Looks Like We're Going To Mars "Soon"
"Soon Americans will be sent to Mars" – Eric Trump #RNC2020
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) August 26, 2020
Keith’s note: The prepared line was “And soon under my father’s leadership, it will send Americans to Mars.” OK Eric, what does “soon” mean? The target date for human Mars missions is still the mid 2030s. That is hardly “soon”. Maybe you should check with your brother-in-law Kyle Yunaska, the NASA Deputy Chief of Staff, before you make these announcements. He has access to better info on the rocket science stuff. Just sayin’.
NASA Deputy Chief of Staff Kyle Yunaska just got a shout out from the #RNC2020 – from his sister Lara Trump. pic.twitter.com/lpeSbfuUKr
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) August 27, 2020
Where are we going?
PLANET TEN!
When?
REAL SOON!
Thank you. You beat me to it.
You don’t suppose the first family are all red electroids, do you?
Buckaroo approves of your comment.
Maybe he expects to pick dedicated trump supporters for a one way mission?
I am no fan of any Trump, but going to the moon and Mars soon is a lie put forth by both Republicans and Democrats since the 1970s.
Elon Musk and Space X have credibility in this area. Our government and Legacy Space do not.
You could be right – Elon could be heading off “soon”
By 2024 Bridenstine said he will have humans on the moon and Musk said he will have launched the first humans to Mars. Both may be unlikely and overly optimistic, but if I had to choose one then I would bet on Musk.
Tesla shorts have lost around $20B this year. I’m certainly not betting against him. The main question is how close will he get to his targeted timeline, and he’s actually been getting better in that respect.
That’s the thing. He left out the silly wording “under my father’s leadership” that the speech writers put in. The way he said it works better.
-It leaves out the “Trump family ruling dynasty” implication that is actually not a good look for the RNC.
-It leaves out the implication that anyone will somehow put boots on the ground on Mars anytime during the next POTUS term.
-It generalizes the statement so that it doesn’t necessarily imply that it will be NASA who does it “soon”est…but maybe SpaceX, which is a U.S. based company, which should be good enough for any pro-business, nationalist chant.
We will go to Mars..eventually. But Elon Musk, Bob Zubrin, et al, recognize that it is necessary to set up crewed bases on the Moon in order to do research on the effects of reduced gravity on both male and female humans over periods long enough to determine the effects of later Mars missions, as well as to develop shielding techniques against solar and cosmic radiation. Lunar base(s) will also be vital to develop ISRU techniques that will be commercially viable, but also for use when we get to Mars.
I have posted before that I think by the time SLS/Orion reaches lunar orbit, they will be met by crewed SpaceX shuttles launches from the lunar bases developed by SpaceX, Blue Origin, Bigelow, et al. Regardless of who wins the election in November, progress of human space exploration and development would be greatly advanced, if Congress would stop throwing good money after bad and wasting time supporting SLS/Orion. Plow that money into commercial space and we will get somewhere a lot quicker.
AD LUNA! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!
Unless they have changed their minds very recently and not told anyone, Mr. Musk and Dr. Zubrin do _not_ think a lunar base is “necessary” for Mars missions. At most, they will admit it could be useful for things like partial gravity medical studies. But Mr. Musk has never been excited or enthusiastic about the prospect, and SpaceX basically treats lunar missions as a side-show they’re willing to contribute to _if_ NASA is paying. Dr. Zubrin has spent decades vocally saying that the Moon is basically a distraction and a detour as far as Mars missions are concerned.
As far as radiation goes, it’s been repeatedly pointed out that this is a non-issue. Based on current knowledge and technology, a trip to Mars and back would result in a ~3% increased risk of cancer later in life. And that’s a conservative estimate and doesn’t include the possibilities of things like storm shelters. More research into the technology of shielding isn’t needed: The basic technology (unless you mean very far term prospects like huge, superconducting magnets), is well understood. Some engineering work is needed for the efficient layout, thickness and materials of the shielding, but that’s not technology development. The flux of energetic particles in interplanetary space and on Mars is well known and has been measured over the course of decades. The one weak point in our knowledge is the exact medical effects of high energy heavy ions, and that’s not something a lunar base would contribute to (unless you violate both NASA and medical ethics rules and use the astronauts as test subjects. The relevant information would require exposing them to doses far beyond legal limits.)
Both these gentlemen are ultimately aiming for exploration and settlement of the Red Planet. I am a charter member of the Mars Society, and well know Bob’s philosophy about Mars. However, he as recently acknowledged and is pushing for us going back to the Moon as an immediate goal.
SpaceX has recently been awarded at least one contract to support operations in cislunar space. I have no doubt that he would utilize development opportunities in lunar exploration as a basis for the ultimate objective of Mars. Time will tell…
Ad Luna! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!
There is a difference between saying a lunar base might be useful for Mars missions (which, I think Mr. Musk and Dr. Zubrin would admit) and saying that it is “necessary” for a Mars mission. You said that it was “necessary” and that they and others “recognize” that it is necessary. Necessary means something you can’t do without, at all. Zub may have said an immediate goal like the Moon is useful, to get things moving, but I really doubt he’d every say it was “necessary” for a Mars mission. (As in, a Mars mission would be impossible without building and operating a lunar base first.) I also suspect Mr. Musk is quite willing to take NASA money and fly payloads to the lunar surface for them. They certainly do have a preliminary development contract to do that. But I see no evidence that Mr. Musk would say his idea of colonies on Mars is impossible without a lunar base as a precursor.
And I note that you did not even attempt to defend your inaccurate claims about radiation, and the alleged but non-existent need for “technology development” for shielding before a Mars mission could be attempted.
Remember Elon Musk is planning on building dozens of Starships on his assembly line so there will be plenty to go around to support both lunar bases as well as bases on Mars, along with launching satellites and supporting the USSF. And if he hits his cost targets of $2-3 million to LEO and $20-30 for deep space flights (Moon, Mars and beyond…) he will be able to afford to do both with Starlink revenue.
The big problem will be finding enough astronauts for both. There are only about 100 active astronauts worldwide (NASA, ESA, Russia, JAXA, Etc.) all of which could be taken to the Moon in a single flight. Maybe there are 200-300 former astronauts who are still fit to fly. That will be far short of the thousands of astronauts Starships will be capable of transporting to orbit, the Moon and Mars. And then there is producing enough spacesuits for everyone…
But that said Starship 1.0 may well be limited to Cislunar operations while Starship 2.0 which he has hinted of (remember Starship, Super Heavy and the Raptor are intended to be scalable…) which will be twice the diameter (and four times the volume) will be what Elon Musk uses to settle Mars and the Solar System.
As for timetables, he is building both the Super Heavy assembly building and launch pad now while ramping up the Raptor production so it may be a lot sooner that anyone is betting on. Remember his slow pace has been because he was building an assembly line as well as design a rocket. If Starship SN8 achieves it’s suborbital flight next month you will likely see the pace pick up.
When the capability to send out humans to the Moon and Mars is operational, I have no doubt there will be plenty of volunteers for those missions, especially now that you don’t have to be a high-performance jet pilot with 2,000 hours in your logbook to qualify. While I would prefer to return to Earth eventually from one or both of those missions, and were I 30-50 years younger and could qualify, I would sign up in a heartbeat! No doubt there are elementary school children out there, who, if properly encouraged, will be the astronauts/cosmonauts/teikonauts that take us to the solar system and beyond. And, if we Earthlings don’t completely screw things up, their grandchildren will.
Ad LUNA! Ad ARES! AD ASTRA!
Staffing is an easily solved problem. If you’re sending hundreds of people, you shouldn’t be sending astronauts. Once you’re at that scale, you should be sending field scientists Maybe some grad students as well, for cheap labor by people used to basic, amenity-free living conditions, electrical engineers, construction workers, etc. Once we get to the scale you’re talking about, the specialized training required for astronauts shouldn’t be necessary. I think the standard NSF practice for new people going to Antarctica involves a one-week safety and training course. For spaceflight, the equivalent might be full month. Two years as an “astronaut candidate” before even getting into crew rotation would be excessive.
“by the time SLS/Orion reaches lunar orbit, they will be met by crewed SpaceX shuttles launches from the lunar bases developed by SpaceX, Blue Origin, Bigelow, et al.”
Your timeline is WAY off. It’s not going to happen that way.
Yes, as soon as the Starship reaches the Moon the SLS/Orion will be shutdown and whatever relics exist will be shipped off to museums, or scrapped.
How does “your” scenario square with NASA’s Human Landing System program that is moving forward with 3 companies as announced April 30, 2020.
https://www.blueorigin.com/…
https://www.nasa.gov/featur…
The National Team which includes Blue Origin seems to have a much better chance of being selected than the other two, in particular Starship. If SpaceX is not selected are they just going to the Moon on their own and setting up bases anyway? You said they will be already on the Moon before the SLS-Orion Artemis-3 mission arrives. Sorry, but NASA has ordered 12 SLS rockets and their parts are already being built at this moment. They aren’t just theoretical, they are real hardware. The first SLS for the Artemis-1 test flight is nearing completion already with the next ones to follow.
Meanwhile Starship has made it’s latest
test hop. I don’t think your timeline has much chance of coming true with the Orion capsule production line making good progress and the Europeans building and delivering the Service module. They may not make the 2024 deadline for theArtemis-3 crewed mission to the surface of the Moon but they have a chance.
Given that NASA is under orders to return to the Moon in 2024 they will probably not be willing to wait for Starship to demonstrate that their system is ready. They will need the company that can deliver it on time. I doubt it will be Starship. They are not perfect as people think. It took longer to fly the Crew Dragon than they had promised.
My guess is the National Team which included Blue Origin and Lockheed have the best chance of winning the Human Landing System contract. We will find out more in February 2021.
Jeff Bezos is worth much more than Elon Musk. He doesn’t have an army of fan boys.
The National Team comprises Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper.
https://www.blueorigin.com/…
And Elon Musk is not waiting on a NASA contract to do it like the National Team, he is moving forward at full speed now on his own which is why he has so many fans. You also forget, unlike the National Team system the Starship lander doesn’t need the SLS/Orion to take humans to the lunar surface. Yes, NASA will probably be ripped by Congress for those SLS orders and those parts will go straight to the scrap pile, just as thousands of propeller aircraft did after WWII when the jets arrived.
I didn’t forget.
But you forgot to answer my question. Here it is again:
Is SpaceX going to the Moon alone, independent of whether Starliner is selected for the Human Landing System?
SpaceX has a private contract to fly Yusaku Maezawa and unspecified number of other passengers around the Moon in 2023. It looks like the date is flexible, and might not be that soon. But, yes, SpaceX is planning to go to the Moon with Starship (or at least near lunar space) whether or not they are selected for the HLS contract. Since the flight is funded by an outside, private contract, I guess we could quibble about that not being going to the Moon “alone”.
Yes, and if Elon Musk hits his numbers with Starship a lot on folks will be able to afford to go to the Moon. NASA might just have to wait in line for their turn.?
Yes, he announced that a couple years ago. And then he also plans to go on to Mars, with or without NASA. That is why SpaceX is building Starlink, so it’s has a revenue stream independent of the government, one linked directly to a consumer market. Actually it’s NASA that should consider itself lucky SpaceX decided to bid on the HLS as they are the only firm with a chance of getting astronauts to the Moon in that timeframe.
If Starliner is selected as a lunar human landing system, SpaceX is definitely going alone, since there’s no way NASA’s getting there.
As for Starship, while they have no lunar colonization plans, Musk and Shotwell have talked about doing lunar landings before Mars. The simple reality of launch windows means they’ll be able to do so sooner than a Mars launch. They might not bother with the landing thrusters, which are only there to satisfy NASA debris concerns.
They might do such a flight anyway, to evaluate how realistic those concerns actually are and whether those thrusters are really needed. And costs should be low enough for customers interested in large payloads and passenger counts to the lunar surface to start showing up. Maybe not by 2024, but very likely before anything delivered by SLS gets there.
It will make NASA look awful foolish if they don’t have an astronaut along on the first crew landing SpaceX does on the Moon, especially if he take a number of foreign astronauts.
I expect it will be sooner than that. Things will move fast once Starship reaches orbit. That is the advantage of mass production of reusable rockets, rapid iterative progress towards a goal.
I like how “the company that can deliver it on time” is the yet-to-deliver-anything Blue Origin. Remember Musk saying we’d be more likely to see “unicorns dancing in the flame duct” than for Blue Origin to have a launch vehicle in 5 years when they were trying to keep SpaceX from getting 39A? That was in 2013. They haven’t even gotten New Shepard flying operationally yet…or doing regular test flights, for that matter.
Oh, and on Boeing’s SLS. They’ll surely deliver that on time. Oh right, it was supposed to launch in 2016…and then 2017…and then 2018…and then 2019…and then this June…and then April of next year…but it’ll almost certainly launch for real in November of next year! Maybe.
Can he get one to orbit first?
SpaceX is building the Super Heavy launch pad now in Boca Chica along with the building needed to build the Super Heavy. He is also ramping up production of the Raptor now that it’s where he want it to be. Likely assembly of Super Heavy #1 will start in a month or so with flight testing by the end of the year so an orbital flight before SLS is very likely.
On moon vs. Mars: If we camp on the moon with stays of a week or so then we might learn something and it will not delay Mars colonization. If we try to establish cities and a permanent presence on the moon then we will not get to Mars in my lifetime.
Whether establishing a permanent presence on the Moon has anything to do with it, (if we don’t, the Chinese will), commercial enterprise and the determination of entrepreneurs won’t let that interfere with exploration/colonization of Mars. The only thing that will get in the way will be government interference in the form of excessive red tape and the NIH syndrome!
AD LUNA! AD ARES! AD ASTRA!
Humans can multi task. Luna and Mars will be developing simultaneously. There is trillions on the sidelines waiting for the new next big thing.
Operational space transportation on the scale SpaceX is developing will be that Netscape moment.
As long as we do not do anything stupid like the Antarctica treaty capital will be flowing to the 9 billion acres of unclaimed resources on Luna. Have no doubt, a trillion dollars worth of ice will soon have American bases being dropped on those deposits.
Yes, and even if there is an Antarctica-like treaty, the situation will be analogous to the Army trying to keep gold miners out of the Black Hills because of the treaty with the Sioux in the 1870’s. If commercial development can be made profitable (with launch costs low enough), somebody will do it, whether it is some mining company or a tourist outfit. As I have said before, the experience gained from ISRU on the Moon will be useful for development of Mars colonies.
AD LUNA! AD ARES! AD ASTRA!
I’m tipping late 2030s – perhaps early 2040s… Eric Trump will be an old bloke by then.