Tip Toe Thru The Tulips

[woodchip]

Not a political post, rather a space post so don't be disappointed. SpaceX has performed the first space walk via a private manned mission in their Crew Dragon capsule. Elon has certainly got the ball rolling on commercializing outer space and seems to be taking control of dependable flight vehicles for NASA. Don't know if I'll be alive when Musk makes a manned flight to Mars, but it has been quite a ride from the first Sputnik, to the moon landing, the space station and now a private citizen taking a walk in space.

[vision]

Don't know if I'll be alive when Musk makes a manned flight to Mars...

You won't be alive, nor I, nor our kids or grand kids. We're not going to Mars for a long time. It won't be Space X going there either (also Musk is a dumbass). There are some incredible hurdles to overcome for a manned round trip to Mars and we aren't even close to overcoming them. I'm not exaggerating when I say it might be a few hundred years at least.

[Top Gun]

It won't be a few hundred years, but it's going to be at least a few decades. Musk is already floating some bull★■◆● "we'll launch by 2028!" thing and I feel very confident putting good money on the over.

[Krom]

Musk also said Tesla would have robotaxis from hands off full self driving up and running like 5 years ago. I didn't buy or subscribe to FSD then, and I'm not buying or subscribing to FSD now either. The guy absolutely sucks at time estimates on the real big problems.

One could make an interesting bet though: Will FSD make it for real or will he land someone on Mars first? On one hand compute/AI is making big strides, but the public roads are a stack of edge cases that could stretch to Jupiter and beyond. On the other hand; launching people to Mars is mostly a logistics problem, just at unprecedented scale.

[Vander]

[Ferno]

Boy, time went by pretty damn quick since then.

[Flatlander]

Musk also said Tesla would have robotaxis from hands off full self driving up and running like 5 years ago.

We do, it's spelled W-a-y-m-o

[vision]

It won't be a few hundred years, but it's going to be at least a few decades.

Maybe. I doubt it will happen in the 21st century. First, there is no financial incentive to go. We do a great job doing science with robots, and there is even a plan to return samples from Mars in a couple years. Second, we can't realistically go until we have a way to get there faster. The shortest round trip is a year and a half in space and there any astronaut who attempts this, if they survive, will be crippled for life probably. Something like a rocket that continually accelerates at 1G would make the trip easy, but there isn't even a plan for one.

[Spidey]

I understand the desire to go to Mars...I just don't understand the rush.

[Top Gun]

Maybe. I doubt it will happen in the 21st century. First, there is no financial incentive to go. We do a great job doing science with robots, and there is even a plan to return samples from Mars in a couple years. Second, we can't realistically go until we have a way to get there faster. The shortest round trip is a year and a half in space and there any astronaut who attempts this, if they survive, will be crippled for life probably. Something like a rocket that continually accelerates at 1G would make the trip easy, but there isn't even a plan for one.

We've had astronauts pull year-long stints in the ISS before, and they haven't experienced any debilitating health effects. There are certainly health concerns that need to be addressed before attempting such a mission (which is a big reason for said year-long ISS stays), but they're hardly insurmountable. The bigger issues are logistical: how do you bring along enough consumables to keep your astronauts alive for the mission duration? Do you send supply missions first, a la The Martian? Can you perform in-situ resource utilization to generate oxygen or fuel while on Mars, which would make the requirements less? These are questions we haven't entirely solved at this moment, but we at least have an idea of what needs to be done to get there.

As to the why...because it's there? That's historically been the reason for most dangerous exploration ventures. There was no financial incentive to get to the Moon either, just a desire to beat the Soviets there.