I enjoyed the article, and it does a good job explaining SpaceX. However, it glosses over a lot of complicated things.
Existential risk and the Fermi paradox: It barely scratches the surface on these as reasons why going to Mars is such an important thing for humanity. I assume most LessWrongers are already familiar.
How to actually get to Mars: The $450 Billion price-tag he mentions is significantly inflated. That came from something called the “90 day report”, which wound up just being a wish-list for all the big aerospace companies. When it became obvious how ridiculous things were getting, Martin Marietta put together a minimum-viable architecture called Mars Direct, which NASA subsequently used as the basis for their Design Reference Missions 3.0 and up. Basically, it’s a $20-30 Billion program, spent over 20 years. Half the money would go toward 10 years of adapting existing technology for the job, and the other half would launch 5 missions with 6 people each spread over another 10 years. That’s ~$500 million per person, for a round trip flight and a year on Mars. Using the previous mission’s habitat module instead of bringing another one would likely cut the costs further. One of the original leaders of the design team subsequently expanded it into a book, called The Case For Mars, which I highly recommend reading. He starts firmly grounded in the near term, then explores options for eventually expanding into colonization, and discusses how realistic terraforming might be and calculates specifically what it would require based on current climate models.
And, while I’m at it, I’ll drop a couple more links:
More on SpaceX: If you want to follow the details, /r/SpaceX has a lot of intelligent discussions, and frequently leans toward more technical aspects with minimal fanboying. (People who tend to make overly optimistic statements are expected to have to justify them. For example, a running joke is that Elon’s timescales are measured in Mars years, not Earth years, which certainly would explain a lot. SpaceX’s competitor, United Launch Alliance, is looked on much more kindly than Wait But Why makes them out to be.)
More on spaceflight in general:http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/ has good technical articles on a range of topics, but they fund the site by restricting some content to “L2” subscribers.
True on both counts, although I believe the Mars Direct price-tag came from the same agency/group that priced out the 90 day report.
Design Reference Mission 3 was remarkably similar to Mars Direct, but DRM 4 and 5 have grown a bit from the minimalist approach, although they still revolve around In Situ Resource Utilization, just as Mars Direct did. DRM 5 is especially confusing, and it will be a year or two until we see DRM 6, so I actually think the 2011 edition of The Case For Mars is about the best book out there for demonstrating that it can be done. Obviously the rocket he describes was based on minimally altered space shuttle manufacturing capabilities and architecture which no longer exist, but the design principles haven’t changed. Zubrin currently endorses a couple versions of Mars Direct based around SLS and/or Falcon Heavy. If you are looking for modern, the most modern Mars architecture I know of is Buzz Aldrin’s current version of his Mars Cycler concept. I haven’t read his new book yet, but as I understand it that’s a grand architecture for a massive project, rather than a minimalist approach. I’m sure we could do it for a fraction of the cost of the Iraq war or the bank bailouts, but that’s still many times larger than NASA’s current budget. I haven’t looked into the political viability, but I suspect that anything over a quarter of a percent of the federal budget isn’t likely. I was trying to discuss how it can be done, rather than how to do it best. I’m definitely all in favor of Buzz and Elon if they can make their visions a reality.
I don’t think there are any serious technical issues that would necessitate inventing something major—all you need is a lot of engineering. The actual problem is in finding a big pile of money and that, to a large degree, is a function of “What will we get out of it?”. The usual answer “But it sooooo cool!” isn’t very convincing.
I don’t think there are any serious technical issues that would necessitate inventing something major—all you need is a lot of engineering.
If I understand correctly, a round trip mission (land, plant a flag, pick up some rocks, take pictures and return) is currently technologically feasible. It’s pretty much a matter of scaling up Saturn V / Apollo. The main technical issue is cancer risk from radiation, but I suppose that even if that was ignored there would be no difficulties finding astronauts who would be willing to fly.
A colony that doesn’t depend on frequent supply launches, on the other hand, seems beyond current technology.
I enjoyed the article, and it does a good job explaining SpaceX. However, it glosses over a lot of complicated things.
Existential risk and the Fermi paradox: It barely scratches the surface on these as reasons why going to Mars is such an important thing for humanity. I assume most LessWrongers are already familiar.
How to actually get to Mars: The $450 Billion price-tag he mentions is significantly inflated. That came from something called the “90 day report”, which wound up just being a wish-list for all the big aerospace companies. When it became obvious how ridiculous things were getting, Martin Marietta put together a minimum-viable architecture called Mars Direct, which NASA subsequently used as the basis for their Design Reference Missions 3.0 and up. Basically, it’s a $20-30 Billion program, spent over 20 years. Half the money would go toward 10 years of adapting existing technology for the job, and the other half would launch 5 missions with 6 people each spread over another 10 years. That’s ~$500 million per person, for a round trip flight and a year on Mars. Using the previous mission’s habitat module instead of bringing another one would likely cut the costs further. One of the original leaders of the design team subsequently expanded it into a book, called The Case For Mars, which I highly recommend reading. He starts firmly grounded in the near term, then explores options for eventually expanding into colonization, and discusses how realistic terraforming might be and calculates specifically what it would require based on current climate models.
And, while I’m at it, I’ll drop a couple more links:
More on SpaceX: If you want to follow the details, /r/SpaceX has a lot of intelligent discussions, and frequently leans toward more technical aspects with minimal fanboying. (People who tend to make overly optimistic statements are expected to have to justify them. For example, a running joke is that Elon’s timescales are measured in Mars years, not Earth years, which certainly would explain a lot. SpaceX’s competitor, United Launch Alliance, is looked on much more kindly than Wait But Why makes them out to be.)
More on spaceflight in general: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/ has good technical articles on a range of topics, but they fund the site by restricting some content to “L2” subscribers.
That happened 24 years ago. Also the Zubrin paper gave no cost estimates.
True on both counts, although I believe the Mars Direct price-tag came from the same agency/group that priced out the 90 day report.
Design Reference Mission 3 was remarkably similar to Mars Direct, but DRM 4 and 5 have grown a bit from the minimalist approach, although they still revolve around In Situ Resource Utilization, just as Mars Direct did. DRM 5 is especially confusing, and it will be a year or two until we see DRM 6, so I actually think the 2011 edition of The Case For Mars is about the best book out there for demonstrating that it can be done. Obviously the rocket he describes was based on minimally altered space shuttle manufacturing capabilities and architecture which no longer exist, but the design principles haven’t changed. Zubrin currently endorses a couple versions of Mars Direct based around SLS and/or Falcon Heavy. If you are looking for modern, the most modern Mars architecture I know of is Buzz Aldrin’s current version of his Mars Cycler concept. I haven’t read his new book yet, but as I understand it that’s a grand architecture for a massive project, rather than a minimalist approach. I’m sure we could do it for a fraction of the cost of the Iraq war or the bank bailouts, but that’s still many times larger than NASA’s current budget. I haven’t looked into the political viability, but I suspect that anything over a quarter of a percent of the federal budget isn’t likely. I was trying to discuss how it can be done, rather than how to do it best. I’m definitely all in favor of Buzz and Elon if they can make their visions a reality.
I don’t think there are any serious technical issues that would necessitate inventing something major—all you need is a lot of engineering. The actual problem is in finding a big pile of money and that, to a large degree, is a function of “What will we get out of it?”. The usual answer “But it sooooo cool!” isn’t very convincing.
If I understand correctly, a round trip mission (land, plant a flag, pick up some rocks, take pictures and return) is currently technologically feasible. It’s pretty much a matter of scaling up Saturn V / Apollo. The main technical issue is cancer risk from radiation, but I suppose that even if that was ignored there would be no difficulties finding astronauts who would be willing to fly.
A colony that doesn’t depend on frequent supply launches, on the other hand, seems beyond current technology.