Eric Berger reports that they go far beyond Mars.
He still seems to be a planetary chauvinist, though.
10 thoughts on “Elon’s Ambitions”
Comments are closed.
Eric Berger reports that they go far beyond Mars.
He still seems to be a planetary chauvinist, though.
Comments are closed.
Planets have real benefits making ‘planetary chauvinist’ a bit of a slander. Why are people shocked that Elon is looking beyond mars? Because of the simple minded notion that if you focus on one thing you’ve disregarded everything else.
There are an infinite number of ways we could expand into the solar system. I guarantee that whatever way we choose will be less efficient than how we could be doing it.
Planets have real benefits making ‘planetary chauvinist’ a bit of a slander.
Boo hoo.
Speaking of whining… do you think you’ll ever get back to writing any of those great historical comparative essays you used to do years ago? I miss those. They were awesome. I realize you need the muse.
Berger really seems to be trying to influence SpaceX operations. Why does Musk have to do what Berger says? Why is that the only course of action?
Musk giving a speech about plans for the future doesn’t mean SpaceX isn’t focused on what went wrong with their last launch or with their core business of launching things into space.
The entire op-ed is peppered with subtle attacks.
Musk may soon detail the architecture he hopes will colonize the solar system.
May? This phraseology casts doubt. Is Berger leaving the door open that Musk will obey him and not say anything about Mars or is he casting doubt about whether or not Musk will tell us what his plans are?
It is not clear the extent to which Musk will detail his Interplanetary Transport System,
It looks like he is casting doubt on the speech itself, implying it really isn’t going to be anything. But if that were the case, then his claim that Mars is distracting SpaceX has less support.
Who knows what the investigation will show? Berger doesn’t know. That he thinks SpaceX needs to follow the Berger Business Plan rather than Musk and SpaceX’s is silly.
Musk has been very straightforward about the risks involved and SpaceX has demonstrated they can fix problems that pop up quickly and with unprecedented openness with the government and public.
Very well said Wodun. First they claim Elon can’t do, then they say he shouldn’t do. Next comes law to restrict and prohibit.
Largely secret plans? I think they have been fairly straight with what they want to do so far. The plans evolve with time and as they get more experience designing systems. So what.
“interplanetary” is a better name than “mars”. couldn’t he have kept it as the Interplanetary Colonial Transporter though?
I don’t have a problem with SpaceX having a roadmap and as roadmaps are of course the long term things will have little detail and fidelity.
I do wonder if Elon isn’t putting his fingers into too many pies at the moment though. He’s hemorrhaging cash like crazy into too many investments. One would have hoped he would have learned after he nearly went bankrupt around Demo Flight 3 when Tesla wasn’t also doing as well. There’s no way he can focus like that. It’s one thing to manage 2-3 businesses but how many is it now?
Is there any indication of what MCT is going to use for an ECLSS? Keeping large numbers of people alive during the 8-month trip to Mars isn’t going to be a trivial task. And then, presumably, they’ll have to be kept alive on the surface for years and decades.
It would be nice to know what Musk is doing to address those problems.
Instead of talking about ‘Musk must focus!’ how about supporting his effort to shore up the issues he isn’t directly addressing? That’s part of what I’m referring to about some good mars society papers. It aught to be enough focus for SpaceX to get colonist alive to the surface of mars. That’s one focus. Keeping them alive is an entirely different focus.
There are a lot of issues that need to be prioritized. Every risk we can identify should have several mitigating proposals. I think one of the biggest risks is ‘planning’ itself. If we determine what the colonists need but are wrong (by coming up short) they’re dead.
If we worry about an issue, provide supply for it, and it turns out not to be an issue… no harm done. That should be expected to happen. But if we miss something because we didn’t give it enough thought we could have tragedy. By focusing on supplying a location and reviewing those supplies over time, adding things we might have missed eventually we will reach a point where we get close to 100% confident we can safely send humans (all the time getting a history of successful landings.)
Everybody knows I’m for moving fast. Really fast, but not imprudently.
Focus means: 1) Focus on how to get to mars. 2) Focus on presupply. 3) Focus on living there. Mixing these up is defocussing.
Just send more stuff solves a lot of problems if the costs are manageable.
Exactly. This is why Elon’s announcement to send at least one Dragon every launch window is so important. Instead of just talking about mars, each lander will move us progressively toward the day of first crew landing regardless of when it happens.
I was musing, suppose we put ten years of supplies at one mars location and a foreign enemy drops crew there to take advantage of it? My reaction? Great! Let those suckers figure out how to live there and we w’ll follow up with an even better deployment!