SpaceX Plans To Send Five Uncrewed Starships To Mars in Two Years (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0175112753
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/23/165239/spacex-plans-to-send-five-uncrewed-starships-to-mars-in-two-years
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/science/musk-says-spacex-plans-launch-about-five-uncrewed-starships-mars-two-years-2024-09-22/
> Earlier this month, Musk had said that the first Starships to Mars would launch in two years "when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens."
>
> The CEO on Sunday said that the first crewed mission timeline will depend upon the success of the uncrewed flights. If the uncrewed missions land safely, crewed missions will be launched in four years. However, in case of challenges, crewed missions will be postponed by another two years, Musk said.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/science/musk-says-spacex-plans-launch-about-five-uncrewed-starships-mars-two-years-2024-09-22/
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh, he did reach orbital velocity in flight 3 and flight 4. Flight 5 -- the FAA is blocking him because they think turtles are traumatized by rocket noise. What happens to turtles during thunderstorms? I wonder. How can it take them 3 months to do a phony environmental review each time he launches a Starship? Reference: [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-rfZwRxjI4
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You're spreading misinformation. The last launch (IFT-4) "wasn't in orbit" only in the most technical sense. They didn't want to take the chance that it would stay up there until the orbit degraded, and they wanted to test atmospheric re-entry. However, it was on an "orbital energy trajectory." AKA a "near-orbital trajectory." Nobody doubts they could have achieved orbit, but that wasn't the goal of the mission. Both the booster and the starship vehicle also did a powered soft splashdown, which is qui
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The straight up facts support what the other user is saying. See e.g. [1]https://payloadspace.com/starship-achieves-major-milestones-on-its-third-test-flight/ [payloadspace.com]. The Starship went around 7.2 km/s. Stable low earth orbit is around 7.8 km/s, and if one moves slightly higher up, then the orbital velocity is 7.12 km/s, which is lower than that of Starship. [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit [wikipedia.org].
[1] https://payloadspace.com/starship-achieves-major-milestones-on-its-third-test-flight/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit
Re: (Score:2)
What kool-aid? The rockets are orbit capable and have proved that. Just because you say it isn't doesn't make it so. Will be funny when they does demo fully re-usable reach Mars, we'll be able to say a lot of people said it was impossible. You'll be an example of someone who said Starship won't work. Congrats.
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So you're just an idiot then.
The wings and flaps weren't melting until AFTER THEY WERE ALREADY RE-ENTERING THE ATMOSPHERE. In other words, well after they had already exited the atmosphere and continued burning to orbital velocity.
All that was missing was a burn at apogee to "circularize" the orbit, which they could have done if they wanted to in order to prove what anyone that is familiar with how any of this works already knew - they were in the orbit they wanted, at the speed they wanted. They just did
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> ...The Starship went around 7.2 km/s. Stable low earth orbit is around 7.8 km/s, and if one moves slightly higher up, then the orbital velocity is 7.12 km/s, which is lower than that of Starship.
If you go even higher up, the orbital velocity is even less. Go up to 10000 km, and orbital velocity is 5 km/s. Can we claim that any rocket achieving 5 km/s is orbital?
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No because going up that much higher is difficult. In this context, a small change in the direction of Starship would have put it in a high enough position that 7.1 or so would have been sufficient to stay in orbit.
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Look at Berkyjay's other posts. He's a perennial troll, and we took the bait.
Re: (Score:1)
> He's a perennial truth teller.
Fixed that for ya
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> You can't even get them to Earth orbit.
Given today's news of as many as five un-crewed missions to Mars, there is still no mention of any plan or effort to return any of the vehicles, (and presumably humans in the future), back to Earth. If that's not the goal, why even bother with the monumental costs and risks of sending people to Mars, instead of all the quality instruments we're already so successful with for actually accomplishing science stuff, (and over extremely lengthy durations)?
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He's talking to investors. But the fanbois think he's talking to them.
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>> You can't even get them to Earth orbit.
> Given today's news of as many as five un-crewed missions to Mars, there is still no mention of any plan or effort to return any of the vehicles, (and presumably humans in the future) , back to Earth. If that's not the goal, why even bother with the monumental costs and risks of sending people to Mars?
Elmo is only selling a retirement on Mars or somewhere en route, and you'd truly be surprised at how many takers there are.
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The only difference in the last flight between actual orbit and what happened, is an engine burn at the apogee of the suborbital path to bring the perigee out of the atmosphere. They didn't do that, because they didn't actually want it to stay in orbit.
But they got it out of the atmosphere and up to orbital velocity. There is absolutely nobody (besides you, apparently) who thinks it wouldn't still be up there if they wanted it to be.
Hopefully there's a payload (Score:3)
Rather than just testing consistent landing ability, sending a fuel generator, some supplies, a rover, etc. would be nice to see. Make the rover remote deployable and operable and use it to prep some nicer landing space for the crewed mission.
And one of those rockets should launch again, at least to Mars orbit.
Re:Hopefully there's a payload (Score:4, Insightful)
There's been some discussion of putting a scaled up version of MOXIE [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Oxygen_ISRU_Experiment [wikipedia.org] on board one. MOXIE is a very small scale tech demonstrator on the Perseverance rover which tested producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere by splitting CO2. A fuel generator would be good. As with a scaled up MOXIE, probably more on the working-out-kinks than actually making one with fuel one is intending to use on a large scale. But your point about rovers is a good one. The sheer tonnage they could land with these systems makes rovers look really appealing, especially because for standard rovers, a major part of the cost is just getting the mass down. So if mass is not as much of an issue, rover cost should start going down, and the rovers will start having more options for a lot of other technologies, like a scaled up version of the Ingenuity helicopter, possibly with enough solar power to not need to have to return to a rover to recharge.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Oxygen_ISRU_Experiment
Re: (Score:2)
Solar's pretty weak on Mars... But they're as likely to be cleaned by a breeze as cover with dust by one, so I think it would be interesting to send up some solar tarps and peg them down to the ground. Or just move rocks onto the corners. It would save a lot of mass on mounting hardware, and if you don't care so much about the mass, think of the volume. Either way you get more room to send more stuff.
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Solar power on Mars is weaker yes, with light levels about 2.3 times as weak as on Earth, but it was strong enough to be able to use it to power Spirit and Opportunity. And solar panels now are about twice as efficient as they were since they were made, and modern batteries are also better. So the energy budget from solar is not bad as long as one is willing to use some time to just sit and recharge. The dust problem is I agree an issue, but from Spirit and Opportunity, we saw that cleaning events were muc
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Is it reasonable to just have a "robot dusting arm" with a brush on it? "Oh no, the panels are covered with--never mind, I pushed the button and they're clean again now."
Re: (Score:2)
This idea and some similar ones were suggested for follow-up missions to Spirit and Opportunity. At the time, they judged that the risk of scratching/damaging the panels was high enough and that they wanted high enough energy budgets for the big rovers, that it made sense to just go nuclear. I'm not sure how much research there's been since then. But presumably this sort of thing is one of the many things when one has this large a mass budget that one could go check with an early launch.
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Standard solar panels are more efficient now.
The high tech panels used on the rovers - or any other space technology - are the same.
There is not much room in approvement in them.
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Better to have a rover there first, with actual science being done, than prematurely sending people who have no way to get home and no way to stay there long term. Ie, do something useful first instead of showing off.
Re:Hopefully there's a payload (Score:5, Interesting)
They will send much more than that. These ships are enormous, 37 stories tall with a 9 meter diameter. It is truly an incredible feat they have already launched to orbit and mock landed them in the water. Their payload for each trip is 100 to 150 tons. They could literally send 100 rovers in each ship and still have room leftover. They will start with things that are not expensive so as not to risk resources in the case of a failure at first but there will be thousands of different things sent on each ship. This is why they initially launched a tesla into space with the Falcon Rocket. They first offered NASA and others to launch things, but not one took them up on their offer given the risk of failure so they put Musk's personal Tesla Roadster as the test payload, and the flight succeeded and now the Tesla is still floating through space.
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That's a lot of posting about what they could send, nothing definite about what they will send. If you're up on the latest and can provide links that are more comprehensive than the article linked to this discussion, it would be genuinely appreciated.
I'm no fan of Musk, but I am a fan of space exploration and won't deny SpaceX has pushed things forward quite a bit.
How quickly will this get borked? (Score:3)
IIRC, in the documentary "Good night, Oppy", JPL had a hell of a time making sure that the thing worked while also being beyond squeaky clean. Some people are very concerned about "contaminating" Mars with Earth microorganisms. I'm guessing that elements of the government are going to try to bork SpaceX's efforts for political reasons while claiming that it's for biological reasons.
Re: (Score:1)
The same government that gave SpaceX a $2.89B contract (a sole contract at the dismay of the other bidders at the time) for Starship/HLS which is all but an official endorsement of the program.
Do you not think contamination is a concern that should be addressed if they are going to attempt to land the ships? SpaceX already knows this is a requirement, I don't think the thousands of engineers who are working on this are so cynical or stupid to disregard it as you think they are.
Re: (Score:2)
Only a very tiny chance that politics are involved here, more it's about Musk with an outsized ego unwilling to cooperate with others. But there are conspiracy theories, and Musk fans, and Musk fans with conspiracy theories...
No creamy nougat center, neither. (Score:2)
Uh, I kind of checked out on Musk's projects after the whole [gestures at everything], but as near as I can tell, the only Starship rocket that has managed to come back to earth in one piece splashed down in the ocean. Ain't no ocean on Mars, though.
Captain Musk (Score:1)
I think the chances of success would be so much higher if Musk would captain the first ship they send to Mars.
Re: (Score:2)
> I think the chances of success would be so much higher if Musk would captain the first ship they send to Mars.
Even better, we could also send his preferred presidential candidate to be the first president of Mars Colony, and then we'll solve two problems.
Musk seeks publicity (Score:3)
Musk has always enjoyed being in the limelight, and making boastful claims has always been part of his strategy. He also likes to do stunts, which at times have been very creative; sending his personal Tesla to orbit the solar system, or selling flame throwers.
However, since he has become more involved in politics, his public persona has become more provocative and extreme. He's said that rich tech bros like himself should have more votes the regular people, and he supports more radical and violent content on X/Twitter.
When he is challenged he engages in retaliation. He's suing the FAA over regulations, which is not very useful most of the time. And he's suing advertisers who are leaving X/Twitter because they don't want to be associated with the more radical content. That's just stupid. He can't win under any circumstances, and it alienates the remaining advertisers even more.
He's becoming more erratic. It's not good a good sign for him, and it's obviously bad for his business empire.
Re: Musk seeks publicity (Score:2)
"sending his personal Tesla to orbit the solar system"
It probably failed expensively and this was his way of hiding the evidence
Re: (Score:2)
> He's becoming more erratic. It's not good a good sign for him, and it's obviously bad for his business empire.
Rich guy syndrome. Surround one's self only with yes-men, nobody working for you dares to criticize because their job might end. And all those yes-men saying "that's brilliant, m'lord!" makes one start to believe it. Tack onto that a lot of fanboys posting gushingly on social media amplifies this. Eventually they end up completely removed from reality and common sense.
Musk haters (Score:4, Insightful)
Criticize all you want but SpaceX has done more for the space industry in its short existence than anyone could have imagined. Yes, Musk's timelines are rarely correct, but SpaceX does come through. I'm so happy I'll be alive to see people on Mars some day ... courtesy of SpaceX. Stop the hate and enjoy the show people, it's a great time to be alive.
Re: Musk haters (Score:2)
SpaceX going to Mars affects my life positively about as much as the DOW going up. Neither one trickles down to me.
Re: (Score:3)
Humans (the tribe you belong to) are going to Mars. How does that not excite you? Just think, some day going to Mars will be as commonplace as taking a trip to another country. It will happen, sadly though after my life time. However, the moon may be somewhat colonized before I pass. I look forward to pointing my 90mm Meade at the Moon and seeing the lights from the settlements there. Amazing times!
Re: (Score:2)
> Humans (the tribe you belong to) are going to Mars. How does that not excite you?
It alarms me - that the first arrival of a human being (either personally or in spirit) would be a megalomaniac arsehole like Musk, one of the worst representatives of the human race you could find. If it is not Musk personally, it will be one of his idiot sychophants posing in his image.
I am as excited about Musk's Mars colony project as I would have been about the [1] Jonestown colony [wikipedia.org] if I had heard about it back then. They do sound very similar, and worth a bag of popcorn perhaps while it lasts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
Re: (Score:2)
Building a proper Mars colony would let us here on Earth upgrade from racism to planetism.
Re: Musk haters (Score:2)
I support Musk and all his followers leaving for Mats as soon as possible.
Re: (Score:2)
> Criticize all you want but SpaceX has done more for the space industry in its short existence than anyone could have imagined. Yes, Musk's timelines are rarely correct, but SpaceX does come through. I'm so happy I'll be alive to see people on Mars some day ... courtesy of SpaceX. Stop the hate and enjoy the show people, it's a great time to be alive.
The best thing to happen to SpaceX was Musk getting distracted by Tesla.
Re: (Score:2)
SpaceX currently is just NASA without the interference, and with the money to actually do what they want to do ...
They have basically built what NASA should have been doing, but were prevented, by lack of funds and government interference
They currently are not ahead of what NASA could currently do if the breaks were taken off, but are starting to get near ...
That makes sense (Score:1)
I assume they're sending two so when the first one breaks down, the other can tow it. That's actually really smart, considering the engineering quality at everything Elon owns.
But it's Elon .. (Score:3)
So expect it sometime in the next 10-15 years like real rocket scientists predict
Every single time based prediction of his has been delayed .... until it's when everyone else said they would probably do it ... or later ...
5 Starships returning from Mars? (Score:2)
"SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket – collectively referred to as Starship – represent a fully reusable transportation system" [1]https://www.spacex.com/vehicle... [spacex.com]
This I wanna see! Maybe a simultaneous landing for show?
[1] https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship/
Special Relativity -- Elon style (Score:1, Troll)
"2 years," which, due to Elon-Time-Dilation, means at least 7 years.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely. But it will still likely happen sooner than anyone else expects. The general tendency (with some exceptions) is that Musk says some highly optimistic time frame, pessimists say it won't happen at all for decades if ever, and then it ends up happening somewhere in the middle. As Musk has gotten to be more of a controversial figure for his political views and generally unpleasant behavior, that's also caused people to take even more negative views of SpaceX's work and prospects just as a matter
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cybertrucks?
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well, I can think of several things to put in those ginormous ships. Automated production facilities for one. Automated mining equipment for another.
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Musk's original plan was to send automated greenhouses, Kimbal Musk currently heads up a hydroponics farming company called SquareRoots
Re: (Score:2)
that makes sense. I mean Starships are indeed huge, but... growing your own food, water, air are much better than relying on Earth to ship it to you!
Re: Special Relativity -- Elon style (Score:4, Insightful)
> Do you genuinely think he is going to send FIVE rockets to Mars before he can send ONE rocket to the moon?
Probably not. It is likely a Starship rocket will go to or around the moon before this. I'm not sure why you would think otherwise. But note that with aerobraking, Mars has only a slightly larger delta-V than that to the moon if a ballistic capture orbit is used. The numbers are worse for Hohmann transfer orbits but not by that much.
Re: Special Relativity -- Elon style (Score:2)
The moon seems like it could be orbited much sooner than 2 years given the recent cadence of his Starship progress, and the lack of the solar orbit transfer windows to the moon. My guess is they will send 5 designs to mars to see what landing / aerobreaking tech works. Musk has a good development workflow which involves failing frequently, failing often, and learning everything you can. Perhaps one of the ships will deliver to Mars orbit a giant payload of Starlink satellites so SpaceX can learn as much as
Re: (Score:2)
> The moon seems like it could be orbited much sooner than 2 years given the recent cadence of his Starship progress
This seems likely to me. If the next couple of test flights go well and orbital refueling is demonstrated by early next year, there's no reason SpaceX won't try sending a Starship to lunar orbit (if not the lunar surface) sometime in 2025. This has been the plan under the Starship HLS component of the Artemis program for some time now.
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He never said he wouldn't shoot other Starships to other nearer gravitational bodies before sending 5 to Mars you know...
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He said 2027 for the NASA certification moon mission under SLS contract, which is after the Mars transfer window. So... he kinda did!
Re: Special Relativity -- Elon style (Score:2)
How many years overdue is full self driving? Actual full self driving would be level 5, Tesla does a bad job of level 3 with fatalities that could be solved by adding LIDAR.
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> How many years overdue is full self driving? Actual full self driving would be level 5, Tesla does a bad job of level 3 with fatalities that could be solved by adding LIDAR.
Tesla already has depth map data from their cameras. If they can't avoid firetrucks with that data, having a second set of depth map data isn't likely to make any difference. (Also, I'm pretty sure all of the fatal crashes were on the legacy highway stack, to within the margin of error, which makes them borderline irrelevant at this point.)
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Musk acts like a micro manager, but isn't one. Like all CEOs. And like all CEOs you have to remain a bit skeptical about what they say at all times. The difference here is that Musk can't keep from talking, and while also owning a social media company the ability to talk endlessly is unchecked.
SpaceX succeeds best when they push back against their boss and do things the right way. After all, the boss is not a rocket scientist, not even an engineer, despite the misleading title of "chief engineer", and o
Re: (Score:3)
In this case, I believe their timeline is accurate -- Starship is almost ready and their already showing the ability to pump out Starship rockets faster than the FAA can move a sheet of paper from one desk to another. Assuming the FAA doesn't block them for purely political reasons, 2 years is very doable.
Re: (Score:2)
I have no proof here, but I love a good conspiracy theory. In my (terrible) opinion, Jeff Bezos if behind all the recent FAA troubles for SpaceX. BlueOrigin wants a big cut of that sweet NASA money. Slowing SpaceX down is a good way to stay competitive for future government contracts.
Re: (Score:3)
Yuuup.
This is a good thing, though.
People are realizing that establishing property rights on Mars now will forever rule out terraforming.
For instance pushing the asterioid belt into Mars over a few centuries would help with mass and heat.
Can't do that if it's populated.
We're better off mining the Taurids into a massive space station at a Lagrange Point, and remove the source of Tunguska-type impactors.
Re: (Score:2)
It is helpful to recall that in 2016 [1]he predicted an unmanned Mars mission in 2018 [time.com] and [2]a Mars colony by 2024 [dw.com]; and that in 2018 [3]he predicted a Mars base by 2028 [space.com].
Musk has always over-promised on his Mars obsession, so we may reasonably expect him to miss the 2026 window for even a Mars fly-by, but maybe in the 2028 window.
[1] https://time.com/4311049/mars-musk-spacex-2018/
[2] https://www.dw.com/en/elon-musk-envisions-mars-colony-in-8-years-time/a-35911138
[3] https://www.space.com/41935-mars-base-alpha-2028-elon-musk.html
Re: Special Relativity -- Elon style (Score:2)
But then again the FAA has also put a big brake on advancements due to blocking testflights. And lets not forget COVID set a lot of projects back for quite some time.
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This particular effort won't work with Musk's usual time dilation, because there is a defined transfer window for optimal delta-V to get between Earth and Mars.
If he misses the transfer window, he's either using WAY more fuel and time to get there, or waiting 26 months for the next window.
If he doesn't hit the window in 2 years, he'll get another shot in a little over 4 years, with everyone mocking him for missing his stated goal for 2 years and nothing to be done about it.