But a self sustaining civilization on Mars? I’m skeptical. Yes, it’s physically possible. And spacex seems to be heading in the right direction. But the sheer difficulty of the problem I think is sometimes understated.
Elon’s rough estimates on what it’ll take to create a self sustaining civilization vary from interview to interview. One quote:
“Roughly 800 to 1000 per year. That’s about what’s needed over ten years to create the fleet to build a self-sustaining city on Mars”
More than 3 launches per day for 10 years? That’s where the impossibility of it all starts to seep in.
Many seemingly unsolvable problems also arise. Where does the money come from? How will we make the Martian surface habitable? Even if getting launch costs down to 2 million as Musk stated once is possible (hard to believe, Falcon 9 is nowhere near that today), the amount of peripheral costs (maintenance, staffing, logistics, training, the list goes on) is extraordinary.
I’m pretty sure they’ll get to mars in the next 10 years. And they even have a good shot and doing that multiple times. But based on the sheer amount of payload that needs to get to Mars, it seems like a mission that will exceed the lifetime of SpaceX.
Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere, for one thing, so radiation is a big problem Musk already dismissed. We already know human bodies lose muscle and bone after just a few weeks in space. The rockets Musk has presented don't have room for the water and food needed for 100+ people. Many other issues. Not to mention terraforming is science fiction right now.
I don't see how humanity will go backward if we don't colonize Mars. That's the kind of thing a cult leader says.
In the meantime Musk is squandering $44bn to buy Twitter just to show that he can.
He said something that sounded like a prediction in an interview, and media outlets, knowing people like you will surely click on a clickbait anti-Musk article, picked it up and ran with it.
Saying "I think this is possible in x years" is not the same thing as saying "Space X will deliver in x years"
Edit: I actually watched parts of those videos months ago and just watched some more. Good stuff, though sorry to say but fairly biased reporting with a lot of opinions and theories thrown in there. Nonetheless informative and entertaining, just… the YouTuber clearly has it out for Musk.
https://littlebluena.substack.com/p/common-sense-skeptic-deb...
My problem is that I know that CSS just starts with a narrative and lies about facts as he moves through his narrative. I'd like to know the places where the planning fallacy is likely to be blinding people working on these problems.
His estimate of Starlink projected costs is three orders of magnitude higher than reasonable estimates I've seen. You don't get three orders of magnitude off by accident. If someone asks you to estimate the cost of a car for example and its true cost is $10,000 and you guess $10,000,000 that is really surprising - so surprising that I find it be an error term, not a surprise term to correct on. I'd like to hear more from the people that guess $10,000, not someone whose error term is being maximized because surprising things are more engaging.
This is actually material relevant to the question of his helping us to reason about these issues, because clearly funding for the travel ought to be up there as one of the single most important issues. But he's giving us three orders of magnitude of error in this central issue. Elon Musk claims one year and than it takes like five. Three orders of magnitude is different. Three orders of magnitude would be someone saying it takes one year, but then it takes 1000 years. The difference between "honest planning fallacy" and "making stuff up" seems kind of easy to discern to me. I don't know, maybe others disagree, but it doesn't feel so hard to tell the difference.
I also hold very different standards for claims about the future than I do for claims about the present and past made after research on the subject. I don't consider people who don't claim to be prophets to be required to meet the always predicts the future successfully bar; it seems kind of silly to expect that. However, it does seem pretty important that someone reporting on say, the price of a service, to give an honest price after months of research - which CSS doesn't. I'd hold a different standard for CSS if these were off the cuff videos or sharing - more like tweets - because then getting some stuff off would be reasonable. But lying about stuff that is so easily verified and photoshopping evidence to preserve the lies? Just reeks malice to me. If he was actually honest - why does he try to hide the lies?
On the radiation aspect, the radiation is not significant and simply increases your long term risk of cancer. It's not a show stopper by any means. It's also mostly mitigated with minimal shielding.
Isn't everyone who regularly publishes "trying to build a brand". And isn't everyone who covers Elon Musk critically trying to incorporate that into their brand? How do you distinguish between "I analyze Elon Musk's statements for accuracy" and "Elon Musk hatred"?
The thing that makes it really easy to distinguish though is that facts are entangled. That ends up making lies contagious.
So when he starts talking about a government conspiracy and my surprise goes way up, it becomes pretty easy to check his facts, and realize the reason I'm so surprised is because he is lying.
As another example of the contagious nature of lies, when he lies about the projected cost of Starlink, the natural result is that anyone who thinks Starlink could be profitable is insane - it costs more than the economy, according to him, since he gave an estimate that was three orders magnitude higher than reasonable estimates. Therefore, when he moves forward to talk about Shotwell, he gets put in a situation where making his claims seem reasonable requires he continue to keep up the lies. So instead of calling her a good executive he makes sexists arguments as to to why she is so stupid. His previous lies were contagious and so he was forced into sexism in order to cover them up, because the entangled fact of a good executive having been involved in the business decisions would cast a lot of doubt on his claims.
And... it isn't that hard to criticize Elon Musk without lying? He isn't perfect, at all. I don't think its necessary for a critic to invent things to criticize rather than to just tell the truth?
Mars (and Venus) do not have a magnetosphere to protect you from radiation. The gravity is the wrong amount, so your bones will dissolve. Mars itself is poisonous.
Write down every aspect of living someplace that you need: gravity, water, temperature, lack of radiation, etc. and in every way Antarctica is as nice or better than Mars. I don't see people clamoring to live in Antarctica.
One nice feature of Antarctica: if you want to go home, you can do so in a normal ship: no space ship required.
> Where does the money come from?
The goal of SpaceX is to make all of what you describe possible within or slightly above NASA's spaceflight budget as well as within the price range of a pioneer who wants to give up everything on Earth and move to Mars.
> How will we make the Martian surface habitable?
The surface will not be habitable by anyone within our lifetimes. People will live in structures that are either underground or partially buried.
> Even if getting launch costs down to 2 million as Musk stated once is possible (hard to believe, Falcon 9 is nowhere near that today)
Falcon 9 throws away carefully engineered and built hardware every single launch. It was never going to get down to those price levels. That's why you need a fully reusable vehicle.
Worst case: It's a huckster distraction while the public gets robbed.
Best case: He's an idiot huckster taking the public and his cultists for a spin.
Initially we were excited about the SpaceX plan but now it's revealed to be largely a sham. Human interest is apparently not the end-game.
I do agree more and more that Musk is a grifter (look no further than Twitter), but SpaceX seems to be one of his ventures that’s not a grift. The technology actually works (falcon 9 works, dragon works, Starlink works), and I don’t see what kind of financial gain he has in going to Mars. Possibly hoping the government subsidizes his Starship rockets that he then will use for contracts?
From Starlink TOS:
>"For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement."
Anything we do on the moon is going to have to be sub-surface to get away from the radiation and dust problems.
I don't see us getting a colony on Mars without non-chemical propulsion.
Self sustaining moon base? Possible.
Huge autonomous telescope on the moon? Really cool, possible but not a priority.
