Which company will achieve her goals before, SpaceX or Blue Origin?

[TrevorMonty]

For the Elon fans that think colonizing Mars is good idea because earth is dying should watch latest "Love Death & Robots" series Exit Stragetic episode on Netflix.

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[chopsticks]

For the Elon fans that think colonizing Mars is good idea because earth is dying should watch latest "Love Death & Robots" series Exit Stragetic episode on Netflix.

Sent from my SM-A528B using Tapatalk

I understand that the idea is not to colonize Mars "because earth is dying" but to give people another option. I don't think that Mars is necessarily the end goal anyways, he just mentioned eventually going interstellar as well in the EA video.

[Coastal Ron]

For the Elon fans that think colonizing Mars is good idea because earth is dying should watch latest "Love Death & Robots" series Exit Stragetic episode on Netflix.

Sent from my SM-A528B using Tapatalk

I understand that the idea is not to colonize Mars "because earth is dying" but to give people another option.

No, that is not right either.

Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars so that humanity is multi-planetary. In doing so if something happens to Earth, humanity could still survive.

I don't think that Mars is necessarily the end goal anyways, he just mentioned eventually going interstellar as well in the EA video.

From the beginning Elon Musk has said that he wants to help humanity become multi-planetary, STARTING with colonizing Mars. And that is because Mars appears to be the location in our solar system that would be the least difficult to colonize.

I think it is important to point out, at least for this thread, that colonization does not imply complete independence from Earth. Independence from Earth is a goal that Elon Musk has, but no one knows how that can be achieved, so the near-term goal is just colonization.

As to what Blue Origin is planning, their current tagline is "We're committed to building a road to space so our children can build the future", which is kind of nebulous since one could say we already have a "road to space", but it's not a cheap road to use.

Bottom line, both companies have goals that don't have defined completion points, which means there is no way to gauge who is achieving their goals first - or at all. 

[chopsticks]

For the Elon fans that think colonizing Mars is good idea because earth is dying should watch latest "Love Death & Robots" series Exit Stragetic episode on Netflix.

Sent from my SM-A528B using Tapatalk

I understand that the idea is not to colonize Mars "because earth is dying" but to give people another option.

No, that is not right either.

Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars so that humanity is multi-planetary. In doing so if something happens to Earth, humanity could still survive.

Uh, that's pretty much what I said, right? Maybe I should have said *more options instead. Anyways, what you said is basically what I was trying to say as well. I'm just not as articulate

With Blue, it certainly seems more nebulous than what SpaceX or Elon Musk puts out there. Perhaps it could partly be due to the culture of secrecy that Blue Origin seems to employ.

One thing that caught my attention in the last Tim Dodd walk around at Starbase is that Elon Musk stated the end goal (becoming multiplanetary), BUT put milestones down in order to get there. The big one (at least to Mr. Musk) is fully and rapidly reusable rockets, an absolute must to him. Have we seen similar goals put forth by Blue Origin or Jeff Bezos in the way of their goal of "a road to space"?

[LouScheffer]

Asking people to just go read other papers isn't really conversation, its trying to shut things down.

But asking people to read other papers is the heart of scientific conversation, and I think should be respected here.  You have a hypothesis, that Mars cannot be terraformed in any reasonable amount of time, and have presented your arguments.  Other people have thought about this problem in detail, come to a different conclusion, and written their arguments down, in detail.  At this point you are welcome to refute their arguments (such as "In stage 4, they assume X, but this cannot be because....").   This is how science progresses - you are welcome to come to a different conclusion, but you need to read, and reference, and reply to existing arguments before your arguments can be taken seriously.

Of course that is science, and this is a mere forum.  But you want us here to read your arguments and reply to them.  But in turn, you should be willing to read the arguments of others, and reply to them.   Asking others to do the work, read the papers, and summarize them here, seems unfair.   You should be willing to read the papers that deal with the exact topic you are talking about.

[edzieba]

Uh, that's pretty much what I said, right?

No, it's the difference between 'lets create an off-site backup' and 'my house just burnt down, how do I backup the data I just lost?'. One is preventative maintenance, the other is (terminally late) crisis response.

[su27k]

For the Elon fans that think colonizing Mars is good idea because earth is dying should watch latest "Love Death & Robots" series Exit Stragetic episode on Netflix.

Earth is not dying, even the worst case scenario in IPCC report has precedence in Earth's long history, the ecosystem can adapt.

Human civilization will be fine too, if we're allowed to adapt, to build at very large scale and to use every technology at our disposal. There're plenty of energy and material on Earth for everyone, if we're freed from the legal and NIMBY constraints so that they can be utilized to the fullest. And that doesn't even include the resource and energy from space, which is basically unlimited and can be tapped as a side benefit of the technology developed to colonize Mars.

So this stupid episode should have no place in any of the discussion on this forum.

[hkultala]

Will SpaceX make it to Mars before Blue manages to create a CisLunar economy?

The goal of SpaceX is not to "make it to mars". It is to create a self-sustaining Mars colony.

Which I think they will fail at trying to do. I just don't see why anybody would really want to live at Mars, tight caves with very little living space, bad food, and internet connection with minutes of lag.

Many people will initially want to go to mars, but most of those people will want to come back on the next synod, when life gets boring and miserable.

So I think spaceX will fail in it's grand goal, not because of technical reasons, but because of social/psychological reasons.

[Zed_Noir]

Will SpaceX make it to Mars before Blue manages to create a CisLunar economy?

The goal of SpaceX is not to "make it to mars". It is to create a self-sustaining Mars colony.

Which I think they will fail at trying to do. I just don't see why anybody would really want to live at Mars, tight caves with very little living space, bad food, and internet connection with minutes of lag.
<snip>

Sounds like the life of folks wearing Dolphins badges. Just with better food and no internet connection.

[grondilu]

Many people will initially want to go to mars, but most of those people will want to come back on the next synod, when life gets boring and miserable.

To be fair, this would not necessarily stop the whole project.  A rotating crew might be sustained until comfort levels become adequate for permanent residency.

I, for one, think it is technically doable.  It's just that it would require such a tremendous effort that it's essentially a political issue, as many people will not agree to contribute, so they would have to be forced to, at least financially.

[spacenut]

I believe it will take years of crew rotations to get a viable Mars colony going.  Fuel, food, power, and eventually mining and manufacturing will have to get started.  Fuel first for return trips to earth.  Food next because if people stay at least one synod, fresh food would be comforting while building the colony.  Lots of power will be needed for fuel and food processing as well as eventual mining and manufacturing.  Fertilizers will have to be made using limited nitrogen.  Mining will have to eventually get started to manufacture metals for construction of more habitats, as well as water mining. 

However, getting to and returning from Mars will have to be done in the least expensive way possible.  Musk thinks it will be Starship/Superheavy that can achieve this. 

[gaballard]

This is why I don’t go here anymore. You guys are so totally clueless as to anything outside this infinitely narrow subject. With exceptions of course! But it’s not a place that’s compassionate, aware, or empathetic.

[meekGee]

This is all gonna be DOA if no one wants to live in a Musk-run colony. He’s hell bent on destroying his brand at the moment.

...If you want a Tesla, you have to wait about 2 years.  That is a huge demand.  ...

Back in the Warsaw Pact days, my cousin back in Hungary had to wait 5 years between buying a Lada and taking delivery. Does that make Ladas better than Teslas?

Communism produced what the bureaucrats thought people needed, not reality.  There were shortages of everything under communism.  Too much government control.  Tesla has high demand.  There are plenty of other cars out there to buy in a capitalist society.  Plenty of choices.  A lot of people want Teslas because of their range and quaility above other electric cars. 

Seems to me that the wait is a result of Tesla's inability to scale up their manufacturing and sales processes to the level of established manufacturers. For example, Ford's truck sales alone were as much as Tesla's worldwide sales for 2021. For total sales,  Ford alone sold some 60% more vehicles in Q4 2021 than Tesla. They started Q1 2022 with as many vehicles on dealers' lots as Tesla sold in the previous quarter, allowing customers to walk in, test drive and drive home with a vehicle instead of waiting 2 years. At the same time, Ford's December 2021 retail EV sales are up almost 140% over the previous year putting them in the #2 EV spot after Tesla. Then there's all the other vehicle manufacturers, domestic and international.

The 2-year wait for a Tesla which costs more than the US median income is as unsustainable as the 10-year wait for the tens-of-billions of dollars SLS. The vast bulk of customers will go to the companies that can actually deliver a product today, rather than after their newborn learns to walk and talk. It's ironic that Old Cars is getting set to do to Tesla what SpaceX did to Old Space with the F9. I think that it may be for a similar reason - Musk has gotten used to dealing with a captive customer base in a subsidized market with little or no competition and now the competition is arriving as Old Car finishes its design and tooling up process for EV. They have the manufacturing and sales capacity in place and a reputation as providers of family cars for over a century in some cases. All they needed was the EV. Tesla has the EV design and engineering. They need everything else and are still struggling.

Tesla is in danger of becoming Blackberry as the world moves toward iPhones and Androids and that is what is going to damage Musk's brand, regardless of his politics. Instead of Tony Stark he'd be Giovanni Agnelli with a rocket hobby. While Starlink will help with the perception problem, it too is very susceptible to targeting by consumer-savvy competitors (such as a certain guy who is pretty slow as a rocketeer but has shown that he can quickly fulfill customers' needs for physical objects and data).

I think that it's a real possibility that neither company will achieve its lofty goals That SpaceX will turn into an Old Space company selling launch services except with re-usable rockets, Blue Origin will add the space-based internet to the AWS portfolio and Mars settlements and O'Neill cylinders will dry up and blow away as the world becomes pre-occupied with other more immediate issues. Not what I hope for, but a real possibility.

That last paragraph...  It's not what you hope for, but you're somehow able to ignore every development of the last few years to come up with it.  (And of course Tywin likes it...) - people see what they want to see.

SpaceX is doing everything exactly contrary to turning into an old-Space service provider, throwing everything behind Starship and Starlink, no holds barred.
BO is falling further behind with Kuiper and by the time they get a constellation up there it'll be battling Starlink v3 (or a very mature Starlink v2), which will be using Starship to launch - so will be hugely disadvantaged. Whether AWS will be willing to take one for the team and avoid using Starlink at that point is TBD.

But you're also looking at Tesla and seeing failure, so what can I say...

[laszlo]

I think that it's a real possibility that neither company will achieve its lofty goals That SpaceX will turn into an Old Space company selling launch services except with re-usable rockets, Blue Origin will add the space-based internet to the AWS portfolio and Mars settlements and O'Neill cylinders will dry up and blow away as the world becomes pre-occupied with other more immediate issues. Not what I hope for, but a real possibility.

That last paragraph...  It's not what you hope for, but you're somehow able to ignore every development of the last few years to come up with it.  (And of course Tywin likes it...) - people see what they want to see.

SpaceX is doing everything exactly contrary to turning into an old-Space service provider, throwing everything behind Starship and Starlink, no holds barred.
BO is falling further behind with Kuiper and by the time they get a constellation up there it'll be battling Starlink v3 (or a very mature Starlink v2), which will be using Starship to launch - so will be hugely disadvantaged. Whether AWS will be willing to take one for the team and avoid using Starlink at that point is TBD.

But you're also looking at Tesla and seeing failure, so what can I say...

First, a consumer product company has one job - to sell as much of its product to as many customers as quickly as possible. A 2-year wait for delivery is a failure in that case, whether it's EVs, ice cream or pet food. A customer who needs something right now will go elsewhere if there is an alternative, even if it's not as good as the delayed product. That's the failure I'm seeing with Tesla. If they don't get it fixed before the competition finishes bringing their resources online, Tesla will become a historical footnote.

Second, my last paragraph is not a prediction of what will actually happen, it's a discussion of a possibility. You're right, people see what they want to see and the many of the people here don't want to see that there is a chance, however small, of things failing. I'm only bringing up that possibility as part of the answer to the original question in this thread.

So yes, having either SpaceX or Blue Origin or both completely fail to achieve their goals is unlikely. But it is one of the possibilities.

[high road]

Will SpaceX make it to Mars before Blue manages to create a CisLunar economy?

Tywin, it's option#3: SpaceX is already doing more in CisLunar space than anyone else, including BO.

I don't know if you can call it "establishing a CisLunar economy", but:

- Manned flights to LEO (regular basis, for profit)

- Manned flights around the moon (sold, planned, for profit)

- Mega constellation (operating)

- Lunar surface mission (planned, government contract)

- Reusable manned vehicle capable of supporting such activities (being built)

Hi Meekgee, but SpaceX goal is not CisLunar is Mars...

And Blue has contracted to LEO, a few now, Eutelsat, etc...

They have a government contract for an LEO crew Station.

They are in a fight for Lander's contract for the Moon, now.

They have a contract for sending the Kuiper constellation to LEO.

And reusable vehicles are almost ready and in the future may be 100% reusable.

The goals of Blue are close, I think so.

So Blue gets to have the goals achieved sign if it does what others (will) have done bdfore, but SpaceX needs to land on Mars?

Blue has a contract to design a space station, not for building it yet. Remember what happened when they got funded to design a lunar lander?

And their rocket will be 'almost ready', let alone reusable, for quite some time yet.

[meekGee]

[deleted]

Goals.

There are two types of goals.
- Eventual goals, such as "Make humanity multi planetary" and "Move Earth's industry to space".
- Mid-term goals, such as "Make Mars self-sustainable" and "establish a self-sufficient colony in space"
- Near-term goals, such as "Establish a colony on Mars" and ""

And this is BO's biggest problem.  The missing link.

SpaceX can aim to have a settlement on Mars that has a growing population, and a declining dependence on Earth import - and that's a viable path from here to there. It starts by landing crews that are entirely dependent on Earth supplies, and then gradually weaning them off by creating ISRU power, ISRU Water, ISRU Methane/Oxygen, some food, some raw materials, etc.  It's not simple but it's a path. There's plenty of motivation (because of the transfer time) and plenty of accessible resources.

BO has a real problem with any of that. First of all, they don't even have a vehicle in the right class. NG certainly ain't it.
Second, even when one day they have a NA or equivalent, what next? The "Weaning" path is a lot more difficult, and the motivation for it is lower.  It's hard to justify ISRU when starships (or an eventual BO equivalent) are hopping in and out on a regular basis for a pretty reasonable cost.

And if you can't get past the first stage, your long term plans just can't get started.

[zubenelgenubi: Off-topic referenced posts deleted.]

[zubenelgenubi]

Moderator:
Electric vehicle manufacture and sales metrics are interesting and on-topic for an automotive enthusiasts' forum. 🛺 🚗

Not here.

22 posts trimmed, including the one claiming that educating oneself about the (on-topic) topic being debated by reading 📚 pertinent publications stifles informed, productive debate.  I've read the same here from this member before. 😱

[Vahe231991]

[deleted]

Goals.

There are two types of goals.
- Eventual goals, such as "Make humanity multi planetary" and "Move Earth's industry to space".
- Mid-term goals, such as "Make Mars self-sustainable" and "establish a self-sufficient colony in space"
- Near-term goals, such as "Establish a colony on Mars" and ""

And this is BO's biggest problem.  The missing link.

SpaceX can aim to have a settlement on Mars that has a growing population, and a declining dependence on Earth import - and that's a viable path from here to there. It starts by landing crews that are entirely dependent on Earth supplies, and then gradually weaning them off by creating ISRU power, ISRU Water, ISRU Methane/Oxygen, some food, some raw materials, etc.  It's not simple but it's a path. There's plenty of motivation (because of the transfer time) and plenty of accessible resources.

The UN could determine that SpaceX is falling afoul of UN laws forbidding sovereignty by countries over any extraterrestrial bodies by contemplating human colonies on Mars, in which case the US would have jurisdiction over Mars colonies set up by SpaceX.

[Robotbeat]

Doubt it. In fact, by definition it’s the opposite. US control would imply colonization and signatory control over celestial bodies, which is forbidden. Some theoretical independent Mars is, by definition, not colonization and not control by a signatory country.

[Vahe231991]

Doubt it. In fact, by definition it’s the opposite. US control would imply colonization and signatory control over celestial bodies, which is forbidden. Some theoretical independent Mars is, by definition, not colonization and not control by a signatory country.

US control over Mars if colonies on the planet were built could theoretically become the first successful instance of any country achieving world domination.