I don’t think there will be Mars landings within my lifetime. These deadlines or milestones are just getting harder and harder to reach time-wise.
Is that because your lifetime is that short, or do you not think Mr. Musk is capable of moving as fast as he wants to?
I’m only 40-ish but suffer a lot of illnesses, so both? Though Musk still seems likely to get it done faster than NASA all by itself.
https://www.space.com/new-toilet-coming-for-international-space-station-astronauts.html
Lets hope it complies with international treaties, which forbid placing ICBMs (haha its a joke “icy BMs”) in orbit.
Best engineers on the planet and they cannot come up with a POOP acronym smh.
Mary Robinette Kowal had a terrifically interesting Twitter thread on peeing and pooping in space last year, aggregated here:
Turns out it’s kind of shitty.
SpaceX’s Starships that are currently in development have been designed to make the round trip. One of the reasons for their methane engines is that they will be able to make the fuel on Mars with solar energy. The Starships are sized so they can get into Mars orbit from the Martian surface with lots of fuel left over.
The rocket engine for the round-trip Mars rocket (the Raptor) already exists and is in production in California.
jpinard
3721
For some reason (my mind isn’t right at the moment), I read this as spaceX was building a super heavy launch and assembly platform orbiting Earth, and was hiring future asteroid miners to help built it. I was so slightly disappointed to see it’s not a Bruce Willis in Armageddon recruiting drive for construction and mining workers,
Why do they need floating ports? To get closer to the Equator? (I.e. less fuel.)
Fewer restrictions in International Waters?
I’m assuming that has to be it. Equatorial launches are more fuel efficient. Musk wants to push the boundaries of bigger and better launch vehicles, so I’d have imagine he’s chasing those efficiencies.
Romalar
3725
I think it’s a mix. Getting permission to launch Super Heavy on land very much seems like it’s going to be difficult, and they’ve talked about even larger rockets. They’ve hinted at doing launches from the Gulf of Mexico, which makes sense since they can ship them directly from Texas sites pretty easily.
Launching closer to the equator doesn’t really help much for Starlink (too high of an inclination), which is a lot of what they want to do right now. It’ll help for a lot of things heading away from Earth entirely (such as Mars) or to GEO, though.
SpaceX wants to reach a point where they are doing multiple Saturn V-scale launches a day. I don’t think even the Space Coast would be able to put up with that level of disruption.
Remembered the other reason which might make sense: The weather delays launches far too often. It’s at least somewhat possible (if the FAA is willing to adjust) that launching from multiple platforms would give them more flexibility to switch where a launch would be based on a long-term forecast.
Though if they’re in the Gulf, does that not mean most of hurricane season is out?
The ports may be mobile to some degree. Meaning they may be able to steer out of the paths of individual storms. Not sure.
Also, not every storm ends up in the Gulf.
ddtibbs
3730
Eventually they’re going to need to launch probes/satellites/spacecraft with plutonium generators again. Might be handy to move them in a way that Canaveral or Vandenberg don’t allow.
