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Elon Musk outlines Mars colony vision

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Entrepreneur Elon Musk has outlined his vision for establishing a human colony on Mars for people that can afford a $200,000 ticket price.

Mr Musk, who founded private spaceflight company SpaceX, was speaking at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Tuesday.

His colonisation plan uses a fully reusable transportation system that would take 100 people and 80-days to get to Mars and eventually as little as 30-days.

arrow3.gif  Read More: BBC News

 

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SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System

arrow3.gif  Source: SpaceX - YouTube Channel

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If anyone can do it he will.....
He wanted to create a new online way of paying for things than using stuffy banks, he created PayPal.

He wanted to create electric cars that people would actually use to replace every day cars rather than short range town cars. So he created Tesla cars with 350+ mile range.

He wanted to create a proper self-driving car that people would use to help them drive rather than replace driving and he created Auto-Pilot.

He wanted to create a way of getting in to space and back again with a re-usable rocket system so he could charge companies to use it, and so he built Space X and now supplies satellites to space.

He wanted to build a Hyperloop transport system to go from the East to the West coast of USA faster than an aircraft and much cheaper to travel, and so far his prototype has worked successfully and now India have given him huge areas of land to build a full scale system to develop a working full size version for testing.

And now he wants to go to Mars and beyond, having previously stating the only major issue is cost, and that by him forking out a fortune to build the infrastructure, he will make all the money back having the building blocks to accept payments from other companies to go and use his infrastructure.

And his ideas and ways of making them happen, and develop future technology and discovery is so powerful that even Jeff Bezos of Amazon has said that rather than leave his money to charity when he dies, he will leave it to Elon Musk, because he believes he will do more to advance humanity than any charity ever would.

When Elon says he wants something doing...... I have yet so see him fail to get it done!

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the great thing about Elon musk, is that he is a dreamer and he works honestly toward his goals, without being distracted of only making profits, and loosing focus on his dreams,

of course he want money, but to use them as a tool for his visions

and he did fail many times, three of his rockets exploded before the fourth one finally succeeded, right before announcing bankruptcy, but that experiments allowed him to create reusable rockets, so now each time a rocket of his land safely, its as if he got a free rocket, so even when he fail, he is going the right direction overall, so he never really failed from that perspective

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$200,000 as a ticket price to Mars is the craziest thing I ever heard. $200 million would not come close to a realistic estimate, so I don't quite follow why they'd even bother charging at all. It might be like those car or boat shows where they charge an entry price to limit the tyre-kickers !

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I was 28 days shy of my 12th birthday when they blasted off for the moon on Apollo 11 and the world has never been galvanized more at anytime since that historic event and it would indeed be a pleasure to see the first people land on Mars in my lifetime.

Now to come up with the 1/4 million necessary to make the trip. :lol:

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I trust that what he says he does.  I have high hopes for this project, very exciting as I never truly believed I would see a human on Mars in my lifetime.

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Very ambitious.  The supply situation will need to be well planned.  I hope this goes go better than the Tesla, which can't get enough batteries for there orders.

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This won't be happening. Only kooks would sign up for a one-way trip to Mars, and kooks will turn completely kooky before they arrive !

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8 hours ago, Habitat said:

This won't be happening. Only kooks would sign up for a one-way trip to Mars, and kooks will turn completely kooky before they arrive !

In the past it's the  " KOOK'S " with their determination , imagination , and stubbornness that made the world  what it is today . 

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8 hours ago, Habitat said:

This won't be happening. Only kooks would sign up for a one-way trip to Mars, and kooks will turn completely kooky before they arrive !

Columbus was deemed a kook as well!

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8 hours ago, Habitat said:

This won't be happening. Only kooks would sign up for a one-way trip to Mars, and kooks will turn completely kooky before they arrive !

They said the same thing about going to a God forsaken hell hole that was mostly desert and poisonous animals.Today it is the thriving nation called Australia.

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On 28/09/2016 at 2:47 PM, Habitat said:

$200,000 as a ticket price to Mars is the craziest thing I ever heard. $200 million would not come close to a realistic estimate, so I don't quite follow why they'd even bother charging at all. It might be like those car or boat shows where they charge an entry price to limit the tyre-kickers !

Elon Musk is a multi-billionaire business man and owner of the most successful private launch vehicle company in history, you aren't.

Elon Musk's company have successfully developed their own launch vehicles, pioneered reusable rockets and become the first private company in history to successfully recover a spacecraft from orbit. In short Elon Musk has vast experience when it comes to spaceflight and launch vehicles, you don't.

Elon Musk's SpaceX has reduced the cost of launching large payloads to orbit and, as a result, won a vast number of orders to launch satellites and forced his closest competitors to start planning an building new launch vehicles (Ariane 6 to replace Ariane 5 for Arianespace and Vulcan to replace Delta IV and Atlas V for United Launch Alliance). In short Elon Musk has greatly reduced the cost of spaceflight, you haven't.

Given the above, and the fact that you have given no evidence to support your claims, why should we believe your figures over his?

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The dreamers, visionaries and adventurers define a civilization. If it were not for the like, we would still be awaiting the first wave of humans to depart Africa. How interesting it might be if Mr Musk were to establish a kickstarter where individuals could vote with a one dollar contribution to both recognize the importance of moving civilization to another planet but to do so as an international community. Even the most obtuse politicians might take notice.

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9 hours ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

Elon Musk is a multi-billionaire business man and owner of the most successful private launch vehicle company in history, you aren't.

Elon Musk's company have successfully developed their own launch vehicles, pioneered reusable rockets and become the first private company in history to successfully recover a spacecraft from orbit. In short Elon Musk has vast experience when it comes to spaceflight and launch vehicles, you don't.

Elon Musk's SpaceX has reduced the cost of launching large payloads to orbit and, as a result, won a vast number of orders to launch satellites and forced his closest competitors to start planning an building new launch vehicles (Ariane 6 to replace Ariane 5 for Arianespace and Vulcan to replace Delta IV and Atlas V for United Launch Alliance). In short Elon Musk has greatly reduced the cost of spaceflight, you haven't.

Given the above, and the fact that you have given no evidence to support your claims, why should we believe your figures over his?

 

I am not dumb enough to fall for this guff about reducing the cost of getting payloads into orbit somehow equating to a  bunch of people being sent one-way to Mars to set up a self-sustaining colony. Literally, the two are worlds apart. This $200,000 ticket garbage is just that, garbage. Thanks for your pomposity anyhow. :tu:

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22 hours ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

Elon Musk is a multi-billionaire business man and owner of the most successful private launch vehicle company in history, you aren't.

Elon Musk's company have successfully developed their own launch vehicles, pioneered reusable rockets and become the first private company in history to successfully recover a spacecraft from orbit. In short Elon Musk has vast experience when it comes to spaceflight and launch vehicles, you don't.

Elon Musk's SpaceX has reduced the cost of launching large payloads to orbit and, as a result, won a vast number of orders to launch satellites and forced his closest competitors to start planning an building new launch vehicles (Ariane 6 to replace Ariane 5 for Arianespace and Vulcan to replace Delta IV and Atlas V for United Launch Alliance). In short Elon Musk has greatly reduced the cost of spaceflight, you haven't.

Given the above, and the fact that you have given no evidence to support your claims, why should we believe your figures over his?

Whilst Elon Musk is undoubtedly a pioneering entrepreneur, it ought to be remembered that Space-X only got properly going through being given $400 million of taxpayers money via NASA towards developing the Falcon rocket and Dragon capsule (about half the overall cost), and a $1.6 billion dollar contract to launch supply missions to the ISS. Without $2 billion of taxpayers money it would have taken far longer for Space-X to - literally - get off the ground.

Edit: and to put the ticket price into context, Virgin Galactic are charging $250,000 for a five minute lob into space. Who am I to doubt Elon Musk, but a $200,000 ticket to Mars seems highly optimistic.    

Edited by Derek Willis
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37 minutes ago, Derek Willis said:

Edit: and to put the ticket price into context, Virgin Galactic are charging $250,000 for a five minute lob into space. Who am I to doubt Elon Musk, but a $200,000 ticket to Mars seems highly optimistic.    

Let's put it FULLY into context.

The cost of a Virgin Galactic ticket is the INITIAL cost of a ticket. Richard Branson fully expects the price to drop when he has a large fleet of spacecraft operating from multiple spaceports. 

The cost of the SpaceX ticket is the price Elon Musk believes he can EVENTUALLY charge once he has a large fleet of spacecraft in operation. 

I agree that this price is optimist, the entire project is, that is not what I was objecting too. What I was objecting too was Habitat just inventing a figure out of thin air.

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3 hours ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

Let's put it FULLY into context.

The cost of a Virgin Galactic ticket is the INITIAL cost of a ticket. Richard Branson fully expects the price to drop when he has a large fleet of spacecraft operating from multiple spaceports. 

The cost of the SpaceX ticket is the price Elon Musk believes he can EVENTUALLY charge once he has a large fleet of spacecraft in operation. 

I agree that this price is optimist, the entire project is, that is not what I was objecting too. What I was objecting too was Habitat just inventing a figure out of thin air.

Well let's add some figures to the context. So far $600 million has been invested in Virgin Galactic. Each flight will carry six passengers at $250,000 per ticket, a total of $1.5 million per flight. Let's be optimistic and say they can achieve a 20% net profit per flight. That is a net profit of $300,000 per flight. At that rate it will take 2,000 flights to cover the investment. Building new spaceports and more space-planes will of course cost more money. It is going to be a very long time before Virgin can reduce the cost of the tickets.

My suggestion regarding the $200,000 mentioned by Elon Musk is that this figure is not what it will cost to send a colonist to Mars, but how much a colonist could pay. Space-X, like all the companies offering launch services, is heavily subsidised by the taxpayer, one way or another. There are no signs of this changing in the foreseeable future. His ambition to colonise Mars would be funded the same way, i.e. heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. On that basis each ticket would cost millions of dollars, but the colonists would only be asked to pay $200,000, which many people could raise through selling their homes. This would be similar to the way the Australian and New Zealand governments subsidised tickets for the migrating "Ten Pound Poms" after the Second World War.

Elon Musk is very astute and knows he could never reduce the cost of sending a human to Mars to only $200,000. He knows that if colonisation is ever to occur, it will be in the main funded by taxpayers. 

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Doesn't look as though Musk will be on board the fist Mars colony ship...

"I think the first journeys to Mars are going to be really very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high; there's just no way around it," Musk said at the IAC, adding that, for this reason, he would not suggest sending children on these flights. It would be, basically, 'Are you prepared to die?' If that's OK, then, you know, you're a candidate for going," he said.

Musk said he'd like to go to Mars, but it's unclear if he'll be among the Red Planet vanguard. In a teleconference with reporters Tuesday after the IAC talk, he said he wasn't sure if he'd be aboard the first-ever Mars colony ship, which may be called "Heart of Gold" after a vehicle in Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

"I would definitely need to have a very good succession plan, because the probability of death is quite high on the first mission, and I'd like to see my kids grow up and everything — so, some pros and cons there," he said.

Source: Space.com

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7 hours ago, Clair said:

Doesn't look as though Musk will be on board the fist Mars colony ship...

 

 

Australia became a British colony in 1770. The first member of the Royal Family did not go to Australia until almost a century later, when Prince Alfred visited in 1867. During his second visit someone shot him! Because of the various dangers involved, and the time needed to get there by ship, the first ruling monarch to visit Australia was Queen Elizabeth, who went there in 1954. So it is understandable that Elon Musk will not want to go to Mars until the journey is considered safe. He once said he wanted to die on Mars - as an old man!

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Any nation with a public debt of near $20 Trillion would have rocks in its collective head to subscribe to subsiding this absurdly expensive exercise, which will make the bill for the Apollo program look like small change. The $200,000 is just a nonsense figure to drum up public interest, but there is no way this scheme should be on the public tit, even if the treasury was in surplus.

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2 hours ago, Habitat said:

Any nation with a public debt of near $20 Trillion would have rocks in its collective head to subscribe to subsiding this absurdly expensive exercise, which will make the bill for the Apollo program look like small change. The $200,000 is just a nonsense figure to drum up public interest, but there is no way this scheme should be on the public tit, even if the treasury was in surplus.

Throughout history the early stages of colonisation - the Americas, for instance - were funded by monarchs, the church, and merchants. The colonists themselves didn't have to come up with the money, or if they did it was heavily subsidised. The motive for everyone involved was to gain riches and/or a better life. Whether Mars can provide those things is debatable. I may be totally wrong about this, but I think Elon Musk's long term goal is to develop the necessary technology and then say to the governments of the world: "If you pay for it, I will provide the transport and infrastructure to colonise Mars". Musk is a rare individual: on the one hand he is a visionary with an outlandish ambition; on the other hand he is a very successful multi-billionaire. If Mars is ever to become a colony with large numbers of people it can only happen if the nations of the world want it to happen and agree to foot most of the costs, which is why I don't think that would occur for a very long time. However, within the next half century I think there will be a small, tax-payer funded science colony on Mars, rather like the small tax-payer funded science colonies on Antarctica.

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