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“We’re going all the way to Mars, I think… best case 10 years, worst case 15 to 20 years.”

Elon Musk: “We’ll probably put a first man in space in about three years. 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.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • 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.

  • Kelly Starks

    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.

  • Kelly Starks

    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.

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