SpaceX in the 2030s

[Eric Hedman]

In the early 2030s is when I think the first human will land on Mars.  I think that unmanned Starships will land on Mars in the second half of this decade.  If the first ones I think it will take several cycles of landings to have the confidence to put humans on them and in the automated insitu propellant production systems sent ahead.  I think the 2030s will be focused on improving Starship and establishing the first small settlement.  I would not expect moving on to other potential places with humans until the 2040s or 2050s at the earliest.  It will take a lot of effort to establish a settlement and then trying to make it less dependent on Earth.  I may not live to see it.  But that would be a pretty good pace of accomplishments.

During this time, the increase in unmanned exploration of everywhere else in the solar system will hopefully continue to grow with more international players public and private getting involved building the groundwork for eventual human missions.

[rakaydos]

You can extract chemicals from the Venus atmosphere, including apparently metals. Plastics would be the way to go for most items.
It would be much easier to have a one way human mission. I am sure there would be volunteers especially amongst the  very old or people with serious life critical illness, to be able to say they have lived on two (or three) planets.

The gravity well, and difficulty of taking off from a cloud base means unfortunately there is not currently much alternative.

I see a potential venus base more like space-austraila. Skilled technical people who have committed sever[e] crimes might have their sentances[sic] reduced to Transportation- effectively a life sentance[sic] doing valuable work.

Australia is a place where naked humans can thrive using just the resources and tech that are available for the picking up as they walk by. The Venusian atmosphere is a lethal gas chamber.

Skilled technical people who have committed severe crimes are the one who can afford a good lawyer and get a plea-bargain. The disadvantaged and uneducated are the ones who are incarcerated.

Then there's the cost of a penal colony. How much does society want to spend per prisoner when it's so cheap to lock someone in a cage on Earth?

Finally, how are you going to get guards and support staff to sign up for permanent exile?

It's a silly fantasy.

At the altitudes where a venus base is being contemplated, one could get by with nothing more than a rebreather and a decontamination shower, and breathable air is a lifting gas.

The plea bargan would BE to transportation. No guards, but any attempt to "escape" would be similar to The Cold Equations, where there is literally no way to survive long enough to reach another biosphere.

As for the cost of maintaining the "prison", it comes out of the colony-building budget. This isnt "build a supermax in a hellhole for the worst of the worst," this is "Staff the colony that's extremely difficult to leave with people we dont want leaving."

[gin455res]

Tesla will have branched out from the single-building power and storage market. They will supply all elements of off-grid community development. This will include sewerage, construction, farming, textiles,  wood and local manufacturing.


With the onward march of AI technology, the de-urbanisation* of cities, more remote working, increased self-sufficiency, and the propensity for human communities to optimise at 150 person settlements; there will be a new golden age of colonisation of previously under utilised land on the earth with high tech clusters of eco-villages.


* driven to some degree by the emergence of an economy dominated by the largely non-local information sector.


The neo-settlement of the earth (and non-centralised technological development of rural areas in poorer nations); and the reawakening of the pioneering spirit coupled with the start of off-world colonisation will be synergistic, both culturally and technologically*.
 
* mainly a trend to more decentralised manufacture.


We will see a consequent increase in the market for satellite broadband. There will be much larger revenues for Starlink than originally envisioned and they will provide the financial resources to accelerate the colonisation of Mars and the Solar System by SpaceX. This trend will continue on into the 2040s and beyond.


(I hope)

[RyanC]

Of course, it is possible at this point that Starship development will fail. For instance, the foam shredding problem of the Shuttle turned out to be unsolvable. It is a possibility that the Starhip heat shild will have similar difficulties. Or, did they solved the sloshing problem during the flip manuever, or they were just lucky with SN 15? Failure of Starship would end SpaceX, as we know it.

Not really.

Consider:

If they fail at the rapid reuse goal for Starship, they can just descope the entire project to Super Heavy Lift (Semi-Reusable); in effect a giant version of Falcon 9 with a reusable booster and expendable upper; capable of pushing >200 tonnes to LEO for a marginal cost of maybe $150 million.

That alone kills SLS and opens up entire economic opportunities -- for example, if 200 tonnes are going to orbit each flight at a cost of $750/kg; it only costs someone $375,000 to put a 500 kg satellite into orbit if they sign onto a Superheavy Expendable rideshare.

EDIT: This is another example of SpaceX's forward thinking securing their economic future. Yes; they're spending a lot of money on Starship/Superheavy -- and yes, some concepts such as the heat shield they have in mind may not work; but the entire system is cheap enough that they can descope to get an immediate minimum viable product (MVP) that's a massive improvement over their current top of the line product; Falcon Heavy.

[wannamoonbase]

Of course, it is possible at this point that Starship development will fail. For instance, the foam shredding problem of the Shuttle turned out to be unsolvable. It is a possibility that the Starhip heat shild will have similar difficulties. Or, did they solved the sloshing problem during the flip manuever, or they were just lucky with SN 15? Failure of Starship would end SpaceX, as we know it.

Not really.

Consider:

If they fail at the rapid reuse goal for Starship, they can just descope the entire project to Super Heavy Lift (Semi-Reusable); in effect a giant version of Falcon 9 with a reusable booster and expendable upper; capable of pushing >200 tonnes to LEO for a marginal cost of maybe $150 million.

That alone kills SLS and opens up entire economic opportunities -- for example, if 200 tonnes are going to orbit each flight at a cost of $750/kg; it only costs someone $375,000 to put a 500 kg satellite into orbit if they sign onto a Superheavy Expendable rideshare.

EDIT: This is another example of SpaceX's forward thinking securing their economic future. Yes; they're spending a lot of money on Starship/Superheavy -- and yes, some concepts such as the heat shield they have in mind may not work; but the entire system is cheap enough that they can descope to get an immediate minimum viable product (MVP) that's a massive improvement over their current top of the line product; Falcon Heavy.

I've thought for awhile that at a minimum the Superheavy will work and be viable.  If you have an oversized F9 that lands back on the chopsticks and avoids ASDS and land processing that part will be much cheaper.

I don't think Starship is likely to fail completely.  It's big enough and capable enough that they can sacrifice payload to accommodate any heatshield and other changes to make it work.  Its a matter of how long that takes.

Can they start carrying and deploying Starlinks as a benefit while they figure it out?  Is there a market for a disposable starship upper stage if you can get 200 tons to orbit?    Yeah you can get 1000 tons into orbit for the cost of one SLS.  1000 tons!

[jketch]

Also the foam shedding problem wasn't unsolvable, not really. It destroyed one shuttle in 135 launches and didn't even occur once during the first 100. If Starship has a 1 in 100 failure rate on landing it would preclude landing crew on the vehicle but the cost savings for reuse would still be immense.

[laszlo]

Also the foam shedding problem wasn't unsolvable, not really. It destroyed one shuttle in 135 launches and didn't even occur once during the first 100. If Starship has a 1 in 100 failure rate on landing it would preclude landing crew on the vehicle but the cost savings for reuse would still be immense.

It occurred constantly, starting in the 80's, just not to the extent that it killed a shuttle and crew until STS-107. There were at least 7 bipod foam losses, as well foam shedding off the rest of the tank on numerous flights.

[JackWhite]

I hope to the 2030s we will see at least two mars expeditions. So much hype and things were done for these missions and that would be satisfying to finally see. Fingers crossed.

[meekGee]

I hope to the 2030s we will see at least two mars expeditions. So much hype and things were done for these missions and that would be satisfying to finally see. Fingers crossed.

Low bar...

[Asteroza]

I hope to the 2030s we will see at least two mars expeditions. So much hype and things were done for these missions and that would be satisfying to finally see. Fingers crossed.

Low bar...

Well it is a martian atmosphere...

[meekGee]

I hope to the 2030s we will see at least two mars expeditions. So much hype and things were done for these missions and that would be satisfying to finally see. Fingers crossed.

Low bar...

Well it is a martian atmosphere...

Wow.  I mean, wow.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

A highly likely item is that SpaceX is building up a significant prowess in high throughput digital RF and Optical communications technology. Such that they will turn that towards a system that is based in the Starlink on-orbit Satellite network. And using RF frequencies or Optical colors that are highly attenuated by Earths atmosphere. To have a very capable system that can track and communicate with thousands of BEO terminals to supply Gbps data rate communications. For a Lunar Station, Lunar Surface Base, Mars Base or other similar non moving (as in traveling from one planetary body to another) multi Gbps throughput communications. For communicating with each Starship out traveling in BEO in cis-lunar or between Earth and Mars or even Earth and somewhere else capable of Gbps communication to each of those Starships.

Everyone else would be customers/subscribers of such a BEO comm network until some other company deploys a competitive system. NASA would still be using their DSN for the older probes but even that network could end being replaced by exo-Earth assets that are tied into the SpaceX BEO network. Such as on or around the Moon or out at Mars.

In the beginning of the 2030's (~mid 2032) Starlink Gen 4 sats would have started their deployment around Earth. Likely the BEO network first hardware could have been deployed 2.5 years earlier (~early 2030) as part of a Gen 3.5 upgrade when all of the 70 degree and SSO orbit sats are started being replaced replaced. It is always possible that scalled down implementation of such a BEO network could end being deployed with Gen 2.5 and Gen 3 sats ~5 years earlier (~late 2025 and ~early 2028).