SpaceX to Send Humans to Mars by 2025

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/spacex-ceo-elon-musk-send-humans-mars-2025/story?id=39554210

SpaceX's Elon Musk aspires to send people to land on mars within the next 9 years. This time-frame is more ambitious than any countries' space program. For example, NASA has set their date to be by 2030.

Do you think they will succeed in doing so? Also, what would be the implications of this?

2025 seems awfully optimistic, because you need to have means of sustaining them there and transporting them back. It would be nice though.

I feel like this would be a one way trip. That or a return trip would be another few decades down the road.

Where do I sign up? We do after all, need a doomer on Mars...

If anyone can do it it's Elon Musk.

Clonehunter said:

I feel like this would be a one way trip. That or a return trip would be another few decades down the road.

That's a no go. They keep mentioning it, but no one's going to risk watching an astronaut die slowly on television because of something that'd be trivial to cure on Earth.

edit: I've recently seen an interview with the director of ESA and he talked about a less glamorous, but perhaps more promising and important step towards space exploration: a permanent astronaut "village" on the Moon. This has been brushed off for a long time as not interesting enough given the necessary budget, but the space powers are probably returning to the idea now that China is knocking at the lunar door and it's starting to look like such a "checkpoint" will be necessary anyways before we move to more grandiose projects.

Clonehunter said:

I feel like this would be a one way trip. That or a return trip would be another few decades down the road.

President Nixon actually had a speech ready incase the Apollo 11 mission failed to return Neil Armstrong and his crew to earth. I'm assuming the same thing will be done if this mars mission fails. That or they could just play Space Oddity for 24 hours on all TV stations.

It's only a a couple hundred million kilometers away. at 1,000 miles an hour it would take about 17 years. at 10,000 miles an hour only 1.7 years. If there is no friction/resistance in space, shouldn't it be really easy to go really fast in space?

First: I get most of my current space news from SciShow Space. If you haven't heard of them before you should check them out on youtube by following the link below.
SciShow Space

Second: Barock Obama cut federal funding for NASA then turned around and mandated a Mars mission with an unrealistic time deadline. What are we going to do go to mars with only 12 cents.

Third: NASA wants to capture an asteroid and cause it to orbit the moon. They want to use it for study and mining. They also want to do that by the late 2020's.

Fourth: We have not been back to the moon since the 1970's. Don't you think it is time to send another mission there sometime soon?

Fifth: In the mid 2020's there is rumor that an asteroid named Apophis will hit the earth effectively ending all life as we know it. Maybe we should mine that asteroid instead.

Sixth: If we want to mine something maybe we should mine Cruithne, Earth's possible second moon. It is a lot closer to us than the asteroid belt.

Seventh: According to my research it will take a manned mission 5 years with the current technology to reach Mars. We will run out of food halfway there however.

Eighth: By the mid to late 2020's scientists predict that we will find a planet in the galaxy that supports intelligent life, other than the earth, and we will receive actually receive a signal back from them.

Ninth: I am very glad Virgin and Space-X are working on space technology. Having space tech developed by a private public sector company empowers the nations people to not rely on the government to support the dreams of humanity.

Finally: I am such a space nerd. I have been learning a lot about it in the last year or so. I am very exited when new discoveries and missions are announced.

Hellbent said:

It's only a a couple hundred million kilometers away. at 1,000 miles an hour it would take about 17 years. at 10,000 miles an hour only 1.7 years. If there is no friction/resistance in space, shouldn't it be really easy to go really fast in space?

How fast is 'really fast?' 10000mph isn't so quick in space terms, the spacecraft has to get way past 20000 in the first place just to get out of Earths gravity, as has been achieved countless times already.

Hellbent said:

If there is no friction/resistance in space, shouldn't it be really easy to go really fast in space?

Theoretically yes, but: Both regulated speeding up and regulated slowing down requires fuel. The more mass the spacecraft has, the more fuel it needs to speed up or slow down by a constant value. Fuel itself has mass, so as long as it's on the spacecraft, it adds to its mass. All contemporary spacecrafts have a rather limited carrying capacity of the mass that they're able to lift out of Earth's gravity. Finally, fuel isn't free of charge and there isn't an unlimited amount of it.

dew said:

2025 seems awfully optimistic, because you need to have means of sustaining them there and transporting them back. It would be nice though.

2050 is optimistic in all honesty at this point if not even a century away. But people whos job it is to bring money to the aerospace industry will continue to state that the next great leap forward is forever but 20 years down the road.

dew said:

edit: I've recently seen an interview with the director of ESA and he talked about a less glamorous, but perhaps more promising and important step towards space exploration: a permanent astronaut "village" on the Moon. This has been brushed off for a long time as not interesting enough given the necessary budget, but the space powers are probably returning to the idea now that China is knocking at the lunar door and it's starting to look like such a "checkpoint" will be necessary anyways before we move to more grandiose projects.

Lunar habitation is the only realistic and practical option as the spear tip for human space travel but even it is a bit pie in the sky. A lunar base or 2 or 3 operating for years if not decades could be an excellent testing platform for many technical and engineering issues and projects useful for martian habitation. Though mars does have unique challenges to deal with that cannot really be studied on the moon. Additionally, if something goes wrong then help or rescue is only days away. A base such as this could and likely would be used to slowly build launch vehicles destined for mars. If low earth orbit is 'halfway to anywhere', then the moon is 3/4 the way.

But even branson and musk don't have the funding required for setting up such long term processes. Getting the resources and man power and logistics in place for a permanent or semi-permanent colony on the moon is not only prohibitively expensive (and not mars) but it's long term enough that its original funders probably aren't going to see anything more than the first baby steps of a private space program before they die. While many may find the idea of a visionary with money to burn to be awe inspiring, I find it a tad silly and even a bit cultish. Whatis going to happen in 20 years when these guys get bored of spending their money on these particular ventures?

Supporting human life outside the earth is the really hard part. If it were easy we'd have already been to mars and beyond.

I see a lot of talk about how this may not happen for decades or centuries from now. I think, technologically, we can get this shit done by the 2020s, it's just a matter of how government policy affects what areas of technological research get the spotlight.