Hmmmm…sure Space X’s technology is state of the art with reusable rockets but China has been in space a lot longer than Space X. Also they started focusing on the moon while Musk was flying high as a kite pushing for Mars. In fact China had a space program while America was hitching rides from Russia - such was the sorry state of the US space program, So easy on our Chinese counterparts, they are risking life and limb to expand the horizons and they should be commended for it. That said I do hope Space X is successful and helps us get to the moon - preferably before China.
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Zen, this is fundamentally about doing the math, not politics. You need to follow this linearly and logically to see the picture. I’m not “being a spokesperson for SpaceX” nor do I think that it’s certain that SpaceX will succeed. If SpaceX DOES succeed, the entire argument about moon or Mars is moot - and if SpaceX does NOT succeed - the argument is still moot.
The Falcon 9 first stage has been reusable for some time now. They’re accelerating their rate of launches, and yet their launch prices are not going to be discounted by 70% - the cost of the first stage.
Which means that SpaceX should actually be making some real money now - and will continue to do so. They have the resources to keep building the Falcon 9 and making money off of it - which means that they have the ability to fund the development of the BFR. They also have a bunch of reusable boosters sitting around - technology that is now proven to work.
So, down the road, lets say the BFR is developed in entirety. Lets say that going to the moon or going to Mars is still up in the air, but the BFR is now operational.
The BFR is designed to cost less per launch than the reusable version of the Falcon 9, and yet will have a payload larger than that of a Saturn V rocket.
Once such a vehicle exists, going to both the Moon and Mars will be a trivial decision, whether by public or private funding. What China is doing is irrelevant - and what they know about landing on the moon is also irrelevant because they’re not developing a rocket that can do a moon launch for the price of a shitty little Falcon 1.
SpaceX bested NASA, Boeing, Orbital ATK, OKB-1 and Lockheed in 9 years. China is behind all of them.
The BFR is primarily an extremely-cheap-per-launch HLV (Heavy-Lift Launch Vehicle) that just happens to have been designed to land on the moon or Mars.
No one, not China, not Russia, not Boeing or Lockheed, not Orbital ATK, no one is even remotely close to developing anything like the BFR within 10 years, and SpaceX has already built the engines and fuel tank and has a profitable source of income to pay for it.
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If you have access to BBC UK iplayer (account required now). Or if torrents are you thing, look there.
Then this new Sky at Night is about going back to the Moon.
Doesn’t work outside of the U.K.
As it stands, if the BFR doesn’t work, no one is going to the moon or Mars next decade, barring NASA’s SLS working out.
BFR:
- Has funding that is not dependent on direct public support.
- Is built entirely on existing concepts (combined in a new way)
-Large: Saturn V
-Reusable: Falcon 9 First Stage
-Heat shield technology: dragon
-Delta Wing landing: space shuttle (note that this is significantly simpler because there are no wheelwells). - Simple design
- Development is partially completed
- Projections are based on actual calculations based on existing technology
- Even if projections are optimistic, they’d have to be off by a very large amount for the development not to be worthwhile (in which case, it would still be refined)
This has like a 30-80% chance of working out. Other programs have more like a 0-3% chance of working out AND this one is vastly superior in all other ways, even if this and all other projects were to be completed today.
Like I said, I don’t think people get it yet. It’s going to have to be built before people realize what’s actually happening.
The next five to ten years are going to be very interesting with regards to getting back to the Moon. A spacex Mars capsule orbit, maybe a Mars automated landing. Will be glued to the website streams for those. I hope we get offered lots of camera views to switch between, that would be cool.
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SpaceX already has an automated landing of their Falcon 9 core booster.
And there are no plans for a capsule to just orbit Mars. They’re sending the whole space ship.
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There are more holes in your arguments than Swiss cheese; I hardly know where to begin. First China doesn’t care how much it cost to get to the moon - only private companies and government agencies overseen by the public do. Second, No one here is arguing whether Space X is being inefficient by recycling rockets > it’s smart and just plain logical. 3rd, you are simply ignoring what China has accomplished so far and the fact that it doesn’t need Russia or any other country to get to space and back means they are presently ahead regardless of their spaceship designs. 4th, China has already sent probes into space including the moon which is an accomplishment in of itself. 5th, the moon is a logical stepping stone for reaching Mars as Space X now readily concedes. Those are just a few points that needed addressing; moreover, your rhetoric about China reminds me of Nasa’s hubris in beating Russia to space and we all know how that turned out. My advice, don’t be complacent and stop being so fixated on Mars. We have to walk before we can run - Mars can wait and we’ll get there in time. Besides, we should be rejoicing that we are going back to the moon with a permanent moon base! This is no small feat and something everyone should get behind, IMO.
Zen, I don’t doubt that China can get to the moon and even start a base. It’s in their culture to do big things.
But SpaceX will do it first and do it bigger if the BFR works, and when that happens, China will likely rethink its plans or stop altogether. China will never create a self-sustaining colony on the moon with their current program and ambitions.
It’s a joke in comparison to what SpaceX is doing - literally everything else is a joke in comparison if SpaceX succeeds.
I’m not saying we can’t use the moon as a learning platform, especially for life support. But, it’s not necessary with BFR tech. And, as I said, the debate is silly - SpaceX will decide what’s right when the time’s right.
They may go for the moon first.
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Not excepted.
I don’t know why everyone’s whining about Mars or Moon first: it’s not up to you. The answer is “we’ll get to both in due time.” In case you haven’t noticed, the system is designed for BOTH.
Got tired of people who don’t know what there talking about with people who do.
Witch empire witch was were China is now went bankrupt (to say, it collapsed) spending too much money on the Great Wall? I’ll not help.
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Who knew asking the question of whether Moon or Mars would be so controversial. @Zen I appreciate your commentary on my mental health and I will note it to my therapist.
Thanks! That’s a great idea. You’re actually looking at a future navigator for launches, constellation management, and hopefully interplanetary trajectories for SpaceX. They just haven’t hired me yet. 
I’ll repeat myself for the third and last time. Find a mission goal, once you have that design a mission around it. It can be the Moon, it can be Mars, it can be Venus, it can even be Alpha Centauri. Still, first you must choose a goal, and then a destination can be chosen. A pure science based mission for a permanent research base has different requirements and objectives than an entire city.
Who knew mission design was actually just being brainwashed and shilling for certain organizations. I’ve been so blind. The great thing about physics is that it doesn’t care about prejudices and the math and requirements will be what they are despite how much anyone wants them to change. Always recheck your numbers, recheck your resources, recheck your opportunity costs, and never ever forget to sanity check. I think that last one was forgotten a few too many times today by everyone involved.
@Lomsor I totally agree but I would have no idea where to start modeling that. It’s almost too beautiful to be modeled computationally but I know saying that on the internet someone would code it to spite me and prove me wrong. I can only hope… Hopefully the next generation of programmers and dreams will be inspired by Inovae and create something like it.
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I’m a big fan of going to the moon, but I really don’t care about putting men there just yet. Work on automation. For that, the moon is awesome. A 2700ms ping, with a face of the moon always pointed in our direction, and 17% gravity. Remote operation of machinery until we have enough information to automate, then we can cut the machinery loose to create the stuff that we want to have up there. LEGO blocks for construction. Raw materials for processing. Laboratories, manufacturing facilities, and so on. A huge chunk of it can be developed here on Earth, including the ability to bootstrap the whole process with a minimum initial payload.
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Pretty much what I’ve been saying.
Instead of bitching, lets imagine stuff! That’s why I came here.
2020s: start a moon and mars base, SpaceX becomes a truly solid, profitable company.
2030s: a few new BFR models exist, and now a larger craft that is constructed and refueled in orbit ferries people around the solar system more comfortably and more economically than simply sending normal BFRs. SpaceX is now among the largest corporations by revenue and profits. Asteroid mining is a real industry, and artificially intelligent robotic spacecraft harvest resources from astroids, creating vast stocks of fuels and materials for building things in space and on other planets.
2040s: Mars now has multiple cities in different regions, almost like experimenting with different conditions. Elon Musk, now much older, diverts his efforts into beginning terraforming and designing a mission to a nearby star with the vast resources that now float around space.
2050s: Artificially intelligent robotcs build many things automatically now, without further need for instruction. 70% efficient solar panels power an ever expanding army of robots that gradually work to change the martian atmosphere to habitable. At this point, if there is any life on Mars to be discovered, it has been, and due to SpaceX’s missions in the 2020s, it has already been considered “too late,” though at this point deciphering martian life from terran life is trivial, and the economy and resource drive to have human life on Mars is too great and entrenched. Martian life is simple and doesn’t pose any threat to terran life, though the reverse isn’t true.
2060s: due to the exponential growth of self-assembling robots, Mars is now closer to being earth like. A project to establish a permanent magnetic field on Mars develops. The same manufacturing that allows this terraforming has transformed earth and Mars: rocketry is accessible to literally everyone on the planet after much political turmoil about artificial intelligence beginning in the mid 2010s culminated in a universal basic income for everyone and an eventual devaluation of currency and wealth itself. People find meaning through personal projects, though many struggle with depression due to a lack of purpose. Millennials now are on the tail end of having peak spending and political power, just as baby boomers do today.
2100: Mars is now actually habitable, climate change on earth has long been solved and humanity is now truly a space faring civilization, with colonies on a few nearby stars and all around the solar system.
For someone who is looking for a future in navigation, constellation management and interplanetary trajectories, you might want to brush up on your math given your belief that Space X’s $200,000 in fuel cost has even the slightest chance at being competitive with airlines at a fraction of the cost. As for your mental stability, I never questioned your ‘mental health’ but merely pointed out that enthusiasm can blind the best of us. But since you read into something that wasn’t there, maybe you have a point regarding you mental health.
I have no problem with Space X going to either Mars or the moon but am simply stating that the moon is a better option and a good starting point for a company that has so far only managed low orbit launches. But PRing rockets as a means for mass transit around the globe? Sorry but that’s where the debate really gets silly.
Chill your beans everyone.
But to be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand space economics. The nuances are extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the science will go over a typical reader’s head. There’s also Elon’s nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his history - his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The scientists understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these concepts, to realize that they’re not just innovative- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike SpaceX truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the intricacies in Elon’s existencial catchphrase “To mars and beyond,” which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev’s Russian epic Fathers and Sons I’m smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Elon’s genius unfolds itself on their pc screens. What fools… how I pity them. 
And yes by the way, I DO have a SpaceX tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It’s for the ladies’ eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they’re within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.
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A few things:
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I don’t understand, nor do I appreciate, the amount of vitriol you’re bringing to the thread in what was (and will hopefully return to being) a civil discussion about SpaceX’s goals. This is, after all, a thread about anything and everything rockets.
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For someone who is so strongly opinionated regarding Mars vs. Moon, you don’t seem to have a very solid grasp of the logistics for either. Yes, the moon is closer. Yes, the moon has more frequent launch windows. However, the actual, literal costs (in money and fuel) of flying to Mars vs. flying to the moon are nearly identical. Furthermore, while the moon is “only” a three day trip compared to the Martian 5-8 months, a catastrophic failure of a vital system is going to likely be lethal long before you could mount a rescue effort to either. Since the costs of launches are effectively the same, sending the supplies ahead of colonists is not only the logical plan of execution, but remains indifferent to your final destination. On a side note, if someone could tell me how often a lunar launch window is available it’d be greatly appreciated: I seem to be incapable of finding this information on Google despite numerous searches. Martian transfers are apparently separated by two years?
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Per this site, a US-OZ (New Zealand?) flight costs approximately $75,000 in fuel. Spread across 350 passengers (a 747’s capacity), the difference would mean a $357 hike in ticket prices. It really doesn’t sound that terrible compared to the thousands such tickets already cost, eh? And you get to save how many hours? I don’t think you’ve really considered the numbers or what people are willing to pay for convenience, and are instead attacking those who dare to dream for reasons I cannot begin to fathom.
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Claiming that technology will one day be able to do anything and everything given enough time is, of course, absurd. However, blindly denying the possibility of something based on zero facts and pure emotion is far greater the folly. SpaceX does not currently have the technology at a price point that is feasible for some of the things they demoed, sure. Not yet, anyway. Tesla electric cars were also largely unaffordable to the general public for many years as well, yet here we are: $35,000 nets you a 100% electric, fully usable, supposedly very quality (cannot testify first hand) car at a price not far from a standard gas powered vehicle. SpaceX already has the technology required, and it’s already been demonstrated to work. They have successfully launched objects into orbit and landed the first stage. They’ve reused the first stage, and landed it again. It’s not like the tech is a pipe dream that doesn’t exist, so why are you so adamantly refusing to acknowledge that it could, in fact, be very much feasible one day? Why are you attacking people who have not once said “It’s definitely the future,” but instead “It’s a pretty cool possibility”? Stifling discussion with “You’re dumb for even thinking this is superior!” without providing any sort of evidence to support your opinion is really, really rude.
Anywho. I fully support both moon and Mars, and would volunteer in a heartbeat to be one of the first to go to either. Personally, I think Mars is a superior choice: it has an atmosphere that can [theoretically] be used to produce both fuel and oxygen, it has a greater gravity well (our bodies don’t do well in low gravity), it’s further from Earth and less likely to be equally destroyed in an Earth-killing event. I’m positive there are more reasons, to include opinionated ones like the fact I think it’s cooler.
I’d also love to see global travel improve, even if the ideas are some time from becoming reality.
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I don’t think this is true in the SpaceX model, they plan to refuel the Mars spacecraft multiple times while en-route in order to cut down on trip duration. So you are looking at a handful of supporting BFRs for a Mars trip with compulsory refueling on the surface of Mars, while Musk stated in his presentation that a single BFR is good enough for a trip to the Moon and back without refueling.
As for the Moon, the launch window is always open, you just need to orbit the Earth to get a transfer opportunity.
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They may be planning on such refueling options (would you mind linking sources? I’d love to read more about it), but it’s certainly not required for the trip there. It’s just a trade off between convenience and costs.
Regarding refueling on Mars, assuming it’s an automated process it could be done by one of the pre-staged transports before the crew ever departs earth. While it is required to refuel for a return trip, you should consider that it is not mandatory to return, but it’s also possible to refuel on Mars, while incredibly difficult/impossible to do so at all on the moon.
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Here’s a link to Elon’s presentation at the point where he talks about getting to various destinations via BFR.
Elon is saying that the BFR can be fueled by 5 tankers in LEO to put 150 tons on the surface of Mars. Then it’s out of fuel. I think it can put roughly the same payload on the Moon, but then the rocket has enough fuel to come back again - probably without the 150 ton payload.
The delta-v between LEO and the moon seems to be about 60% that of the delta-v between LEO and Mars which is what makes that possible. I don’t know how much aerobraking on Mars changes that balance, but it does so in Mars’ favor.
For me, the Mars/Moon argument is largely about the survivability of crew on the long trip to and from Mars. The ISS tells us that microgravity is a horrible environment for people, and we don’t have data for low gravity environments. I’d never approve putting people into those environments without that data.
Of course, I continue to place the Man/Machine argument before the Mars/Moon argument. We’ve been on Mars for decades courtesy of our machines, and I see no reason to change that. Put 150 tons of machines on Mars instead of 150 tons of life support.
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Zen, you’re not in any position to accurately comment on the feasibility of mass transit. The people who know best about the feasibility of mass transit on earth using SpaceX rockets is SpaceX and literally no one else. They’ve shown time and time again that their plans are feasible and that their timelines are the most questionable thing about everything they’ve announced. They came up with the reusable rocket, FFS.
Also, have you taken a physics class in your life? Do you actually understand the BFR? Can you name any technical aspects of the rocket that they need to improve upon or haven’t worked out fully enough yet?
Because as far as I can tell, every aspect of the design is going to be fine, with only incremental hurdles to overcome. Expect the design and numbers to change as it is further developed, but it’s now been refined to the degree at which it’s clear that they should be able to pull it off.
My biggest concern is simply money, to be honest. If they have the money, I think that they will succeed pretty handily.