SpaceX Tuesday...

[SystemParanoia]

garyhun said:

SystemParanoia said:

Dan_1981 said:

Great write up on the waitbutwhy website.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/spacexs-big-fking-ro...

I really can not believe I'm likely to see this in my lifetime.

I expect some of those dates to slip a little. Or even maybe a lot, but it is amazing.

Got a little emotional reading it.

cracking link

Agreed. I really hope we (or later generations) can look back at this moment and say "that was when it started, that was when the colonisation of Mars became the reality it is today".

Am I the only one who gets, and still gets, shivers and a tear in my eye when I watch the booster landing back on earth?

the first landing i saw was onto the deck of 'Ofcourse i still love you'

My jaw hasn't been the same since seeing how fast it came down at such an angle with a perfect drop and power cutoff
especially being used to seeing helicopters come down, do a little hover, then gingerly touch down, or harriers/ospreys do their own very careful thing.

Epic!

Edited by SystemParanoia on Thursday 29th September 11:51

Edited by SystemParanoia on Thursday 29th September 11:53

[anonymous-user]

That still looks mental, in a fantastic achievement beyond my comprehension sort of way, every time I watch.

[p1stonhead]

Its all so very very exciting. I really hope I don't die before I get to see someone walk on Mars - being 30, I really hope that's a reasonable request!

[IN51GHT]

"Venus is a dick, with its lead-melting temperatures, its crushing atmospheric pressure, and its unbearable winds."

LOL

[anonymous-user]

IN51GHT said:

"Venus is a dick, with its lead-melting temperatures, its crushing atmospheric pressure, and its unbearable winds."

LOL

And don't forget that "Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are just huge balls of gas pretending to be planets".

[Caruso]

IN51GHT said:

"Venus is a dick, with its lead-melting temperatures, its crushing atmospheric pressure, and its unbearable winds."

LOL

Several 10s of km up in Venus's atmosphere the pressure is 1 atm and the temp in the 20-30 deg C range. So the only other place in the solar system you could survive without a spacesuit. Quite nice if you don't mind living on a balloon.

[Beati Dogu]

It's interesting that while Mars is much smaller than the Earth, the land surface area is almost identical.

[Flooble]

Beati Dogu said:

It's interesting that while Mars is much smaller than the Earth, the land surface area is almost identical.

Until they terraform Mars and cover 70% of the surface with oceans as on Earth, reducing the land surface area to about the same as Australia :-)

[SystemParanoia]

Flooble said:

Beati Dogu said:

It's interesting that while Mars is much smaller than the Earth, the land surface area is almost identical.

Until they terraform Mars and cover 70% of the surface with oceans as on Earth, reducing the land surface area to about the same as Australia :-)

Time to buy a few acres on Olympus mons!

[Beati Dogu]

Kinda funny that people like Musk whine about the CO2 levels in our atmosphere passing an arbitrary 0.04%, but they want a million of us to visit a freezing cold planet with a lethal 96% CO2 atmosphere.

Oh well. It sells his cars, batteries & solar panels I guess.

[Alias218]

This excites me so much. It's like something out of a movie, proper sci-fi, except it's a lot better than that because it's fking real. If I live for no other reason than to see this successfully pan out, I will consider it to be a life well spent.

I think we're entering an age of discovery and innovation thanks to billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg et al who rather than sitting on vast fortunes are reinvesting them in humanity's betterment. This is going to be an exciting century, I just hope I get to live through as much of it as I can.

[Beati Dogu]

Zuckerberg is a dick. If he really wants to make life better for humanity he should shut down Facebook.

But it's certainly exiting times again in terms of rocketry. Definite kudos to Musk & Bezos for that.

[Flooble]

Does anyone have any thoughts regarding the reference in WaitByWHy's article to "well paid jobs on Mars"?

Most lousy areas of the world attract high-paid jobs only if there is a natural resource which can be exploited (generally oil).

Unless Mars has gold dissolved in oil with floating diamond and platinum chunks I'm not sure what is there which would be worth shipping back to Earth?

Or perhaps the plan is to move heavily polluting industry to Mars ...

[RobDickinson]

what makes you think it needs an earth like capitalist economy?

it certainly wont have one for a long time, and shipping goods back to earth isnt too likely either.

[Eric Mc]

The resources of Mars (whatever they turn out to be) will be best utilised by those who are trying to live on Mars.

[Flooble]

RobDickinson said:

what makes you think it needs an earth like capitalist economy?

it certainly wont have one for a long time, and shipping goods back to earth isnt too likely either.

The WaitButWhy article referred to companies opening offices on Mars and high-paid jobs. Which suggests a capitalist economy.

[RobDickinson]

it does but we've not even got one person there yet...

[stew-S160]

Flooble said:

Beati Dogu said:

It's interesting that while Mars is much smaller than the Earth, the land surface area is almost identical.

Until they terraform Mars and cover 70% of the surface with oceans as on Earth, reducing the land surface area to about the same as Australia :-)

Which would only take about, oh, 100,000 years, at current technology levels.

Good summary here from Robert Walker- http://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/wait_lets...

[Flooble]

RobDickinson said:

it does but we've not even got one person there yet...

Agree completely - the question for me is how a Martian expedition-colony could become self-sustaining. Colonies on earth generally survived because people were able to live off the land and scratch out a living even if they were literally dumped on the shore by a boat.

The cost of running the Martian expedition up to the point where it becomes self-sustaining (relying on Martian resources) is far more than SpaceX could manage to siphon from their launch business and the article seems to imply that there is some sort of "plan" or at least thinking that people will go to Mars in the same way they went to, e.g. California.

I found it interesting that the economic foundations could be so vague.

[Eric Mc]

Initially it would be a subsitence economy with little or no trading using currencies. If anything, different settlements would barter goods, services, food etc.