Dear Moon

[Carl Sagan]

Japanese clothing entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa has paid a lot of money to buy all the seats on the next generation BFR (big effing rocket) for its first trip around the Moon (scheduled for 2023). This is a new and massive spaceship currently being built by Elon Musk's company SpaceX.

Maezawa loves art and wants 6-8 artists to travel with him on the week long trip that will skim the Moon but not land. He's also invited Musk to accompany him. The idea is to create an art project called Dear Moon, that will unite the world, help bring humanity together in the cause of world peace. It fits with the SpaceX mission, which is to create an exciting multiplanetary future for our species, while that remains an option. 

The BFR should also start taking humans to Mars in the 2020s. Here's what it looks like. 

What a future we are heading towards. 

[RamNut]

I bet they'll even be able to print out their return tickets at home, and buy duty free booze on board. 

[Sith Happens]

Won't happen.

Maybe 2033.

 

[Stive Pesley]

I hope it happens just so as to finally shut up the 'moon-landing was fake' and flat earther conspiracy lot ?

[Carl Sagan]

5 hours ago, Paul71 said:

Won't happen.

Maybe 2033.

 

Elon said this is the schedule if everything goes well. But, he made the point that it was only ten years ago that SpaceX attempted their fourth launch of the Falcon1 rocket. He'd run out of money with the three failed previous launches. Somehow he cobbled together enough for a fourth and it became the first commercial company to launch into orbit, winning them a NASA contract that saved them. 

Now, a decade later, they have the Falcon Heavy which is twice as powerful as any other rocket in existence, and they dominate the space launch business. They have innovated and disrupted at an incredible rate. This new rocket is huge - it will carry many tens of astronauts at a time, but they expect start testing next year so many different bits are already made. 

That said, it's a really tough ask and I'd say 2024/2025. That still allows them to send the spaceship to Mars in the 2026 launch window, and Mars is really the goal. Otherwise it's not until 2028.

[McRainy]

2 minutes ago, Carl Sagan said:

Mars is really the goal.

What's the point of going to Mars?

 

[Sith Happens]

3 minutes ago, Carl Sagan said:

Elon said this is the schedule if everything goes well. But, he made the point that it was only ten years ago that SpaceX attempted their fourth launch of the Falcon1 rocket. He'd run out of money with the three failed previous launches. Somehow he cobbled together enough for a fourth and it became the first commercial company to launch into orbit, winning them a NASA contract that saved them. 

Now, a decade later, they have the Falcon Heavy which is twice as powerful as any other rocket in existence, and they dominate the space launch business. They have innovated and disrupted at an incredible rate. This new rocket is huge - it will carry many tens of astronauts at a time, but they expect start testing next year so many different bits are already made. 

That said, it's a really tough ask and I'd say 2024/2025. That still allows them to send the spaceship to Mars in the 2026 launch window, and Mars is really the goal. Otherwise it's not until 2028.

I hope it happens, just seems ambitious. Mind you he might run of money earlier if he continues calling people child rapists without evidence.

[Carl Sagan]

34 minutes ago, Lambchop said:

What's the point of going to Mars?

It makes the future more exciting than not going. Also, SpaceX plans a colony of a million people by the end of the century as a backup to civilization on Earth, in case we blow ourselves up here. 

The ultimate goal is to become multiplanetary, living across the solar system and spreading out to the stars. If you consider the the trillions of humans capable of living good lives in such a future, it's a moral imperative to work to create it.

[Carl Sagan]

37 minutes ago, Paul71 said:

I hope it happens, just seems ambitious. Mind you he might run of money earlier if he continues calling people child rapists without evidence.

Weirdly stupid behaviour on his part.

But setting ambitious goals helps achieve them. The lack of ambition regarding space in the UK depresses me. Last week we launched a satellite on an Indian rocket! Instead of having our own launch capability. It's embarrassing. 

[McRainy]

11 minutes ago, Carl Sagan said:

 it's a moral imperative to work to create it.

I'd say that was highly questionable whilst we can't live sustainably on this planet. 

[Carl Sagan]

24 minutes ago, Lambchop said:

I'd say that was highly questionable whilst we can't live sustainably on this planet. 

I suppose it's a trolley bus problem. Do you allow a trillion people to be killed if the tram stays on the tracks, or do you divert it so that one person dies instead? Why should it matter that those trillion lives are in the future?

If the window to create a spacefaring civilization is small and there's no future at all for humanity unless we do it now, then that reinforces the urgency.

It can be argued that no one has done more than Musk to live sustainably on this planet too. Tesla has single handedly shifted the entire global automotive industry towards electric vehicles. Just as the purpose of SpaceX is to create a colony on Mars, the purpose of Tesla was to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport and it has succeeded.

His company solar city (now rolled into Tesla) was the biggest supplier of solar panels in America.

[jono]

7 hours ago, RamNut said:

I bet they'll even be able to print out their return tickets at home, and buy duty free booze on board. 

I’ll buy my sandwiches and crisps in Boots at the space port. The price they sell Pringles for onboard will be sky high. 

[Parsnip]

Meanwhile in Africa...

[McRainy]

14 minutes ago, Carl Sagan said:

I suppose it's a trolley bus problem. 

Not really, because you're equating the hypothetical with the actual. I find it difficult to see space as a priority when millions are dying now. It feels to me like an evasion of responsibility on a grand scale, and the propect of humans spreading their destructive behaviour across the galaxy doesn't exactly fill me with hope. 

[Carl Sagan]

1 hour ago, Lambchop said:

Not really, because you're equating the hypothetical with the actual. I find it difficult to see space as a priority when millions are dying now. It feels to me like an evasion of responsibility on a grand scale, and the propect of humans spreading their destructive behaviour across the galaxy doesn't exactly fill me with hope. 

We have to agree to differ there.I would say many moral philosophers are strongly in favour of my argument - for instance, it's the core of the effective altruism movement whih advocates going multiplanetary above all other contributions we could make.

My personal perspective reinforces it because from a theoretical physics point of view the concepts of past, present and future disappear. So, I think the future lives are not hypothetical but are as real as yours or mine. But that's not a standard justification.

[Wolfie]

2 hours ago, Lambchop said:

What's the point of going to Mars?

 

What was the point of going to the moon?.

A. Nothing more than a grand peeing contest between USA and USSR?

B. A grand achievement which brought about massive technologolical challenges and advances to overcome them, whilst firing the imaginations for a new generation of scientists - without which, we wouldn't have many of the things we now take for granted.

Take your pick

[Dale The Ram]

[ThePrisoner]

2 hours ago, Lambchop said:

What's the point of going to Mars?

 

For pleasure you can’t measure. 

[Smyth_18]

How does an astronaut get their baby to sleep?

They rocket.

 

(I just made this up. Are you watching Penguin? You will notice me one day!)

[Highgate]

1 hour ago, Lambchop said:

Not really, because you're equating the hypothetical with the actual. I find it difficult to see space as a priority when millions are dying now. It feels to me like an evasion of responsibility on a grand scale, and the propect of humans spreading their destructive behaviour across the galaxy doesn't exactly fill me with hope. 

While I think you are correct that Earth and the people on it should of course be the priority, it seems to me that we could scarcely spend money more productively than on astronomy/astrophysics and space exploration, all the while having the eventual goal of inhabiting other planets/moons. 

Earth won't be habitable for ever, and if we are going to survive as a species we are going to have to spread our wings so to speak.  Our destructive behaviour shouldn't be too damaging if we are limiting our colonies to previously lifeless locations.  It's by engaging in such projects that we will increase our technological expertise which if applied correctly can be of enormous benefit to humanity here on Earth.