SpaceX founder Elon Musk envisions 1,000 passenger ships flying to Mars

[webfact]

SpaceX chief envisions 1,000 passenger ships flying to Mars

By MARCIA DUNN

 

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — On a personal quest to settle Mars, SpaceX founder Elon Musk envisions 1,000 passenger ships flying en masse to the red planet well within the next century, "Battlestar Galactica" style.

 

Musk outlined his zealous plan Tuesday to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars, complete with iron foundries and even pizzerias. He wants to make humans a multiplanetary species, and says the best way to do that is to colonize the red planet.

 

"I think Earth will be a good place for a long time, but the probable lifespan of human civilization will be much greater if we're a multiplanetary species," he said.

 

Musk, who also runs electric car maker Tesla Motors, received a wildly warm reception at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. Many in the crowd were avid space buffs.

 

For now, the aerospace company he founded in 2002 is focusing on satellite deliveries, as well as space station cargo runs for NASA and a future crew capsule for U.S. astronauts. Its Falcon rocket, though, is grounded for the second time in a year because of devastating accidents.

During his address, Musk did not mention the Sept. 1 launch pad explosion that destroyed a Falcon rocket and its satellite.

 

Instead, he noted that SpaceX already has begun work on the Mars Colonial fleet, recently test-firing a powerful new rocket engine named Raptor. The system ultimately could take people to the moons of Jupiter and beyond, he said.

 

Musk said it would be a "super-exciting" adventure to Mars but also dangerous, at least for the first few trips. His goal is to get the price down so anyone could afford to go, with a ticket costing no more than a house on Earth. He's shooting for 1 million Martians.

 

Would he go, someone asked? Perhaps ultimately, but it would depend on whether he had a good succession plan in place. As for being the first Martian, the risk of fatalities will be high — "there's just no way around it" — and he wants to see his five young sons grow up.

 

"It would be basically, are you prepared to die? If that's OK, then you're a candidate for going," he told the audience.

 

In April, Musk announced plans to send an unmanned Dragon capsule to land on Mars as early as 2018. NASA is offering technical support, but no money. The space agency has its own program to get astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, using its own hardware.

 

Musk invited industry to join the Mars effort, which will represent a $10 billion investment. SpaceX currently is spending a few tens of millions of dollars on the enterprise, and the amount will soon grow, he said.

 

Musk described in detail his plans to launch a monster-size rocket — larger than even NASA's Saturn V moon rocket — from the same launch pad at Kennedy Space Center from which the Apollo astronauts departed for the lunar surface in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

 

The first-stage boosters would return to land vertically — just like his Falcon rocket boosters do now. Reusability, in fact, is essential to any plan for getting humans to Mars, as is refilling fuel tanks in Earth orbit and creating rocket fuel at Mars for return trips, he said.

 

The rocket would hoist a spaceship big enough to carry 100 to 200 people to Mars, a trip lasting several months, quicker with nuclear propulsion. Musk promised no one would be stuck there; spaceships would return regularly, and "you get a free return trip if you want."

 

"Ultimately what I'm trying to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible, make it seem as though it's something that we can do in our lifetimes," he said.

___

Online:

SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com/

International Astronautical Federation: http://www.iafastro.org/

 

-- © Associated Press 2016-09-28

[Alive]

The poor envision jobs that allow them to feed their families, own a house and car. The real geniuses and superheroes of tech and wealth envision things far beyond Elon Musk's trivial dreams of Mars. Everyone has a dream. Why is it we have to hear the dreams of the wealthy and successful alone. Why isn't this man already on Mars? Anyone can dream but some the regular suspects get all the attention. All dreams are valid and deserving of attention now.

[williamgeorgeallen]

cut all spending on war. would get to mars withing our lifetime with all the cash saved. could even settle all the refugees there. oh wait there would be no refugees.

[halloween]

They make a crappy movie, and then the idiots start getting all excited.

BTW the book of the same name was much better.

[ourmanflint]

It would be a great place for a prison.

[Shaunduhpostman]

As bizarre as it might sound, the technology likely exists for hyper-light speed travel, but for the masses these technologies have been suppressed. Ben Rich the head of Lockheed Skunkworks said himself that they already have made interstellar journeys using it, but that it is all black project stuff and that he was not at liberty to say anything more about it, though if you read around you'll see that , as usual it is being hidden in plain sight. The technology does not seem to involve conventional propulsion but rather utilizes the enormous amounts of energy to be found everywhere in the cosmos at the zero point back ground and uses the energy to create extremely energetic vorticies  to create a gravitational field capable of  twisting and folding space time. So basically space time is moved to wherever or whenever you are travelling and in theory travel  is instantaneous, no propulsion ever happens. I am not a physicist or even good at understanding any of it, but that is as best as I can get my head around these technologies which according to some are actually not that difficult to achieve or develop and have likely been been achieved and developed many times over in humankind's 200,000+ residency on earth. There are too many indicators corroborating this from many countries and many sources for there to be nothing to it. 

 

In any case, it makes little sense to me to wait 20 years to develop the technology to send people on years long trips just to go to Mars. Stephen Hawking's people and their recently  publicly revealed statements about the feasablity of sending very small nanocraft to Alpha Centauri is much more interesting. If I am not mistaken Hawking or his cronies said that these craft are feasible now and can travel at 30 percent the speed of light getting us a window on a system that already has shown to have an earth sized and goldilocks zone planet and getting us there in 15 years. Within  a few more years I'm sure they could get something designed that would be even faster.

 

As much as I like Musk's cars and ideas, I suppose his vision has to be compromised by what could conceivably make money and what could be mass marketed. Of course if he started talking about wanting to research and develop electrogravitic zero point energy vortex time-space warping hyper light speed craft to one day send the masses to Andromeda, the oil people would do what they have done to many inventors who threaten their profits, not least of whom would be Nikola Tesla, many of whose papers remain classified and unavailable to the public today, and put the proverbial ice pick upside the back of his head or incarcerate and discredit them.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Shaunduhpostman

[gregk0543]

That would solve all our problems if some people could get to Mars. We are having enough issues staying alive on earth.

[bark]

1 hour ago, williamgeorgeallen said:

cut all spending on war. would get to mars withing our lifetime with all the cash saved. could even settle all the refugees there. oh wait there would be no refugees.

Save money, but it is the spending on military which give us the new technology, to go to the mars.  If not spent on war it would be wasted in another area of Government.

But, I love your dream and wish it would come true.

[TPI]

Me, send me! Myself and my fellow ex-pats believe that this Earth is really Hell, look around, it's obviously not Heaven and we don't believe in Purgatory, so what's left? This place is Hell because there is no "Justice", good guys never win, and the most evil self centered egotists always seem to come out on top! There is no real reward for hard work and any wealth you might acquire can be easily taken from you either by law or by legislation! Bah! Humbug!

[Alive]

The space story I believe most is in this novel and so far it seems very true. Space is for the chosen ones who have ruined the planet.The rest of humanity will be left in the dirt. Use the slaves and then move on telling them they don't have a vote and too bad they don't make more money or have 'value' to mankind. That's how I see it.

 

 

Edited September 28, 2016 by Alive

[gregk0543]

2 minutes ago, Alive said:

The space story I believe most is in this novel and so far it seems very true. Space is for the chosen ones who have ruined the planet.The rest of humanity will be left in the dirt. Use the slaves and then move on telling them they don't have a vote and too bad they don't make more money or have 'value' to mankind. That's how I see it.

 

 

 If they dont take some slaves with them who is going to do the work. Are we just going to supply them for free forever? Will they pay taxes? Surely Death and taxes are not escaped on mars?

[elgordo38]

Methinks he should get his electric car off of the ground first. Mad geniuses scare me. I think one of my ex-wives was one. 

[williamgeorgeallen]

3 hours ago, ourmanflint said:

It would be a great place for a prison.

ha would be like australia in the early days. mars might turn out to be a great place to live for a while. i had a great 10 years there before i discovered thailand.

Edited September 28, 2016 by williamgeorgeallen

[SOTIRIOS]

....he seems to 'know things'......

 

...but not allowed to say......

 

....and the 'timeline' is intentionally meant to throw people off.....

[Alive]

I respect the guy but he extended himself too much. It seems like he is trying to keep his and his company's name in the media. Without that, what will his stock do? And he has some competition out there. He seems to me using Trump's more-media-attention-the-better approach. This time's Howard Hughes?

[Anthony5]

He should change his name to Elon Ponzi, since that is what he's doing with tax payers money. Luckily not mine.

[Xircal]

Great idea but don't forget to explain to the tourists that they're buying a one way ticket.

[chilli42]

Musk thinks we're probably living in some advanced civilization's virtual reality video game, a variation on philosopher Nick Bostrom's popular brain bender "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?"

 

Its nice to dream.  Keep dreaming.

[Shot]

 

Can you imagine being in the cheap cramped seats (coach) for a year? Chicken or fish?

[Enoon]

11 hours ago, gregk0543 said:

 If they dont take some slaves with them who is going to do the work. Are we just going to supply them for free forever? Will they pay taxes? Surely Death and taxes are not escaped on mars?

 

Robots or cyborgs will do the work. 

 

By the time this happens human society (assuming the planet has not been incinerated, and is still dominated by creatures that are identifiably human) will have changed so much it's impossible to say who/what will be going where, with whom and what they/it will be doing when they/it gets there.

 

It will not be "just like today but with better gadgets", any more than History was "just like today but with old fashioned clothes and stuff".

 

 

[tails]

Time to register marsvisaforum.com, I can't wait to hear the grumblings on there

[daveAustin]

Unless there's a profound change in consciousness, we're likely 100 years or more from his idea. Massive massive logistics and expense. Just the radiation and travel time alone would be nightmarish for most. He was talking 80 days, but the reality is likely three times that.., people would have to hard exercise like 6-8 hours a day to stop them turning into a vegetable and solar radiation outside the earths magnetic shield is immense.

I'm in the in camp btw for getting out there and moving on from where we're at, but we need to be realistic. Go off half cocked, there'll be errors... couple of explosions, hundreds killed, end of project. The above light-drive ideas are fanciful (and no, we have nothing approaching that, and niether do the yanks have Mercury vortex engines), but that's probably the type of thing we should be shooting for. We need speed!

[ace]

6 hours ago, chilli42 said:

Musk thinks we're probably living in some advanced civilization's virtual reality video game, a variation on philosopher Nick Bostrom's popular brain bender "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?"

 

Its nice to dream.  Keep dreaming.

There's actually scientific theory behind that.  It's a variant on the doomsday theory,  which is a function of probability /statistics & the size and age of the universe.  Having viewed the previous posts in this thread,  I'd better not try to explain it further.  Suffice it to say,  in the end it doesn't really make a difference. 

Musk has achieved far more in his life than me,  and 99.9999% of the population,  but this one I don't get.  Most space propellerheads agree that orbitals / moon base are the best options to get a foothold in space. Not some huge Mars bound armada. 

[gemguy]

19 hours ago, Alive said:

The poor envision jobs that allow them to feed their families, own a house and car. The real geniuses and superheroes of tech and wealth envision things far beyond Elon Musk's trivial dreams of Mars. Everyone has a dream. Why is it we have to hear the dreams of the wealthy and successful alone. Why isn't this man already on Mars? Anyone can dream but some the regular suspects get all the attention. All dreams are valid and deserving of attention now.

There you go...he should be building a business and system, so to speak, that allows all the people with dreams and visions and many brilliant ideas easy access to "the system"  that analyzes and considers peoples ideas and inventions and then put them to practice and market them and share in the profits while a healthy percent of those revenues and profits will be used to alleviated poor people of poverty and create jobs and social services ...etc. etc ...like that...you know.

There already exists many Invention or Idea Companies that will help with a persons idea or inventions or concepts but they have an agenda that thwarts as many good ideas as the ones that are actually considered and then they narrow it down to only a few ideas or inventions being pursued by those companies.

Many good ideas are ignored or not recognized.

So...some one like Ellon Musk is needed to bring all the ideas together and make all the more ideas or inventions or concepts a reality ...Because...Ellon Musk is a guy that can secure the money that is nneeded to make  many of those idead a reality.....as the biggest challenge that inventors have, 9 times out of 10, is securing financing or financial support to  bring their ideas or invention to market.

Ellon seems to easily secure the big finance for all his ideas ...and that aspect is a significant factors as to his success and the barriers that thwarts  many a good idea that would have already existed if not for the challenges concerning securing the needed financial resources.

 

Cheers

[Alive]

I am a "savage" in the world of Elon Musk and the superrich. We are the enemies of their conquests (our nation's direction and finances) and their personal dreams. You know what happened to the savages of past. These folks crush them just the same today. They do it with their owned media and governments and control over the capitalist system. The savages who do want better lives better keep their nation's gold and take more from these modern day conquistadors who ride over their simple dreams of peace, health and security. Another way to look at it is these "science" projects are nothing less than a rogue trader on Wall St. who will break his company for his silly gamble. No one benefits and the company may be lost but if they are lucky their corrupt friends in government will bail them out.

 

Before the government helps these clowns and others like them, I say give one trillion dollars to all the Americans in the US who make under 50k a year. Let the debt which is already due to corruption and war by the elite go up by an unnoticeable amount. Helicopter money for the masses, nothing for Elon Musk and cronies.

[jcsmith]

On 9/28/2016 at 11:49 AM, Alive said:

The poor envision jobs that allow them to feed their families, own a house and car. The real geniuses and superheroes of tech and wealth envision things far beyond Elon Musk's trivial dreams of Mars. Everyone has a dream. Why is it we have to hear the dreams of the wealthy and successful alone. Why isn't this man already on Mars? Anyone can dream but some the regular suspects get all the attention. All dreams are valid and deserving of attention now.

People care about Elon Musk's visions because they are things that benefit the human race as a whole. I'd guess populating another planet is probably a dream that more people can get on board is a bit more important than someone starting a new business or hoping they shag a celebrity.

Edited September 29, 2016 by jcsmith

[Familyonthemove]

So we send thousands of rockets into space and accelerate the global warming that will turn Earth into a hot, dusty, inhospitable, barren planet - so we can travel across space to a hot, dusty, inhospitable barren planet.

 

Excellent plan.