How (any Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars
I was going to wait until SpaceX managed to land one of their first stages on a bargeAutonomous Spaceport Drone Ship[0] to post another update for those that might be interested, and then this happened to CRS-7 which meant they won't get to to try again until at least September.
However, Wait But Why has just posted an absolutely excellent[1] piece on the history, present, and future of SpaceX, it's goal to put 1,000,000 people on Mars, complete with quick primers on a bunch of related background subjects:
How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars.
It covers a bunch of stuff I was going to, but better, clearer, in more detail, with more diagrams and videos, and a bunch of insight from talking to Elon himself.
And yes, it's a crazy goal, but Elon has a step-by-step plan for getting there, which has worked out pretty well so far. Admittedly, the CRS-7 failure wasn't part of the plan, but I don't think anyone realistically thought that SpaceX would never lose a payload, so coping with that near-inevitability would have been factored in somehow. And according to a whole of other really-fricking-smart, actual rocket scientist people he's worked with, he's one of the smartest people they've ever worked with.
The next 20 years are going to be interesting.
(via /r/spacex)
[0] Definitely not a barge. Because barges are unpowered. And Jeff "Patent Dickwad" Bezos (off of Amazon, and Blue Origin) apparently has a patent on landing a spacecraft on a barge. Because apparently that's a novel and non-obvious invention that no-one else would have thought of!
[1] But loooooong. But worth it.
However, Wait But Why has just posted an absolutely excellent[1] piece on the history, present, and future of SpaceX, it's goal to put 1,000,000 people on Mars, complete with quick primers on a bunch of related background subjects:
How (and Why) SpaceX Will Colonize Mars.
It covers a bunch of stuff I was going to, but better, clearer, in more detail, with more diagrams and videos, and a bunch of insight from talking to Elon himself.
And yes, it's a crazy goal, but Elon has a step-by-step plan for getting there, which has worked out pretty well so far. Admittedly, the CRS-7 failure wasn't part of the plan, but I don't think anyone realistically thought that SpaceX would never lose a payload, so coping with that near-inevitability would have been factored in somehow. And according to a whole of other really-fricking-smart, actual rocket scientist people he's worked with, he's one of the smartest people they've ever worked with.
The next 20 years are going to be interesting.
(via /r/spacex)
[0] Definitely not a barge. Because barges are unpowered. And Jeff "Patent Dickwad" Bezos (off of Amazon, and Blue Origin) apparently has a patent on landing a spacecraft on a barge. Because apparently that's a novel and non-obvious invention that no-one else would have thought of!
[1] But loooooong. But worth it.