Useful mass. Curiosity cost 2.1 billion, maybe 400 million of that could have been ULA's markup. The rest was the hardware. It costs money to launch the infrastructure to change rocks into oxygen, money that could be earning in the stock market and paying out for launch costs that way.
Yes - in the beginning - but it appears the solar system has unlimited energy and a massive amount of metals and other materials that are not trapped in our gravity well. In the long run it will be cheaper to send resources down than to try to lift resources up.
This channel has almost single-handedly reignited my passions for space and related future technology. So much of space news has become "Military does this", "Musk said that", "China launch but China bad", "ISS ending", and "Artemis might not happen" etc... It's refreshing to see a realistic, futuristic AND positive outlook on the subject.
I'll also recommend Isaac Arthur. I think one of Anthrofuturism's videos also mentioned him once too? But anyway they pair well together since here the emphasis is on current/NEAR future tech and lunar exploitation, whereas SFIA is a bit wider ranging, but focussing _mostly_ on far future. Isaac Arthur does have somewhat Elmer Fudd-ian speech impediment that can take some getting used to, but that's more prevalent in his earlier videos.
@chrisc1140 I love your recommendations, I was going to mention Isaac originally too (but changed my comment before posting for brevity). I love these kind of channels, and the fact they're willing to crunch numbers and think about the logistics of sci-fi.
the moon is only useful if we turn it into a giant concave and accurate mirror that reflects the sunlight like a laser at random nearby stars' suspected habitable planets to piss off aliens because its funny
@@olawlor i think the error a lot of people make is assuming you can only do one or the other. there are enough other billionaires and countries to colonize all the things simultaneously. you can speed things up significantly with infrastructure though. if musk doesn't, one of his competitors will.
@olawlor Well, not exactly, we have no evidence they ever made it to the Americas. And when we say canoes that includes large, multi hulled vessels with many rowers and/or sails - not just the sorts of canoes you take to the pond to fish. But you have a point. They did sail thousands of miles in one go. Don't forget that they brought crops and livestock with them though, as well as enough people to establish healthy genepools. That doesn't even ruin the analogy though. They made shorter voyages of hundreds of miles much more often, settling thousands of tiny and large islands.
A better metaphor is that it's like trying to sail to the New World from Spain *without* stopping at the Canary Islands to stock up on fresh food and water, and fix the parts of your ship that you discovered were problematic on the voyage down.
The moon almost feels cheated in, as if a player didn't want to grind to send lots of mass and resources out of the gravity well. So just spawned a bunch in orbit for us.
Using the moon as a stepping stone on the way to mars makes so much sense to me that I can only imagine that Elon wants to skip it for, like, ego reasons or something. I'm not very optimistic that his mind can be changed based on logical or economic arguments.
He doesn't really want to go to Mars. He will never go, that's a promise. He will use it to sell people ideas and promises. He will start with the rich and tourism in space. Elon is not your friend. He is a rat. An avaricious evil.
Elon was responding to a specific idea someone had to use the moon as a LOX refueling depot for SpaceX, which he said is a "distraction" because the Delta V needed to get to the moon from LEO is a waste of time when you have enough Delta V in LEO already to get to Mars. Best case, LOX gets mined at the moon and sent to LEO in order to refuel the Starship, but the economics of whether that's cheaper to do than just sending the LOX up from Earth as is currently the plan depends entirely on how expensive the upfront costs for the needed infrastructure to mine, manufacture, and transport LOX on the moon is, and how long it will take for those costs to be paid back before you can say you're actually saving money by launching LOX from the moon. So for SpaceX's plans with regard to Mars based on current technology and infrastructure, the moon is a distraction as it simply isn't necessary for getting from LEO to Mars. His comment was specifically a response to the idea of using the moon as a gas station for Starships going to Mars. It absolutely floors me how so many people seem to think he was talking about the moon in general, or Artemis, when he's clearly responding to a specific idea he disagreed with.
Step 1: Escape gravity well Step 2: Insert self in inhospitable gravity well so far away it severs regular transit Step 3: Wait I want to go back to step 2 for a second... Step 4: PLEASE WE HAVE TO GO BACK TO STEP TWO!
Knowing Elon he won't admit he's 'in the wrong' by going to Mars first because he already spent too much attention/time on it, he made it his thing, a part of his personality, arguing against it will, to him, feel like an attack on himself. He made going to Mars part of his schtick, it will be hard to separate for a persona like him. Either way he is still contracted by NASA to fulfill some of their Moon goals so let's hope they won't kill Artemis this presidency.
In the wrong in what way? I like how you people like to be critical but are also deeply ignorant and generally clueless. Of course that's because your only motive is to vilify and when has a hater ever been intelligent or honest?
@TheEvilmooseofdoom whenever someone says "you people" in a critical argument, it immediately makes me see them as an ignorant person. You seem to me like the exact kind of person you're describing the original commenter as.
this is the one thing i think musk is wrong about. he wants the oregon trail, we want the transcontinental railroad. then again there is no reason we cant do both, musk to mars, bezos to moon. cant wait to see "mass driver" as a delivery option on amazon.
Musk's brain has been fried by ketamine and culture war bullshit. He literally owns twitter, and he spends most of his time on it either ranting about nonsense or admitting to using sockpuppets to call himself a good dad. I think he used the money he got from his parents' emerald mine for good at first, but he's completely lost the plot now. Years ago, elon would have probably been staunchly in support of high speed rail, and now he's vocally opposing it in california to build..... a tunnel for a few cars? A really really really expensive underground road with bad capacity? He stopped being serious a while ago I think.
At least the Starship will be available to others, someone else can still industrialise the moon and Space X is going to make it much easier, methods for surviving mars will help on the moon like Boring company tunnelers. We already see companies like Vast relying on starship to build their future space station. The Starship (if it work as intended) is so good that it alone will propel a new era of space, just making it available to the public is enough of a contribution to our space future.
@@Perrirodan1 a lunar industrial outpost can also manufacture things that mars will need. fuel (for transfers), structural hardware, machinery and solar panels come to mind.
I agree with every word of this. Moving from Earth to Mars is like moving from a really nice cave to a much crappier cave. But we don't all need to keep living in caves!
I like to split the various planetary systems as though they're their own solar systems outright. The defining feature isn't a star but rather the central gravity well. In this way you can think about going to Mars as like going all the way to alpha Centauri to avoid trouble instead of just going to the places already in the solar system (the Earth system in this analog). Even still, the Martian system is just a worse Earth system. The planet is uninhabitable and the mass already in orbit is tiny and concievably depletable given hundreds or thousands of years. The chad Earth system on the other hand has a habitable planet and the absolute motherlode of already orbiting materials Doesn't mean we can't or wont go to Mars, but doing it for the sole purpose of building a doomsday bunker is a bit of a waste of time when we can build better ones right here in the Earth system and even fling them into the interplanetary void if need be
something to note is that musk was replying to a tweet talking about stopping by the moon to refuel liquid oxygen on the way to mars, which as far as I've heard (i'm not the best at delta-v calculations), doesn't make the most sense musk was saying that it isn't worth it to refuel at the moon, and that it's best to go to mars directly Full Tweet that Musk was replying to: "There is a long running debate between the Mars people and the space Habitat people. Zubrin vs O’Neill, Musk vs Bezos. I have thought for some time now it’s essentially futile in the commercial age - because the two camps are no longer competing for a fixed pie of launch and hardware building resources. Supply can increase to meet demand, and all the competing approaches will do to each other is help by accelerating development of the markets both need. And consider this - Starship needs about 6 tanker refills for each ship going to Mars. Its O/F ratio is about 4, which means 69% of all the mass SpaceX will send to orbit for their Mars missions is liquid oxygen. Lunar regolith is typically about 40% oxygen by mass. The habitat builders have always struggled to time a market to drive their projects - maybe selling vast quantities of lox to SpaceX cheaper than they can launch it themselves is the proverbial “selling blue jeans to prospectors” that can close the O’Neillian case?"
Happy to give you a Like on that comment. I wish they had never cancelled Asteroid Re-Direct. I would love to see resource utilization in LEO, leading to the eventual in-space construction of big sh*t, like self sufficient ship/stations that can traverse the entire solar system. Then we can just pop over to Mars whenever we want and laugh at Elon. 🤣
My only reservation, and maybe why Elon is Mars-centric, is that your mass driver idea is trivially reconfigured to lug mass at Earth, which would be impossible to interdict from high in the Earthen gravity well. The only path I see is for Moon industry to be nationality agnostic, pure corporations with flesh and blood skin in the game, in various countries, as hostages. Any potential military capability will need to be strongly monitored, and very difficult to deploy before terrestrial nations can react with terrestrial MAD. Mass leaving the moon would ideally be "caught" by an interdicting system, with very limited inbuilt propulsion. Trajectories should be publicly available in real time. Any potential militarisation should be very difficult to conceal, perhaps various nations should have independent monitoring satellites, but Lunar facilities are outlawed.
@TheGahta But would you trust the moon dwellers if there was a fraction of a percent chance they could cause more devastation than a hydrogen bomb if they felt like it? Just by pointing their mass driver in your direction? Maybe it's an absurd scenario, but so is pointing thousands of nukes at each other. Moon industrialization won't happen if it's an existential threat to terrestrial life, or God help us.
@@kirenscragg740 Isaac 'Chad' Arthur, Space elevators are too complicated ,an Orbital ring is a very sensible and not so complicated thing, let's make one!
Hey guys just wanted to say Elon's tweet was out of context. I’m not on twitter so I’m not certain what was said but I think someone asked if it would make sense to send a ship to the moon and then refuel to go to mars. In which case with starship wouldn’t really make a ton of sense. Just refuel in Leo and go to mars
@@AnthrofuturismNo it wasn’t this video is literally misinformation, this is the second video I watch from you guys and I won’t be bothering with another.
Actually there is an old science fiction short story about astronauts catching a moon man-shaped alien trying to raise it to become a traitor to the others living on the Moon. In this story they easily recognized the need for the Moon as a resource to colonize Mars and the rest of the solar system. Later on I can try to find it in one of my books of shorts and reference it if you’re interested. It referenced an old story about a psychologist, chimp, and a keyhole.
Yes, skipping the Moon would be a bad idea. At this point though I think there is already enough momentum that Moon induatrialization (aka ISRU) will happen naturally.
As for space colinization: I think weak gravity wells trump zero gravity. (Ceres, Callisto, Titan, Triton) - Instant direct acess to resources. - Better protection agains radiation and meteorites. Air and/or ice. - No lightspeed travel communication lags.
Nonjupiter gas/ice giants would be awesome for humans as they offer ~1g. But permanently flyng fusion powered selfrepairing planes and nonchemical rockests starting from them are still much farther off SciFi.
Back to more near term: Rotating habitats for ~1g of perceived gravity can be done on the (better radiation and meteorite shielding) Moon and eventually Ceres too. Just needs steep walled parabolas rather than cylinders. Switch from dirt to clean is needed in any case. It's just closer together when all ia on the Moon.
I thought this was kind of a no-brainer? It's a HUGE supply of material for building habitats, power satellites, massive fleets of ark-ships, or just cheap fuel and mass-produced fuel tanks and 'shipping container' cabins for more advanced craft from Earth to pick up in orbit instead of lifting them from Earth at enormous expense. There's a huge economic case (and by this, I mean making it practical to build more and larger space ships, as well as space-beamed solar power installations, sunshades, habitation cylinders, or whatever we decide we need in the future without lifting every gram of material from Earth, not just 'making a few rich folks even richer') for developing Lunar infrastructure, it can be a critical part of Earth's overall space launch ecosystem, the shipyard to end all shipyards, a valuable place to live and work for the advancement and expansion of humanity. Mars is mostly of scientific interest, and of MORE interest the longer not a single human actually goes there (because that gives us a longer window where we're SURE any life we find isn't mutant Earth life we brought over. If you actually want to make off-Earth colonies, you're going to be better off looking at artificial cylinder habitats than planetbound stuff, anyways, even if you have no interest in protecting the scientific value of Mars. Mars will remain for the foreseeable future a political goal at best, having no clear route to self-sufficiency or any worthwhile exports. Making a Mars colony self-sustaining (and thus with 'backup' value for humanity) seems actually more difficult than creating an entirely space-bound civilization living in rotating drums and harvesting asteroids and such, and until/unless self-sufficiency happens the colony would be a one-sided resource drain, as opposed to a space-borne or Lunar colony that could work together in a mutually-beneficial manner with Earth's industry on the road to self-sufficiency (as well as afterwards remaining a valuable trade partner).
They are different enough bodies that that argument really doesn't work well. The Earth is actually a much better testing ground for Mars equipment than the Moon. The hard part about landing on Mars is it's atmosphere, too thin to shed a lot of speed but still thick enough to need a heat shield. The airless Moon does not prepare you for that at all. Landing on Mars is closer to landing on Earth than it is to landing on the Moon, and it's not that close. The only way to get good at landing on Mars is by landing on Mars.
Agreed moon is too carbon poor for methalox based infrastructure, and hydrogen rockets have a ton of issues with storage etc. the moon CAN be useful but not for our current rockets
Musk: Forges companies that revolutionize two of the most bureaucratic laden industries in just 20 years. Anon on RUclips: haha he big dummy b/c I don't understand statements in a greater context
They're not even building on the asteroid approach-and-land tech the Japanese used. While the Belt isn't as dense as depicted in fiction, it's still a lot of raw material and maybe even rare stuff just sitting there. We're fighting for scarce resources on our home planet and wrecking it in the process when a lot of what we need is out there and we now have the technology and skills to bring them home.
Very well made video! I agree that the moon isn't a distraction, but i think gravity wells have one thing going for them that stations don't. A station cannot grow beyond its initial construction (not easily anyways). A gravity well colony only needs a seed to grow and eventually support a very large population.
I have a cool video idea for you Animals like rats, cockroaches, ants, etc have stowed away on ships and colonised almost every part of the world. (excluding poles) I’ve always thought about them stowing away on rocket ships and colonising space with humans. It’s a little unrelated to you’re usual content, but I thought it could be an interesting topic to explore. (:
I absolutely agree. I have a video idea: What kind of propellant could you make from moon dirt? The lower percentages of nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen means it’s hard to get a gas-producing chemical reaction from cheaply refined fuels, though I guess you could use aluminium and excess liquid oxygen, if you could make sufficiently resilient engine bells. Are ion engines powerful enough to land on the moon vertically? Are there other engine types that make more sense on the moon? Would it be possible to make fuel-cells that generate electricity from regolith-derived reductants and oxidants (oxygen and aluminium might be problematic since aluminium isn’t a fluid).
What will it take for humanity to consistently commute to the moon? All the resources on the moon are locked away until we can easily travel back and forth
Yeah, I don't get this fixation on Mars. Stepping stones are good. Mars has a two year wait between windows and takes months to get there, while the Moon is 3 days away and always available.
Something people arent seeing is that it would be more profitable to go straight to mars because they could force more infrastructure and people to be dependent on the company since space travel would be less developed by skipping the moon. Thus securing more profit guaranteed by the company sending them. Think of company towns IRL, but instead with space colonies
How beneficial would launching form the moon to mars be vs launching from earth to mars? In other words, is it worth the investment to produce fuel on the far side of the moon using local resources and have a Launch facility there? (as a refuel stop) I feel like it would be super useful but I'm stupid so can you figure it out please?🙏 I'm thinkin the benefices of doing this stop to be: 1. Escaping the lower gravity would be easier, saving a lot of fuel. 2. Similar to how launching from the equator towards the east is better launching with the mons orbit could help. 3. The fuel can be made on site. (power would need to be nuclear, solar will not cut it)
Can you explain what the "crystal palace" structure is, I've seen references to it in 70's literature but haven't found any good modern explanations? EDIT: Okay, this is also the first time I've heard of "light gas gun"
Just a quick question - now you’re focussing on the moon, are you going to include other celestial bodies in the future? - love the channel, it’s truly inspiring!
Not impossible. Ilmenite, the rock we mine Titanium from on earth, is about the same on the Moon: FeTiO3 and some impurities. We use Chloride to process it, Fluoride can also be used. Once we have gaseous TiCl4 we can purify it and reduce that with Magnesium to get the Chloride back for recycling.
@@Anthrofuturism Huh I wonder if there is a guy out there, who has proper training, acess to the machines/hardware needed to test this, close proximity to materials to simulate a Lunar refinery, who could upload and post his results on youtube... nah
@@LegoManthe3rdhe would need to be experienced in working with high temperatures and powerful acids, bases, and oxidizers. He’d also need ample open land to reduce risks. Now where would we find someone like that? 🤔
There's something I've been wondering about. On Earth we do not just scoop some random "dirt" and smelt it into metals - we use ores. Is there any information if there are ores on the Moon? Would they even form in Moons geology being so different than Earth's?
On earth, minerals are typically concentrated through hydrothermal processes, which there probably isn't any history of on the moon. I've looked myself to see if there is some evidence but besides hypothetical vapor geyser deposits and electrostatic placer deposits and maybe cold traps in polar craters, there doesn't look to be many mechanisms that concentrate minerals
It's only a distraction for SpaceX, not everyone. It's like the first step on a ladder. Some people skip it and some people want the safety of having it. It's not wrong but if your bold you can skip it and get to the top sooner.
getting to the moon is more like the first third of the ladder, you have to be very tall or expend a lot of energy to climb a ladder without the first third of the rungs
"Atmospheric scooping" about that...I'm broadly in agreement that most of what we need is on the moon but I see the lack of volatiles in general as being one of the most severe issues to resolve. Volatiles, particularly water and more specifically hydrogen being something so abundant on Earth that it's absence will reveal our extensive dependence on it for many critical technologies we would likely need for practical lunar development. I'm not suggesting that atmospheric scooping of water vapour or carbon dioxide from Earch is an economic solution to the lack of hydrogen, but it does enable a supply of nitrogen, which is lacking on the moon. Just nitrogen enables very useful materials like silicon nitride for high durability bearings (something described as an essential import in some other literature I've read) and propellent as nitrogen itself just as a reaction gas and explosives like sodium azide (I won't speculate as to what the maximum threshold of explosiveness constitutes a credible propellent). It's not that useful, but it's something.
I totally agree! The moon should be the first target! Mars is great, but the moon is so close and opens up everything else in the solar system and beyond.
In a recent interview, The COO of SpaceX said she planned to retire on the moon, rather than Mars, because she believed that by that time the moon will be far more developed. Perhaps SpaceX is not overlooking the moon after all.
I agree, but I know that's not Elon's MO. He always goes for the big fix, not the incremental steps. He went straight to electric cars and skipped hybrids. If he could I bet he'd be building an interstellar ship but figured Mars was the best he'd get in his lifetime. I do believe the moon will be industrialized though. If we can get to Mars, the moon is too tempting to keep passing by!
The moon should absolutely be industrialized but in context if starship gets as cheap as elon wants and the goal is to colonize mars than yes the moon Is a distraction.
There is no reason we can't do both. Blue Origin is more focused on near Earth prospects and honestly I think that is the way to go, Mars is going to take years if not decades to become a viable economy.
It's unfortunate that Zubrin's quote is related to Mars, and not the Moon, but it holds up just as well, if not better. Material supply from Earth to Mars is a ridiculous notion, except for the case of initial colonists (which I would hope Musk would know the difference between material and people...). Every kilogram you send up to a colony should be towards the goal of not just making that colony self sufficient, but productive. Even if industrialization takes the same time between the Moon and Mars, the Moon is much closer, and we would see a faster return on investment.
10,000's of orbital habitats, infrastructure ships and tools > then a million person colony on Mars --> dont want to put all our eggs in one basket. Zing
We don't actually know what gravity is needed to keep humans healthy. We know that complete weightlessness has problems, but Mars's gravity and even Moon's gravity may be sufficient. Also what proponents of space habitats seem to forget, is that large non-spinning space stations are easy to construct because there's only very small forces acting on the structure. As soon as you add spinning, you're no longer playing space legos, you need to build the thing like a reverse skyscraper always trying to come apart.
At least with starship, You need to build up launch infrastructure and sufficient tanker fleet to prepare a dozen(or more) starships that need all to depart during relatively narrow launch window. Once that is achieved then it's no longer a matter of choosing between Mars and everything else, you will be easily able to send plenty to the moon during the slower months following Mars departures, after all you can send stuff to the moon every few weeks rather than waiting 2 years in case of Mars. Attempting to build a refueling infrastructure on the moon before going to Mars at all could be considered a hindrance to any early Mars missions, delaying it for a decade or two due to investment required vs sending up more fuel runs early on.
@@TheEvilmooseofdoom Much lower launch cost to orbit, for one. If we were to industrialize the Moon like this entire channel advocates, Musk would have an incentive to develop his completely automated gigafactory concept in order to build Tesla-made mining equipment for the lunar economy, and later adapt that method to Starship production. Once he's got that established, the cost per Starship goes down. Additionally, the lunar surface would make for a good testbed for dedicated interplanetary Starships powered by nuclear thermal engines. This could be used to extend launch windows or increase the amount of cargo that the Starship system can deliver to Mars. There's no way the FAA would let a nuclear Starship be tested or flown in Earth's atmosphere, but the Moon is already an irradiated wasteland that has no governing body, so an accident there just means damaged or lost hardware instead of an ecological disaster.
I can think of a charitable interpretation of Elon's words. He's in his 50s, so he has about 30 years of active life in him in ideal conditions. He has every reason to believe that without him the space race will come to a halt, or at the very least that for a while there won't be another multi-billionaire willing to spend wealth on non-profitable space ventures. He pursues preservation of human race via colonization. Under these conditions the easily nukable Moon indeed seems like a place on which he can easily spend the rest of his life without getting to where he wants to go. So to him personally the Moon is a distraction. That does not invalidate any points made in this video. Still, people in different situations may see things differently.
Elon musk has built the most promising prospect to bring us the fastest advancement in inter-planetary colonization, however skipping the moon might leave him behind everyone else and unfortunately underdeveloped
He is going to have to anyways. I bet you his plans will change in the next few years once other companies start utilizing the moon. He'll see he is missing out and devote a portion of his starship fleet to lunar development.
Have you thought about maybe doing that on another planet...? That is bigger than the moon? But 100% understand your argument, and I agree. Also imagine the day we get to tour Olympus Mons
The one thing we will need to be careful with the moon is to not overmine it. It does affect a LOT of stuff on the Earth, specifically our weather and tides which are pretty important. While I am totally for spreading across the stars, but even if it became totally safe I have no desire personally to leave the earth. I am fine with habitat creation and such things, but I still think that terraforming other planets for us terrestrials is a noble goal, space is big & while planets are bigger targets they require much more to take them down than any habitat we can realistically build in our pre-dyson sphere era so I find them to be preferable personally.
The moon is huge and the amount of material we'd have to extract to even remotely start affecting Earth is terrifying to think about. Even mining the entire continent of North America off the moon would have negligible effects on Earth. Planets are huge
While I do agree with Elon on his goal of bring mankind into space, I disagree with him on this key point. Good video, shorter than usual, but still filled with analysis. However, can you make more videos on the potential of near-earth asteroids, building solar farms by disassembling mercury, or mining fuel from the gas giants?
"The way to industrialise space is to get a lot of mass into orbit!"
*looks at Moon*
"Hmmmm..."
Useful mass. Curiosity cost 2.1 billion, maybe 400 million of that could have been ULA's markup. The rest was the hardware. It costs money to launch the infrastructure to change rocks into oxygen, money that could be earning in the stock market and paying out for launch costs that way.
@@ingenparkslong term returns of starting a self sustaining industry on another planetary body.
Yes - in the beginning - but it appears the solar system has unlimited energy and a massive amount of metals and other materials that are not trapped in our gravity well. In the long run it will be cheaper to send resources down than to try to lift resources up.
Seeing the Moon as mass already in orbit is a fantastic perspective.
This channel has almost single-handedly reignited my passions for space and related future technology. So much of space news has become "Military does this", "Musk said that", "China launch but China bad", "ISS ending", and "Artemis might not happen" etc... It's refreshing to see a realistic, futuristic AND positive outlook on the subject.
I'll also recommend Isaac Arthur. I think one of Anthrofuturism's videos also mentioned him once too? But anyway they pair well together since here the emphasis is on current/NEAR future tech and lunar exploitation, whereas SFIA is a bit wider ranging, but focussing _mostly_ on far future.
Isaac Arthur does have somewhat Elmer Fudd-ian speech impediment that can take some getting used to, but that's more prevalent in his earlier videos.
@chrisc1140 I love your recommendations, I was going to mention Isaac originally too (but changed my comment before posting for brevity).
I love these kind of channels, and the fact they're willing to crunch numbers and think about the logistics of sci-fi.
Other than isaac arthur, also check out Anton Petrov for updated scientific discoveries.
Check out Isaac Arthur too. This guy is pretty dope too, just if you want practically infinite space content
the moon is only useful if we turn it into a giant concave and accurate mirror that reflects the sunlight like a laser at random nearby stars' suspected habitable planets to piss off aliens because its funny
I completely agree
I wonder if we could use our solar systems' relative movements to draw a 🍆 with it, from their perspective
Yeah that's pretty much what I was saying
First let's annoy elon musk with the mirror first
@@TSSmithhow we can easily do that with an actual mirror and a laser pointer
saying we should skip the moon and go to mars is like trying to cross the pacific ocean in a canoe
(Which, to be fair, the polynesians actually did!)
@@olawlor i think the error a lot of people make is assuming you can only do one or the other. there are enough other billionaires and countries to colonize all the things simultaneously. you can speed things up significantly with infrastructure though. if musk doesn't, one of his competitors will.
@@olawlorit’s like canoeing across the pacific when you have the perfect spot for a big drydock 10 miles away
@olawlor Well, not exactly, we have no evidence they ever made it to the Americas. And when we say canoes that includes large, multi hulled vessels with many rowers and/or sails - not just the sorts of canoes you take to the pond to fish. But you have a point. They did sail thousands of miles in one go. Don't forget that they brought crops and livestock with them though, as well as enough people to establish healthy genepools.
That doesn't even ruin the analogy though. They made shorter voyages of hundreds of miles much more often, settling thousands of tiny and large islands.
A better metaphor is that it's like trying to sail to the New World from Spain *without* stopping at the Canary Islands to stock up on fresh food and water, and fix the parts of your ship that you discovered were problematic on the voyage down.
The moon almost feels cheated in, as if a player didn't want to grind to send lots of mass and resources out of the gravity well. So just spawned a bunch in orbit for us.
Exactly lol
I mean… everything about the Earth seems cheated in.
wish the devs put a giant sentence on it that says 'INDUSTRALIZE ME"
@@spdracr There’s probably going to be a mid-campaign mission that guides us into doing that.
Wouldn't be surprised if it's the weak anthropic principle at play.
“Gravity wells are for suckers.”
Truth.
Using the moon as a stepping stone on the way to mars makes so much sense to me that I can only imagine that Elon wants to skip it for, like, ego reasons or something. I'm not very optimistic that his mind can be changed based on logical or economic arguments.
Me neither but I tried... (But really the video isn't actually for him).
@@Anthrofuturism is it for you? ❤
He doesn't really want to go to Mars. He will never go, that's a promise. He will use it to sell people ideas and promises. He will start with the rich and tourism in space. Elon is not your friend. He is a rat. An avaricious evil.
'Ti$m™️
Elon was responding to a specific idea someone had to use the moon as a LOX refueling depot for SpaceX, which he said is a "distraction" because the Delta V needed to get to the moon from LEO is a waste of time when you have enough Delta V in LEO already to get to Mars. Best case, LOX gets mined at the moon and sent to LEO in order to refuel the Starship, but the economics of whether that's cheaper to do than just sending the LOX up from Earth as is currently the plan depends entirely on how expensive the upfront costs for the needed infrastructure to mine, manufacture, and transport LOX on the moon is, and how long it will take for those costs to be paid back before you can say you're actually saving money by launching LOX from the moon.
So for SpaceX's plans with regard to Mars based on current technology and infrastructure, the moon is a distraction as it simply isn't necessary for getting from LEO to Mars. His comment was specifically a response to the idea of using the moon as a gas station for Starships going to Mars. It absolutely floors me how so many people seem to think he was talking about the moon in general, or Artemis, when he's clearly responding to a specific idea he disagreed with.
Step 1: Escape gravity well
Step 2: Insert self in inhospitable gravity well so far away it severs regular transit
Step 3: Wait I want to go back to step 2 for a second...
Step 4: PLEASE WE HAVE TO GO BACK TO STEP TWO!
Knowing Elon he won't admit he's 'in the wrong' by going to Mars first because he already spent too much attention/time on it, he made it his thing, a part of his personality, arguing against it will, to him, feel like an attack on himself. He made going to Mars part of his schtick, it will be hard to separate for a persona like him. Either way he is still contracted by NASA to fulfill some of their Moon goals so let's hope they won't kill Artemis this presidency.
In the wrong in what way? I like how you people like to be critical but are also deeply ignorant and generally clueless. Of course that's because your only motive is to vilify and when has a hater ever been intelligent or honest?
@TheEvilmooseofdoom whenever someone says "you people" in a critical argument, it immediately makes me see them as an ignorant person. You seem to me like the exact kind of person you're describing the original commenter as.
"Gravity wells are for suckers"
Excellent title for a Heinlein novel!
this is the one thing i think musk is wrong about. he wants the oregon trail, we want the transcontinental railroad. then again there is no reason we cant do both, musk to mars, bezos to moon. cant wait to see "mass driver" as a delivery option on amazon.
So you agree with his Nazism?
Musk's brain has been fried by ketamine and culture war bullshit. He literally owns twitter, and he spends most of his time on it either ranting about nonsense or admitting to using sockpuppets to call himself a good dad.
I think he used the money he got from his parents' emerald mine for good at first, but he's completely lost the plot now. Years ago, elon would have probably been staunchly in support of high speed rail, and now he's vocally opposing it in california to build..... a tunnel for a few cars? A really really really expensive underground road with bad capacity? He stopped being serious a while ago I think.
@@LordOfNihil that's a good way to put it
At least the Starship will be available to others, someone else can still industrialise the moon and Space X is going to make it much easier, methods for surviving mars will help on the moon like Boring company tunnelers.
We already see companies like Vast relying on starship to build their future space station.
The Starship (if it work as intended) is so good that it alone will propel a new era of space, just making it available to the public is enough of a contribution to our space future.
@@Perrirodan1 a lunar industrial outpost can also manufacture things that mars will need. fuel (for transfers), structural hardware, machinery and solar panels come to mind.
Industrialise the Moon! Churn out space ships, space stations and habitats!
I agree with every word of this. Moving from Earth to Mars is like moving from a really nice cave to a much crappier cave. But we don't all need to keep living in caves!
My like was number 42. Does that mean that the moon is the answer to life, the universe and everything?
Probably
Seems legit
I'd buy it
I like to split the various planetary systems as though they're their own solar systems outright. The defining feature isn't a star but rather the central gravity well. In this way you can think about going to Mars as like going all the way to alpha Centauri to avoid trouble instead of just going to the places already in the solar system (the Earth system in this analog). Even still, the Martian system is just a worse Earth system. The planet is uninhabitable and the mass already in orbit is tiny and concievably depletable given hundreds or thousands of years. The chad Earth system on the other hand has a habitable planet and the absolute motherlode of already orbiting materials
Doesn't mean we can't or wont go to Mars, but doing it for the sole purpose of building a doomsday bunker is a bit of a waste of time when we can build better ones right here in the Earth system and even fling them into the interplanetary void if need be
something to note is that musk was replying to a tweet talking about stopping by the moon to refuel liquid oxygen on the way to mars, which as far as I've heard (i'm not the best at delta-v calculations), doesn't make the most sense
musk was saying that it isn't worth it to refuel at the moon, and that it's best to go to mars directly
Full Tweet that Musk was replying to:
"There is a long running debate between the Mars people and the space Habitat people. Zubrin vs O’Neill, Musk vs Bezos. I have thought for some time now it’s essentially futile in the commercial age - because the two camps are no longer competing for a fixed pie of launch and hardware building resources. Supply can increase to meet demand, and all the competing approaches will do to each other is help by accelerating development of the markets both need.
And consider this - Starship needs about 6 tanker refills for each ship going to Mars. Its O/F ratio is about 4, which means 69% of all the mass SpaceX will send to orbit for their Mars missions is liquid oxygen. Lunar regolith is typically about 40% oxygen by mass.
The habitat builders have always struggled to time a market to drive their projects - maybe selling vast quantities of lox to SpaceX cheaper than they can launch it themselves is the proverbial “selling blue jeans to prospectors” that can close the O’Neillian case?"
Get home
turn on computer
Anthrofuturism posted 3 minutes ago
Today's a good day
:)
wow you should do a whole series on how we could easily do all this moon stuff.
I would give this 100 likes if I could. The O'Neil vision is our future in space, not inhabiting planets.
Happy to give you a Like on that comment. I wish they had never cancelled Asteroid Re-Direct. I would love to see resource utilization in LEO, leading to the eventual in-space construction of big sh*t, like self sufficient ship/stations that can traverse the entire solar system. Then we can just pop over to Mars whenever we want and laugh at Elon. 🤣
I mean if humans become feelingless creatures in the Future then maybe most people will be living in oneill cylinders
I love ur videos, u realy changed my point of view for mars and the moon in general, ur reason are valid🗣
My only reservation, and maybe why Elon is Mars-centric, is that your mass driver idea is trivially reconfigured to lug mass at Earth, which would be impossible to interdict from high in the Earthen gravity well. The only path I see is for Moon industry to be nationality agnostic, pure corporations with flesh and blood skin in the game, in various countries, as hostages. Any potential military capability will need to be strongly monitored, and very difficult to deploy before terrestrial nations can react with terrestrial MAD. Mass leaving the moon would ideally be "caught" by an interdicting system, with very limited inbuilt propulsion. Trajectories should be publicly available in real time. Any potential militarisation should be very difficult to conceal, perhaps various nations should have independent monitoring satellites, but Lunar facilities are outlawed.
Why does it need to lug stuff at earth? It can lug it just as well away from it or anywhere in-between
@TheGahta But would you trust the moon dwellers if there was a fraction of a percent chance they could cause more devastation than a hydrogen bomb if they felt like it? Just by pointing their mass driver in your direction? Maybe it's an absurd scenario, but so is pointing thousands of nukes at each other. Moon industrialization won't happen if it's an existential threat to terrestrial life, or God help us.
I'm detecting a lot of influence from Isaac Arthur
The GOAT
That would be based.
The man, the myth, the legend himself
Praying for a crossover episode
@@kirenscragg740 Isaac 'Chad' Arthur, Space elevators are too complicated ,an Orbital ring is a very sensible and not so complicated thing, let's make one!
4:30 he just suddenly started talking Zeon Deikun ideology
Hey guys just wanted to say Elon's tweet was out of context. I’m not on twitter so I’m not certain what was said but I think someone asked if it would make sense to send a ship to the moon and then refuel to go to mars.
In which case with starship wouldn’t really make a ton of sense. Just refuel in Leo and go to mars
That is exactly what the tweet was about, literally everyone, including this video, is taking his tweet totally out of context.
@@roberthesser6402EDS is real
@@norrisbonson3795 it was about funding habitats by selling fuel. Synergy.
@@AnthrofuturismNo it wasn’t this video is literally misinformation, this is the second video I watch from you guys and I won’t be bothering with another.
Thanks!
thank you!!
Actually there is an old science fiction short story about astronauts catching a moon man-shaped alien trying to raise it to become a traitor to the others living on the Moon. In this story they easily recognized the need for the Moon as a resource to colonize Mars and the rest of the solar system. Later on I can try to find it in one of my books of shorts and reference it if you’re interested. It referenced an old story about a psychologist, chimp, and a keyhole.
Yes, skipping the Moon would be a bad idea. At this point though I think there is already enough momentum that Moon induatrialization (aka ISRU) will happen naturally.
As for space colinization: I think weak gravity wells trump zero gravity.
(Ceres, Callisto, Titan, Triton)
- Instant direct acess to resources.
- Better protection agains radiation and meteorites. Air and/or ice.
- No lightspeed travel communication lags.
Nonjupiter gas/ice giants would be awesome for humans as they offer ~1g. But permanently flyng fusion powered selfrepairing planes and nonchemical rockests starting from them are still much farther off SciFi.
Back to more near term: Rotating habitats for ~1g of perceived gravity can be done on the (better radiation and meteorite shielding) Moon and eventually Ceres too. Just needs steep walled parabolas rather than cylinders.
Switch from dirt to clean is needed in any case. It's just closer together when all ia on the Moon.
🫵👍
@@friskydingo5370 thank you!!!
Danke!
I thought this was kind of a no-brainer? It's a HUGE supply of material for building habitats, power satellites, massive fleets of ark-ships, or just cheap fuel and mass-produced fuel tanks and 'shipping container' cabins for more advanced craft from Earth to pick up in orbit instead of lifting them from Earth at enormous expense.
There's a huge economic case (and by this, I mean making it practical to build more and larger space ships, as well as space-beamed solar power installations, sunshades, habitation cylinders, or whatever we decide we need in the future without lifting every gram of material from Earth, not just 'making a few rich folks even richer') for developing Lunar infrastructure, it can be a critical part of Earth's overall space launch ecosystem, the shipyard to end all shipyards, a valuable place to live and work for the advancement and expansion of humanity.
Mars is mostly of scientific interest, and of MORE interest the longer not a single human actually goes there (because that gives us a longer window where we're SURE any life we find isn't mutant Earth life we brought over.
If you actually want to make off-Earth colonies, you're going to be better off looking at artificial cylinder habitats than planetbound stuff, anyways, even if you have no interest in protecting the scientific value of Mars. Mars will remain for the foreseeable future a political goal at best, having no clear route to self-sufficiency or any worthwhile exports. Making a Mars colony self-sustaining (and thus with 'backup' value for humanity) seems actually more difficult than creating an entirely space-bound civilization living in rotating drums and harvesting asteroids and such, and until/unless self-sufficiency happens the colony would be a one-sided resource drain, as opposed to a space-borne or Lunar colony that could work together in a mutually-beneficial manner with Earth's industry on the road to self-sufficiency (as well as afterwards remaining a valuable trade partner).
Of course *Mr. 6 Starships to Lunar Surface* is going to keep forcing his Von-Braunian superlaunchers in every crevice he can find.
You and Issac Arthur have given me enough ideas on colonizing the solar system to last a lifetime
"ugh I don't need this distracting tutorial."
3 failed mars landings later "if only I there was a easier, closer way to practice ...
They are different enough bodies that that argument really doesn't work well. The Earth is actually a much better testing ground for Mars equipment than the Moon. The hard part about landing on Mars is it's atmosphere, too thin to shed a lot of speed but still thick enough to need a heat shield. The airless Moon does not prepare you for that at all. Landing on Mars is closer to landing on Earth than it is to landing on the Moon, and it's not that close. The only way to get good at landing on Mars is by landing on Mars.
"moon is a distraction" **looks inside** *the guy is distracted by buying Twitter for no reason*
Elon is doing to much dmt to understand any of this.
If the moon has readily accessible water then fuel can be made for a hydro lox engine. Methane burning engine, not useful in a reusable lunar economy.
Agreed moon is too carbon poor for methalox based infrastructure, and hydrogen rockets have a ton of issues with storage etc. the moon CAN be useful but not for our current rockets
Elon musk is the definition of money doesn't mean you're smart.
Money follows value
@@richardgilpin5553 the value is people he pays for
Not always true
Musk: Forges companies that revolutionize two of the most bureaucratic laden industries in just 20 years.
Anon on RUclips: haha he big dummy b/c I don't understand statements in a greater context
Sorry, can't understand you with your lips still stuck there.
They're not even building on the asteroid approach-and-land tech the Japanese used. While the Belt isn't as dense as depicted in fiction, it's still a lot of raw material and maybe even rare stuff just sitting there.
We're fighting for scarce resources on our home planet and wrecking it in the process when a lot of what we need is out there and we now have the technology and skills to bring them home.
Beautiful video. Thanks for your effort Anthro Futurism.
god you just have to love it when Elon goes full on goofy goober mode with his tweets
Elon is an absolute gift for content creators.
Elon will happily accept money from others to fly stuff to the moon and he will keep trying to make it cheaper to do so
The Moon Is The Future!
Elon is the distraction.
He lives in your head rent free.
Very well made video! I agree that the moon isn't a distraction, but i think gravity wells have one thing going for them that stations don't.
A station cannot grow beyond its initial construction (not easily anyways).
A gravity well colony only needs a seed to grow and eventually support a very large population.
After vacuuming the Earth's deserts, I set my sights on the moon as a new destination.
Less than a minute after upload
my GLORIOUS king has another upload. Praise be above, another blessing of a video has arrived
I have a cool video idea for you
Animals like rats, cockroaches, ants, etc have stowed away on ships and colonised almost every part of the world. (excluding poles) I’ve always thought about them stowing away on rocket ships and colonising space with humans. It’s a little unrelated to you’re usual content, but I thought it could be an interesting topic to explore. (:
SEM LUA NÃO HAVERIA VIDA NA TERRA.
I absolutely agree. I have a video idea:
What kind of propellant could you make from moon dirt? The lower percentages of nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen means it’s hard to get a gas-producing chemical reaction from cheaply refined fuels, though I guess you could use aluminium and excess liquid oxygen, if you could make sufficiently resilient engine bells. Are ion engines powerful enough to land on the moon vertically? Are there other engine types that make more sense on the moon? Would it be possible to make fuel-cells that generate electricity from regolith-derived reductants and oxidants (oxygen and aluminium might be problematic since aluminium isn’t a fluid).
What will it take for humanity to consistently commute to the moon? All the resources on the moon are locked away until we can easily travel back and forth
Yeah, I don't get this fixation on Mars. Stepping stones are good. Mars has a two year wait between windows and takes months to get there, while the Moon is 3 days away and always available.
Something people arent seeing is that it would be more profitable to go straight to mars because they could force more infrastructure and people to be dependent on the company since space travel would be less developed by skipping the moon. Thus securing more profit guaranteed by the company sending them. Think of company towns IRL, but instead with space colonies
Great post! Unpopular take: Elon isn’t serious about space colonization
I'm shocked to see someone with exactly the same vision for space as my own.
How beneficial would launching form the moon to mars be vs launching from earth to mars?
In other words, is it worth the investment to produce fuel on the far side of the moon using
local resources and have a Launch facility there? (as a refuel stop)
I feel like it would be super useful but I'm stupid so can you figure it out please?🙏
I'm thinkin the benefices of doing this stop to be:
1. Escaping the lower gravity would be easier, saving a lot of fuel.
2. Similar to how launching from the equator towards the east is better
launching with the mons orbit could help.
3. The fuel can be made on site. (power would need to be nuclear, solar will not cut it)
I wish I had this much ungrounded optimism
Can you explain what the "crystal palace" structure is, I've seen references to it in 70's literature but haven't found any good modern explanations?
EDIT: Okay, this is also the first time I've heard of "light gas gun"
wasn't the elon tweet in response to question just about refueling? earth → moon→ mars vs earth → mars?
Yes and every half wit has taken it out of context since.
This is good. One thought I had though, if we carve the Moon up too much it will affect tides on Earth right. That sounds like a bad thing?
Sure, after a million years or so of carving it up.
Just a quick question - now you’re focussing on the moon, are you going to include other celestial bodies in the future? - love the channel, it’s truly inspiring!
exploitation of things like ceres (20% carbon) and station/orbital architecture is on the horizon
moonwalking isn't going backwards, it's going forwards and looking cool while you do it
Seriously though, how hard is it to refine titanium on the moon?
@@rapidthrash1964 we don't know energy cost yet, need to do more experiments.
As hard as the rest of the stuff, double that for sure.
Not impossible. Ilmenite, the rock we mine Titanium from on earth, is about the same on the Moon: FeTiO3 and some impurities.
We use Chloride to process it, Fluoride can also be used. Once we have gaseous TiCl4 we can purify it and reduce that with Magnesium to get the Chloride back for recycling.
@@Anthrofuturism Huh
I wonder if there is a guy out there, who has proper training, acess to the machines/hardware needed to test this, close proximity to materials to simulate a Lunar refinery, who could upload and post his results on youtube... nah
@@LegoManthe3rdhe would need to be experienced in working with high temperatures and powerful acids, bases, and oxidizers. He’d also need ample open land to reduce risks. Now where would we find someone like that? 🤔
There's something I've been wondering about. On Earth we do not just scoop some random "dirt" and smelt it into metals - we use ores. Is there any information if there are ores on the Moon? Would they even form in Moons geology being so different than Earth's?
On earth, minerals are typically concentrated through hydrothermal processes, which there probably isn't any history of on the moon. I've looked myself to see if there is some evidence but besides hypothetical vapor geyser deposits and electrostatic placer deposits and maybe cold traps in polar craters, there doesn't look to be many mechanisms that concentrate minerals
I already knew the moon was earth's shining gem, but now? I'll build a ladder there if I must
I agree with this entirely! Well said and well done
It's only a distraction for SpaceX, not everyone. It's like the first step on a ladder. Some people skip it and some people want the safety of having it. It's not wrong but if your bold you can skip it and get to the top sooner.
getting to the moon is more like the first third of the ladder, you have to be very tall or expend a lot of energy to climb a ladder without the first third of the rungs
@@Dman6779 And yet a lot of people skip it and go directly to the second.
I always think the moon would be the best staging ground for humanity to get into the solar system.
"Atmospheric scooping" about that...I'm broadly in agreement that most of what we need is on the moon but I see the lack of volatiles in general as being one of the most severe issues to resolve. Volatiles, particularly water and more specifically hydrogen being something so abundant on Earth that it's absence will reveal our extensive dependence on it for many critical technologies we would likely need for practical lunar development.
I'm not suggesting that atmospheric scooping of water vapour or carbon dioxide from Earch is an economic solution to the lack of hydrogen, but it does enable a supply of nitrogen, which is lacking on the moon.
Just nitrogen enables very useful materials like silicon nitride for high durability bearings (something described as an essential import in some other literature I've read) and propellent as nitrogen itself just as a reaction gas and explosives like sodium azide (I won't speculate as to what the maximum threshold of explosiveness constitutes a credible propellent).
It's not that useful, but it's something.
I totally agree! The moon should be the first target! Mars is great, but the moon is so close and opens up everything else in the solar system and beyond.
without the moon how could we imagine to step away from the earth?
I'll be a moon miner. Sign me up. Get me some cheese lung.
It's just like Exurb1a said.
The Moon is a gateway to forever.
In a recent interview, The COO of SpaceX said she planned to retire on the moon, rather than Mars, because she believed that by that time the moon will be far more developed. Perhaps SpaceX is not overlooking the moon after all.
I agree, but I know that's not Elon's MO.
He always goes for the big fix, not the incremental steps. He went straight to electric cars and skipped hybrids.
If he could I bet he'd be building an interstellar ship but figured Mars was the best he'd get in his lifetime.
I do believe the moon will be industrialized though. If we can get to Mars, the moon is too tempting to keep passing by!
I haven't watched the video but when I saw the post you made of the tweet I felt the pain and anger and dissapointment. I'm sorry brother.
The moon should absolutely be industrialized but in context if starship gets as cheap as elon wants and the goal is to colonize mars than yes the moon Is a distraction.
There is no reason we can't do both. Blue Origin is more focused on near Earth prospects and honestly I think that is the way to go, Mars is going to take years if not decades to become a viable economy.
What is the point of colonizing mars? Gravity wells are for losers
Mining, we should take everything. Centuries worth there. Millennia even.
O'Neil cylinders are the future.
It's unfortunate that Zubrin's quote is related to Mars, and not the Moon, but it holds up just as well, if not better. Material supply from Earth to Mars is a ridiculous notion, except for the case of initial colonists (which I would hope Musk would know the difference between material and people...). Every kilogram you send up to a colony should be towards the goal of not just making that colony self sufficient, but productive. Even if industrialization takes the same time between the Moon and Mars, the Moon is much closer, and we would see a faster return on investment.
The most cost effective launch is the one you don't have to make.
10,000's of orbital habitats, infrastructure ships and tools > then a million person colony on Mars --> dont want to put all our eggs in one basket. Zing
I want to see the lunar shipyard in this lifetime.
We don't actually know what gravity is needed to keep humans healthy. We know that complete weightlessness has problems, but Mars's gravity and even Moon's gravity may be sufficient. Also what proponents of space habitats seem to forget, is that large non-spinning space stations are easy to construct because there's only very small forces acting on the structure. As soon as you add spinning, you're no longer playing space legos, you need to build the thing like a reverse skyscraper always trying to come apart.
So far all spacestation parts got launched via rocket, they had to withstand much more forces than mere gravity Einstein 😂
It’s like the beginning chest option in Minecraft😭
I wonder if we can reach the core of the moon and reach all the heavy elements in it.
I think he's saying that once getting to Mars is "solved", the Moon is easy mode. Not useless, but easier than Mars and thus a distraction.
Naw, he is saying mars because that's what his grift is and musk isn't going to stop a grift that is still giving him leverage 😂
At least with starship, You need to build up launch infrastructure and sufficient tanker fleet to prepare a dozen(or more) starships that need all to depart during relatively narrow launch window.
Once that is achieved then it's no longer a matter of choosing between Mars and everything else, you will be easily able to send plenty to the moon during the slower months following Mars departures, after all you can send stuff to the moon every few weeks rather than waiting 2 years in case of Mars.
Attempting to build a refueling infrastructure on the moon before going to Mars at all could be considered a hindrance to any early Mars missions, delaying it for a decade or two due to investment required vs sending up more fuel runs early on.
The Moon should have cities by now! Shining brightly in New Moon… beautiful and scary
It's funny that he didn't consider the Moon as a great place to put a Starship factory or two.
To what end? It would take a generation to build if not two.
@@TheEvilmooseofdoom Much lower launch cost to orbit, for one. If we were to industrialize the Moon like this entire channel advocates, Musk would have an incentive to develop his completely automated gigafactory concept in order to build Tesla-made mining equipment for the lunar economy, and later adapt that method to Starship production. Once he's got that established, the cost per Starship goes down.
Additionally, the lunar surface would make for a good testbed for dedicated interplanetary Starships powered by nuclear thermal engines. This could be used to extend launch windows or increase the amount of cargo that the Starship system can deliver to Mars. There's no way the FAA would let a nuclear Starship be tested or flown in Earth's atmosphere, but the Moon is already an irradiated wasteland that has no governing body, so an accident there just means damaged or lost hardware instead of an ecological disaster.
@@peterallen5575 Sure, again, in a generation or two. I think he's thinking more immediate needs.
Friendship with SpaceX ended, Blue Origin is my best friend now.
You’re that easy to manipulate, huh?
I can think of a charitable interpretation of Elon's words. He's in his 50s, so he has about 30 years of active life in him in ideal conditions. He has every reason to believe that without him the space race will come to a halt, or at the very least that for a while there won't be another multi-billionaire willing to spend wealth on non-profitable space ventures. He pursues preservation of human race via colonization.
Under these conditions the easily nukable Moon indeed seems like a place on which he can easily spend the rest of his life without getting to where he wants to go. So to him personally the Moon is a distraction.
That does not invalidate any points made in this video. Still, people in different situations may see things differently.
All he was saying is that on a trip to Mars there is no point in stopping at the moon first.
Unless Elon is dumping his NASA contract for a lunar starship, he is a hypocrite. 😅
Elon musk has built the most promising prospect to bring us the fastest advancement in inter-planetary colonization, however skipping the moon might leave him behind everyone else and unfortunately underdeveloped
He is going to have to anyways. I bet you his plans will change in the next few years once other companies start utilizing the moon. He'll see he is missing out and devote a portion of his starship fleet to lunar development.
This is why we need Bezos. His strategic vision is actually more sane and feasible. No one wants to live on effing Mars.
Awesome! Well said.
Have you thought about maybe doing that on another planet...? That is bigger than the moon? But 100% understand your argument, and I agree.
Also imagine the day we get to tour Olympus Mons
Using the moon as a hub for space industry would be great because we wouldn't have to ruin our environment building all that stuff on earth.
The one thing we will need to be careful with the moon is to not overmine it. It does affect a LOT of stuff on the Earth, specifically our weather and tides which are pretty important. While I am totally for spreading across the stars, but even if it became totally safe I have no desire personally to leave the earth. I am fine with habitat creation and such things, but I still think that terraforming other planets for us terrestrials is a noble goal, space is big & while planets are bigger targets they require much more to take them down than any habitat we can realistically build in our pre-dyson sphere era so I find them to be preferable personally.
The moon is huge and the amount of material we'd have to extract to even remotely start affecting Earth is terrifying to think about. Even mining the entire continent of North America off the moon would have negligible effects on Earth. Planets are huge
If we leave 80% will that be enough?😄
@@mennol3885 that's 147,000,000,000,000,000 tons of material for us to use :D (147 quadrillion)
While I do agree with Elon on his goal of bring mankind into space, I disagree with him on this key point. Good video, shorter than usual, but still filled with analysis. However, can you make more videos on the potential of near-earth asteroids, building solar farms by disassembling mercury, or mining fuel from the gas giants?