Can anyone give me one good reason why they are spending so much money to colonise Mars?
Other than … ‘We can send the tech bro’s there on a one way flight’
That I would accept
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Starlink is great, that I understand. Satellite deployment, telescopes, scientific expedition. But the colonising Mars bit, I guess that’s just because we can sort of thinking, and the earth is ■■■■■■ so let’s go somewhere more ■■■■■■. Probably the hope that there’s all sorts of rare minerals etc to be mined. In the meantime quite likely clogging our space up with more junk and not paying any mind to consequences.
I can give you hundreds but basically it is:
Exploration
Technology advances
Continuity of human existence if there is an extinction level event on earth
Why does NASA send rovers to Mars or why was Webb launched?
It’s human nature to explore, expand our knowledge and learn.
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I’d hope that the cross pollination of NASA and Space X scientists, the people actually doing all the work and innovation, continues and that the ethics that ground NASA are adopted by the privateers. The little that I’ve read it sounds like there’s not really competition between SX, NASA, whatever Bezos’ thing is, that people frequently work for each and co-operate.
So the billionaires can escape when we end up in WW3.
Why did the US have a space arms race with Russia.
To show off their superior technology.
Ideally hopefully prevent having to use it.
What do you think he’s done re society that’s very dangerous?
At that level of power he certainly could do very dangerous things.
I’m not sure forcing an electric car industry and battery business is very dangerous. Yet.
I still find Trump much worse.
Out of those two who would you prefer as President of the USA?
You wouldn’t mine Mars for these. You would mine asteroids in the belt and comets due to the minimal gravity and reduced delta-V to get there and back.
There are many companies which are developing and trying out space junk de-orbiting.
The starlink satellites will all de-orbit, re-enter and burn up within approx 5 years of launch on their own.
Currently, most space junk is from unused satellites and 2nd stages.
With starship and starlink, none of that will be an issue due to SpaceX.
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Musk has announced that he’s going to rapidly upgrade the air traffic control systems in the US.
He has also started to rapidly deploy live updates into the backend of the US federal payment system.
I’ll let everyone make their own mind up about the potential consequences of getting these wrong and the likelihood he ■■■■■ something up with these rapid and poorly researched upgrades.
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After Mars it’s very hard to think of human kind going anywhere.
Everywhere else just seems too far away.
It would have to be some sort of perpetual civilisation travelling through space. Recycling everything
ATC upgrades would be long overdue and if done properly would be unreal. I have no faith it will be done properly though
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It’s basically his engineers putting more controls in to check for and response to system failures right?
That sort of stuff goes on all the time in other industries.
It’s not dangerous per se. It’s dangerous to do nothing to address system uptime issues though.
There has been a deteriation of her health and there a quite a few I have seen interviewed saying she should be bought home. It hasn’t happened though
Not going to end well although I think the upgrades will be more around making himself and the orange one richer.
I saw how Musk’s rapid upgrade approach worked on Twitter’s reliability. Forgive me for not having a huge amount of faith in his ability to get a system upgrade right first time.
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There have been lots of rumors about her health but we can pretty much ignore it after she just spent ~40 hours on spacewalks. I think it was about the narrative of smashing Boeing for Starliner.
She is amazing and exemplifies the best of astronauts. 59 years old.
with 80% less staff.
the staff that he sacked?
Twitter approach better not be what is happening here.
The rapid agile development cycle is too risky in my view. Can’t afford 1 error with lives on the line.
Who cares if that method brings twitter down, no lives lost.
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It doesn’t matter with twitter there were no lives at risk.
I absolutely agree that she is amazing, and one I really admire. There have been concerns around her health, also I think if there was confidence that they could be returned safely they would be returned already. The right strategy is being deployed IMO, get everything right and bring them back… This hasn’t been achieved to date. Also makes you wonder about what would happen if they were on the way to Mars. That is why I believe the Mars dream is a very long way off.