“We’re going all the way to Mars, I think… best case 10 years, worst case 15 to 20 years.”
I believe him when he says he’ll launch his first manned mission in three years. However, I think he seriously underestimates the challenges of a mission to Mars, based on our present engineering abilities to build interplanetary spaceships.
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I believe him when he says he’ll launch his first manned mission in three years. However, I think he seriously underestimates the challenges of a mission to Mars, based on our present engineering abilities to build interplanetary spaceships.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Of course, he’s a child of the Mars Society.. he’s bought into the argument that tether based artificial gravity is easy to do and not really necessary anyway and all that radiation junk is just nervous flight surgeons. In fact, he’s more hardcore than Zubrin because he wants to go one-way-to-stay. So I expect his mind is filled with a single number: 30 tons to the surface of Mars. First cargo, then crew.. or should I say colonists?
Does Falcon Heavy allow you to put 30 tons on the surface of Mars? No, more like 10 tons. That is, when they have their Dragon capsule that can land on Mars they’ll already have the vehicle that can put it into Mars transfer orbit. This will be a testbed for the bigger rocket.. and yes, Elon is a fan of the one-big-rocket concept, just like Zubrin.
Ah Trent, you can’t put 10 tons on Mars, and ceratainly not anyone in a 20 ton Dragon, with a Falcon 9h. And you can’t get folks alive to Mars in a Dragon (or a Orion for that mater).
Musks projections, and cost numbers are increasingly out of wack.
I was just thinking this am that Musks doing all hes done, two-three boosters and a capsule (maned and cargo) for about what Rutan spent to develop SS1&2 and WK 1+2; and I don’t beleave Musk’s people are vastly brighter the Rutans proven team. Musk has to be cutting some serious corners somewhere.