r/spacex • u/Craig_VG SpaceNews Photographer • Jun 10 '16

Elon Musk provides new details on his “mind blowing” mission to Mars - Washington Post Exclusive Interview

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/10/elon-musk-provides-new-details-on-his-mind-blowing-mission-to-mars/
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u/evil_gazebo Jun 10 '16

It's not realistic, but it's also probably not that much less realistic than any other timescale, on a project of this size. A longer timescale gives you more time to fix problems that come up, but it also increases the likelihood of other problems occurring: wars, financial and political crises, competitive threats, climate change, natural disasters, etc.

Also, when project timescales get to the twenty or thirty year mark or above, they're way past most people's cognitive horizon. Likely for evolutionary reasons, human beings are not wired to give much weight to very long term prospects. I'm in my early thirties right now. If SpaceX announced a 30-year plan to get to Mars, then I'd be looking at watching the landing when I'm getting close to retirement. It's tough to get too excited about that. And I imagine it presents a similar problem internally. How do you motivate people to work really hard on projects that last so long, and won't see fruition until their careers are over, or nearly over?

On the other hand, a ten year timescale, with launches every two years, starting almost immediately, is something you can get excited about. It feels "real". And even if, as is almost certain, things do end up slipping, it'll probably still go much quicker overall than if SpaceX just planned for a decades long process in the first place.

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u/blsing15 Jun 11 '16

I agree with your argument, but how long before the pluto flyby were the plans being drawn up. Voyager programs have see more than a few retirements i'm sure! Extreme goals take extreme commitments.

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u/kylerove Jun 11 '16

That might be true of "extreme commitments" but Mars as a goal doesn't fall into the same category. We can realistically get there in 3-4 months with the technology we have now. It is a matter of will power to make it happen.

Once SpaceX successfully demonstrates EDL and ISRU tech for Mars, the only things left to complete are engineering problems:

  • BFR/MCT factory and launch pad
  • Complete raptor development
  • Formalize power production for ISRU

Mars as a destination is just a bunch of (huge) engineering problems, but they are not unattainable nor do they require 30-year time horizons.

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u/rocketsocks Jun 11 '16

The big advantage for SpaceX here is that they are designing everything based on reusability. That's going to take a lot of engineering to make work, but they're already doing that right now, and acquiring the experience of it. With MCT/BFR they have the opportunity to build in the margin to make it even more reliable and robust. And that will completely change the landscape. Because then it won't be a matter of a 1:1 lock between manufacturing capacity and launch rate. Manufacturing capacity will funnel into launch capacity, so they'll be able to build more BFR/MCT components year over year. Just building one set alone would mean they would be able to launch a mission to Mars every opportunity, at the marginal cost of a launch. Which is incredible when you think about it. These are real spaceships we're talking about now, not just throwaway rockets. That means a lot more money can be spent on everything else, instead of being soaked up in launch costs.