SpaceX’s plan for Mars, Google’s data saving plans for India. Plus Patrick Beja thinks he’s vindicated that modular phones like Project Ara will never catch on.
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Show Notes
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Hi Tom,
unfortunately there was a giant omission in your reporting on the SpaceX interplanetary transporter.
The vision is to operate a _fleet_ of these spacecrafts. For every spacecraft carrying passengers ten or so cargo ships will be needed, carrying supplies, building materials and machinery.
The misunderstanding illustrates the change in mindset that is needed.
What we are accustomed to is that the first and second stage of a rocket are sacrificed in order to get the payload into orbit. We are accustomed to seeing rockets as _single use, single mission endeavours_.
Sacrificing the first and second stage is insanely expensive of course, but everybody believed there was no other way.
SpaceX has achieved what space engineers thought was impossible: the first stage comes back, survives the reentry, and can be fully and rapidly reused; the fundamental step to enable interplanetary transport.
Just as international air transport companies operate fleets of 747’s, any organisation that takes on the challenge of colonizing Mars will have to operate a fleet of interplanetary transporters.
http://newatlas.com/elon-musk-mars-speech/45645/
Earth and Mars reach a point of closest approach every 26 months. In order to colonize Mars: in the two years leading up to a departure window the boosters are to launch many times, building up a fleet of transporters in orbit around the Earth.
Colin Tennyson