<story><title>A SpaceX booster now trails only 4 space shuttles in flight experience</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/spacex-hits-major-reuse-milestone-with-rockets-10th-flight/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gameswithgo</author><text>Electric cars and vertical rocket landings were ideas you could show would work eventually  with a little napkin math.  It is a good critique of humanity that so many &amp;quot;experts&amp;quot; neglected to do that napkin math and just declare it impossible.&lt;p&gt;Getting starship to work reliably still involves some never done before procedures that remain to be proven. But SpaceX has a plan that might work, if it doesn&amp;#x27;t there are many ways to adjust the plan.  With enough time and money, they can do it.&lt;p&gt;Colonizing mars is not so easy to show as feasible.  Certainly we can launch a bunch of cans and digging equipment and get a few people living there. But anything like a self sustaining population?  Don&amp;#x27;t know, we don&amp;#x27;t really have a concrete plan of how to do that. People often say, if you think you can colonize mars, colonize the Gobi Desert first, as it is 10,000 times easier.</text></item><item><author>hackeraccount</author><text>It can&amp;#x27;t be done.&lt;p&gt;Technically you can do it but it&amp;#x27;s not practical.&lt;p&gt;It is possible and practical but there&amp;#x27;s no reason to.&lt;p&gt;Oh, look here we are.  Well, sure anybody could have seen that this was where we would end up - we just didn&amp;#x27;t agree on when we&amp;#x27;d be here.</text></item><item><author>Buttons840</author><text>Agreed. I barely knew who Elon Musk was until reading his biography, which was written years ago. The biography ended with Elon&amp;#x27;s dream of colonizing Mars and doing verticle rocket landings, and talked about the challenges and shared some skepticism. So from my perspective the first of his &amp;quot;dreams&amp;quot; has become a common reality, and I&amp;#x27;m left thinking that colonizing Mars is next.</text></item><item><author>dgritsko</author><text>SpaceX&amp;#x27;s effort to take first-stage reuse from moonshot to mundane is nothing short of extraordinary. It still makes me smile to think of how breathlessly excited we got over individual frames of grainy footage from the first water landing tests. The fact that landing and reuse now seem routine gives me a high degree of confidence that they will succeed in future endeavors - landing a Starship seemed inevitable, rather than the stuff of sci-fi dreams that it was only a few years ago.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ClumsyPilot</author><text>It makes much more sence to industrialise the Moon than to colonise mars. Moon materials can be used to produce ships and space structures, satellites, propellant, etc. You can have a space elevator on the moon today with a titanium cable. It will actually be profitable.&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, colonising the moon is tractable in terms of emergencies: if someone on the moon suffers an accident and needs a surgery, they could be in a hospital on Earth in a day or two. If their shelter is damaged, or supplies are needed, we can send help to the Moon and have it arrrive before everyone is dead.&lt;p&gt;You are on mars and suddenly are suffering from liver disease? You are probably dead. It&amp;#x27;s going to be like the life of iur first Abtarctic explorers, when they get in trouble, there is no help. Many don&amp;#x27;t return, and noone stays there to live. To this day noone &amp;#x27;colonised&amp;#x27; Antarctica.&lt;p&gt;Mars settlement is only viable when we have a spaceship factory on the moon, nuclear engines, and we could send the equivant of a large marine research vessel to mars, so 10,000 tons usefull payload, every month.</text></comment>
<story><title>A SpaceX booster now trails only 4 space shuttles in flight experience</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/spacex-hits-major-reuse-milestone-with-rockets-10th-flight/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gameswithgo</author><text>Electric cars and vertical rocket landings were ideas you could show would work eventually  with a little napkin math.  It is a good critique of humanity that so many &amp;quot;experts&amp;quot; neglected to do that napkin math and just declare it impossible.&lt;p&gt;Getting starship to work reliably still involves some never done before procedures that remain to be proven. But SpaceX has a plan that might work, if it doesn&amp;#x27;t there are many ways to adjust the plan.  With enough time and money, they can do it.&lt;p&gt;Colonizing mars is not so easy to show as feasible.  Certainly we can launch a bunch of cans and digging equipment and get a few people living there. But anything like a self sustaining population?  Don&amp;#x27;t know, we don&amp;#x27;t really have a concrete plan of how to do that. People often say, if you think you can colonize mars, colonize the Gobi Desert first, as it is 10,000 times easier.</text></item><item><author>hackeraccount</author><text>It can&amp;#x27;t be done.&lt;p&gt;Technically you can do it but it&amp;#x27;s not practical.&lt;p&gt;It is possible and practical but there&amp;#x27;s no reason to.&lt;p&gt;Oh, look here we are.  Well, sure anybody could have seen that this was where we would end up - we just didn&amp;#x27;t agree on when we&amp;#x27;d be here.</text></item><item><author>Buttons840</author><text>Agreed. I barely knew who Elon Musk was until reading his biography, which was written years ago. The biography ended with Elon&amp;#x27;s dream of colonizing Mars and doing verticle rocket landings, and talked about the challenges and shared some skepticism. So from my perspective the first of his &amp;quot;dreams&amp;quot; has become a common reality, and I&amp;#x27;m left thinking that colonizing Mars is next.</text></item><item><author>dgritsko</author><text>SpaceX&amp;#x27;s effort to take first-stage reuse from moonshot to mundane is nothing short of extraordinary. It still makes me smile to think of how breathlessly excited we got over individual frames of grainy footage from the first water landing tests. The fact that landing and reuse now seem routine gives me a high degree of confidence that they will succeed in future endeavors - landing a Starship seemed inevitable, rather than the stuff of sci-fi dreams that it was only a few years ago.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lumost</author><text>There are some pros of martian colonization efforts over comparable efforts in the Gobi desert.  For one there is a compelling reason to colonize for at least a portion of the population.  It would be the opportunity of a lifetime to study planetary geology up close, put terraforming theories to the test, and produce fuel&amp;#x2F;water for further space missions using the reduced gravity and atmospheric drag.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand the fact that &amp;quot;going for a walk&amp;quot; will be extremely difficult will motivate increased focus on cavern excavation and other construction underground.  These are &amp;quot;necessities&amp;quot; on mars but would be &amp;quot;interesting&amp;quot; in the gobi dessert.</text></comment>