I don't know how to think of SpaceX anymore

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Yeah, colonizing Mars is one of Elmo’s crazier pipe dreams. In fact, I’d go further and question why we’re wasting money on manned space travel at all. Robotics have done a fantastic job of getting us valuable information about the universe at a fraction of the cost of manned space missions.

A disturbing possibility is that because Musk is crazy and Trump is as dumb as a rock with comic-book style ideas about space (e.g.- the “Space Force”) Musk may divert large amounts of taxpayer money to SpaceX for one harebrained scheme or another.

42

I’m beginning to understand that Musk’s real skill is blackmail.

Starlink’s satellites were critical for Ukraine’s military, enough so that the DoD eventually took over the payment for them when Musk started whining that he could no longer afford the cost of maintaining service (less than half a billion). Russia was attacking more conventional communication services. (Which means that “tall towers” would be the first to go in case of war.)

His hero status in Ukraine has been precarious, since he didn’t allow expansion of service into Crimea even for military actions. More recently, reports of large illicit use of Starlink terminals by Russia explains their successes.

It’s an overstatement to say he effectively controls the war in both countries but he is a sole supplier of crucial war materiel. Quite a place to be in for somebody entering the government as an advisor to a president who says he will end that war.

He also put SpaceX into a position to blackmail the American government, at least if it truly wants to continue a manned space program.

Even more destabilizing- I understand I’m putting this over an actual war - is his blackmail of the entire country by making Twitter into the prime disseminator of propaganda and misinformation. Those of you who think he wasted his money or is destroying Twitter are wrong. He’s using it just as he wanted, for his own personal benefit. The increase in his stock holdings is pleasurable, certainly, but the increase in his personal power and ego is priceless.

Trump is a master of the art of blackmail. He and Musk will be in a small war of their own sooner rather than later. We can hope that they both can be winners in destroying each other.

43

Honestly, I’m not sure that’s not entirely performative. Painting himself as the grand visionary taking humanity to the stars in the public eye sure has a way of keeping that investor money flowing. Or maybe he’s just drunk on his own Kool-Aid. Or perhaps there isn’t actually any material difference between the two anymore (if ever there was).

44

My sense is that he started to get pulled into global politics (e.g. becoming a person with influence over the life and safety of millions) while, at the same time, breaking up with his closest romantic partner. Between those, his stress level maxed out and he started doing drugs and destroying his ability to do things well, and his ability to understand when he’s doing things well.

Though, there is the alternate “4D chess” hypothesis that, with Truth Social being the largest competitor to Twitter, he went anti-PC to sink Truth Social. And, from there, he formed the contacts with the alt-right crowd, hooked in with Peter Thiel and JD Vance, and realized that he could simply buy out Trump and have his own country to run. What better path to success for his businesses than the run the regulatory organ of the land?

I’m maybe on board for the government buy-out idea but, in general, I think he’s just doing drugs and making decisions that will, over the long run, cause him to get ejected from his own businesses or bring them to failure.

45

Colonizing Mars is stupid, and, to be honest, likely impossible. By definition a “Colony” is a largely self sustaining new settlement that grows from that point. That is not happening on Mars. Not next year, not in ten years, not in any foreseeable timeline at all. You CAN’T BREATHE there. Colonies like Jamestown and whatever was first colonized in Australia - Spider Bite Point, whatever - at least were places you could breathe the air and drink the water and grow food, and if all else failed you could trade with the aboriginals. Antarctica is 10000 times easier to colonize than Mars, and no one has done it. Science bases are not colonies.

Just sending humans to Mars, though, would be sufficiently awesome than I think it’s worth it on that basis alone. Space exploration will also be largely robots from now on, in large part because most places could never be visited by a human. Humans can’t land on Saturn. Humans cannot land on Venus. But Mars we can land on so let’s try.

46

Not only because the atmosphere in incredibly thin, not only because it contains almost no oxygen, but also because, along wirh the CO2, it also contains significant amounts of carbon monoxide. It’s hard to imagine any place more hostile to life, with the exception of all the other planets that aren’t Earth.

Why? This isn’t a carnival game – it would involve an incredibly massive expenditure of resources that could be put to far better use here on our troubled home planet. What benefit could we possibly see?

IMHO, manned space travel and establishing settlements on other planets or their moons may be something to start thinking about when we’ve achieved transhumanism, but certainly not before.

47

That’s probably mostly true, but I was responding to the claim that towers can be built to do the same as StarLink. No one’s going to be building towers in the ocean or Antarctica, or for that matter, in remote areas in the rest of the world. Even where it’s physically possible, there’s not enough payback.

48

When you shop for Ernst Stavro Blofeld on Wish…

49

I haven’t read it yet but may have to simply to learn if it really makes points I hadn’t considered. I do know there are a lot of people who doubt that Mars is colonizable but on the basis of really flawed presumptions. I would hate to read an entire book just to mark off everything as “wrong, wrong, misleading, wrong, maybe but probably over-pessimistic, wrong, stupidly wrong, and wrong”.

50

I would like someone to explain to me why anything about SpaceX is exciting. Yes, self-landing rockets look cool. But other than that, SpaceX is just shooting stuff into low-earth orbit. Humanity has been doing this for 65 years, Musk is just making it more efficient.

“But he’s going to Mars!” No he’s not. At best he might make a smoking crater on Mars, hopefully not a bloody one. But right now there’s no evidence that he’s working on anything that would make a Mars colony work. There’s no in-situ resource processing, no habitat prototypes. All available evidence suggests that the “Mars mission” is nothing but a hype strategy.

So, if you want to think about SpaceX, think about it as a way for a “private” company to funnel as much taxpayer money as possible into the pockets of the wealthiest man in the world, with the blessing of a bunch of rubes who think they’re going to be dogecoin trillionaires with unlimited Mars real estate.

51

The presumption that we will colonize another celestial body is in itself suspect. We will have spent all this effort getting out of our gravity well; why go live at the bottom of another?

52

“More efficient” is rather disparaging of just how revolutionary Starship has the potential to be. It’s like someone figured out how to make and sell Lamborghinis for $40,000 instead of $400,000– it’s a game changer. Not just the cost but the payload capacity will make things possible in space that previously were either unaffordable or flat-out undoable.

It would be premature to spend a lot of money on those until the means to get there is established. Development of Starship is soaking up over a billion dollars a year. Once Starship flies, proves it works, and meets the cadence and cost benchmarks necessary for a colonization effort to even begin, then I expect to see a lot more expenditure on the Mars end of the project.

53

After the Space Shuttle was retired, NASA asked private companies to design and build a craft that could take astronauts to and from the ISS, so we wouldn’t be relying on Russia.

Space X’s Dragon crew capsule has flown about eight times without any problem, Boeing’s Starliner has only made a half trip (They took two people up, but the ship performed poorly and they brought it back empty. The two astronauts will return on a Space X vessel)

Musk is a jerk but SpaceX is quite a successful company.

54

Nevertheless, that’s all it is. Cheaper payloads to low-earth orbit.

It will always be premature. “Right around the corner, gang! Keep sending me money! We’re definitely going to Mars!”

It will never stop being funny to me the way that all the skeptical hard-science nerds are so credulous and gullible with regard to anything this man says. He’s got a proven track record of being a liar who is only interested in money, and a Mars mission will be nothing if not a money-loser. But sure, he’s “going to Mars”.

55

It’s really well researched, the authors spent great amounts of time consulting with experts on pretty much all the relevant topics, and even if you know all of that stuff and more, it’s also really well and entertainingly written.

56

Mars is a stupid goal, and I’m not sure if Elon Musk knows that and is memeing about it because of the same “not because it is easy but because it is hard” energy that led us to put men on the moon long before we could exploit the moon’s resources or stick around long term.

But getting larger and larger payloads to orbit is absolutely monumental to humanity. Once we can access the resources of that asteroid belt and the moon, and more importantly once we can make things, including big and complicated things, in orbit - the solar system is ours for the taking.

57

I agree with this. A very readable book. In fact, I agree with everything you have written in this thread so far.
Right now, Elon Musk seems for all practical purposes more powerful than most of the states on Earth, which is something those states do not like. He is cornering himself. And this strategy is becoming dependant on Donald tanTrump’s whims, which is a bad place to be. This is not sustainable. Gustav Krupp believed he could control Hitler, Elon Musk thinks he can manipulate tanTrump. As I have written upthread, I think he is going to Scaramucci down in flames hard soon.

58

Here is a flowchart for the program whose eventual, hopeful goal is to establish a self-sustaining colony on Mars. Tell me at which step you think it breaks down:

Build a huge rocket with lots of payload:
If it flies, go to next step;
If it doesn’t (now very nearly established that it will fly and not blow up, crash, etc.)

Make the huge rocket reusable:
If it can be recovered and reused, go to next step;
If it doesn’t, fly as an expendable booster which is still cheaper than any alternative out there for low-Earth orbit applications. (prospects for reusability now looking better)

Make the huge rocket reusable quickly and cheaply:
If the rocket meets its cost and cadence goals, go to next step;
If it doesn’t, it’s still cheaper than an expendable rocket for low-Earth orbit applications.

Establish that the reusable rocket can fly as a tanker to refuel Starship upper stages in orbit:
If fuel transfer works, go to next step;
If it doesn’t, you still have quick, cheap launch like Falcon 9 but bigger and cheaper.

Have a refueled Starship upper stage do an unmanned demo flight either round-trip to the moon or one-way to Mars:
If it works, go to next step;
If it doesn’t, you still have an enormous transtage and payload for one-way missions.

Have a Starship demonstrate the ability to support a crew in high orbit for the length of a Mars journey, about 260 days. 260 days in space is a modest goal that’s now well-established. The main deal breaker is dealing with radiation exposure beyond the protection of the Earth’s magnetosphere:
If it works, go to next step;
If it doesn’t, then manned interplanetary flight will be much harder than we thought. First real roadblock to Mars plans.

For all of the following steps the two defaults are:
If it works, go to next step;
If it doesn’t, delay next step indefinitely while the problem is worked on.

  • Demonstrate that in situ fuel and oxygen production on Mars works.
  • Demonstrate that a Starship can reenter the Earth’s atmosphere safely not just from orbital speeds but from interplanetary speeds.
  • Demonstrate that a Starship landed on Mars can refuel in situ and return to Earth.
  • Send first crewed mission to Mars and back.
  • Set up preliminary Mars base; establish that a crew can live and work there for extended periods. Test food production and recycling efficiency. Measure long-term effects of reduced gravity. Debug equipment necessary for following steps.
  • Start sending cargo missions to build up supply reserves to support expanded base population. Minimum is sufficient supplies to support all personnel until evacuation back to Earth if necessary becomes possible.
  • First wave of settlers; expand base as logistics and finances permit.
  • Keep the whole enterprise going. Reduce reliance on imports as much as possible.
59

Hoorray! No, sorry: I meant Juche! Good luck!

60

On the other hand, I have read the book, as well as worked on adjunct studies to the NASA Mars DRA 3.0 and 4.0, as well as supporting studies for orbital transportation and an unsolicited proposal for a high bandwidth solar-orbiting interplanetary positioning and telemetry system. I’ve also kept apace on in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) research and the particular complexities of habitation on Mars, so instead of offering uninformed presumptive criticisms I can offer an informed opinion that the book is materially correct on nearly every point that is made in it against Mars colonization, and in fact it actually doesn’t cover some of the significant, if more obscure, aspects of space and interplanetary habitation.

And regardless, there is no indication that SpaceX has done any of the really difficult work of researching and developing the technologies that would be required for even a short term outpost, much less a self-sustaining colony of tens or hundreds of thousands of people; the underlying assumption of Musk’s assertions is that they just need to transport people and resources to the surface of Mars (still unclear about how they will successfully land a thousand tons of payload on a planet with just enough atmosphere to be difficult but not enough to slow to subsonic speeds but that is another issue entirely) and the people will then McGuyver their way to survival, which is basically an eight year old’s notion of space exploration.

As for how cheap ‘Starship’ will make things…well, we’ve still never seen so much as an accounting statement from SpaceX much less actual development and operating budgets, and the fact that they are soliciting billions of dollars of capital investment every year suggests that their operating margins aren’t as flush as Elon would like people to believe.

Yeah, but one of the shitty ones who doesn’t actually have a real plan or who constructs a base with a reactor that explodes once someone starts shooting at any part of it, and also has a cameo with a famous singer who can’t act her way out of a paper bag.

Stranger