoting their space programmes further in fear of being left behind? Would the USA have landed a man in the Moon in the 1960s if it hadn't been for the successes of the Soviet space programme?
 
paranoid marvin said:
In relation to overspend HS2 is apparently going to run £50 billiion over initial estimates - and that's just a train.

In all honesty in space terms $3 billiion isn't that much. Google says that NASA's budget this year is $25 billiion.

I think Musk will get a workable - reusable - rocket that can get to the Moon and back, and whatever the cost it will have been worth it, as it will open many doors in the future.

Talk of Mars is (and was) just crazy, and I think it's stuff like this that gets people accusing him of being a snakeoil salesman. He's also done a questionnable number of other things, but that's who he is, like him or not.

I'm not a fan of Musk, but one good thing I will say is that he's at least put space travel on the table, and hasxpeople thinking and talking about it. And the more it is in the public conciousness, the more likely it is to come about. I wonder how many other countries around the world are promoting their space programmes further in fear of being left behind? Would the USA have landed a man in the Moon in the 1960s if it hadn't been for the successes of the Soviet space programme?
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Well, lets revisit this in seven years time and see who is right. My guess is Starship goes nowhere. No moon landing and certainly no Mars landing. And Musk will still be in the early stages of his jail term.
 
paranoid marvin said:
In relation to overspend HS2 is apparently going to run £50 billiion over initial estimates - and that's just a train.

In all honesty in space terms $3 billiion isn't that much. Google says that NASA's budget this year is $25 billiion.

I think Musk will get a workable - reusable - rocket that can get to the Moon and back,
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HS2 can't even get from London to Manchester and back.
 
Christine Wheelwright said:
Well, lets revisit this in seven years time and see who is right. My guess is Starship goes nowhere. No moon landing and certainly no Mars landing. And Musk will still be in the early stages of his jail term.
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Quite possibly. I do think that someone will have landed on the Moon, and that may (in part) be because of Musk's investment.

He's a controversial figure - in the main bevause he seems to like being controversial. Although to be fair, I do think that he believes that what he sales isn't lies. As I said, I'm not a fan of his, but I do think that it will take him - or someone like him - to move the prospect of space travel forward.
 
mosaix said:
HS2 can't even get from London to Manchester and back.
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Of course, London doesn't miss out. The biggest surprise is that the Northern part was suggested at all. I do wonder how much of the whole project was sold on the basis that it would help those 'up North'.
 
paranoid marvin said:
As I said, I'm not a fan of his, but I do think that it will take him - or someone like him - to move the prospect of space travel forward.
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That's the thing, really. You need determined madman with preposterous ideas (like flying) to make the impossible possible. And though the whole 120m of Starship & Booster still has to be proven to be a viable concept on the long (reusable) run, no other company or organisation is even close to what SpaceX has achieved. And the success of Falcon 9 is undeniable.
 
paranoid marvin said:
Of course, London doesn't miss out. The biggest surprise is that the Northern part was suggested at all. I do wonder how much of the whole project was sold on the basis that it would help those 'up North'.
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From the outset (re HS2) I was bemused by the sales pitch: "It'll take 30 minutes off the journey from London to Birmingham".

- WGAFF about 30 min?
- Fewer people are travelling now for business meetings; home working, e-conferencing and virtual meetings are the future.
- Did anyone ask 'the North' (or as @JunkMonkey puts it "a bit less down south'
1730460593337.png
) what they wanted?
- Was a proper, projected, inflation-corrected costing for the full 10[?] years ever actually done? Was the cost of the new rolling stock, points controls, collision avoidance systems, site clearance, etc included? If so, which mickey-mouse organisation did it? Why was their tender accepted?
1730460442833.png
Cheapest? Most cost-effective?
 
Orcadian said:
If so, which mickey-mouse organisation did it? Why was their tender accepted? View attachment 126089 Cheapest? Most cost-effective?
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You missed out 'offered the biggest bribes mutually advantagious business arrangement.

I know I'm verging on the political here* but one of the most extraordinary things I noticed during the current American General Election came in an interview with JFK jr.'s. running mate when she said their administration would be the 'least corrupt' of the three options available... Essentially admitting: “Yeah, we're corrupt, but the other guys...!” And no one picked up on it. That was the amazing thing.


*as JFK jr. Is now not running for president - apart from in those states where it was too late to take his name off the ballot - I concider this comment to be historical rather than political. (More weasel words available on demand.)
 
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