Starship and a Human city on Mars

[Stive Pesley]

57 minutes ago, 86 Hair Islands said:

Also disappointing that rather than calmly reflecting on how what he's trying to do has been 'inverted' and why, he's not instead reacted by labelling all his detractors nonces.

Poor show really. 

Yes. I mean - has he perhaps considered buying a major social media application and then flailing around trying to change it so that no one is allowed to say anything bad about him? Just a thought

[Archied]

17 hours ago, 86 Hair Islands said:

Also disappointing that rather than calmly reflecting on how what he's trying to do has been 'inverted' and why, he's not instead reacted by labelling all his detractors nonces.

Poor show really. 

If you mean bill perhaps the old people in glass houses thing might hold him back while maxwell is alive 

[Carl Sagan]

Another milestone passed with the "static fire" of the SuperHeavy booster:

This is the most powerful rocket firing in history. The booster (the first stage) has 33 Raptor engines. Before the test SpaceX turned one off as it wasn't responding properly and in the test itself, one more didn't fire. So this saw 31 of the engines firing together. Starship, built to be rapidly reusable (five launches a day), has a lot of redundancy. This should comfortably lift it to orbit. We really are looking at the full orbital flight test, with Starship (the second stage) stacked atop this booster, by the end of March.

[Anag Ram]

48 minutes ago, Carl Sagan said:

Another milestone passed with the "static fire" of the SuperHeavy booster:

This is the most powerful rocket firing in history. The booster (the first stage) has 33 Raptor engines. Before the test SpaceX turned one off as it wasn't responding properly and in the test itself, one more didn't fire. So this saw 31 of the engines firing together. Starship, built to be rapidly reusable (five launches a day), has a lot of redundancy. This should comfortably lift it to orbit. We really are looking at the full orbital flight test, with Starship (the second stage) stacked atop this booster, by the end of March.

So what?

 

It’s not exactly rocket science 

 

[Comrade 86]

Anyone else catch this ad during the Superbowl? No response from Musk as yet.

 

[Archied]

On 13/02/2023 at 17:45, 86 Hair Islands said:

Anyone else catch this ad during the Superbowl? No response from Musk as yet.

 

What’s the fuss , I can do that kind of shxt without a Tesla 

[Comrade 86]

20 minutes ago, Archied said:

What’s the fuss , I can do that kind of shxt without a Tesla 

I know someone who agrees with you...

"It's too dangerous, you can't have a person driving a two-tonne death machine." "It would be like an elevator," Musk said. "They used to have elevator operators, and then we developed some simple circuitry to have elevators just automatically come to the floor that you're at.

The car is going to be just like that."

[Carl Sagan]

Amazing drone footage of the Booster 7 (the lower stage) static fire. The most powerful rocket ignition in history. Imagine sitting in your Starship atop that to begin your journey to another planet.

 

[Ramarena]

Looks like Branson is suspending his project and jettisoning 85% of staff from Virgin Orbit after their failed launch.

[Ram-Alf]

52 minutes ago, Ramarena said:

Looks like Branson is suspending his project and jettisoning 85% of staff from Virgin Orbit after their failed launch.

I was told Branson invited all out for a meal, but they all failed to turn up for the lunch

[Carl Sagan]

22 hours ago, Ramarena said:

Looks like Branson is suspending his project and jettisoning 85% of staff from Virgin Orbit after their failed launch.

Virgin Orbit has indeed gone under. Virgin Galactic will likely go the same way. It's a question of scale and both those companies are completely unscalable. Virgin Orbit was launching a handful of small satellites at a time, but it's probably one-tenth the price to launch them on SpaceX's Falcon9 instead. And, when Starship is operational, it will become one-thousandth of the price.

In terms of carrying people into space, Virgin Galactic has only one space plane which hasn't flown for over a year because the flight (with Branson on) went quite badly wrong and it doesn't even reach space officially, and carries 6 people. NASA and the American government have so far spent $50 billion on the SLS (Space Launch System) disposable rocket to take 4 astronauts close to the Moon, but then they have to transfer into the Starship to actually land on it. 

SpaceX has spent maybe $10 billion on the Starship, but it will take 100 astronauts at a time, is fully reusable and can take them anywhere in the solar system. As well as carrying vast amounts of cargo into space, for instance for huge future space stations. And they will make one a week, whereas it takes NASA/Boeing 2 or 3 years to make one SLS rocket, which they throw away afterwards instead of reusing. After a couple of years, SpaceX will have 100 Starships, each of which can fly a few times a day.

This is why it's so transformational and disruptive.

The first Starship Orbital Flight test is currently slated for 20th April. someone's made a decent animation:

 

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

I think that if we concentrate a bit more on maintaining the place we currently live, then we may not need to bother with these 'save humanity and continue civilisation' narcissistic vanity projects for billionaires.  We've been going on about life on Mars since David Bowie was singing about 50 years ago.

 

[Carl Sagan]

36 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

I think that if we concentrate a bit more on maintaining the place we currently live, then we may not need to bother with these 'save humanity and continue civilisation' narcissistic vanity projects for billionaires.  We've been going on about life on Mars since David Bowie was singing about 50 years ago.

This is the most unfathomable argument. Unusually for an industry, the space industry is able to contribute massively to our understanding and monitoring and improving life on Earth. Going into space is perhaps the biggest thing to aid out understanding and ability to improve things on Earth.

Idiots bang on about "why do we spend money on space when we should be spending it to improve Earth?" without asking the same question about *anything* else: why do spend money on football, or videogames, or making films? It really is unfathomable. Especially when not going into space is the one strategy 100% guaranteed to lead to Humanity's extinction.

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

3 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

This is the most unfathomable argument. Unusually for an industry, the space industry is able to contribute massively to our understanding and monitoring and improving life on Earth. Going into space is perhaps the biggest thing to aid out understanding and ability to improve things on Earth.

Idiots bang on about "why do we spend money on space when we should be spending it to improve Earth?" without asking the same question about *anything* else: why do spend money on football, or videogames, or making films? It really is unfathomable. Especially when not going into space is the one strategy 100% guaranteed to lead to Humanity's extinction.

Singularly looking after and protecting healthy bee populations  would do more for humanity than spending billions on space.  Only an idiot would suggest otherwise if we're going down that road.

[Carl Sagan]

2 hours ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

Singularly looking after and protecting healthy bee populations  would do more for humanity than spending billions on space.  Only an idiot would suggest otherwise if we're going down that road.

This is why I have become so exasperated. Can people really not see it is *only* by operating in space we are able to properly measure the world and improve it? It's only by going into space that we can assess ice coverage and depth, sea level rise and fall, determine what is happening at all levels of the atmosphere, assess forestry coverage and a million other things. In fact *billions* of other things, helping us identify what is happening and address it for good.

Then, it also allows us to do things such as identify asteroids that are potential hazards to civilization and potentially develop techniques to divert them, or observe space weather and safeguard global infrastructure in the event of Earth-directed emissions from the Sun. And, should the worst happen and something like a gamma ray burst wipes out life on Earth, but we have suffiecient Humans off planet, we can go on as a species and still  spread intelligence, culture, life, and the ability to do good throughout the Cosmos. What a win-win!

Oh but no, "let's not do any of that and examine bee populations instead". It beggars belief.

Though happily bees do have an interesting connection with Mars, in that Ray Bradbury used them on the Red Planet in his Martian Chronicles book series. And I hope that, in the future, bees will thrive on Mars as well as on Earth, polinating plants and making honey - at first in giant domes, but later on a terraformed world.

Edited April 1, 2023 by Carl Sagan

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

25 minutes ago, Carl Sagan said:

This is why I have become so exasperated. Can people really not see it is *only* by operating in space we are able to properly measure the world and improve it? It's only by going into space that we can assess ice coverage and depth, sea level rise and fall, determine what is happening at all levels of the atmosphere, assess forestry coverage and a million other things. In fact *billions* of other things, helping us identify what is happening and address it for good.

Then, it also allows us to do things such as identify asteroids that are potential hazards to civilization and potentially develop techniques to divert them, or observe space weather and safeguard global infrastructure in the event of Earth-directed emissions from the Sun. And, should the worst happen and something like a gamma ray burst wipes out life on Earth, but we have suffiecient Humans off planet, we can go on as a species and still  spread intelligence, culture, life, and the ability to do good throughout the Cosmos. What a win-win!

Oh but no, "let's not do any of that and examine bee populations instead". It beggars belief.

Though happily bees do have an interesting connection with Mars, in that Ray Bradbury used them on the Red Planet in his Martian Chronicles book series. And I hope that, in the future, bees will thrive on Mars as well as on Earth, polinating plants and making honey - at first in giant domes, but later on a terraformed world.

I've been watching footage from space showing deforestation in Borneo for about twenty years.  It get's bigger each time.  I can do without any more photos at a cost of billions.  The lack of Orang-utans is the clue.  The Earth seems to have survived adequately for a fair while with it's own natural shield and if the Sun decides it's had enough ain't no shield stopping it anyhow.  If humans are not intelligent and cultured enough to look after this place why would they spread good throughout the cosmos.  A total pipe dream anyway as it would be last billionaire on the spaceship first.  I'll stick with Bees thanks.  An irrelevance too you maybe but without them we all starve.  

[TigerTedd]

34 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

I've been watching footage from space showing deforestation in Borneo for about twenty years.  It get's bigger each time.  I can do without any more photos at a cost of billions.  The lack of Orang-utans is the clue.  The Earth seems to have survived adequately for a fair while with it's own natural shield and if the Sun decides it's had enough ain't no shield stopping it anyhow.  If humans are not intelligent and cultured enough to look after this place why would they spread good throughout the cosmos.  A total pipe dream anyway as it would be last billionaire on the spaceship first.  I'll stick with Bees thanks.  An irrelevance too you maybe but without them we all starve.  

My god, you’ve missed the mark so much you’re probably closer to circumnavigating the globe and hitting it from the other direction. let me break it down:

If the sun decides it’s had enough, we’re all screwed anyway. But not if some of us are off world. That’s entirely the point. And it’s not if, it’s when. The sun will eventually explode. That’s what Carl is saying, that’s what Carl is saying, we are absolutely 100% guaranteed to all die if we stay on the planet earth. Not for millions and millions of years, but it absolutely will happen, if we can’t find a way to be a multi planetary species. 

Why would we spread good throughout the cosmos? Fair point. We are essentially a virus. We should probably just all top ourselves now for the good of the universe. Or maybe we can live in a fantasy world, be super naive and hope for something better from humanity. Maybe we can learn from our mistakes and become a force for good in the universe.

First billionaire on the ship. Literally exactly what musk is trying to avoid. He’s trying to make space travel as accessible as air travel by making it scalable and reusable.

Stick with the bees. Absolutely, it’s an important point. But it’s not necessarily Elon’s responsibility to try to fix everything. Carl says space travel is the most important thing. You could say something else is more important right now, and you might be right, but it doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. There are many important and concerning things that threaten our existence. The lack of bees is one, over farming of cows is another, etc etc. there are also many billionaires in the world. Why not petition one of the many that are swanning around on their yachts not doing much to save the bees. Space travel May be a billionaires’ play thing, but at least in the case of Musk there is an end game which theoretically benefits mankind. Unlike the Besos’s and Branson’s of the world where it really is just a vanity project with no real accessible outcomes.

One final thought: in the 60s people thought nasa was a waste of money, why bother going to space, or the moon? But where would we be now without satellites, gps, google maps, mobile phones, space telescopes, etc etc. You’ll question Musk now, but in 50 years there will be incredible technological breakthroughs based on the work he’s funding. More billionaires should be brave enough (or insane enough) to do stuff like this. It’s the only way we’ll advance. The only other entities with huge resources are governments, and they are far too risk averse to invent the internet, or the smart phone. We need a few crazy visionaries with limitless resources in the world for us to ever move forward. 

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

2 minutes ago, TigerTedd said:

My god, you’ve missed the mark so much you’re probably closer to circumnavigating the globe and hitting it from the other direction. let me break it down:

If the sun decides it’s had enough, we’re all screwed anyway. But not if some of us are off world. That’s entirely the point. And it’s not if, it’s when. The sun will eventually explode. That’s what Carl is saying, that’s what Carl is saying, we are absolutely 100% guaranteed to all die if we stay on the planet earth. Not for millions and millions of years, but it absolutely will happen, if we can’t find a way to be a multi planetary species. 

Why would we spread good throughout the cosmos? Fair point. We are essentially a virus. We should probably just all top ourselves now for the good of the universe. Or maybe we can live in a fantasy world, be super naive and hope for something better from humanity. Maybe we can learn from our mistakes and become a force for good in the universe.

First billionaire on the ship. Literally exactly what musk is trying to avoid. He’s trying to make space travel as accessible as air travel by making it scalable and reusable.

Stick with the bees. Absolutely, it’s an important point. But it’s not necessarily Elon’s responsibility to try to fix everything. Carl says space travel is the most important thing. You could say something else is more important right now, and you might be right, but it doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. There are many important and concerning things that threaten our existence. The lack of bees is one, over farming of cows is another, etc etc. there are also many billionaires in the world. Why not petition one of the many that are swanning around on their yachts not doing much to save the bees. Space travel May be a billionaires’ play thing, but at least in the case of Musk there is an end game which theoretically benefits mankind. Unlike the Besos’s and Branson’s of the world where it really is just a vanity project with no real accessible outcomes.

One final thought: in the 60s people thought nasa was a waste of money, why bother going to space, or the moon? But where would we be now without satellites, gps, google maps, mobile phones, space telescopes, etc etc. You’ll question Musk now, but in 50 years there will be incredible technological breakthroughs based on the work he’s funding. More billionaires should be brave enough (or insane enough) to do stuff like this. It’s the only way we’ll advance. The only other entities with huge resources are governments, and they are far too risk averse to invent the internet, or the smart phone. We need a few crazy visionaries with limitless resources in the world for us to ever move forward. 

Back in the 90's.  All good as as far as I'm concerned.  According to Kennedy parroting Mallory we went to the moon because it was there.   I could see the benefit of that sorting out the post war c*** waving rather than going to war-  using the best Nazi scientists to facilitate it of course.   

[TigerTedd]

40 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

Back in the 90's.  All good as as far as I'm concerned.  According to Kennedy parroting Mallory we went to the moon because it was there.   I could see the benefit of that sorting out the post war c*** waving rather than going to war-  using the best Nazi scientists to facilitate it of course.   

The 90s was the peak of human civilisation, I’ll not argue against that. But GPS is still a helluva lot more convenient than multimap, and the internet was a thing in the 90s, as were mobile phones.

Even if Kennedy did go to the moon as a folly, as a f*** you to the Russians, and didn’t realise there might be other benefits (which is b******* by the way, of course he knew there would be scientific breakthroughs and ramifications), the fact is, there were undeniably benefits. Even if Musks project is purely about vanity and ego, that doesn’t mean their won’t be benefits for mankind. 

[Archied]

On 01/04/2023 at 22:39, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

Back in the 90's.  All good as as far as I'm concerned.  According to Kennedy parroting Mallory we went to the moon because it was there.   I could see the benefit of that sorting out the post war c*** waving rather than going to war-  using the best Nazi scientists to facilitate it of course.   

Perhaps they were the best scientists that the Nazi s just happened to use first ? Or maybe they were nazis first and foremost who decided to become scientist s to advance the cause , you decide , but for me my guess is the majority were the former 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Archied