The mission we're talking about does not require political support. All of your arguments stem from big government waste, taxpayer indecision, etc. And you'd be right, if we were talking about NASA. But we're not. Why are you comparing daring space missions to rail or airplanes?! How about comparing to other space missions? Take the Apollo program. The entire program, with six moon landings, cost about $100 billion in 2010 dollars, and it was done half a century ago.
We have momentum, private industry that is not tied to taxpayer whims, and a half a century of technology and advancement. Yes, Mars is tougher than the Moon - but not that much tougher. Space travel just isn't as expensive as you think it is. Not anymore.
When you look at the itemized breakdown of the Apollo program costs, and realize that much of the work is already done were we to attempt it again, the picture looks even better: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program#Program_cost
The launch vehicles that SpaceX would/will be using will be already completed and tested, as will most required facilities. The DSN is pretty mature these days, and could probably handle a manned mission to Mars without much overhauling.
As a stupidly simplified analysis, assuming that the 125million estimated cost of a Falcon Heavy remains the same wherever you point it, 1 trillion USD will get you 8 thousand launches. Assuming you use one thousand Falcon 9 launches for the initial setup and manned mission to get there, which is absurd, you would still have enough money left over to do more than 10 support flights a month for the next 50 years. (I think it is fair to say that if you need that many support flights, you shouldn't be on Mars anyway. The ISS needs a fraction of that.)
Again, stupidly simplified, 8000 Falcon Heavy flights would get you 112,000,000 kg into trans-Mars orbit. That is something like one and a half RMS Queen Mary's or almost two and a half Titanics.
Of course the R&D/materials for the manned spacecraft itself, the continuous mission support, the R&D/materials of any habitat, etc are all going to be very expensive.
>We have momentum, private industry that is not tied to taxpayer whims, and a half a century of technology and advancement.
That's a pipe dream. For private industry to do this there has to be a profit motive, and in this case there isn't. There's no way you can make money going to Mars, and getting sponsored by Red Bull isn't going to defray the costs much. When Elon Musk says Mars is the goal, he means he's intent on providing a capability the rest of us will be expected to pay for.
>Yes, Mars is tougher than the Moon - but not that much tougher. Space travel just isn't as expensive as you think it is. Not anymore.
There's a hell of a lot more to a Mars mission than getting everything to Mars. We couldn't do it today even if the rocket was free. And it won't be.
Even beyond the obvious engineering problems there are still a lot of things we just don't know how to do in the constraints of the vessel. We have no practical way of protecting the crew from the radiation they'll be exposed to, for example. We don't know how to build an environmental system that guaranteed (more or less) to work for five years. We don't know how to keep astronauts in good physical and mental condition over those kinds of time frames. The list is endless.
Mars is like Apollo in the same way an Everest ascent is like camping in your back yard. You are grossly underestimating the difficulty of what you're proposing, which is why you find your tiny cost estimate credible.
> That's a pipe dream. For private industry to do this there has to be a profit motive, and in this case there isn't.
A ridiculous proposition. Anyone who can not think of a potential profit motive for going to Mars isn't thinking very big or very long. Making a list is left as an exercise to the reader.
> When Elon Musk says Mars is the goal, he means he's intent on providing a capability the rest of us will be expected to pay for.
For colonization, yes. But that's fair - and it ties to a profit motive ("Live on Mars, for the price of a middle-class home!" the ad campaigns may go). But for the initial trip, whereby he proves his company and technology? Surely not.
> Even beyond the obvious engineering problems there are still a lot of things we just don't know how to do in the constraints of the vessel. We have no practical way of protecting the crew from the radiation they'll be exposed to, for example. We don't know how to build an environmental system that guaranteed (more or less) to work for five years. We don't know how to keep astronauts in good physical and mental condition over those kinds of time frames. The list is endless.
That's what the $50 billion and more-than-a-decade is for.
> Mars is like Apollo in the same way an Everest ascent is like camping in your back yard.
I'm not going to even answer that. So absurd.
> You are grossly underestimating the difficulty of what you're proposing, which is why you find your tiny cost estimate credible.
You are the only one on the planet who I have heard of who suggests the cost would approach anything near $1T. It is you who is way off the mark when compared to professional estimates.
> But for the initial trip, whereby he proves his company and technology? Surely not.
So far, he hasn't even proven an ability to do that in earth orbit without taxpayer money: SpaceX is almost entirely funded by government contracts. Wouldn't you want to see them prove financial independence there first, before speculating on whether they can get to Mars without taxpayer money? It might be possible, but so far the evidence for SpaceX being a viable concern purely on private-sector funding is weak imo.
> So far, he hasn't even proven an ability to do that in earth orbit without taxpayer money
So far, no human has been put in orbit without taxpayer money, anywhere. That's the past, though. It would be silly to suggest that because that's the way things used to be, that things will always be that way. Or else, everyone could make that argument about every endeavour by every company, and you'd be stuck in an argument that ONLY governments will ever be able to put humans into orbit. And of course that's nonsense.
> SpaceX is almost entirely dependent on government contracts.
False. Wouldn't you want to see their launch manifest first, before speculating on where their money comes from?
Bills aren't paid by counting up numbers of customers. Of those customers listed, most are small-fry, kicking in a few million here and there, while NASA is the main source of cash. Over the 10 years of SpaceX's existence, NASA has put in approximately as much money as all other funders (Musk, his investors, and every non-NASA customer) combined. Private-sector customers account for less than 30% of revenues.
In this case the money they're receiving is closer to grant money than payment from a customer. But in any case, the further-up-the-thread post was just arguing that whether SpaceX will go to Mars (or anywhere else) depends in significant part on convincing their one dominant "customer", the U.S. Federal Government, to spend taxpayer money on the goal. The alternative, funding a trip to Mars entirely from private-sector funds and private-sector customers, does not appear so far to be close to materializing, considering that they haven't even successfully funded a trip to low-earth orbit via that means.
A ridiculous proposition. Anyone who can not think of a potential profit motive for going to Mars isn't thinking very big or very long.
Um, do you have any experience in scientific exploration, or even terrestrial expeditions of any kind? This reads like too much like armchair warrior, sorry....
Do you expect only astronauts to speak about travelling to other planets? Be real. I've been to as many different countries and places on Earth as I can afford (on the order of maybe 15 or so). Regardless, obviously when it comes to space exploration I have little to no experience (I have been through many interviews at SpaceX but do not yet have a job there). Shouldn't we be encouraging people to speculate about profit in the planets and the stars, rather than belittling them with the idea that we are "armchair warrior"s?
As for scientific exploration: I have collected more than ten million individual measurements of atmospheric pressure across the whole globe over the last year. I intend to use this data to learn more about short-term weather patterns and to generally improve humanity's understanding of the atmosphere.
So there's some physical exploration of Earth in my past, and some scientific exploration of Earth in my present, while working my ass off to attain the goal of space exploration in my future.
It is not so much an as-hominem attack as a reality check on the level of abstraction. The rocks that came back from the moon are (for insurance purposes) "priceless", but yet the moon was not a for-profit expedition. On the contrary, why not sell some "priceless" rocks for an infinite sum and alleviate world hunger? But somewhere in-between what sounds logical and what is reasonable to expect there intervenes some other considerations.
Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few good ideas; it yields bad ideas that sound plausible enough to fool you into working on them.
At YC we call these "made-up" or "sitcom" startup ideas. Imagine one of the characters on a TV show was starting a startup. The writers would have to invent something for it to do. But coming up with good startup ideas is hard. It's not something you can do for the asking. So (unless they got amazingly lucky) the writers would come up with an idea that sounded plausible, but was actually bad.
None of this is to discourage. Its more to get the dialogue on a track where what is actually hard is actually at least given some respect.
>A ridiculous proposition. Anyone who can not think of a potential profit motive for going to Mars isn't thinking very big or very long. Making a list is left as an exercise to the reader.
Right, right. Because there's... well, and there's... Hmmmmm. My list is surprisingly empty beyond the Red Bull thing.
>But for the initial trip, whereby he proves his company and technology?
Again, nobody is going to piss away a trillion dollars to "prove his company and technology". Even Musk doesn't have that kind of money.
>That's what the $50 billion and more-than-a-decade is for.
I'm beginning to think you've never worked on a project bigger than cleaning the garage.
>You are the only one on the planet who I have heard of who suggests the cost would approach anything near $1T. It is you who is way off the mark when compared to professional estimates.
Every credible estimate I've seen is around the $1T mark, so I'm far from the "only on on the planet".
What you are describing are "problems with manned spaceflight to Mars", but not "problems with manned spaceflight to Mars.. that would be solved by political involvement, and could only be solved with political involvement."
Actually, the political involvement makes the engineering much more difficult. That's why the shuttle turned out so badly. But the taxpayers are where the money comes from for projects that don't make any sense from an economic standpoint, so you're pretty much stuck with the politics.
We have momentum, private industry that is not tied to taxpayer whims, and a half a century of technology and advancement. Yes, Mars is tougher than the Moon - but not that much tougher. Space travel just isn't as expensive as you think it is. Not anymore.