Mass Effect iRL

[Master_Craig]

I found this really interesting. Entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk gave a presentation just recently about the SpaceX plan to get people to colonize Mars. The full article is here - http://www.news.com.au/technology/scien ... 2882b0350b

And there's a very Mass Effecty kinda video here - https://youtu.be/0qo78R_yYFA - which demonstrates the planned transportation to actually get there.

It sounds expensive as hell, it's a bit too optimistic for some people's liking and apparently it's going to be a very dangerous mission, where candidates are chosen if they are willing to put their life at risk. Makes sense.

I love space stuff... I'm interested to hear and learn more about this. What do you all think?

 

[madster111]

I think we now have a viable plan to leave this shit planet and we need to invest in it heavily.

In all seriousness though, there's not a single piece of technology in that video we don't currently posses. All it takes is getting it built.
Well, except the whole terraforming mars thing, but that's long game.

SpaceX already have the best rocket engines ever produced, they're planning next generation ones for the ITS, they've shown that they can land and (november) re-use a 1st stage from a rocket launch, despite the falcon 9 not having been designed for landing (it can't hover like the ITS will), and they've shown that they can do all this for a very reasonable price with fairly good reliability.
I'm hype, now the only thing we need is for both the US presidential candidates to fall off a cliff and for somebody who's not shit to get into power so we don't blow ourselves up before we're interplanetary.

As for expensiveness, how about the F-35. The useless heap of shit that's going to have a total cost, once everything's said and done, of 1.5 TRILLION dollars. For a fucking single engine jet aircraft that's still not allowed to fire it's gun in combat.
I think we can afford to spend a couple hundred billion for the sake of our entire goddamn species future.

I do feel the need to point out the scale of the rocket for those who can't really understand from the video, though. This crazy motherfucker wants to give it only 3.5x the thrust of the Saturn V at liftoff. The Saturn V was 363 feet or 110 meters tall (36 storeys) and weighed 2,970,000kg.
Now imagine how big and heavy your shit is when you need 3.5x as much power.
This absolute monster could drop a bloody lunar lander off on it's way past the moon like it's nothing.

Some slides from his presentation:
http://imgur.com/a/20nku


Also i wish they'd kept the working name for the rocket. Used to be known as the BFR. Big "Falcon" Rocket.

 

[WickedLiquid]

The big question on my mind is do I sleep with my fellow human lady or the blue avatar alien?

Seriously it's a cool idea and I'd love to see us visit another planet in my lifetime. Besides the fact that it would be really friggin cool, there isn't a big enough reason to colonize Mars. Hence why we wouldn't spend trillions on setting up a home there when we have more dire needs on Earth.

We also need to remember planets are really really really far away. Jupiter is (I believe) 1 light hour away. That's really friggin far. In order for space travel to become a reality we need to be able to develop ways to travel that are faster than light speed.

Like a Mass Effect.

 

[madster111]

there isn't a big enough reason to colonize Mars.

One little undetectable gamma ray burst from the other side of the galaxy, an asteroid too small to track (one hit queensland here in aus yesterday) hitting a supervolcano, the russian automated dead-hand system going off accidentally or as the result of a terrorist attack.
All things that could happen as you're reading this sentence and humans no longer exist.

Right now we have the technology to not have all our eggs in one basket, and yet this is what we're doing.
All for the sake of little pieces of paper or fake numbers in a computer.


I'd also like to quickly point out how fucking scary that last scenario is - dead-hand is designed to activate and launch ALL russian nukes with no real oversight in the event that it detects a nuclear detonation near the kremlin. With tensions re-heating up between the US and Russia, it's a good thing we have no rogue military states on this planet with nukes it might sell to terrorists, right guys
Oh, wait

 

[WickedLiquid]

And Madster just volunteered to drive the stupid-ass Mako around Mars and do all the boring shit.

 

[Master_Craig]

Hahaha, the Mako, nice.

Speaking of nukes... I read an interesting piece a while ago, in response to Donald Trump's apparent question of "Why can't we use nukes?" (I don't wanna turn this into a politics topic, mind you). The fella in writing claimed he was one of the staff members who was tasked with turning one of the keys for the American nuclear launches. He explained that the reason America has their nukes is so that they don't have to use them.

He further explained that if the decision to fire a nuke is ever made, the person making the decision would have to understand that millions of people would die, the geographic landscape of the planet would permanently change and whoever fires a nuke first would essentially be pulling the trigger to World War III and most likely the end of the modern world as we know it.

Pretty scary when you think about it like that.

Anyway... back to Mass Effect iRL.

I think it's incredible that the technology is being funded and made for space travel. I think the idea is absolutely terrifying though, especially for the people who are making the journey. Elon Musk claims that by the time this technology is ready, the trip to Mars would take eighty days... Goddamn, that's still a long time to be stuck on board a ship.

I'm really interested in the idea of humanity reaching out to the stars. Maybe I've just watched too much Star Wars and played too much Mass Effect, but I guess I really want to know what could be out there. It's a shame, because I probably won't be alive by the time said technology gets seriously rolling.

 

[madster111]

And Madster just volunteered to drive the stupid-ass Mako around Mars and do all the boring shit.

Bro the mako was sweet, don't know why people had so many problems with it. There was like 3 sections in the whole game that was annoying (including side planets), the rest of time you were a goddamn tank that can jump. My favorite way to deal with armatures was to run those little bitches over.

Pretty scary when you think about it like that.

Even scarier when you realize that the russians version doesn't have people turning keys and entering codes, it has a computer waiting to detect radiation and a shockwave.

I'd also like to point out the 80 days figure is pretty much bullshit. That's minimum people under the absolute best conditions, in reality you're going to be on the ship for a total of about 7-8 months.
Not really that bad when you think of it, just take a couple 2tb drives filled with some shows. Hell, DBZ alone if you watched 2 episodes a day would last until you're on the way back.

It's a shame, because I probably won't be alive by the time said technology gets seriously rolling.

With the way medicine is advancing, there's a very good chance your fit ass will live out to 2100, which if musk has his way and our species as a whole isn't fucking stupid will see us looking at both moon and mars bases and at least suborbital trips to space for cheap, while also possibly getting pictures back from a probe sent to alpha centauri (starshot)

If the cannae drive actually ends up working in space, the entire inner solar system will be open for humans in our lifetime and potentially even landing a rover on a plant/moon in alpha centauri.



Or we all die due from nuclear resource wars in 2040-2060.

 

[Master_Craig]

The Mako was alright. I hated driving it on most of the side planets. The side planets were so plain, essentially just a random shape of an environment with random textures applied to it. The only planets that made sense were the ones you visit for the story, as they were designed with thought and purpose.

Being on a ship for seven to eight months, Goddamn that still feels like a long time. Better bring ALL the TV shows and games, then.

I'd like to live to be over a hundred, that'd be pretty sweet.

 

[WickedLiquid]

I just realized if you played Mass Effect and only went planet to planet doing the boring Mako fetch quests, and nothing else, you'd pretty much be playing No Man's Sky.

ZING!

 

[Master_Craig]

I just realized if you played Mass Effect and only went planet to planet doing the boring Mako fetch quests, and nothing else, you'd pretty much be playing No Man's Sky.

ZING!

Somebody call a doctor. We got a BURN victim here.

 

[madster111]

Linking straight to reddit, fight me:
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comment ... and_costs/

This is extremely encouraging. Round trip to the moon for a 2 day stay for <$100,000us.

Mark Zuckerberg alone could fund 20,000 tons worth of moon colony without even dropping below being a multi-billionaire.
2 resupplies per year ($120mil ish, ie the cost of a single F-35) using the existing lander and we get 12 people living on the moon year round.