Quote from: Slarty1080 on 06/23/2021 07:20 pmQuote from: guckyfan on 06/23/2021 07:20 amQuote from: Darkseraph on 06/23/2021 12:18 amLong post, but to sum it up, I believe SpaceX in the 2030s will inadvertently end up enabling the Bezos vision of the future but the Mars vision will wither to just being at least flags and footprints, at most, supplying some government bases with people and cargo. The amount of people who will have been in space by the end of that decade will likely number in the 1000s. That will sound like a depressing vision to some, but I actually think its great and a giant leap from what we've had for the past 50 years.Agree that SpaceX will enable the vision of Jeff Bezos. But with Mars as a necessary step on that path. Mars is the easiest place to learn how to live in a closed environment with mostly closed circuit habitats. Once we have mastered Mars, the path to expand outward into the asteroid belt and beyond is open, when nuclear propulsion becomes widely available.I have said before: If the interplanetary fairy granted me one wish for a planet to settle, it would look very much like Mars. Hard, but not too hard.At some point there will be a deviation between what the Government want and is prepared to pay for and what SpaceX want and then we will really know what SpaceX is about. I'm convinced that at that point SpaceX will step up to the mark to fill the gap, whatever the cost to the company in order to make humanity a multi-planet species.The ever widening gap between what the government is willing to pay and what SpaceX is willing to do to fill the gap, can be seen in the Commercial Cargo, Commercial Crew, and HLS programmes. No need for future tenses, although much more will indeed be needed, which is why SpaceX is willing to fill up that gap with Starlink revenue. Expect those trends to continue.
Quote from: guckyfan on 06/23/2021 07:20 amQuote from: Darkseraph on 06/23/2021 12:18 amLong post, but to sum it up, I believe SpaceX in the 2030s will inadvertently end up enabling the Bezos vision of the future but the Mars vision will wither to just being at least flags and footprints, at most, supplying some government bases with people and cargo. The amount of people who will have been in space by the end of that decade will likely number in the 1000s. That will sound like a depressing vision to some, but I actually think its great and a giant leap from what we've had for the past 50 years.Agree that SpaceX will enable the vision of Jeff Bezos. But with Mars as a necessary step on that path. Mars is the easiest place to learn how to live in a closed environment with mostly closed circuit habitats. Once we have mastered Mars, the path to expand outward into the asteroid belt and beyond is open, when nuclear propulsion becomes widely available.I have said before: If the interplanetary fairy granted me one wish for a planet to settle, it would look very much like Mars. Hard, but not too hard.At some point there will be a deviation between what the Government want and is prepared to pay for and what SpaceX want and then we will really know what SpaceX is about. I'm convinced that at that point SpaceX will step up to the mark to fill the gap, whatever the cost to the company in order to make humanity a multi-planet species.
Quote from: Darkseraph on 06/23/2021 12:18 amLong post, but to sum it up, I believe SpaceX in the 2030s will inadvertently end up enabling the Bezos vision of the future but the Mars vision will wither to just being at least flags and footprints, at most, supplying some government bases with people and cargo. The amount of people who will have been in space by the end of that decade will likely number in the 1000s. That will sound like a depressing vision to some, but I actually think its great and a giant leap from what we've had for the past 50 years.Agree that SpaceX will enable the vision of Jeff Bezos. But with Mars as a necessary step on that path. Mars is the easiest place to learn how to live in a closed environment with mostly closed circuit habitats. Once we have mastered Mars, the path to expand outward into the asteroid belt and beyond is open, when nuclear propulsion becomes widely available.I have said before: If the interplanetary fairy granted me one wish for a planet to settle, it would look very much like Mars. Hard, but not too hard.
Long post, but to sum it up, I believe SpaceX in the 2030s will inadvertently end up enabling the Bezos vision of the future but the Mars vision will wither to just being at least flags and footprints, at most, supplying some government bases with people and cargo. The amount of people who will have been in space by the end of that decade will likely number in the 1000s. That will sound like a depressing vision to some, but I actually think its great and a giant leap from what we've had for the past 50 years.
All this gives SpaceX a nice steady cash flow for the first half of the 2020s; despite the emergence of Blue Origin's New Glenn and ULA's Vulcan, as well as foreign "Falcon 9" clones in China and Russia that are on the drawing boards.
Musk's marginal propensity to spend money unnecessarily is approximately zero.
EDIT: Starlink may mature into a "common family" of satellites, with a variety of roles including debris removal; providing even more income for SpaceX.
The ability + capability of cheaply testing concepts in space on SpaceX internally funded flights (allowing higher risk than normal) is going to be an increasingly important factor in SpaceX's R&D programs going into the 2020s.
Quote from: RyanC on 07/10/2021 01:18 amThe ability + capability of cheaply testing concepts in space on SpaceX internally funded flights (allowing higher risk than normal) is going to be an increasingly important factor in SpaceX's R&D programs going into the 2020s.I think there's a larger point here. Most of the individual parts of F9, Dragon, and Starlink had been demonstrated at a decent technology readiness level before SpaceX did them. Kerolox gas generators, DC-X landings, capsule reentry, etc. Where SpaceX succeeded was in implementing them all in integrated systems to execute a sustainable business plan.Now they've "caught up" to the engineering frontier, so to speak. The advancements in Starship are based on solid science, and they all theoretically work on paper, but nobody had made such a serious attempt at the engineering before SpaceX. FFSC methalox, skydiver reentry, orbital refueling, catching boosters out of the air. Executing at that lower TRL requires additional skills and longer development, and faces more uncertainty.What happens beyond Starship, when their engineering frontier starts to catch up to the scientific frontier? Either SpaceX starts trying to do more basic science internally to chase after things with even lower TRLs, or their pace of advancement slows while they wait on others to advance the science, or else they refocus their efforts laterally to areas like Martian civil engineering.
Many people here seem to think that there is not much of an external market for Starship (or for that matter the whole Mars project), and maybe that industry has not had the vision and belief in SX's SS to plan to exploit the new capabilities. However there may well be SpaceX staff ready to branch out on their own, with fortunes mad in Tesla stock etc. ust like at Tesla where Straubel has set up a large battery recycling project.These may be small enterprises, but with inside information, and the momentum of working for Elon, key innovations may be exploited. Who will design a system for collecting space debris? who will build a conversion of an SS to a telescope (like Elon mentioned) etc.... Things like this are not on the main SX trajectory, and distract SX from its goals.... Not much... but a start!
I believe the Mars moons are after Mars, and then the Jovian moons, but Venus' atmosphere is good too.
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.
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.
Quote from: colbourne on 10/12/2021 11:37 amYou 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.
