Elon Musk says SpaceX's new spaceship could go 'well beyond Mars'

originally posted by: BlueShaman

originally posted by: TheKnightofDoom
He has a Bond villain name so beware all.

Good point.

Ah, so! And couple him with secret resources and permissions of government and he has magical results along with a few duds that slows the process and may actually be allowed to happen.

(Why do so many people that that government and industry are there to serve them?)

Going "beyond" Mars, or anywhere else for that matter, once you're in space isn't the issue. So, no great technological leap there. We've had spacecraft which have exited the entire solar system for decades, exited the Heliophere even.

The real challenge is slowing down and actually landing! People forget this is no easy feat, and involves intensive knowledge of the gravitational forces, atmosphere and surface one is landing on. Take Mars for example; we have literally mountains of data on every aspect of this nearby planet, yet only about 1 in 6 attempts to land there are completely successful. Not very good odds, which get exponentially worse the less we know about the place where a landing is to be attempted. In fact, spacecraft have to be purpose built for the planet they are landing on. A Moon landing requires a completely different descent and landing craft than Mars. It's not like Star Trek or Lost in Space where the same spaceship can just tool around and pick out a planet to land on and then go check it out.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

"Going "beyond" Mars, or anywhere else for that matter, once you're in space isn't the issue. So, no great technological leap there. We've had spacecraft which have exited the entire solar system for decades, exited the Heliophere even. "

Being able to do so in a timely manner with a Humans on board never mind the rest of the life support system and other equipment required to make such a journey is a little different than Voyager 1 exited the heliosphere. More akin to us landing on the Moon only a hell of a lot further away.

Certainly agree that orbiting and landing at any target destination beyond Mars or even on Mars is fraught with danger considering our lack of knowledge/information.

a reply to: andy06shake

Well, frankly, the whole concept of deep space travel for mankind is pretty silly really. To travel the vast distances of interstellar space is going to require a hell of a lot more than life support. It's going to involve the development of technology to transport people/objects at high percentages of C. When (if) this ever happens, then mankind will be faced with time dilation and Twin Paradox issues, likely rendering anything the traveler finds on his journey of little use to the planet he left behind (upon his return). Anything he could discover would have already been discovered or the existence he brings his discovery back to would be extinct. Sure, it's fun to think about, but in reality there is no practical value other than to the traveler himself.

I agree though that the life support elements are also a challenge, but that wasn't really my point about Voyager. Elon Musk is talking about the technology of his spaceships, not life support systems. Musk doesn't have anything up on anyone else in this category, and this is the distinction I was making.

a reply to: Phage

Was Earth "made" for man. In a sense, yes. It's positioning is quite hospitable to the complexity and longevity needed to create a being as complex as ourselves. Remember my reference to jupiter and the required protection (provided by its gravity) from asteroids? How could we evolve without that protective influence?

Life elsewhere is not possible.

You've read way more than I actually wrote.

No, life elsewhere in the universe = perfectly plausible.

Living on Mars or Titan = impossible.

Life on Mars or Titan? Yes, probably bacterial (i.e. about a thousand times smaller than one of your own liver cells). Multi-cellular life? Probably wishful thinking.

Nothing is known about the origins of life. There are only hypotheses and assumptions.

There is a point in science where theory takes on the quality of fact i.e. electromagnetism, strong-weak nuclear force, gravity - no one thinks these are "unreal", or aren't deeply captured by Newtons laws, Einsteins Laws, and Quantum laws.

Morowitz work shows an internal coherency in self-organizing processes in physical matter, and the tripartite organization he notes, to me, strikes me as "law-like" as gravity, electromagnetism, or the nuclear forces. It just takes time for the old paradigm (and the people who make it up) to internalize the new facts.

If reading long books with lots of biochemistry and mathematics is not your cup of tea, than resist commenting on it.

Or, read it and see why I'm so excited about the books ontological implications.

Science is about discovery - Morowitz spent a whole lifetime discovering the laws and ordering principles behind matter. He helped me, at least, think of my body and being as one big "energy flow".

Still, Professor Morowitz was more confident dismissing dogma, like creationism or intelligent design, than specifying how life originated on Earth.

Hehehe. Something tells me Morowitz was a creationist-in-the-closet. He was a follower of Teilhard De Chardin i.e. believed that the "Omega Point" was a real thing. What else does that mean other than a somewhat God-like belief in a "point" or unifying center i.e. God?

He didn't go about his science the way creationists/intelligent design advocates do, and hence, his brilliance as a scientist and philosopher. He just showed - better than anyone else (includng Conway Morris) - that life had an internal logic i.e. a non-random way of cohering, evolving and reproducing - all as a function of energy flow in far-from equilibrium systems held together by H20.

But I agree, we are a long, long way from terraforming. That doesn't mean we can't live there. We do need to get our eggs out of this basket.

I think its wishful thinking - borne from a tendency to not pay attention to dissociative-processes.

Just to be clear: life elsewhere in our universe, perfectly plausible. It just requires - as every thinking person who reads science and values reason can accept - a set of conditions that the Human being just can't overcome willy-nilly.

Just because we can think about it, doesn't mean it's possible.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

The technology to travel to another star probobly wont materialize for at least a few 100 years yet. By that time if we are not well on our way to colonizing our own system we will probobly be back in the iron age. That being said should humanity keep developing towards the singularity and manage to learn at an exponential rate who knows whats possible.