Political Crossfire Forums

Canned man. I'll. Pass. We are already on the best spaceship we will ever have. Spaceship Earth.

Having had a chance to watch Musk's entire presentation, I'm a bit disappointed, honestly. The decision to go with methane engines is solid, despite the challenges. The idea of taking the fuel down to such a low temperature that the density increases to the point of negating cavitation issues along the leading edges of the turbopump impeller blades is frankly brilliant. Even the kerosene engines are going to develop serious impeller damage over repeated uses. And full-flow staged combustion is f**k hard. Both fuel and oxidizer are to be completely phased over to gas before they hit the chamber. Its a seriously challenging engine. And they want to run 42 of them simultaneously.

All that said...the basic challenges haven't changed, the funding problems have not changed, and fantastical images of one of these vehicles sitting on Europa or Enceladus isn't going to create the realistic 2020 timeframe he was talking about. I have no doubt of the technical capability, assuming we've all got the will to stomach the loss of human life that always accompanies the colonization of distant shores, to make this happen. I doubt the money will be there. And I saw no time spent on the necessary infrastructure to maintain a human population over there. It would take centuries, in all probability, to create an economically and materially self-sufficient Martian population. Musk is mostly focused on the spacecraft. Which is fine...but its only a small piece of the puzzle if the overaching ideology of his company (and his personal passion and life goal) is to make humanity multi-planetary.

anyway, /rant, but the presentation was solid.

Till we get warp speed, our cosmic empire =low earth orbit, the moon, and maybe mars.

My predictions is tourism in low earth orbit, and restricted to the mega wealthy.