https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musks-plans-for-life-on-mars-a-dangerous-delusion-12243479
I’m glad other inhabitants of planet earth don’t have their heads in the clouds as most others seem to!
Elon's StarShip is way too small to support 100 humans all the way to Mars. I mean WAY too small, see here (I thought it was a lot bigger):
It would be as bad as packing sardines in a can. Maybe, by pure luck, it might be able to send 10 people with something of a degree of safety margins. I would say it's a suicide mission.
That's a debunking of some youtuber's "fan" concept using a starship shaped shell
not SpaceX nor Elon Musk's actual plans for a Mars starship or anything close as far as I know.
Link to the fan video.
It shouldn't surprise you that some fan video with cool visuals is popular but also not at all aligned with practical reality. It should also not surprise you that's not the actual plan.
Starship is not meant to be an escape vehicle for sending 100 peoeple to Mars in one go. No one sensible has that idea, especially not Elon Musk himself. If you want to hear what
Elon Musk's actual ideas and plans for Mars colonisation are instead of attacks on a straw man are then watch this uncut interview/discussion directly with him.
Let me highlight some quotes directly debunking the notions Elon Musk's plan is for a "life boat" vehicle with self-sustenance on Mars before the next half centaury at least.
[5:13] It's not an escape vehicle [...] unless Mars is made self sustaining which will probably not happen in my life time [...] it's meaningless to have an escape [vehicle], life boat or an escape hatch if you are simply moving to another place where you will soon die out. That doesn't count, it's not much of a life boat really
[...]
[6:43]You first have to say what is the goal [...] the goal is get enough tonnage to Mars and enough people to make Mars self sustaining as quickly as possible. So then you say ok let's back out the math on this. We're gonna need a lot of tonnage. Maybe, I don't know 100 000 tons may 1 000 000 tons? so then you can't be faf'ing around with these expandable rockets, they're a joke. They're absurd ... If you want to get let's say first order of approximation 1 million tons to to the surface of Mars inclusive of people [and cargo] that means something probably around 4 or 5 million useful tons of payload in low earth orbit [...] Let's put this into perspective, total global capacity to orbit of all expendable rockets is around 5 or 6 hundred tons [...] if you say the world's going to end then if you do not increase your capacity perhaps they could do 1000 tons. That's 1/5000th of what's needed. This is ridiculous. It's not even .1%
[...]
[9:15] Expendable rockets are just utterly stupid in my opinion, utterly stupid. They are a complete waste of time.
[...]
[10:12] You basically need to have something that in expendable form that would probably get about 4% of its [lift-off mass] to orbit such that you can spend about half of that 4% on reusability.
[...]
[11:20] You can't have a tiny rocket. As a tiny rocket you basically just end up carrying your electronic[avionics] to orbit. [...] trying to get even a 10 000kg rocket to orbit I think you would get bascially zero payload [...] [12:10]For big rockets you also get gauge [manufacturing minimum tolerance] advantages... [...] [14:18][Falcon 9] with a 12ft or 3.6M diameter which is that size because of road transport limitations
[...]
[17:35] "Large size, twice the take off thrust of a Saturn-V but about the same payload but that gives you reusability much cheaper, in situ propellent, it all is coherent" - Dr. Robert Zubrin
[...]
[19:21] I'm trying to make sure that our rate innovation increases it does not decrease. This is really essential, in fact if we do not see something close to an exponential improvement in our rate of innovation we will not reach Mars.
[21:16] In so far as building a self sustaining city on Mars [...] you have to achieve full and rapid reusability. I emphasis full and rapid. Reusability is only relevant to the degree it is rapid and complete. You also have to do orbital refuelling, this is essential, as well. And then propellent production on Mars, this is also essential.
[22:05] In the absence of radical innovation we have no chance of meeting that goal [Mars colonisation]. If our goal was simply, you know, defeat Lockheed and Boeing or something like that we would probably achieve that goal [logarithmically].
[23:45] So let's not shoot for the Moon let's shoot for Mars. And then these competitive things are kind of small things along the way. Unless somebody else is shooting for Mars, they will not be competitive with something as pedestrian as launching a few satellites into Earth orbit.
[27:13] "How would you prioritise missions 2 thru 10? Are you going to focus on exploration, building up the infrastructure or science?" [open potential plans for order of missions to Mars]
The goal of the Starship
system is not sardine can colonisation/escape vehicles. It is to give
large enough to be efficient,
reusable capacity to Mars with a goal of 5 to 1 LEO to Mars payload tonnage.
The setting of Mars colonisation as a goal has the purpose of forcing innovation forward at the highest possible rate with the benefits of low cost satellites and Moon travel along the way. If you think setting a goal of actually making it to Mars is meaningless and deluded let me repeat the quote:
"So let's not shoot for the Moon let's shoot for Mars. And then these competitive things are kind of small things along the way. Unless somebody else is shooting for Mars, they will not be competitive with something as pedestrian as launching a few satellites into Earth orbit." Seems to have worked very well for their business competitiveness recently (Artemis Program).
Can you really say SpaceX has poorer resource utilisation than NASA "inhouse", Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Blue Origin or any of the other competitors? Obviously their current achievement is only possible off the pioneering work of these other organisations but
right now who is looking the best to be the leader in space tech? Maybe a decade ago that speculation would be fair, but given all the success and accomplishment that has
already happened by now in 2021
can you honestly say SpaceX's direction and vision is poor?Also note plans change (this interview was Oct 2020 for reference) Elon Musk has shown a strong willingness to be proven wrong and change approaches provided
good reasoning which is more than most leaders (particularly political ones but that's more the voter's fault).
I'm not going to waste time watching every video and "news" article "debunking" Mars colonisation but it feels to me like most of these Mars "debunkings" are trying to raise basic challenges for Mars colonisation as though they aren't being thought about when they clearly are.
These "debunkings" set up a false narrative by making it seem as though the challenges are being ignored through omission. I swear I could start a youtube channel debunking these
"debunking" videos but I have better things to spend my time doing, like instead doing it through writing posts on a niche forum which barely anyone will ever read
(someone help me get this info out there please)