News Elon Musk wants to put millions of people on Mars.

[RGClark]

I anticipated a warm dinner tonight and what do I find...
Right, there are different quality levels for predictions.
The last number for Tesla was 700 million for total assets. I don't really care much about short term stock prices and predictions by stock market pundits, who usually only recommend, what makes them earn most of the money.

That's a commonly used means of evaluating a companys value: how much stock is on the market and the prices of the stock. That that many people own the stock at that current value means a large portion of stock purchasing market believe the company has that value. It is not pundits who set those stock values; it's the market.


Bob Clark

 

[Urwumpe]

That's a commonly used means of evaluating a companys value: how much stock is on the market and the prices of the stock. That that many people own the stock at that current value means a large portion of stock purchasing market believe the company has that value. It is not pundits who set those stock values; it's the market.

Yes, and like I said above, this market says: 700 million. Not 3 billion. 3 billion is anticipated by undisclosed means for the future in the MLP fantasy world of the self-declared experts. A company with good tendencies can be a bit higher by its stock value than by its real assets, but generally, it does not vary much unless you are approaching a bubble... like we had lately.

Not that 3 billion is hard to achieve for a car company. The biggest three car producers are at 200 billion.

 

[C3PO]

Do you realize he is saying : "I'm going to put millions of people on Mars" ? If that isn't megalomania...

That would be megalomania, but I don't think that's exactly what he said. AFAIK the correct quote is "I want to put millions of people on Mars".

And I don't even think that he meant that SpaceX would put millions of people into orbit. I think Elon wants to be part of the beginning of space travel for the general public by bringing the costs down, and the quote was taken out of context.
Whether you call it "visionary" or "megalomania" depends mostly on whether you agree with him or not.

 

[T.Neo]

Nothing you can do on manned flights though - on manned flights, you design to reliability, since even a gold plated spacecraft would be cheaper than loosing a single astronaut by an avoidable accident.

Surely various cost-reducing design choices are relatively irrelevant (like simplified launch infrastructure) or helpful (using less-stressed, more robust engines instead of high-performance bleeding edge designs, minimising seperation events) toward improving safety?

 

[N_Molson]

Put it the way you want, but I'm 100% certain than there are not going to be more than 1,999,999 millions people living on Mars in Elon Musk's lifespan (I'll be happy if a manned mission gets there, to begin with).

So it is definitively an irrational statement, since he knows there is no way to achieve this in our timeframe (in a few centuries, why not, that's a different matter).

 

[RGClark]

Put it the way you want, but I'm 100% certain than there are not going to be more than 1,999,999 millions people living on Mars in Elon Musk's lifespan (I'll be happy if a manned mission gets there, to begin with).
So it is definitively an irrational statement, since he knows there is no way to achieve this in our timeframe (in a few centuries, why not, that's a different matter).

Note that Elon's primary focus is that humanity should become a multiplanet species. Then he wants other planets such as Mars to have self-sustaining colonies. That is the impetus of his comments of having large numbers of people on Mars.

Here's the passage where he makes the comment about millions of people on Mars from that article linked in the first post in this thread:

Musk doesn't just want to stop at one human. In his Heinlein prize acceptance speech, he said he wants to put 10,000 people on Mars. Musk rarely makes public statements merely for effect but a call for 10,000 would-be Martians is extraordinary, even by his standards. When I query him on this point, he pauses. Is he reconsidering? Yes... but, as with so much else about Musk, not in a predictable way. "Ultimately we don't really want 10,000 people on Mars," he says, after letting the pause linger a few seconds more. "We want millions."

To me he's saying that is a goal we should be aiming for, to have a fully independent, well populated planet.


Bob Clark

 

[T.Neo]

There are parts of Earth that are far cheaper to reach than Mars, and a good deal more habitable too, yet have far fewer than a million inhabitants (see Greenland, for example). One wonders if Musk's Mars plan includes immigration incentives...

 

[Hlynkacg]

Put it the way you want, but I'm 100% certain than there are not going to be more than 1,999,999 millions people living on Mars in Elon Musk's lifespan (I'll be happy if a manned mission gets there, to begin with).

So it is definitively an irrational statement, since he knows there is no way to achieve this in our timeframe (in a few centuries, why not, that's a different matter).

I hate to be defending our resident quasi-mathematical tinkerbell but "Impossible" and "No ****ing chance in hell" are not synonymous terms.

 

[N_Molson]

Replace 100% by 99.9999999999999999999999 % (in case the Almighty Probe teleports several billions people and terraforms the planet in an instant of time).

 

[Hlynkacg]

Replace 100% by 99.9999999999999999999999 % (in case the Almighty Probe teleports several billions people and terraforms the planet in an instant of time).

billions?

The target is millions.

Likewise who said anything about terraforming?

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

I wouldn't compare this to the moon landing. When Dryden suggested landing on the moon for beating the Russians, he had already enough information to provide a rough time schedule.

That is the difference to megalomania... Musk has not even put a single human into space, has no schedule how to even get a single human on Mars and no clue about the many problems that will await him for getting even just 100 to the Mars one day.

It makes a nice light-hearted joke, but some people here are too much fanboy of Elon Musk to get it.

I do agree, the millions on mars quote is a little dumb considering the current situation, but my last book (and a good one) was Sputnik by Paul Dickson. Quite frankly, the power and funding that NASA was granted during the 50s 60s and 70s was mainly due to the perceived need to "beat the russians", but Wernher Von Braun worked to market spaceflight in ways that make Musk look media-averse. Having people make grandiose claims like that can be annoying, but if you promise the public nothing, the funding will be just that-0. Publicity seeking does help to advance space exploration, even if it is unrealistic.

 

[Quick_Nick]

Likewise who said anything about terraforming?

Right, Mars is already perfect for sending millions...of our dead. :lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

Surely various cost-reducing design choices are relatively irrelevant (like simplified launch infrastructure) or helpful (using less-stressed, more robust engines instead of high-performance bleeding edge designs, minimising seperation events) toward improving safety?

Yes, exactly. Not every way to save costs on one end means you also save costs for the whole program. And human payload has some different requirements for "cargo handling" as well.

The loss of a satellite is just a few hundred million of damage, covered by insurance and results in a minor investigation what went wrong, depending on when the accident happened in the lifecycle of the unmanned launcher.

A loss of one astronaut results in unpredictable damage, is not really covered by insurances (This usually only covers what you have to pay to their relatives, not the education costs for the replacement), means you have less astronauts available as volunteers, results in a really bad investigation with many many people interfering in the investigation, and finally could mean instead of just focusing on the problems, you have to follow some obscure legislation to make astronauts safer by pseudo-solutions, that will eventually kill more astronauts, but result in more legislation.

 

[Codz]

billions?

The target is millions.

Likewise who said anything about terraforming?

Assuming people want the luxury of breathing and eating. Some people are so picky...:lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

Assuming people want the luxury of breathing and eating. Some people are so picky...:lol:

Nothing a good hydroculture can't solve... but how to haul the water to Mars. :lol:

 

[RGClark]

Put it the way you want, but I'm 100% certain than there are not going to be more than 1,999,999 millions people living on Mars in Elon Musk's lifespan (I'll be happy if a manned mission gets there, to begin with).
So it is definitively an irrational statement, since he knows there is no way to achieve this in our timeframe (in a few centuries, why not, that's a different matter).

I presume that is a typo? Perhaps you were thinking of the French "milliards"? Not the same as someone saying in English "millions".


Bob Clark

 

[N_Molson]

I presume that is a typo? Perhaps you were thinking of the French "milliards"? Not the same as someone saying in English "millions".

Yes, you're right on that one. In French, millions = "millions" and billions = "milliards", so it can be confusing. I should use 10e6 and 10e9.

Nothing a good hydroculture can't solve... but how to haul the water to Mars.

And you lift another point... For each person you send to Mars, you have to send a given mass of materials (including the infrastructure "share" required to support that new person) and consumables, so if you add up everything, you end with crazy numbers, and Earth will be a barren desert given the insane rate of rocket launches required (even LOX/LH2 rockets help global warming, since they produce a lot of heat).

 

[Jarod]

I'm 100% (99.9999999999999999999999 %) certain than there are not going to be more than 1,999,999 millions people living on Mars in Elon Musk's lifespan ... so if you add up everything, you end with crazy numbers, and Earth will be a barren desert given the insane rate of rocket launches required (even LOX/LH2 rockets help global warming, since they produce a lot of heat).

1873 :
Georges : I just read 2 books from Jules Verne "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Around the Moon", it's about men going to the moon, it's really exciting, can you imagine if we could do that in the next hundred years?

Walter : Stop reading these stupid books for children, Georges. Men can't fly. Mark my words, I'm 99.9999999999999999999999% certain that we're not going to the moon.
And even if we did, I'm sure that it would require so much black powder that it would blow a giant hole in the Earth's crust. You wouldn't want that now, would you ?

 

[N_Molson]

Well, if you think we can have space elevators and fusion drives before the end of the century (me and Mr Musk will have passed away long before that anyway)... :hmm:

Or teleportation maybe... :idea:

 

[Jarod]

Again, Georges is not saying that a feat could be accomplished or not in the future nor how.
It's about Walter saying that the feat will not be accomplished, no matter what, dismissing technological evolution and changing paradigms in different fields of science for the duration of a lifetime. This goes contrary to what is experienced in everyone's lifetime.
When Elon Musk says that he wants to put millions of people on Mars, well good for him. He didn't say that he will with a certain percentage of confidence.
When you say that something will not happen, that's your opinion but Elon Musk isn't making an irrational statement as you said.
Just to be clear, I only criticize your logic. Like you, I don't think there will be millions of people on Mars anytime soon, but it's only because I don't see the economic need to leave a gravity well for an other. Still, I won't say that orbital colonies are impossible within a lifetime.