Like I say, Musk’s idea is an offsite backup in case something catastrophic happens to make all of Earth uninhabitable (or just wipes out human life, like a gamma ray burst pointed straight at us or something). It’s not something I’m particularly fussed about, but in his vision the whole point is to be away from Earth.
You mean “in case he causes something catastrophic to happen”
Might not want to buy a huge refinery to create rocket fuel if that’s a real concern. Allegedly.
The earth has huge gravity well compared to Mars. Eventually, rocket ships built on Mars will be far less expensive then those built on earth, so for the kind of things like astroid mining and refining like you see in Expanse, Mars will be more economical. Admittedly not in our lifetime but New World colonies took 100+ years to be profitable.
antlers
5099
Do you have a reference for that? My understanding was that Spain was getting a net benefit from the New World by the 1520s.
I’m gonna bet there aren’t any primitive aliens on Mars hoarding Helium-3.
I was thinking of particular places like Plymouth and Jamestown, we also have to consider all of the settlements that failed and/or were abandoned.
I could be wrong but my understanding is that Spain got rich from the New World almost entirely from sacking Inca, Maya, and Azteca empires and stealing their gold and taking over the gold and silver mines, using indigenous slaves.
The Economy of Plymouth Colony - History of Massachusetts Blog.
The thing about colony profitability is that it depends on how you’re measuring it. It was certainly quickly profitable for the rulers, and not that slower for exporters with a captive new market as mercantilism surged, all of them greasing bureaucrats, royal families, and the church. State accounts, not so much.
jpinard
5105
Interesting. I actually thought alignment WAS calibration. Boy I can’t wait to see some of the first images, when it’s all ready to go!
Romalar
5106
My understanding is that now they are going to work on calibrating other aspects like thermal effects when they aim it in different directions relative to the sun (which can degrade alignment among other issues), how it behaves when tracking moving objects, how it behaves when pointing at a star and masking out its bright light to see faint objects like planets, and just generally checking on observing different wavelengths of light.
The Ingenuity copter has been taking pictures of the parachute used in its own rover’s landing.
jpinard
5108
What a beautiful picture. I still can’t believe that thing flies in an environment with such low air density.
Boeing, where quality is job 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…
I was very interested to see that NASA is finally standing up to the Senate. The US Senate has for years used the NASA budget more as a subsidy for favored providers than to actually cost-effectively develop things. Which is why SLS is enormously expensive and keeps postponing launch and scaling back planned capability while SpaceX keeps delivering cheaper solutions in a much more timely manner.
Here’s some perspective on how much better the JWST is compared to our previous IR telescopes
Lol, that was about my first thought when I saw the images. Except in my head the progression was CGA, EGA, VGA.
