Starship and a Human city on Mars

[Archied]

6 minutes ago, GboroRam said:

Q: Hypothetically, suppose that someone’s futurist philosophy as a tech billionaire is nothing more than thinly veiled fascism, and their ultimate goal is to architect an autocratic Martian society in which they rule as a despotic god-emperor who has free reign to impregnate any female member of said society. What do you do?

Apply for the job

[Stive Pesley]

Surely this throws a bit of a spanner in the works when it comes to Elon's Mars colony? 😂

 

[JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta]

On 23/04/2023 at 15:15, Ramarena said:

In that scenario:

Who will own mars?

Who owns the colony infrastructure?

What laws will there be?

What would be the nationality status?

Who gets admitted/who doesn’t?

Does this all get dictated by the first billionaire to get there?

Etc, etc, etc.

Whilst one one hand it’s absolutely fascinating from a scientific perspective, it could be hugely problematic, given all the problems we would likely export there as a civilisation.

You just know it will be a private enterprise and whoever is running it will offer "free" trips to Mars, you just have to work off the cost of the journey when you get there.

Here's the fun part though, you never work the cost off so you are basically an indentured slave on a planet you can't get off. I have no doubts this is the absolute dream scenario for our current billionaire class. None of that social justice, human rights, labour laws malarkey. Just a bait and switch forcing people to work until they are dead. All the while those poor souls are being told "well if you don't like it then perhaps you should have been clever enough to build your own space program and fly people to Mars yourself!"

Either that or it will be run by some full scale libertarian idiot that thinks governments providing services like police forces and hospitals is communism so everyone is in it for themselves in some disgusting free for all.

Edited April 26, 2023 by JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta

[Carl Sagan]

On 23/04/2023 at 15:15, Ramarena said:

In that scenario:

Who will own mars?

Who owns the colony infrastructure?

What laws will there be?

What would be the nationality status?

Who gets admitted/who doesn’t?

Does this all get dictated by the first billionaire to get there?

Etc, etc, etc.

Whilst one one hand it’s absolutely fascinating from a scientific perspective, it could be hugely problematic, given all the problems we would likely export there as a civilisation.

Musk's hope, expectation and plan is that Mars will be owned by the Martians (ie the Humans living there). They will jointly own the colony infrastructure and decide on their own laws via a form of direct democracy. There would be no jurisdiction of Earth-based governments. 

There will be no influx of billionaires to Mars, because the initial life of the colonists would be incredibly hard, and risky, and uncomfortable. And you will effectively be spending the rest of your life indoors or in a spacesuit. Musk might be the exception and choose to go, because he believes the Mars colony is integral to the survival of Humanity as a species. But he lives in a mobile home on the SpaceX site, when other billionaires have multiple comfortable mansions across tbe world.

The idea of who gets to go is that it is likely the same as those who have migrated to other area on Earth, like the "founding fathers" heading for America, or the Polynesian migrations, or those early Humans who first left the Olduvai Gorge. SpaceX is lowering the price as much as possible by increasing the scale, to make it affordable for almost anyone who wants to go.

[TigerTedd]

2 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

Musk's hope, expectation and plan is that Mars will be owned by the Martians (ie the Humans living there). They will jointly own the colony infrastructure and decide on their own laws via a form of direct democracy. There would be no jurisdiction of Earth-based governments. 

There will be no influx of billionaires to Mars, because the initial life of the colonists would be incredibly hard, and risky, and uncomfortable. And you will effectively be spending the rest of your life indoors or in a spacesuit. Musk might be the exception and choose to go, because he believes the Mars colony is integral to the survival of Humanity as a species. But he lives in a mobile home on the SpaceX site, when other billionaires have multiple comfortable mansions across tbe world.

The idea of who gets to go is that it is likely the same as those who have migrated to other area on Earth, like the "founding fathers" heading for America, or the Polynesian migrations, or those early Humans who first left the Olduvai Gorge. SpaceX is lowering the price as much as possible by increasing the scale, to make it affordable for almost anyone who wants to go.

Does that mean we’re going to to get a bunch of weirdo isolationist, survivalist, fundamentalists living up there and forming their own weird society. 

[Carl Sagan]

11 minutes ago, TigerTedd said:

Does that mean we’re going to to get a bunch of weirdo isolationist, survivalist, fundamentalists living up there and forming their own weird society. 

To survive in such a hostile environment, far far less hospitable than the South Pole or the summit of Mt Everest, they will have to be brilliant scientists, engineers, farmers and more. How they organize society will be down to them, but if they're brilliant at those other things, perhaps they'll be brilliant at this too?

[Stive Pesley]

2 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

How they organize society will be down to them, but if they're brilliant at those other things, perhaps they'll be brilliant at this too?

Maybe, or at least we can hope so - but in my experience - truly brilliant people tend to only be brilliant at a very narrow spectrum of things. Like their brains have diverted all their efforts towards a specialist interest

[Ramarena]

18 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

Musk's hope, expectation and plan is that Mars will be owned by the Martians (ie the Humans living there). They will jointly own the colony infrastructure and decide on their own laws via a form of direct democracy. There would be no jurisdiction of Earth-based governments. 

There will be no influx of billionaires to Mars, because the initial life of the colonists would be incredibly hard, and risky, and uncomfortable. And you will effectively be spending the rest of your life indoors or in a spacesuit. Musk might be the exception and choose to go, because he believes the Mars colony is integral to the survival of Humanity as a species. But he lives in a mobile home on the SpaceX site, when other billionaires have multiple comfortable mansions across tbe world.

The idea of who gets to go is that it is likely the same as those who have migrated to other area on Earth, like the "founding fathers" heading for America, or the Polynesian migrations, or those early Humans who first left the Olduvai Gorge. SpaceX is lowering the price as much as possible by increasing the scale, to make it affordable for almost anyone who wants to go.

The infrastructure would cost hundreds of billions.

I’m not sure how anyone who isn’t a billionaire would be able to own it. It would need to be funded by private interest, or a state body eg: NASA.

This is why I’m dubious this would ever be an autonomous colony, as the ownership of the land/infrastructure will pollute any autonomy of the colony.

[AndyinLiverpool]

50 minutes ago, Ramarena said:

The infrastructure would cost hundreds of billions.

I’m not sure how anyone who isn’t a billionaire would be able to own it. It would need to be funded by private interest, or a state body eg: NASA.

This is why I’m dubious this would ever be an autonomous colony, as the ownership of the land/infrastructure will pollute any autonomy of the colony.

Colonies have a habit of becoming autonomous. The process, however, is often painful.

[Carl Sagan]

1 hour ago, Ramarena said:

The infrastructure would cost hundreds of billions.

I’m not sure how anyone who isn’t a billionaire would be able to own it. It would need to be funded by private interest, or a state body eg: NASA.

This is why I’m dubious this would ever be an autonomous colony, as the ownership of the land/infrastructure will pollute any autonomy of the colony.

There is no one worse at spending money than Government or government bodies, such as NASA. For instance, look at the simply extraordinary waste of NASA's Space Launch System. And there is no reason for any government to do this, plus it would be impossible for them to justify it to taxpayers on Earth. 

The only way it can happen is a grassroots movement paired with the greatest act of philanthropy ever seen. There are many future-focused billionaires who will help as their gift to the trillions of future Humans and post Humans who cannot ask for our assistance but require it to transform a long term future for Humanity from a potential thing to something real. 

[TigerTedd]

3 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

There is no one worse at spending money than Government or government bodies, such as NASA. For instance, look at the simply extraordinary waste of NASA's Space Launch System. And there is no reason for any government to do this, plus it would be impossible for them to justify it to taxpayers on Earth. 

The only way it can happen is a grassroots movement paired with the greatest act of philanthropy ever seen. There are many future-focused billionaires who will help as their gift to the trillions of future Humans and post Humans who cannot ask for our assistance but require it to transform a long term future for Humanity from a potential thing to something real. 

Out of interest, is there a commercial value to this? Governments haven’t been too interested in the idea, because it’s not like mars is made of gold. But I’d there anything worth doing on mars besides surviving?

Like can the progress made here help to one day mine asteroids in the asteroid belt, and move heavy industry off world. Are there any other benefits, like the potential of secret hidden precious minerals on mars that we don’t know about yet. 

Or is it just there to be conquered for s**** and giggles, like Everest?

[cstand]

Incredible how many successful Starlink satellites that have been launched since 2019.

 

Edited April 30, 2023 by cstand

[Stive Pesley]

Does this help tempt anyone?

https://newatlas.com/space/how-do-you-fry-potatoes-in-space-very-carefully/

[TigerTedd]

I’m at the Kennedy space centre today. I’m very excited. 

[TigerTedd]

 

 

[TigerTedd]

Sorry for spamming, but this is very exciting. By total coincidence, a launch that was supposed to happen earlier in the month but had to be rescheduled is happening tomorrow morning. We fly out of Orlando t9morrow, today is our last day of holidays, but providing it flies on time, we’ll just have enough time to see it before we have to leave the space coast. And our campsite is just across the lagoon from the launch site, you can literally see the VAB from where our RV is parked. I can’t believe our luck.

also, today I got to see the Saturn 5 rocket, touch actual moon rock, see the Atlantis shuttle, and a used falcon 9. As well as a whole bunch of other rockets in the rocket garden. I bloody loved it. Way better than Leicester.

It’s a SpaceX European space agency falcon 9 launch, if anyone is interested, you can watch it here: https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=euclid

[Stive Pesley]

https://archive.ph/5WCha

Good article about the need for research into how humans will survive for extended periods outside of regular earth gravity

[Stive Pesley]

Sounds like Musk is running SpaceX in his usual style

https://medium.com/predict/spacex-is-in-trouble-again-2f51658872db

 

 

[Carl Sagan]

Despite stories of doom and the damage to the Orbital Launch Mount (OLM) during the first Orbital Flight Test, and many saying it would be a year to repair it, yesterday saw the static fire of (SuperHeavy) Booster 9 on the OLM, which was protected by a brand new, all singing, all dancing, water deluge system. The water emerges from a giant steel plate beneath the rocket engines and absorbs much of the energy. Here's how it looked:

People were wondering how SpaceX might deal with the fallout from the first launch and what steos the company would propose to prevent future problems. However, SpaceX isn't that type of company. Instead of talking about it and putting proposals forward, they've simply gone and built a better system. Already! It is quite phenomenal.

Booster 9, seen here, is the lower half of what will become the second orbital flight test, so this was another step in getting it ready to go for that.

And the second tweet here is a closeup of the Water Deluge System without rocket engines firing into it. Definitely a thing of engineering beauty:

 

[Stive Pesley]

Impressive technology but what about the environmental impacts that are mentioned in the previous link I sent?

Quote

SpaceX failed to apply for the permits needed to discharge this volume of wastewater, and as such, it has potentially damaged the local environment. You see, the water they were using wasn’t of the same grade that comes out of your tap; instead, it was industrial process wastewater. This means the water can have all manner of pollutants mixed into it, and releasing such a vast amount into the environment could have significantly detrimental effects. This is why SpaceX should have obtained a licence, as the assessment for the licence would ensure the water and its discharge is safe.

Failure to obtain a licence can land a company fines of up to $50,000 per day, or even jail time. Needless to say, I will keep you posted if the EPA or any other environmental body presses charges here.

But this licence breach hides another issue with the water deluge system, as no matter the quality of the water they use, they might not pass EPA pollutant limits. You see, rockets don’t burn clean, even Starship with its methane (natural gas) fuel. As methane naturally contains volatile organic impurities, its combustion produces soot, carbon monoxides, particulates and even potentially toxic and carcinogenic pollutants. Under normal launch conditions, these disperse through the air until their concentrations are low enough not to be a problem. However, the water deluge system will capture many of these emissions and effectively pumps them into the local waterways, which could potentially poison them. This could mean the water deluge system isn’t a viable option for SpaceX, as it is too environmentally damaging.

I guess this is the beauty of being a billionaire, you can just ignore the rules/things you don't like