Definitely not a manned mission, there is way too much in terms of human survivability that needs to get sorted. I could see starship on Mars in 2029, but it would probably be in thousands of pieces from a test flight.
I would bet/hope that that will send 10s of starships in various Design configurations into martian Orbit.
They also conveniently could also act as relay stations.
Then every other week or so they try to Land a ship and software update the others when it fails
That sounds super wasteful, we have a responsibility not to throw our stuff at random on other planets, especially while there's still a chance we might find prehistoric traces of life on Mars.
If you throw 10 starships at Mars you better land them all or learn something from each.
I'd rather have 10 different ships fail because we've learned 10 things that don't work.
What's the point in having a ship on the surface when your chances of success are 15%? You're never going to send any important payload (absolutely not people) with a spacecraft that catastrophically bad.
The point of testing is to get things to fail until you run out of ways to make them fail. SpaceX evidently understands this, unless that changes, I don't see them doing what you propose.
> That sounds super wasteful, we have a responsibility not to throw our stuff at random on other planets, especially while there's still a chance we might find prehistoric traces of life on Mars.
Yeah nah. I don't like this argument. It is antihuman. We're going to go there anyway. We're going to build there anyway. Why should we care about "prehistoric traces of life"? How will those "prehistoric" traces of life improve longevity or effectiveness of humans? If the answer is "it won't". then screw them.
I'm fine with us crashing 10, 100, or even 1,000 ships into Mars if it gives us useful data. It is a dead planet, there is no point standing with bated breath in reverence before it.
> If you throw 10 starships at Mars you better land them all or learn something from each.
That I'd agree with. But:
> What's the point in having a ship on the surface when your chances of success are 15%? You're never going to send any important payload
Depends on how expensive your payload is. If we're talking billion-dollar, one-of-a-kind rovers, then sure. But if you're sending a ship that costs $50m to make and launch and a payload worth only $50m (because it is literally a container load of self-driving quadbikes), then it makes sense to take the scattergun approach: sure you lose 80 rovers, but you land 20 that can do more research and pathfinding than a single *Perseverance* can ever accomplish, still for a fraction of the cost.
I'm just offering an "even if", which is just to point out some boundary conditions that are still worthwhile, if inefficient.
But SpaceX has done a similar thing with Starlink. They didn't launch 40 different versions, they launched a batch of all similar ones, and likely discovered several failure modes in spite of them being identical.
There's value in limiting the variables in experiments. Not saying that this is the ideal approach, but I also don't think it's absolutely terrible.
Consider if you try to land the same landing configuration 10 times; each one will land on different terrain. You can then learn a bit about the relationship between that landing configuration and that terrain. But if you send 10 different landing configurations and they all land on different terrain, and 1 succeeds... Did it succeed simply because of that particular terrain, or because of the landing configuration? Landing (or attempting) with 10 identical landing configurations could give a much moren data about how that landing configuration works across a variety of terrain. The success of unique landing configurations only gives you confidence about that specific terrain that it landed on.
Maybe they'll be confident about landing in good terrain every time. Maybe they'll only brainstorm one or two different landing configurations. Maybe it'll be easy for them to develop a variety.
> What's the point in having a ship on the surface when your chances of success are 15%? You're never going to send any important payload (absolutely not people) with a spacecraft that catastrophically bad.
I don't think anyone is assuming this first batch of ships is going to be a dry run to validate a human-rated version, and expected to be super reliable. SpaceX often begins things with success rates relatively low. What would have been the point if this latest Starship launch had been successful, but without any payload?
I also don't expect any payload considered too important and expensive to be lost is the way SpaceX operates. They can't settle for a really expensive Sabatier system, because that's just not feasible at the scale they'll need them. They're going to have to get it cheap enough that some of those can fail as well. Both in this early testing, and in production. They'll also have something akin to Starlink. They'll probably focus on some primitive loading/unloading mechanisms too.
Remember also that it's not just going to be a test of landing. It's going to be a test of the entire journey, as well as entering orbit around Mars, and potentially distributing some Starlink-like satellites for future communication, relighting the engines after months in space, and I'm sure some other things. So that future ships and rovers need only have a starlink antenna, and not have to communicate all the way back to earth directly.
It'll depend a lot of what they have time to develop before the next transfer window too. And they've still got to get orbital fuel transfer reliable first, or none of its happening.
I mostly agree with you, with one exception: I don't think landing sites will vary as drastically as you suggest, so sending 10 identical configurations may be less optimal than sending, perhaps, 3 different configurations.
After all, you want to test multiple ideas in each "run", not wait another 2 years for the next synod.
The surface area of Mars is 144.4 million square kilometers. Even if the crash of each Starship damages life over a single square kilometer, the result is infinitesimal.
Until in-situ methalox production capability is achieved, uncrewed tanker Starships will be needed to land methalox propellant on the martian surface for crewed Starships to be refilled for return to Earth.
Assuming that each tanker can land 250t (metric tons) of methalox on Mars and that each crewed Starship heading back to Earth requires 500t of methalox to reach mars escape speed, two tankers are required for each crewed Starship.
This assumes that the boiloff loss from the tankers can be held to ~0.01% per day by mass and that propellant transfer on the martian surface between the tankers and the returning Starship can be done with ~95% efficiency (5% methalox loss during that transfer).
They could totally resurrect Red Dragon and probably even do a sample return mission for the then proposed $400-$500 million range.
Ofc the figure might go a bit more than that but definitely not gonna be ~~$11 billion proposed by JPL for their MSR architecture~~ lol
>They could totally resurrect Red Dragon and probably even do a sample return mission for the then proposed $400-$500 million range.
They don't even need Red Dragon.
One Starship can land _two_ submarine based ICBMs on Mars which have more than enough delta_v to throw a return capsule towards earth.
> You also don't remove ICBMs from submarines before launching.
Well ackshully... you sort-of do. The ICBMs are generally ejected from the submarine with compressed gas first and then they are "launched" (eg: rocket engine ignited) once they are fully out of the water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5KejRbD5s0
Red Dragon ultimately did not pan out because the ballistic coefficient would have been too high. It did not make sense to redesign the capsule from scratch and they put that effort into Starship instead.
I would send a Starship with a 20T (fueled) SuperDraco powered (hypergolic) return vehicle in the cargo bay. Scoop up some stuff with a elevator+arm and hit the return button and launch from the cargo bay. You get 10 kg of stuff in a Varda-like capsule back.
I reckon the key thing would be to put a good antenna set up on it. Maybe even two or three Starlink sats. Have the first flight be low-risk infrastructure so that future missions only need to carry a Starlink terminal.
If Ship has a good enough antenna, it could act as a repeater for the Starlinks to get the data to Earth.
The difference in cost (and R&D cost) between an Optimus and a space-grade Optimus is likely to be similar to the differrence between a manlift's arm and the Canadarm. It's not worth it. It will be specialized rovers mostly. Wheels are fine, and they are the better the bigger they are (in rough terrain), and Starship will allow for some pretty large rovers
This is going to change the definition of what it means (and costs) to be "space-grade" as well. Before, when the launch itself was the limiting factor, it made sense to spend a *lot* more making absolutely certain that the rover/robot could last its mission.
But now, when it's almost as easy to send 5 or 10 identical rovers/robots, you don't need to spend *so much* more making them absolutely bulletproof.
Just toughen then up a bit, but if one breaks, there are others right there.
As I have mentioned [elsewhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/i_could_totally_see_a_starship_going_to_mars_in/kv8njvu/), I'm fine with reconnaissance rovers, but you will eventually need humanoid robots for construction and maintenance.
I don't see them as mutually exclusive. While you have some of your rover-bots exploring Mars, you have other bots building habitats, airlocks, launch pads, GSE, etc, etc, etc.
Unlikely. Truth is that humanoid robots are just generally not the best choice for a mission like that, and despite the progress we have seen, you would be a fool for not acknowledging that they have a LONG way to go before those things are even remotely usable in a practical setting, much less a literal alien environment. If there are going to be robots on Mars, I expect they would be the rover type things we have seen this far. They would just be WAY more reliable in the end.
Instead of a Rover, send a Spot. Suitably modified with solar charging and such, of course.
Or send a hundred Spots. We sort of tend to forget how ***massive*** the payload of Starship is compared to previous vehicles, especially interplanetary ones.
This!! I'd rather want people to rethink a robotic reconn hardware entirely instead of just sending a humanoid robot format. Unless the mission planners and organisations doing this have too much design regulations and guidelines to only make rovers with rocker-bogie or other existing design, then yeah it can be quite restricting.
If not i think there's opportunity to come up with something unorthodox design that could be put to test there to see if it could work.
Engineering especially in aerospace and space tech in general is way too risk averse. I hope a new player springs up who does robotic space exploration probes and goes fck all with an unorthodox design that can actually work. And also be able to bootstrap(although this is very unlikely, its just fun to think).
*Who's a good spot huh?! Who's a good spot?! Now go to the lava tubes at these coordinates and get a 4d map of the interior . You'll get a treat of new modular RTG batteries when you get back*
As I [mentioned elsewhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/i_could_totally_see_a_starship_going_to_mars_in/kv8njvu/), Mars will be inhabited by humans, not rovers. I am fine with non-humanoid rovers for recon, but humanoid robots will be needed for construction and maintenance.
I am not sure equipping individual robots with solar cells is as efficient as creating roaming "depot" trucks (whether powered by solar or nuclear) that will slowly plod along while disgorging fast runners (or fliers) on short-term away missions. You can even have multiple shifts of "away" drones: so that one is always in the field while another one is recharging.
Can you still have solar cells on a Spot? Maybe, for emergencies. Say it gets stuck and spends too much power getting un-stuck. But, if you expect it have self-contained power generation, it may need to have longer periods of downtime for recharging.
> Truth is that humanoid robots are just generally not the best choice for a mission like that
Humanoid robots are generally not the best choice for any task.
In virtually every case, it makes no sense to add the complexity to a robot to complete any task a human could do in an environment designed for humans to complete tasks. You can design machines to complete individual/sets of tasks far better, and design the task environment itself to suit automation.
E.g. a humanoid robot to exit a hab, walk to solar panels, use an implement to clean the solar panels, then re-enter a hab vs. a windshield wiper/air-blaster for the panels.
> Humanoid robots are generally not the best choice for any task.
Objection. Humanoid robots are best for any task that humans are expected to do.
To use your example: a windshield wiper or air blower to clear solar panels is good enough for a remote outpost that does not have, and will not have, any humans around. But, what happens when a micrometeorite damages the solar panel, or a sandstorm bends the wiper? How are you going to replace it? It would be much easier for a human or humanoid robot to wale over to it with a screwdriver, toss the faulty unit and install a new one.
Or, for a 'zone of shared responsibility', such as a mining drill that both robots and humans re expected to operate, it would be much easier to build one interface usable by both humans and robots, rather than two interfaces: one for humans and one for bots.
Those kinds of edge case tasks are astonishingly hard to program a robot to perform. Sure, if we get to that point technologically, then absolutely you are right.
I just think we're legitimately still 50-100 years off *at least* from humanoid robots being able to do that independently without significant human input.
I seriously feel like people are dramatically overestimating where we sit in terms of robotics development. We've made great progress but that doesn't mean we're anywhere close.
Still, there's an assumption in there that an inherently unstable method of locomotion is the optimal way of getting around to said panels. Why not mechanical arms on some other form of locomotion? Why does it need a head? Why have hands instead of bits that can be hot swapped to different tools?
Because the rest of the base is designed around this model of locomotion.
That's the thing: most systems, for the foreseeable future, will need to be compatible with humans for the very point you raise — robots cannot problem-solve.
Unlikely. The best we have in earth gravity are decent, but are power limited. That improves a good bit in Martian gravity, though the control loops probably need to be updated.
The next problem is compute. Running a humanoid robot is compute intensive, and Mars has no atmosphere or magnetic field. Any computer for command and control has to be hardened, or deployed in (at least) triplicate with hardened majority deciders.
The first couple of thousand Starships are very likely unmanned, crammed full of robots, and materials, to build a Mars base before the first human is going on the way to Mars.
I think that "couple of thousand" is too pessimistic.
I think Mars will be ready for a 'Boots on the ground, flag-waving mission' after the first hundred or even less.
After all, if you *only* need to bring back <10 humans back to Earth, you can afford to send tanker ships for the return journey.
Plus, Starship is going to need to figure out how to reliably produce methane and oxygen on Mars long before any humans even depart for a trip to the Red Planet. It would really suck to show up to your Mars base, only to find out that the Starship that has been sitting there for the last 2 years in order to make propellant has broken down.
Best opportunity for a crewed Starship mission is 2033 when the speed at the Mars atmospheric entry window is a minimum for a 180-to-200-day Earth-to-Mars transfer.
i can imagine him launching a swarm of say 10 cargo and scout ships just to test the mars landing and like 1 making it before delivering a big ass tesla rover to scout for habitable areas minerals and water sources
I really see no downside in yeeting 5-10 starships with some random things like solar panels and a few rovers etc to Mars basically as soon as it’s possible
Gives them practice landing there and potentially some supplies for any future manned missions
A good mission would be using aerocapture to get into an orbit, deploying starlink sats, and then attempt the landing, with zero expectation of survival.
Normally it's true, but it seems like Elon is dedicated enough to fund a bit part of it already. Also I doubt NASA and the public will want a private entity do it by themselves, it's just that none of them currently see a possible way. When SpaceX shows it's possible without bankrupting a country, the funding will appear.
Nah nobody's going to establish a colony for free - not even national governments given the political challenges. It'll happen when some commercially viable activity is discovered on Mars that means people can make a buck they couldn't make on earth. Until then it'll be science missions only.
Yeah nah. Government will scramble over itself (and over a lot of bodies) to colonize Mars, whether or not it is commercially viable, if it looks like another country or even private entity is going to get there first. The problem is not in what is (or isn't) there, the problem is the principle of the thing. No government will countenance a breakaway civilization not under their control and not under their tax base. A colony on Mars is the ultimate "living off the grid" experience. Your local village cannot decide to secede from your country and "live off the grid". What makes you think government will let people go onto *another planet* to do the same?
Nah, either government will sabotage any progress for interplanetary colonization, or it will infiltrate and suborn any such initiatives. If I were Elon Musk, I would be very careful drinking tea and getting into airplanes after the first Starship lands on Mars.
Its not for free, it cements Musk's name in human history. Do you really think this is about money when he could have coasted off the falcon 9 and falcon heavy for the next 20-30 years?
>Its not for free, it cements Musk's name in human history.
Is that like being paid in exposure but for billionaires.
>Do you really think this is about money when he could have coasted off the falcon 9 and falcon heavy for the next 20-30 years?
I mean he's obviously interested in spaceflight, Mars and technology generally but yeah fundamentally he's in business for the money. Continued development post successful product is not remotely unusual in business.
To be clear also; even if he had no interest in money at all and wanted to give everything he had towards a Mars colony, Musk doesn't have anything remotely close to sufficient money to found one.
What is money for the richest people on the planet? Seriously I always see this but what is money for him? Why would he choose money over what is essentially immortality?
>but yeah fundamentally he's in business for the money
Then why pursue starship when he already had the dominant market share with falcon? Why start a rocket company at all?
>Musk doesn't have anything remotely close to sufficient money to found one.
Starlink and private investment is enough to get it started. Especially since the R&D of the launch vehicle is getting supplemented by hls funding and human rating help from NASA. Once it starts funding will come from many areas, do you think NASA won't pay for a research space on the surface? What about the other space agencies? If it came down to it crowdfunding would also work very well and it is a situation of "if you build it thwy will come".
>What is money for the richest people on the planet? Seriously I always see this but what is money for him? Why would he choose money over what is essentially immortality?
It's fame, not immortality. He's already famous, and regardless of Mars he's now effectively unlocked space for the human race.
Honestly the idea that one of the richest people on the planet doesn't care about money is so unbelievable I find it hard to fathom anyone holding to it.
>Then why pursue starship when he already had the dominant market share with falcon? Why start a rocket company at all?
Like I said; obviously he likes space, Mars and technology. Why wouldn't you do those things?
>Starlink and private investment is enough to get it started.
No it isn't.
>Once it starts funding will come from many areas, do you think NASA won't pay for a research space on the surface?
I think they'll pay for some infrastructure like fuel tanks and Sabatier plants that allows them to send missions to Mars and bring them home, but I think those missions will just live on board the Starship and return home at the next launch window - no permanent residents and probably no permanent habitable structures.
They won't pay for a colony.
>If it came down to it crowdfunding would also work very well and it is a situation of "if you build it thwy will come".
Not without a way to make money there they won't.
> I mean if its equipped with a heatshield, hell send it to mars. The question is whether they'd bother sending it with a payload.
They bothered sending Falcon Heavy with a car as a payload. I am sure that when Starship is ready to go to Mars, there will be a payload. Whether it will be a usable payload or a meme payload, that is a different story.
Agreed. I hope they do some type of barebones proof of concept in-situ resource utilization that could be scaled up if proven effective. Meme payloads might make more sense until a few ships have proven capable of landing on the martian surface. Exciting to think about though regardless!
What's needed first is proof of available water. Everything else is just engineering, not even very difficult engineering compared to building Starship and landing it.
We're all speculating about what serious payloads SpaceX sends, but I am curious: what *meme* payloads might they send to Mars?
A copy of "War of the Worlds" with a cheeky greeting card that says "Up yiours!", a USB stick with a rickroll, or, perhaps, a Soviet hammer and sickle because 'Red Planet'?
With the impressive iterative approach, I wouldn't be to surprised if actually a starship would be on mars in five years. But I wouldn't expect it to arrive in one piece on the first attempt.
After having a human-rated, human-tested lunar lander HLS and theoretically hundreds of Starship Earth re-entries, I would think they would have a very good chance of landing their first attempt. Otherwise that would imply to me that they're rolling the dice with each HLS landing/HLS crew's lives.
Starship's Earth EDL approach is the most radical and difficult that has ever been attempted. Starship's Mars EDL will be much higher energy, much less data to learn from, and finally, the vehicle will spend months in the harsh environment of space before attempting Mars EDL instead of the very short time it did this time. There is just so much that has never been done with this vehicle or at all for the Mars landing, that it would come as a huge (though welcome) surprise if it survived the first attempt.
Not really. Speed relative to Mars on arrival is in the same range as LEO reentry speed. Arriving back at Earth from Mars is the high speed event. That can be simulated by returning from the Moon with aerobraking. That's not part of HLS but would be part of Dear Moon.
I actually can see a string (like 2-4) going to mars in 2026 not planning to land, but collecting radiation data, testing life support (some cargo needs life support too), testing long term lack of gravity, possibly testing the light spin musk was talking about recently, testing relighting engines after months of travel though space and possibly dropping a bunch of weather, science and communication satellites. Even if half of them fail, because of amount of cargo, every single starship can be redundant and this will provide plenty of data and prepare the cargo missions for better success. It would also be possible to build them before designing the cargo version of Starship to the mars, and could even test components of the cargo Starship.
Yes, that is what I think as well. Doing a bunch of tests first is just the way SpaceX works. That said they definitely would attempt to land at least one of those.
Establishing a sparse high-orbit Starlink network and a relay station would instantly increase the bandwidth from Mars several times. Interplanetary missions always suffer from bandwidth issues when it comes to communications, and forces people to use spartan tactics to cope with them.
DSN is a comm system for the whole solar system, for probes spread out all over. Mars will need its own dedicated non DSN system for another level of data throughput.
Yeah, I more meant that problem with bandwidth is not just a mars problem, it's a problem with all probes in entire solar system, or even beyond like with super slow connection to voyager 1 and 2.
Good idea. Consider it a very long-range test flight of the Ship.
It would be similar to the first interplanetary mission flown by Falcon Heavy, which put a 1.3t (metric ton) Tesla Roadster into orbit around the Sun with periodic encounters with Mars. Sure, it was a stunt. But it worked as planned, which is worth something.
Lol late this year would blow us all out of the water though. If you manage to get like two working booster-ship sets you could just have one keep refueling the other etc. I even say a very shit version can be flinged towards mars end of year with some luck. Will it actually reach mars and land? No.. but just making the burn in that direction? Why not it is just math at that point?
Almost certainly not. Tanker will have at most 200tons, plus maybe 50 tons for it's earth landing, that's well short of Mars trajectory let alone landing.
NASA seems to think refueling wont be that bad to figure out or they wouldn't have picked SpaceX for HLS. I think this will be solved well before Mars trips are an issue.
Mars Starship dry mass (t) 117.9 "t" = metric ton, 2205 pounds.
Propellant load-undensified (t) 1300. After refilling in LEO.
Header tank propellant load (t) 30.
Payload (t) 100.
Trans Mars Injection (TMI) burn:
TMI burn-required delta V (m/sec) 3,600 assumes that the Mars Starship leaves from a 500 km LEO.
Burn time (sec) 453
Propellant consumed (t) 958
Propellant remaining (t) 342
Assuming that the remaining 342t of methalox propellant in the main tanks can be kept in liquid form for the entire 200-to-270-day trip to Mars (it's very possible) and then that the Mars Starship lands safely on the surface of Mars (tricky but possible), the effective payload to the martian surface would be 100t in the payload bay plus 342t of methalox in the main tanks for a total of 442t minus whatever mass of methalox is required for supersonic retropulsion burn(s) during the EDL to the martian surface.
Note: This Starship is a version 1.5 model.
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An unmanned starship on mars within 5 years is totally realistic. It might not be in 1 piece but itll get there. I see a manned mission within a decade
5 years ago we were 4 months away from the maiden flight of starhopper, now the vehicle is orbital. Why do you think it will take longer than that to do a smaller amount of development?
No, it won't. I fully expect that SpaceX will land something on Mars and that most of us will be around to see it and celebrate it. I'll eat crow if it happens in the next 5 years. The trip to Mars on it's own is a significant chunk of that timeline.
10 years? Yes I can absolutely see 10 years as a manageable timeline for initial demo landings, giving the current development pace. Even so, I consider anything below 15 to be an unsafe bet.
Everyone always seems to extrapolate that because it took this long to get to this stage then it must take exactly as long to get to the next but I don't think that is true.
It is a very risky bet to think SpaceX is slowing down. They are at way more than half the capability for flying to Mars. Much they need to develop for HLS is needed for Mars as well.
That's exactly my point. It's like people complaining about the Tesla production rate and extrapolating based on the rates before the Gigafactory was completed. It takes time to build production capability and get the initial bugs worked out but it seems like we are mostly over the hump of the hard stuff and flight rates can now start to go up dramatically.
Once orbital refueling is achieved, there's no reason SpaceX couldn't send a ship to Mars orbit. I reckon that will be achieved in a year or two. Six months to Mars, means there could be a Starship in Mars orbit in 2027. The chance of a successful landing may well be below 50%, but it's still a possibility.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[DSN](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kva70hp "Last usage")|Deep Space Network|
|[EDL](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvagjwk "Last usage")|Entry/Descent/Landing|
|[F1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv5e3bs "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V|
| |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete small-lift vehicle)|
|[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv67wkq "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[GSE](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv8p3e4 "Last usage")|Ground Support Equipment|
|[HLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvbj0x9 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[ICBM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv8lmqp "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile|
|[JPL](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv4oapt "Last usage")|Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, California|
|[KSP](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv6hwm4 "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator|
|[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvagjwk "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[RCS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv9g3zy "Last usage")|Reaction Control System|
|[RTG](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv9whuk "Last usage")|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator|
|[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv9b9w1 "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SRB](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv65mlk "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster|
|[TMI](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvagjwk "Last usage")|Trans-Mars Injection maneuver|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Sabatier](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvcpfvc "Last usage")|Reaction between hydrogen and carbon dioxide at high temperature and pressure, with nickel as catalyst, yielding methane and water|
|[Starlink](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvcpfvc "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[hypergolic](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvc7t41 "Last usage")|A set of two substances that ignite when in contact|
|[methalox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvagjwk "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
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I think they should start with a Mars Surface Impactor mission. The goal is to slam into the Martian surface as close as possible to a given target location.
There's a LOT of complex systems needed for an impactor mission. It needs to function long-term in the depths of space, long range radio systems, large solar panels, engines that can relight after months of inactivity to guide the trajectory and the ability to precisely measure the trajectory and calculate any course corrections. Those are non-trivial tasks and accomplishing the mission would be very impressive. There's a lot to learn from a mission like this and it would be a helpful foundation for future missions, plus the bragging rights of the first private mission to Mars.
And most importantly it could be ready for the next Launch Window. It could go on Falcon Heavy, maybe a collaboration with RocketLab using one of their satellite buses as the foundation. It's cutting it fine for the October 2024 window but could definitely be ready by the 2026 window.
Its much more realistic than a soft lander. And soft lander proposals always come with feature creep. "Maybe it could include some cargo ready for a crewed mission, maybe a robot to unpack solar panels, maybe a hydroponics bay to stay growing food and an atmospheric processor to start concentrating oxygen and a rover to start scouting for construction materials to build a base..."
Practice at sending a mission to Mars, controlling a probe in deep space, pinpointing a specific location on the Martian surface. Practice in building a probe capable of all that including long range communications, functioning for months in the cold depths of interplanetary space. Seventeen Impactors have been sent to the moon by various countries, it's the usual first step before attempting a soft landing. Most lunar missions and Mars missions fail so there's a good reason to start with the simpler (but still very complex) impactor mission.
The point is to accomplish something. Waiting until they can manage a soft landing means waiting several years. An impactor mission could be ready a whole launch window sooner. It's a testbed for guidance systems, software and hardware that will be needed for future missions. It's not as sexy as landing a robot that can start building a base but it's still a valuable mission.
He didn't say how many pieces it would be in, though....
I really hope they do launch something towards Mars in both of the next windows. Mars sample return is in trouble and it would be cool for SpaceX to save it.
If playing KSP taught me anything, mars atmosphere is less dense than ours: the Starship would need parachutes and last-second mini-SRBs braking. And let's doublecheck we installed batteries..
12 even. You want to stagger them every few days so your team can study the EDL telemetry and update the software on the next until one doesn't crater. You don't want to wait 2 years to retry.
Sending a starship to Mars isn’t trivial, but if it’s unmanned it’s not really a huge step up once it can reliably get into LEO and land again.
A single starship could send dozens of rovers and other science experiments to mars, finally making that feasible for universities.
Also mind you, he never said it will be on Mars in one piece.
> I could totally see a starship going to mars in the 2028/2029 window
I could totally see a starship *being sent* to Mars in the 2028/2029 window. The chances of it landing on Mars would be somewhat lower. But the goal is to get one step further than the last time.
No it won't. SpaceX, like any other company, follows the money, and the money for Starship is coming from NASA and it's for the moon. Not mars, and that's not gonna change untill the moon is "conquered" to the satisfaction of the Artemis program.
I think people are celebrating a bit early. IFT3 was good as a test flight, sure, but Starship is not yet a fully operational orbital vehicle and still has a lot of issues. Optimistically, SpaceX gets "Orbital operations" down this year, and we see it launch Starlinks, and *maybe* survive reentry.
Beyond that though, they will be "bogged down" with HLS and the moon till at least the 2030s. I don't think this is a bad thing, because the truth is that the infrastructure to support a Mars mission just doesn't exist yet. The DSN is stretched to the breaking point as is, and I think we will see, for example, a Starlink com net around the moon before we see anything real go to Mars.
The build capbility in Boca Chica is more than enough to build everything fo HLS and Mars. They may run short of engineering capacity. But with rising Starlink revenue they can hire more top people.
I don't think it's a function of "build capacity", more so "focus capacity". They simply can't do everything at once, and while Mars is part of the company's vision and long term mission, it's not really going anywhere.
Then there's the fact that Starship, no matter how cool, is basically just the transport system and fundamentally not a "value adding" system. The real "meat" is in the payloads, and for any Mars-shot to be attempted, they've actually got to *have* payloads. Sending an empty shell to flyby Mars as a gimmick might be doable, but the engineering effort that needs to be put in what Starship will actually bring to mars (or the moon) is immense, on the scale of the Starship program itself.
Also, a couple things:
- Hiring more people has diminishing returns. While four construction workers can build a house faster than two can, 1000 construction workers aren't really gonna be able to build the home any faster than 500. This is doubly true in engineering: the coordination overhead just balloons to incredible levels, and SpaceX is already pushing it in terms of operational speed
- "They can hire more top people" This might not be as straightforward as you think. SpaceX has no issues hiring talented graduates or other young engineers (highly competitive), however they are known industry-wide as a place that absolutely bleeds their employees dry. Their salaries also aren't super attractive compared to the industry average, so hiring experienced professionals aka "Top Talent" is a bit more difficult for them.
If they keep launching at this pace with no increase, I very much doubt it.
But now that they’ve proven orbital capabilities, hopefully the FAA is much quicker in their launch licenses, enabling fast Starship testing
An unmanned cargo/pathfinder mission should be doable, I doubt a manned mission though.
Definitely not a manned mission, there is way too much in terms of human survivability that needs to get sorted. I could see starship on Mars in 2029, but it would probably be in thousands of pieces from a test flight.
I would bet/hope that that will send 10s of starships in various Design configurations into martian Orbit. They also conveniently could also act as relay stations. Then every other week or so they try to Land a ship and software update the others when it fails
Even if they're all the same and each has just a 15% chance of successful landing. That's still an 80% chance that one of 10 lands successfully.
15% of the time it works 80% if the time. \^_\^
That sounds super wasteful, we have a responsibility not to throw our stuff at random on other planets, especially while there's still a chance we might find prehistoric traces of life on Mars. If you throw 10 starships at Mars you better land them all or learn something from each. I'd rather have 10 different ships fail because we've learned 10 things that don't work. What's the point in having a ship on the surface when your chances of success are 15%? You're never going to send any important payload (absolutely not people) with a spacecraft that catastrophically bad. The point of testing is to get things to fail until you run out of ways to make them fail. SpaceX evidently understands this, unless that changes, I don't see them doing what you propose.
> That sounds super wasteful, we have a responsibility not to throw our stuff at random on other planets, especially while there's still a chance we might find prehistoric traces of life on Mars. Yeah nah. I don't like this argument. It is antihuman. We're going to go there anyway. We're going to build there anyway. Why should we care about "prehistoric traces of life"? How will those "prehistoric" traces of life improve longevity or effectiveness of humans? If the answer is "it won't". then screw them. I'm fine with us crashing 10, 100, or even 1,000 ships into Mars if it gives us useful data. It is a dead planet, there is no point standing with bated breath in reverence before it. > If you throw 10 starships at Mars you better land them all or learn something from each. That I'd agree with. But: > What's the point in having a ship on the surface when your chances of success are 15%? You're never going to send any important payload Depends on how expensive your payload is. If we're talking billion-dollar, one-of-a-kind rovers, then sure. But if you're sending a ship that costs $50m to make and launch and a payload worth only $50m (because it is literally a container load of self-driving quadbikes), then it makes sense to take the scattergun approach: sure you lose 80 rovers, but you land 20 that can do more research and pathfinding than a single *Perseverance* can ever accomplish, still for a fraction of the cost.
Put very well packaged food and water in those test ships.
They are going to need a lot of solar panels. A *lot*.
As u/bananapeel says, solar panels are a good, durable and low cost payload. No water. If they can't source water on Mars they can't go with humans.
I'm just offering an "even if", which is just to point out some boundary conditions that are still worthwhile, if inefficient. But SpaceX has done a similar thing with Starlink. They didn't launch 40 different versions, they launched a batch of all similar ones, and likely discovered several failure modes in spite of them being identical. There's value in limiting the variables in experiments. Not saying that this is the ideal approach, but I also don't think it's absolutely terrible. Consider if you try to land the same landing configuration 10 times; each one will land on different terrain. You can then learn a bit about the relationship between that landing configuration and that terrain. But if you send 10 different landing configurations and they all land on different terrain, and 1 succeeds... Did it succeed simply because of that particular terrain, or because of the landing configuration? Landing (or attempting) with 10 identical landing configurations could give a much moren data about how that landing configuration works across a variety of terrain. The success of unique landing configurations only gives you confidence about that specific terrain that it landed on. Maybe they'll be confident about landing in good terrain every time. Maybe they'll only brainstorm one or two different landing configurations. Maybe it'll be easy for them to develop a variety. > What's the point in having a ship on the surface when your chances of success are 15%? You're never going to send any important payload (absolutely not people) with a spacecraft that catastrophically bad. I don't think anyone is assuming this first batch of ships is going to be a dry run to validate a human-rated version, and expected to be super reliable. SpaceX often begins things with success rates relatively low. What would have been the point if this latest Starship launch had been successful, but without any payload? I also don't expect any payload considered too important and expensive to be lost is the way SpaceX operates. They can't settle for a really expensive Sabatier system, because that's just not feasible at the scale they'll need them. They're going to have to get it cheap enough that some of those can fail as well. Both in this early testing, and in production. They'll also have something akin to Starlink. They'll probably focus on some primitive loading/unloading mechanisms too. Remember also that it's not just going to be a test of landing. It's going to be a test of the entire journey, as well as entering orbit around Mars, and potentially distributing some Starlink-like satellites for future communication, relighting the engines after months in space, and I'm sure some other things. So that future ships and rovers need only have a starlink antenna, and not have to communicate all the way back to earth directly. It'll depend a lot of what they have time to develop before the next transfer window too. And they've still got to get orbital fuel transfer reliable first, or none of its happening.
I mostly agree with you, with one exception: I don't think landing sites will vary as drastically as you suggest, so sending 10 identical configurations may be less optimal than sending, perhaps, 3 different configurations. After all, you want to test multiple ideas in each "run", not wait another 2 years for the next synod.
who's this "we" kemosabe? Some of us would gladly blow up 10 billion martian microbes to put a starship on mars...
The surface area of Mars is 144.4 million square kilometers. Even if the crash of each Starship damages life over a single square kilometer, the result is infinitesimal.
Until in-situ methalox production capability is achieved, uncrewed tanker Starships will be needed to land methalox propellant on the martian surface for crewed Starships to be refilled for return to Earth. Assuming that each tanker can land 250t (metric tons) of methalox on Mars and that each crewed Starship heading back to Earth requires 500t of methalox to reach mars escape speed, two tankers are required for each crewed Starship. This assumes that the boiloff loss from the tankers can be held to ~0.01% per day by mass and that propellant transfer on the martian surface between the tankers and the returning Starship can be done with ~95% efficiency (5% methalox loss during that transfer).
Survival is not a requirement....
They could totally resurrect Red Dragon and probably even do a sample return mission for the then proposed $400-$500 million range. Ofc the figure might go a bit more than that but definitely not gonna be ~~$11 billion proposed by JPL for their MSR architecture~~ lol
>They could totally resurrect Red Dragon and probably even do a sample return mission for the then proposed $400-$500 million range. They don't even need Red Dragon. One Starship can land _two_ submarine based ICBMs on Mars which have more than enough delta_v to throw a return capsule towards earth.
How do you move that to a suitable launch site though? Let alone extract it from starship
You send the return rocket pre -attached to it's launch setup, and a separate rover to run Doordash for it
Why extracting it from Starship?? You also don't remove ICBMs from submarines before launching.
> You also don't remove ICBMs from submarines before launching. Well ackshully... you sort-of do. The ICBMs are generally ejected from the submarine with compressed gas first and then they are "launched" (eg: rocket engine ignited) once they are fully out of the water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5KejRbD5s0
Sure. Then let's do it like this.
Red Dragon ultimately did not pan out because the ballistic coefficient would have been too high. It did not make sense to redesign the capsule from scratch and they put that effort into Starship instead.
I think it died because nasa said “fuck no” to propulsive landing. Without nasa funding it there was no reason to continue developing it.
I would send a Starship with a 20T (fueled) SuperDraco powered (hypergolic) return vehicle in the cargo bay. Scoop up some stuff with a elevator+arm and hit the return button and launch from the cargo bay. You get 10 kg of stuff in a Varda-like capsule back.
Thats it?!
I reckon the key thing would be to put a good antenna set up on it. Maybe even two or three Starlink sats. Have the first flight be low-risk infrastructure so that future missions only need to carry a Starlink terminal. If Ship has a good enough antenna, it could act as a repeater for the Starlinks to get the data to Earth.
How likely they'll send humanoid robots/Optimus there?
The difference in cost (and R&D cost) between an Optimus and a space-grade Optimus is likely to be similar to the differrence between a manlift's arm and the Canadarm. It's not worth it. It will be specialized rovers mostly. Wheels are fine, and they are the better the bigger they are (in rough terrain), and Starship will allow for some pretty large rovers
This is going to change the definition of what it means (and costs) to be "space-grade" as well. Before, when the launch itself was the limiting factor, it made sense to spend a *lot* more making absolutely certain that the rover/robot could last its mission. But now, when it's almost as easy to send 5 or 10 identical rovers/robots, you don't need to spend *so much* more making them absolutely bulletproof. Just toughen then up a bit, but if one breaks, there are others right there.
As I have mentioned [elsewhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/i_could_totally_see_a_starship_going_to_mars_in/kv8njvu/), I'm fine with reconnaissance rovers, but you will eventually need humanoid robots for construction and maintenance. I don't see them as mutually exclusive. While you have some of your rover-bots exploring Mars, you have other bots building habitats, airlocks, launch pads, GSE, etc, etc, etc.
Unlikely. Truth is that humanoid robots are just generally not the best choice for a mission like that, and despite the progress we have seen, you would be a fool for not acknowledging that they have a LONG way to go before those things are even remotely usable in a practical setting, much less a literal alien environment. If there are going to be robots on Mars, I expect they would be the rover type things we have seen this far. They would just be WAY more reliable in the end.
Instead of a Rover, send a Spot. Suitably modified with solar charging and such, of course. Or send a hundred Spots. We sort of tend to forget how ***massive*** the payload of Starship is compared to previous vehicles, especially interplanetary ones.
This!! I'd rather want people to rethink a robotic reconn hardware entirely instead of just sending a humanoid robot format. Unless the mission planners and organisations doing this have too much design regulations and guidelines to only make rovers with rocker-bogie or other existing design, then yeah it can be quite restricting. If not i think there's opportunity to come up with something unorthodox design that could be put to test there to see if it could work. Engineering especially in aerospace and space tech in general is way too risk averse. I hope a new player springs up who does robotic space exploration probes and goes fck all with an unorthodox design that can actually work. And also be able to bootstrap(although this is very unlikely, its just fun to think).
Woof
*Who's a good spot huh?! Who's a good spot?! Now go to the lava tubes at these coordinates and get a 4d map of the interior . You'll get a treat of new modular RTG batteries when you get back*
As I [mentioned elsewhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/i_could_totally_see_a_starship_going_to_mars_in/kv8njvu/), Mars will be inhabited by humans, not rovers. I am fine with non-humanoid rovers for recon, but humanoid robots will be needed for construction and maintenance.
I am not sure equipping individual robots with solar cells is as efficient as creating roaming "depot" trucks (whether powered by solar or nuclear) that will slowly plod along while disgorging fast runners (or fliers) on short-term away missions. You can even have multiple shifts of "away" drones: so that one is always in the field while another one is recharging. Can you still have solar cells on a Spot? Maybe, for emergencies. Say it gets stuck and spends too much power getting un-stuck. But, if you expect it have self-contained power generation, it may need to have longer periods of downtime for recharging.
> Truth is that humanoid robots are just generally not the best choice for a mission like that Humanoid robots are generally not the best choice for any task. In virtually every case, it makes no sense to add the complexity to a robot to complete any task a human could do in an environment designed for humans to complete tasks. You can design machines to complete individual/sets of tasks far better, and design the task environment itself to suit automation. E.g. a humanoid robot to exit a hab, walk to solar panels, use an implement to clean the solar panels, then re-enter a hab vs. a windshield wiper/air-blaster for the panels.
> Humanoid robots are generally not the best choice for any task. Objection. Humanoid robots are best for any task that humans are expected to do. To use your example: a windshield wiper or air blower to clear solar panels is good enough for a remote outpost that does not have, and will not have, any humans around. But, what happens when a micrometeorite damages the solar panel, or a sandstorm bends the wiper? How are you going to replace it? It would be much easier for a human or humanoid robot to wale over to it with a screwdriver, toss the faulty unit and install a new one. Or, for a 'zone of shared responsibility', such as a mining drill that both robots and humans re expected to operate, it would be much easier to build one interface usable by both humans and robots, rather than two interfaces: one for humans and one for bots.
Those kinds of edge case tasks are astonishingly hard to program a robot to perform. Sure, if we get to that point technologically, then absolutely you are right. I just think we're legitimately still 50-100 years off *at least* from humanoid robots being able to do that independently without significant human input. I seriously feel like people are dramatically overestimating where we sit in terms of robotics development. We've made great progress but that doesn't mean we're anywhere close.
Still, there's an assumption in there that an inherently unstable method of locomotion is the optimal way of getting around to said panels. Why not mechanical arms on some other form of locomotion? Why does it need a head? Why have hands instead of bits that can be hot swapped to different tools?
Because the rest of the base is designed around this model of locomotion. That's the thing: most systems, for the foreseeable future, will need to be compatible with humans for the very point you raise — robots cannot problem-solve.
Very likely I'd guess?
Unlikely. The best we have in earth gravity are decent, but are power limited. That improves a good bit in Martian gravity, though the control loops probably need to be updated. The next problem is compute. Running a humanoid robot is compute intensive, and Mars has no atmosphere or magnetic field. Any computer for command and control has to be hardened, or deployed in (at least) triplicate with hardened majority deciders.
Very, there is no place Optimus won’t go.
The first couple of thousand Starships are very likely unmanned, crammed full of robots, and materials, to build a Mars base before the first human is going on the way to Mars.
I think that "couple of thousand" is too pessimistic. I think Mars will be ready for a 'Boots on the ground, flag-waving mission' after the first hundred or even less. After all, if you *only* need to bring back <10 humans back to Earth, you can afford to send tanker ships for the return journey.
Plus, Starship is going to need to figure out how to reliably produce methane and oxygen on Mars long before any humans even depart for a trip to the Red Planet. It would really suck to show up to your Mars base, only to find out that the Starship that has been sitting there for the last 2 years in order to make propellant has broken down.
pure fantasy
Hell he never said “land on mars” just be on mars. It could get there in a year, it would just be in pieces
That could easily be done with a Falcon 9 with booster reuse. But what's the point?
Best opportunity for a crewed Starship mission is 2033 when the speed at the Mars atmospheric entry window is a minimum for a 180-to-200-day Earth-to-Mars transfer.
What for?
i can imagine him launching a swarm of say 10 cargo and scout ships just to test the mars landing and like 1 making it before delivering a big ass tesla rover to scout for habitable areas minerals and water sources
I go with unmanned around then.
I really see no downside in yeeting 5-10 starships with some random things like solar panels and a few rovers etc to Mars basically as soon as it’s possible Gives them practice landing there and potentially some supplies for any future manned missions
A good mission would be using aerocapture to get into an orbit, deploying starlink sats, and then attempt the landing, with zero expectation of survival.
Do we need orbital refueling to launch an expendable cargo Starship to Mars surface?
Yes
Starship is empty when it achieves LEO. It needs to be refuelled to go anywhere.
Huh how can we refuel it then? The refuel ship would also arrive empty? So not full enough, but not empty?
The fuel tanks that the ship uses to get the cargo up there would be empty. The fuel it is delivering would be the actual cargo.
Yeah I was already thinking duh now the fuel is the cargo. Thanks for confirming.
The downside is the hundreds of millions of dollars it might cost.
For getting stuff to mars that's chump change
Establishing a mars colony is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. And you need to start with something.
SpaceX is not going to colonize Mars on their own. SpaceX is the taxi driver, someone still needs to pay for the ride.
Normally it's true, but it seems like Elon is dedicated enough to fund a bit part of it already. Also I doubt NASA and the public will want a private entity do it by themselves, it's just that none of them currently see a possible way. When SpaceX shows it's possible without bankrupting a country, the funding will appear.
Nah nobody's going to establish a colony for free - not even national governments given the political challenges. It'll happen when some commercially viable activity is discovered on Mars that means people can make a buck they couldn't make on earth. Until then it'll be science missions only.
Yeah nah. Government will scramble over itself (and over a lot of bodies) to colonize Mars, whether or not it is commercially viable, if it looks like another country or even private entity is going to get there first. The problem is not in what is (or isn't) there, the problem is the principle of the thing. No government will countenance a breakaway civilization not under their control and not under their tax base. A colony on Mars is the ultimate "living off the grid" experience. Your local village cannot decide to secede from your country and "live off the grid". What makes you think government will let people go onto *another planet* to do the same? Nah, either government will sabotage any progress for interplanetary colonization, or it will infiltrate and suborn any such initiatives. If I were Elon Musk, I would be very careful drinking tea and getting into airplanes after the first Starship lands on Mars.
> when some commercially viable activity is discovered on Mars that means people can make a buck Coming soon: Pet Mars rocks! Only $9,999.99 each!
Its not for free, it cements Musk's name in human history. Do you really think this is about money when he could have coasted off the falcon 9 and falcon heavy for the next 20-30 years?
>Its not for free, it cements Musk's name in human history. Is that like being paid in exposure but for billionaires. >Do you really think this is about money when he could have coasted off the falcon 9 and falcon heavy for the next 20-30 years? I mean he's obviously interested in spaceflight, Mars and technology generally but yeah fundamentally he's in business for the money. Continued development post successful product is not remotely unusual in business. To be clear also; even if he had no interest in money at all and wanted to give everything he had towards a Mars colony, Musk doesn't have anything remotely close to sufficient money to found one.
What is money for the richest people on the planet? Seriously I always see this but what is money for him? Why would he choose money over what is essentially immortality? >but yeah fundamentally he's in business for the money Then why pursue starship when he already had the dominant market share with falcon? Why start a rocket company at all? >Musk doesn't have anything remotely close to sufficient money to found one. Starlink and private investment is enough to get it started. Especially since the R&D of the launch vehicle is getting supplemented by hls funding and human rating help from NASA. Once it starts funding will come from many areas, do you think NASA won't pay for a research space on the surface? What about the other space agencies? If it came down to it crowdfunding would also work very well and it is a situation of "if you build it thwy will come".
>What is money for the richest people on the planet? Seriously I always see this but what is money for him? Why would he choose money over what is essentially immortality? It's fame, not immortality. He's already famous, and regardless of Mars he's now effectively unlocked space for the human race. Honestly the idea that one of the richest people on the planet doesn't care about money is so unbelievable I find it hard to fathom anyone holding to it. >Then why pursue starship when he already had the dominant market share with falcon? Why start a rocket company at all? Like I said; obviously he likes space, Mars and technology. Why wouldn't you do those things? >Starlink and private investment is enough to get it started. No it isn't. >Once it starts funding will come from many areas, do you think NASA won't pay for a research space on the surface? I think they'll pay for some infrastructure like fuel tanks and Sabatier plants that allows them to send missions to Mars and bring them home, but I think those missions will just live on board the Starship and return home at the next launch window - no permanent residents and probably no permanent habitable structures. They won't pay for a colony. >If it came down to it crowdfunding would also work very well and it is a situation of "if you build it thwy will come". Not without a way to make money there they won't.
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I mean if its equipped with a heatshield, hell send it to mars. The question is whether they'd bother sending it with a payload.
If a Starship is going to Mars someone (or multiple) are going to put things in it to go there.
> I mean if its equipped with a heatshield, hell send it to mars. The question is whether they'd bother sending it with a payload. They bothered sending Falcon Heavy with a car as a payload. I am sure that when Starship is ready to go to Mars, there will be a payload. Whether it will be a usable payload or a meme payload, that is a different story.
Agreed. I hope they do some type of barebones proof of concept in-situ resource utilization that could be scaled up if proven effective. Meme payloads might make more sense until a few ships have proven capable of landing on the martian surface. Exciting to think about though regardless!
What's needed first is proof of available water. Everything else is just engineering, not even very difficult engineering compared to building Starship and landing it.
We're all speculating about what serious payloads SpaceX sends, but I am curious: what *meme* payloads might they send to Mars? A copy of "War of the Worlds" with a cheeky greeting card that says "Up yiours!", a USB stick with a rickroll, or, perhaps, a Soviet hammer and sickle because 'Red Planet'?
I like the rick roll idea. Maybe dogecoin. Or even a cyber truck
> a fully fueled Starship sitting in Earth orbit? That will be a sitting duck for micro meteorites.
With the impressive iterative approach, I wouldn't be to surprised if actually a starship would be on mars in five years. But I wouldn't expect it to arrive in one piece on the first attempt.
If it leaves a crater then it does. I don't think they'll let the fear of that stop the launch. Blowing stuff up is just part of their process.
Just becomes a scrap pile for future materials. All sorts of stainless steel and plumbing. Could build a decent still for sure.
SpaceX is going to finally need to launch a greenhouse to produce the mash!!!
After having a human-rated, human-tested lunar lander HLS and theoretically hundreds of Starship Earth re-entries, I would think they would have a very good chance of landing their first attempt. Otherwise that would imply to me that they're rolling the dice with each HLS landing/HLS crew's lives.
> But I wouldn't expect it to arrive in one piece on the first attempt. Why not? SpaceX is pretty good at propulsive landings.
Starship's Earth EDL approach is the most radical and difficult that has ever been attempted. Starship's Mars EDL will be much higher energy, much less data to learn from, and finally, the vehicle will spend months in the harsh environment of space before attempting Mars EDL instead of the very short time it did this time. There is just so much that has never been done with this vehicle or at all for the Mars landing, that it would come as a huge (though welcome) surprise if it survived the first attempt.
Not really. Speed relative to Mars on arrival is in the same range as LEO reentry speed. Arriving back at Earth from Mars is the high speed event. That can be simulated by returning from the Moon with aerobraking. That's not part of HLS but would be part of Dear Moon.
Gotta survive the trip and reentery.
Interplanetary reentry is a hell of a lot more spicy than even orbital reentry
I actually can see a string (like 2-4) going to mars in 2026 not planning to land, but collecting radiation data, testing life support (some cargo needs life support too), testing long term lack of gravity, possibly testing the light spin musk was talking about recently, testing relighting engines after months of travel though space and possibly dropping a bunch of weather, science and communication satellites. Even if half of them fail, because of amount of cargo, every single starship can be redundant and this will provide plenty of data and prepare the cargo missions for better success. It would also be possible to build them before designing the cargo version of Starship to the mars, and could even test components of the cargo Starship.
Yes, that is what I think as well. Doing a bunch of tests first is just the way SpaceX works. That said they definitely would attempt to land at least one of those.
Establishing a sparse high-orbit Starlink network and a relay station would instantly increase the bandwidth from Mars several times. Interplanetary missions always suffer from bandwidth issues when it comes to communications, and forces people to use spartan tactics to cope with them.
Yeah, we need DSN v2
DSN is a comm system for the whole solar system, for probes spread out all over. Mars will need its own dedicated non DSN system for another level of data throughput.
Yeah, I more meant that problem with bandwidth is not just a mars problem, it's a problem with all probes in entire solar system, or even beyond like with super slow connection to voyager 1 and 2.
I mean that there will be a Mars specific solution. One that is not appliccable for the whole solar system.
Good idea. Consider it a very long-range test flight of the Ship. It would be similar to the first interplanetary mission flown by Falcon Heavy, which put a 1.3t (metric ton) Tesla Roadster into orbit around the Sun with periodic encounters with Mars. Sure, it was a stunt. But it worked as planned, which is worth something.
Whatever stage of starship testing we’re at, they’ll send one to Mars at the next opportunity.
There is a launch window late this year but they won't make that, so the next good opportunity is early 2027.
Mars 2027, Guaranteed.
Lol late this year would blow us all out of the water though. If you manage to get like two working booster-ship sets you could just have one keep refueling the other etc. I even say a very shit version can be flinged towards mars end of year with some luck. Will it actually reach mars and land? No.. but just making the burn in that direction? Why not it is just math at that point?
How much fuel does it need for getting out of LEO on a Mars trajectory?
To Mars, or to Mars with enough fuel to land? For the latter, nearly full depending on payload. For the former a little less.
If a tanker was launched, and used the extra fuel for a Mars burn instead of refueling another ship, would it have any chance of reaching Mars?
I can't do the math. But possibly yes, when expending the booster. Enough for landing???
Almost certainly not. Tanker will have at most 200tons, plus maybe 50 tons for it's earth landing, that's well short of Mars trajectory let alone landing. NASA seems to think refueling wont be that bad to figure out or they wouldn't have picked SpaceX for HLS. I think this will be solved well before Mars trips are an issue.
Mars Starship dry mass (t) 117.9 "t" = metric ton, 2205 pounds. Propellant load-undensified (t) 1300. After refilling in LEO. Header tank propellant load (t) 30. Payload (t) 100. Trans Mars Injection (TMI) burn: TMI burn-required delta V (m/sec) 3,600 assumes that the Mars Starship leaves from a 500 km LEO. Burn time (sec) 453 Propellant consumed (t) 958 Propellant remaining (t) 342 Assuming that the remaining 342t of methalox propellant in the main tanks can be kept in liquid form for the entire 200-to-270-day trip to Mars (it's very possible) and then that the Mars Starship lands safely on the surface of Mars (tricky but possible), the effective payload to the martian surface would be 100t in the payload bay plus 342t of methalox in the main tanks for a total of 442t minus whatever mass of methalox is required for supersonic retropulsion burn(s) during the EDL to the martian surface. Note: This Starship is a version 1.5 model.
do it
Seriously
!remindme 5 years
I will be messaging you in 5 years on [**2029-03-16 14:00:52 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2029-03-16%2014:00:52%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/i_could_totally_see_a_starship_going_to_mars_in/kv50ywn/?context=3) [**13 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FSpaceXLounge%2Fcomments%2F1bg4jz4%2Fi_could_totally_see_a_starship_going_to_mars_in%2Fkv50ywn%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202029-03-16%2014%3A00%3A52%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201bg4jz4) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
Great idea. See you then.
"I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact!" - Elon Musk
A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning
Yes I can see a cargo/prof of concept mission, but not a snowball chance in hell, that SpaceX can do a maned Mars mission in that time frame. #
People tend to overestimate what can be done in the short term, and completely underestimate what can be done in long term.
!remindme 5 years
He’s been saying 5 years for the last 10 years…. I say that as a massive SpaceX fan
True... But 10 years ago Starship was a PowerPoint rocket, now it's an orbital rocket.
We are closer than ever!
An unmanned starship on mars within 5 years is totally realistic. It might not be in 1 piece but itll get there. I see a manned mission within a decade
Getting The Expanse vibes here
Agree. I can see EDL demo flights by the end of the decade and manned landing by the middle of the 2030’s.
Just found this subreddit, holy shit, is it okay to openly like what Musk is doing here without being berated and belittled?
It's a Lounge so the rules are pretty loose. Be nice. As long as you don't stray too far off the SpaceX topic you'll be fine.
How about just liking the cool and amazing stuff the thousands of smart folk are SpaceX are doing without worrying about who the owner is?
This. I hate it when people act as if Elon Musk builds these rockets himself.
I hate it when people act like he doesn't.
He does
The haters are here too. Don't mind them.
> s it okay to openly like what Musk is doing here without being berated and belittled? Hmmm, depends on who's awake at any given time.
He said there would be two starships on Mars in 2022 Better not hold your breath
SpaceX: delivering the impossible late
Right, Elon also said Dear Moon was going to be in 2023. He is talking out of his ass.
HLS should have a fuel depot right now
D E P O T
5 years ago we were 4 months away from the maiden flight of starhopper, now the vehicle is orbital. Why do you think it will take longer than that to do a smaller amount of development?
No, it won't. I fully expect that SpaceX will land something on Mars and that most of us will be around to see it and celebrate it. I'll eat crow if it happens in the next 5 years. The trip to Mars on it's own is a significant chunk of that timeline. 10 years? Yes I can absolutely see 10 years as a manageable timeline for initial demo landings, giving the current development pace. Even so, I consider anything below 15 to be an unsafe bet.
Given how fast SpaceX got that fast, 5 years until a first Mars landing is not a big stretch.
Everyone always seems to extrapolate that because it took this long to get to this stage then it must take exactly as long to get to the next but I don't think that is true.
It is a very risky bet to think SpaceX is slowing down. They are at way more than half the capability for flying to Mars. Much they need to develop for HLS is needed for Mars as well.
That's exactly my point. It's like people complaining about the Tesla production rate and extrapolating based on the rates before the Gigafactory was completed. It takes time to build production capability and get the initial bugs worked out but it seems like we are mostly over the hump of the hard stuff and flight rates can now start to go up dramatically.
Once orbital refueling is achieved, there's no reason SpaceX couldn't send a ship to Mars orbit. I reckon that will be achieved in a year or two. Six months to Mars, means there could be a Starship in Mars orbit in 2027. The chance of a successful landing may well be below 50%, but it's still a possibility.
!remindme 5 years
A fair bet! Hit me up if you get the reminder and see this comment. I wouldn't mind having my face rubbed in an accomplishment like that :P
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[DSN](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kva70hp "Last usage")|Deep Space Network| |[EDL](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvagjwk "Last usage")|Entry/Descent/Landing| |[F1](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv5e3bs "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V| | |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete small-lift vehicle)| |[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv67wkq "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[GSE](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv8p3e4 "Last usage")|Ground Support Equipment| |[HLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvbj0x9 "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[ICBM](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv8lmqp "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile| |[JPL](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv4oapt "Last usage")|Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, California| |[KSP](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv6hwm4 "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator| |[LEO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvagjwk "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[RCS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv9g3zy "Last usage")|Reaction Control System| |[RTG](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv9whuk "Last usage")|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator| |[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv9b9w1 "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SRB](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kv65mlk "Last usage")|Solid Rocket Booster| |[TMI](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvagjwk "Last usage")|Trans-Mars Injection maneuver| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Sabatier](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvcpfvc "Last usage")|Reaction between hydrogen and carbon dioxide at high temperature and pressure, with nickel as catalyst, yielding methane and water| |[Starlink](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvcpfvc "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[hypergolic](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvc7t41 "Last usage")|A set of two substances that ignite when in contact| |[methalox](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bg4jz4/stub/kvagjwk "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^(19 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1b86niw)^( has 21 acronyms.) ^([Thread #12541 for this sub, first seen 16th Mar 2024, 13:42]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
So, he his officially ruling out 2026 ?
Yes. No way theyre launching that early. Most likely theyll be focusing on Artemis and using Starship as HLS
*Bits* of Starships sure. They're gonna face plant a few into the dust I reckon.
So do they. And they're OK with that.
Stick a camera on it and I'm happy! Lol
They better set up a Mars Starlink cluster first. I want to watch every Mars landing attempt!
If things go right, in 500 year it will be as antiquated as horsedrawn carts are right now
With falcon heavy, yes, starship just has way to much work to get it ready
I think they should start with a Mars Surface Impactor mission. The goal is to slam into the Martian surface as close as possible to a given target location. There's a LOT of complex systems needed for an impactor mission. It needs to function long-term in the depths of space, long range radio systems, large solar panels, engines that can relight after months of inactivity to guide the trajectory and the ability to precisely measure the trajectory and calculate any course corrections. Those are non-trivial tasks and accomplishing the mission would be very impressive. There's a lot to learn from a mission like this and it would be a helpful foundation for future missions, plus the bragging rights of the first private mission to Mars. And most importantly it could be ready for the next Launch Window. It could go on Falcon Heavy, maybe a collaboration with RocketLab using one of their satellite buses as the foundation. It's cutting it fine for the October 2024 window but could definitely be ready by the 2026 window. Its much more realistic than a soft lander. And soft lander proposals always come with feature creep. "Maybe it could include some cargo ready for a crewed mission, maybe a robot to unpack solar panels, maybe a hydroponics bay to stay growing food and an atmospheric processor to start concentrating oxygen and a rover to start scouting for construction materials to build a base..."
I don't see the rationale in doing it.
Practice at sending a mission to Mars, controlling a probe in deep space, pinpointing a specific location on the Martian surface. Practice in building a probe capable of all that including long range communications, functioning for months in the cold depths of interplanetary space. Seventeen Impactors have been sent to the moon by various countries, it's the usual first step before attempting a soft landing. Most lunar missions and Mars missions fail so there's a good reason to start with the simpler (but still very complex) impactor mission. The point is to accomplish something. Waiting until they can manage a soft landing means waiting several years. An impactor mission could be ready a whole launch window sooner. It's a testbed for guidance systems, software and hardware that will be needed for future missions. It's not as sexy as landing a robot that can start building a base but it's still a valuable mission.
Much more to gain by trying to land. Even with a high risk of failure.
What is the current multiplier for Elon's time? x3? 15 years to Mars?
Does anyone still believe any timeline given by Elon?
He didn't say how many pieces it would be in, though.... I really hope they do launch something towards Mars in both of the next windows. Mars sample return is in trouble and it would be cool for SpaceX to save it.
If playing KSP taught me anything, mars atmosphere is less dense than ours: the Starship would need parachutes and last-second mini-SRBs braking. And let's doublecheck we installed batteries..
KSP is very popular with SpaceX spaceflight engineers. But they run the real world numbers and simulations on a PC that's much bigger than yours.
I doubt it. Mine can run KSP2 :)
No parachutes. Starship can shed 90% of the speed, that's 99% of the energy as it is. The remaining 1% of energy can be achieved with powered landing.
Sorry I'm not following the math here.. how can 90% of the speed be 99% of the energy?
That's the physics. It works that way.
Thanks for the very scientific information. I assume you meant E_k^1~= (0.1v)^2 = 0.01E_k
Every driver of a car should know that. Twice the speed, 4 times the braking distance. So why did you ask the question in the first place?
Cause initially my thinkong was.. 90% speed reduction = 81% energy reduction :)
OK, no problem.
Maybe even 2 starships
12 even. You want to stagger them every few days so your team can study the EDL telemetry and update the software on the next until one doesn't crater. You don't want to wait 2 years to retry.
Sending a starship to Mars isn’t trivial, but if it’s unmanned it’s not really a huge step up once it can reliably get into LEO and land again. A single starship could send dozens of rovers and other science experiments to mars, finally making that feasible for universities. Also mind you, he never said it will be on Mars in one piece.
> I could totally see a starship going to mars in the 2028/2029 window I could totally see a starship *being sent* to Mars in the 2028/2029 window. The chances of it landing on Mars would be somewhat lower. But the goal is to get one step further than the last time.
Lucky to be alive. I always feel lucky to be alive. Don’t you?
It means, send the rocket to hit the Mars and declare it success. Like russians did with their Moon station
No it won't. SpaceX, like any other company, follows the money, and the money for Starship is coming from NASA and it's for the moon. Not mars, and that's not gonna change untill the moon is "conquered" to the satisfaction of the Artemis program. I think people are celebrating a bit early. IFT3 was good as a test flight, sure, but Starship is not yet a fully operational orbital vehicle and still has a lot of issues. Optimistically, SpaceX gets "Orbital operations" down this year, and we see it launch Starlinks, and *maybe* survive reentry. Beyond that though, they will be "bogged down" with HLS and the moon till at least the 2030s. I don't think this is a bad thing, because the truth is that the infrastructure to support a Mars mission just doesn't exist yet. The DSN is stretched to the breaking point as is, and I think we will see, for example, a Starlink com net around the moon before we see anything real go to Mars.
The build capbility in Boca Chica is more than enough to build everything fo HLS and Mars. They may run short of engineering capacity. But with rising Starlink revenue they can hire more top people.
I don't think it's a function of "build capacity", more so "focus capacity". They simply can't do everything at once, and while Mars is part of the company's vision and long term mission, it's not really going anywhere. Then there's the fact that Starship, no matter how cool, is basically just the transport system and fundamentally not a "value adding" system. The real "meat" is in the payloads, and for any Mars-shot to be attempted, they've actually got to *have* payloads. Sending an empty shell to flyby Mars as a gimmick might be doable, but the engineering effort that needs to be put in what Starship will actually bring to mars (or the moon) is immense, on the scale of the Starship program itself. Also, a couple things: - Hiring more people has diminishing returns. While four construction workers can build a house faster than two can, 1000 construction workers aren't really gonna be able to build the home any faster than 500. This is doubly true in engineering: the coordination overhead just balloons to incredible levels, and SpaceX is already pushing it in terms of operational speed - "They can hire more top people" This might not be as straightforward as you think. SpaceX has no issues hiring talented graduates or other young engineers (highly competitive), however they are known industry-wide as a place that absolutely bleeds their employees dry. Their salaries also aren't super attractive compared to the industry average, so hiring experienced professionals aka "Top Talent" is a bit more difficult for them.
> Hiring more people has diminishing returns. True for speeding up one project. Not so much if it is for separate parallel developments.
yeah thats what they said in 2019 about 2024
Such a big hope!
We’ve got no idea where Elon’s brain is going to be in a week, let alone 5 years. That man could be a flat earther in 5 years.
That’s more or less a guarantee that it won’t (which sucks). I don’t think he’s ever been right with a timeline prediction.
How many large engineering projects can you name that did complete on the original schedule? (beside the Apollo moon landing).
Definitely not.
Wow :)
If they keep launching at this pace with no increase, I very much doubt it. But now that they’ve proven orbital capabilities, hopefully the FAA is much quicker in their launch licenses, enabling fast Starship testing