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http://phys.org/news/2016-09-spacex-ceo-musk-mind-mars.html
September 27, 2016
SpaceX chief Elon Musk unveiled on Tuesday ambitious plans to establish a Mars colony by sending 100 humans at a time on massive spacecraft, possibly costing as low as $100,000 per person.
Taking the stage under a large globe of Mars at the International Astronautical Congress, Musk showed his vision for a giant rocket that would propel people to the Red Planet “in our lifetime.”
“We need to go from these early exploration missions to actually building a city,” he said to an overflow crowd at an expo center in the western Mexican city of Guadalajara.
Musk showed a futuristic video depicting his concept of an interplanetary transport system based on reusable rockets, a propellant farm on Mars and 1,000 spaceships on orbit, carrying about 100 people each.
The spacecraft would have a restaurant, cabins, zero-gravity games and movies.
“It has to be fun or exciting. It can’t feel cramped or boring,” he said.
Musk later told reporters he was “optimistic” that the first human mission could leave Earth in 2024 and arrive on the Red Planet the following year.
Before that, SpaceX plans to send an unmanned Dragon cargo capsule to Mars as early as 2018.
The South Africa-born Canadian-American entrepreneur said the plan would require a “huge public-private partnership,” but he did not announce any alliance with a government agency.
The first flight would be expensive but the aim is “making this affordable to almost anyone who wants to go,” by dropping the price of a ticket over time from $200,000 to $100,000, Musk said.
“You can’t create a self-sustaining civilization on Mars if the ticket price is $10 billion per person,” he said.
It could also be deadly.
“I think the first trips to Mars are going to be really, very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high. There is just no way around it,” he said. “It would basically be, ‘Are you prepared to die?’ Then if that’s ok, then you are a candidate for going.”
While SpaceX was hit by a setback on September 1 when its Falcon 9 rocket, after several successful missions and vertical landings, exploded on the launch pad during a test in Florida, Musk said “this is just a small thing on a long road.”
SpaceX is not alone in aspiring to travel to Mars.
The US space agency NASA, which is studying the effects of long-term space flight on the human body, has announced its own plans to send people to Mars by the 2030s.
Blue Origin, a company founded by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, also envisions a Mars mission, but decades from now.
Experts warn that reaching Mars225 million kilometers (140 million miles) from Earth on averageand living there requires major engineering feats and a massive budget.
John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, said Musk’s presentation was “long on vision, short on detail.”
Musk did not explain in detail how he would get the “billions of dollars that would be required to put the vision into reality.”
The plan also faces technical challenges, such as refueling in orbit, which has never been done, and building fuel depots on Mars.
Chris Carberry, chief executive of Explore Mars Inc, a non-profit promoting the goal of sending humans to the planet within two decades, said a mission of just three to six people would cost between $80 billion and $120 billion.
Musk’s presentation is “very inspiring, aspirational, but I think it’s going to be very challenging to be able to accomplish this in 10 years.”
“I think it’s probably more likely we’re going to send a smaller mission to first figure out if people can live on Mars before we send 100 people there at a time,” he said.
Musk said the rocket would take a spaceship into orbit, release it and land back on Earth to pick up a fuel tanker, which it would fly to the craft to fuel its journey to Mars. The trip would one day take as little as three months, or even less than one month.
Once on Mars, humans would have to install a plant to produce propellant by using the planet’s methane resources to fuel the spacecraft for its return to Earth.
SpaceX has achieved engineering breakthroughs, notably by successfully landing the Falcon 9 upright, which could cust space travel costs by making rockets reusable.
Blue Origin has also built a rocket that lands vertically and is working on a taller launcher called New Glenn, but the company is focusing on sending people to Earth’s low orbit for now.
“We want to have millions of people living and working in space in a decades timeframe if they want to,” Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson told AFP.
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-spacex-ceo-musk-mind-mars.html
Unfortunately “something” keeps blowing up his rocket ships on the launch pads, I’m staying here with Earth.
On 19 October 2016, Schiaparelli the ExoMars entry, descent and landing demonstrator module will enter the Martian atmosphere, descend and land on the surface, all within six minutes. The information gathered during this short period will test and demonstrate technologies required to deliver a lander or rover safely onto the surface of Mars.
-http://exploration.esa.int/mars/58425-preparing-to-land-on-mars/During World War II, methamphetamine was sold in tablet form under the brand name Pervitin, produced by the Berlin-based Temmler pharmaceutical company. It was used extensively by all branches of the combined Wehrmacht armed forces of the Third Reich, and was popular with Luftwaffe pilots in particular, for its performance-enhancing stimulant effects and to induce extended wakefulness.
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#History.2C_society.2C_and_cultureThe Schiaparelli lander attempted an automated landing on 19 October 2016, but the signal was lost unexpectedly a short time before the planned time of the landing. ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and MAVEN listened for the lander’s signal. Initial analysis of returned telemetry (600 megabytes of data) suggests that the heat shield and parachute deployment worked as expected, but the parachute was released too soon. In addition, the subsequent rocket thrusters’ firing lasted about 3 seconds instead of the expected 30 seconds, so a soft landing appears not to have occurred. The Context Camera of NASA’s MRO discovered new ground markings that may be related to the lander’s impact and parachute.
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiaparelli_EDM_lander#Loss_of_the_lander… I’m staying here with Earth…
If these kind of things would be realistic, it’s of course matter of becoming a chosen one instead of being compelled to go there.
Sorry for my broken English.
HOWDY
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a17407/mars-mission-failures/
Without gravity, our bone matrix withers and you get osteoporosis and muscle decay.
Without the magnetosphere of the earth, there is no protection from cosmic rays. These cosmic rays can pass through spacecraft, and just the travel to Mars would likely cause brain damage to a degree where the folks on arrival would be likely insane, and have cancer conditions develop. Mars itself offers only minimal protection from cosmic rays, so even if travelers somehow made it there, physical/mental decay would continue even on the surface. The International Space Station is not an issue for cosmic rays, because it is within the magnetosphere of the Earth, in low orbit.Both physically and mentally, when the human body is removed from the Earth, it deteriorates. We need the Earth, we need its gravity, we need its magnetosphere, we need its life-giving qi that heals the body.
It’s a romantic idea for humans to populate other planets, but it may not be possible. We are biologically dependent on the Earth.
It’s unfortunate, because in 600 million years the luminosity of the sun will have increased to the extent that all plant life dies, killing us . . . assuming that man-made global climate change and/or asteroid strike doesn’t kill us first, which is highly likely. But there are serious problems in removing us from the planet Earth. I don’t see any satisfactory solutions in the immediate future.
S
Laika (Russian: Лайка; c. 1954 November 3, 1957) was a Soviet space dog who became one of the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the Earth. Laika, a stray dog from the streets of Moscow, was selected to be the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into outer space on November 3, 1957.
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laikahttp://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/10/world/europe/the-soviets-sent-stray-dogs-to-conquer-space/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocWSY8ac6qE
Catherine Clifford,CNBC Fri, Nov 4 11:19 AM PDT
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/elon-musk-robots-jobs-government-181956572.html
Computers, intelligent machines, and robots seem like the workforce of the future. And as more and more jobs are replaced by technology, people will have less work to do and ultimately will be sustained by payments from the government, predicts Elon Musk , the iconic Silicon Valley futurist who is the founder and CEO of SolarCity (SCTY), Tesla (TSLA), and SpaceX.
According to Musk, there really won’t be any other options.
“There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation,” says Musk to CNBC. “Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen.”
In a country with universal basic income, each individual gets a regular check from the government. Switzerland considered instituting a universal basic income of 2,500 Swiss francs ($2578) a month this summer. Voters ultimately rejected the plan , but it sparked a broad, global conversation.
Also this summer, President Obama addressed the idea of a universal basic income in an interview with the Director of MIT’s Media Lab, Joi Ito, and Scott Dadich, editor in chief of WIRED: “Whether a universal income is the right model is it gonna be accepted by a broad base of people? that’s a debate that we’ll be having over the next 10 or 20 years.”
While society is slowly mulling over the idea of a basic human income, technology is rapidly changing the global workforce.
For example, in the future, semi-trailer trucks will be able to drive themselves. And though that won’t become the status quo for a while, it will mean that there won’t be a need for quite as many truck drivers, says Musk.
Some drivers will transition to fleet operators, responsible for monitoring the status of a fleet of trucks, not any one individual truck. If a truck appears to be having issues, then the fleet operator would come in remotely and solve the problem.
“Actually, it’s probably a more interesting job than just driving one [truck],” says Musk.
It’s likely those truck drivers who no longer have a job might see the situation differently.
But the optimistic Musk sees increased automation as an overall benefit to society, even an opportunity.
“People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things,” says Musk. “Certainly more leisure time.”
A long horizon of leisure time may sound good, but it can also be an intimating prospect. For many, having a job and someplace to be each day is grounding and gives purpose to life.
Indeed, Musk himself is driven by his professional ambitions. He hasn’t needed to work to pay his bills for well over a decade. In 2002, Musk sold PayPal , the online payments company he co-founded, to eBay in a deal that put $165 million in his pocket. Instead of kicking back, he has launched multiple companies and is trying to get to Mars.
Even though Musk’s ambition may be more outsized than most, many Americans would probably also want to continue doing some kind of work. Binge watching Netflix is only enjoyable for so long.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBQmEqBCY0
http://pattayatoday.net/news/international-news/tin-can-tramp-was-stocks-genius-with-fortune/
A tramp who lived on a pittance collecting tin cans and eating scraps from rubbish bins left a secret £1m fortune when he died.
Curt Degerman nicknamed Tin-Can-Curt made shrewd stock market investments with the little money he made.
The financial genius could be seen cycling around the northern Swedish town of Skelleftea dressed in a dirty blue jacket and torn trousers.
He is said to have led a frugal lifestyle but in between collecting cans and bottles from the coastal citys rubbish bins he was to be found in the city library studying the stock market in the financial papers.
He went to the library every day because he didnt buy newspapers. He knew stocks inside out, a cousin told reporters at the time of his death, from a heart attack, aged 60, in 2008.
It was then that relatives discovered he had a portfolio of stocks and shares worth more than £700,000.
In addition, he had purchased 124 gold bars worth £250,000, owned his own home and had more than £4,000 in a bank account. There was more than £270 in loose change inside his home.
He left the fortune to a cousin who had visited him regularly in the later part of his life.
But under Swedish law Mr Degermans uncle was entitled to inherit the riches.
They became embroiled in a legal battle but the pair confirmed they have now reached agreement though neither party is prepared to discuss the detail.
An interesting question (if a bit off-topic for this forum)
Wu wei (traditional Chinese: 無爲; simplified Chinese: 无为; pinyin: wú wéi; a variant and derivatives: Japanese: 無為(むい); Korean: 無爲(무위); Vietnamese: Vô vi; English, lit. non-doing) is an important concept in Taoism that literally means non-action or non-doing.
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_weiAutonomist Marxism is thus a “bottom-up” theory: it draws attention to activities that autonomists see as everyday working-class resistance to capitalism, for example absenteeism, slow working, and socialization in the workplace.
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_NegriIf one is very serious about one’s neidan, qigong, taiji etc., it’s ideal when one doesn’t need to work, but is still provided basic material necessities.
HOWDY
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