Elon Musk shared his latest moon and Mars plans with Earthlings today

It's been more than four years since Elon Musk first revealed his audacious plan to lay the foundation for a city on Mars. The SpaceX founder and leading Martian real estate evangelist will give an update on his interplanetary opus Friday at this year's virtual Mars Society convention.

SpaceX has conducted a few short flights of Starship prototypes and launched several hundred Starlink satellites for its broadband service that Musk has said will help fund his Martian ambitions.

Musk will speak on Friday, the second day of the convention, at 3 p.m. PT. (It was previously set for 4 p.m.). You can register for free to attend via Attendify or Zoom, and the video feed is also accessible via Facebook and YouTube.

Elon Musk to share latest moon and Mars plans with Earthlings today

Musk says that he is 80-90% certain his Starship will reach orbit next year.

50% confident he will be able to recover the ship and booster.

He says it is probable they will lose a few before they perfect the return landings. He hopes not to lose any boosters because of the amount of engines that would be lost.

At first it is only going to use about two to four engines on the booster, not the 28 that the final booster will have. He thinks they will be doing high volume flights in 2022.

Musk said that it is essential that innovation has an almost exponential increase or we will never make it to Mars in his lifetime.

According to Musk, if we have this increase in innovation, he may be able to send an unmanned Starship to Mars in four years.

We get to hear from Robert Zubrin too in the video. The live feed was a couple hours ago. You can watch the video below.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

His ability to send a ship to the moon or mars isn’t all the amazing to me as it has been done many times before.
Admittedly not by private industry but still it’s nothing new.

I’m still waiting on the solutions to the real problems associated with going to mars.
Until those issues are resolved it’s nothing but a suicide mission.

a reply to: Bluntone22

He said we need almost exponential innovation just to send an unmanned ship.

Not sure what he's getting at there. If he said manned ship, I would understand.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Well low earth orbit is pretty easy but escaping earths gravity takes a butt ton of power.
The Saturn five was huge.
Maybe that’s what he means.

a reply to: Bluntone22

escaping earths gravity takes a butt ton of power

To overcome that problem only takes time and money, not exponential innovation

Maybe he is talking about a new kind of rocket engine?

Hope he's not talking some trans-humanism stuff.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Well, he needs to stop flying his jetpack around at 6,000 feet and start working on real projects like this.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Musk said that it is essential that innovation has an almost exponential increase or we will never make it to Mars in his lifetime.

LoL assuming Musk is only going to live 4 years.

The guy is an idiot.

Yep. I said it. He is a “Magic Elixir” salesman.

And ya’ll are buying his BS! (Just saying)

While good at getting certain things done he can’t have any idea on the future tasks. And he sells his BS about what he @is able to do” and everyone believes it!

He is not a futurist. He is not a salesman of the future. He is stealing your money.

Get over it. (And welcome to the real world)

It's not really private. Everything the government does is contractors except for the main management and executives. All they did was contract out the work. He won the bid for the work. He still works for NASA. It's not his astronauts. He is however very intelligent about a lot of things.

Mars is not a suicide trip with our current tech.

Its really simple actually.

We already know of and have mapped a massive amount of large cave formations on the planet. We just need to send the supplies and a rover to that location first an have camp set up. Then simply fly there.

The cave structure will protect them from excess radiation.

Mars has ice water, from which we can sustain life and derive oxygen, we have solar panels for energy. We just need to send enough supplies to get things started. We can grow food and send food.

We are really overcomplicating it.

The radiation issue during travel was actually already solved as well. The hull could/will have a thin lining of liquid water (as shown in "AWAY")

If we can land on the moon 60 years ago, we can land on Mars today.

People just overcomplicate things.

Musk lifts the blindfolds to that.

Erm, I don’t hate the guy just the cult that thinks his ideas are any good (they aren’t).

So, I listen to the announcements, then make up my mind.

And seriously, this asshat is not part of the future that I see.

Yes. Asshat. Dude is an effin’ idiot. Sorry folks.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
Erm, I don’t hate the guy just the cult that thinks his ideas are any good (they aren’t).

So, I listen to the announcements, then make up my mind.

And seriously, this asshat is not part of the future that I see.

Yes. Asshat. Dude is an effin’ idiot. Sorry folks.

If you were right, and he indeed was an idiot, you must be the super genius then? And everyone at NASA are also dummies sucked into his BS for handing him a billion dollar contract?

Seriously, you should go for the CEO job at NASA. I reckon you would slay it 👍🏼

a reply to: Bluntone22

I'd imagine the crew quarters will have water between the inner and outer hull to keep the nasties out. It's all very interesting how the technology is progressing which begs the question - what the hell has been the holdup for the past 50 years?

a reply to: FinallyAwake

Yum, yeah. And your point??!

This is about the whole entire part of being human.

So, now what???

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: FinallyAwake

Yum, yeah. And your point??!

This is about the whole entire part of being human.

So, now what???

My point is your ignorance

originally posted by: billxam
a reply to: Bluntone22

I'd imagine the crew quarters will have water between the inner and outer hull to keep the nasties out. It's all very interesting how the technology is progressing which begs the question - what the hell has been the holdup for the past 50 years?

It’s more just the nasties.
Just look at the effects of being weightless on the human body.
Food and water will be a huge problem.
Dust on the moon.
Sand storms on mars.

NASA is still looking for a working toilet.

It seems exploration has never been easy, nothing is ever guaranteed and many always die.

I think we should all just stay locked up in our houses. It is much safer.

The Pilgrims faced many hardships during their journey to Plymouth and through the first winter in the New World. First, there was little space aboard the Mayflower for its 102 passengers and additional crew members. Areas below-decks were cramped and dark, and passengers had little personal space. Many passengers were seasick. All the passengers needed to use a chamber pot for a bathroom, and if the weather was rough, they were not allowed to go up on deck to dump it out. For 66 days, passengers endured these small, smelly spaces. Additionally, there was little food and water. Many passengers, including children, drank ale.

The troubles of the Pilgrims did not end when they reached America. Initially bound for Virginia, the Mayflower went off course and ended up landing on Cape Cod first, before finally settling in Plymouth (known then as Plimoth). The weather was much colder than what the Pilgrims had prepared for and the first winter was devastating. The Pilgrims struggled to build homes, and many families crowded into the few homes that were built. Food was scarce, and many Pilgrims starved to death that first winter.

What were some of the hardships the pilgrims faced during their trip across the Atlantic and the first winter at Plymouth?

originally posted by: Bluntone22
It’s more just the nasties.
Just look at the effects of being weightless on the human body.
Food and water will be a huge problem.
Dust on the moon.
Sand storms on mars.

NASA is still looking for a working toilet.

Weightlessness in transit is manageable. Valeri Polyakov stayed on the ISS for 437 days. The guy is fine. It takes 80 to 150 days to go to Mars, depending on orbits and the delta-v of the spacecraft.
If worst came to worst, you could always tether and spin two starships for artificial gravity.
Staying on Mars may turn out to be the real issue. We know how to handle micro-gravity for a couple of months, but we have zero knowledge about how the human body adapts to reduced gravity of Mars at 0.37g.

Food and water won't be a huge problem. If there is ever a manned SpaceX mission to Mars they will have sent half a doze cargo ships to Mars first. The entire point of Starship project is not just to sent one or two spacecraft to Mars but eventually hundreds in each synode. Starship is not a remarkably advanced vessel. It is however (or supposed to be) remarkably affordable.
If they achieve mass production, SpaceX will be looking at less than 10 mil US-$ to build and 2 mil US-$ to launch Starships to LEO. You'd obviously need a hell of a lot orbital refueling missions to do the burn for Mars but the number of Starships you could get to Mars for just 1 billion would be insane.
Obviously this will only happen ten to twenty years after the first Starship gets to LEO and back in one piece, but it's not a fantasy anymore. Starship is designed to work like an airliner, not a rocket. Few people understand what this means.

Moon Dust is actually a great case in point in this context. Yes, regolith dust is potentially quite harmful to humans and landing crafts alike. While there a many technological solutions for various issues related to this, dirt cheap Starships are a good short term solution. If one breaks, not biggy, just use the spare.

Sand storms on Mars are not a thing. Not like they are depicted in the Martian anyway. You run into issues with Solar power generation but thats about it. And using solar power is bs anyway, they have to use a small nuclear reactor anyway if they don't want to wait years and years to produce fuel for the return trip.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

The space industry in on a path towards being a trillion dollar industry... The next few tech bubbles will be related to who controls earths orbital 'area'. Space tourism is already in the works, and there's lots of niche technologies being made public now.

a reply to: mightmight

Staying on Mars may turn out to be the real issue. We know how to handle micro-gravity for a couple of months, but we have zero knowledge about how the human body adapts to reduced gravity of Mars at 0.37g.

Going from micro gravity to Mars gravity should be easier than going from micro gravity to Earth gravity.

The real problem will be coming home to Earth gravity. After all that reduced gravity and micro gravity.

The trip to Mars should be a one way trip for most.

We should adapt fine to 0.37g.