Boeing manages to launch starliner

[Suff]

With crew even.

After a very long journey they have two crew in progress of heading to the ISS.

After years of watching Dragon capsules go to the ISS ahead of Starliner, it is not quite a page turner to watch this. However it is of interest and shows that NASA now has even more options for getting to the ISS.

[Workingman]

Hmm, a decade in the making by Boeing and still on crew tests. Meanwhile SpaceX has done the six crewed missions it was contracted for in just four years since 2020.

However, just think of the time and cost if NASA had gone it alone.

I have a hunch that I know who NASA will be looking at next...

[Suff]

Well SpaceX just launched their 4th test flight of Starship. Booster did the job, came back down and soft landed on the Ocean. The ship made it to Orbit, made it through re-entry with one of the flaps overheating and losing parts of the flap followed by a landing burn which brought it upright and landed it softly on the ocean.

Totally wild.

Meanwhile the Starliner how has 3 Helium leaks on two different parts of the service module thruster plumbing.

Not Boeing's decade.

[Workingman]

OK, we got it, SpaceX is supreme and St Elon is God - as if he runs it. All the other space agencies...NASA, ESA, JAXA, ISRO and the CNSA are amateurs - not worth bothering about. Then there are the Russians.

Go do some reading...

[Suff]

Go and watch the video.

It is truly worth it as you see world firsts for two specific events.

Nobody else is close and I truly mean they are not even on the same planet close.

[Workingman]

Which video? Links.

It matters not what St Elon does we humans are stuck here on earth forever, till we do ourselves in.

There is nowhere in the Solar System to save us, not even a terraformed Mars. We have not yet found a habitable exoplanet, and we are looking some 2,000 light years out.

And how big and how many of St Elon's spaceships would there need to be to save 7.5 billion of us?

Wake up!

We need to sort out planet Earth.

[Suff]

Amazingly enough SpaceX actually have the video on their website.

They also posted Buoy/Starlink video of the booster coming in to do a soft landing on the sea. But that was on X only I think.

That booster you see landing is the height of a 23 story building and weighs around 400 tonnes.

But this is not about saving the planet or even most of us on the planet. It is about producing self sustaining outposts off earth. If you think about self sustaining, that's a pretty daunting task with our current technology.

To answer you question, the goal is 1,000 ships which can carry 100 people to Mars, plus also equipment drops. That's ten journeys to Mars for those 100,000 people to get to the 1m people suggested as required to maintain a self sustaining outpost. The rest of the 7bn, 999m? Take your chances on Earth, they may be better than Mars.

What is happening right now is a level of change in our ability to reach and utilise space which we have not seen since the Apollo program. I don't count the Shuttle, essentially it changed nothing.

Before you also rubbish this advancement, this also drives the ability to reach the Asteroid belt and that area has resources such as Platinum in accessible quantity which can change things dramatically on earth. Such as use in catalysts which drive many of the advanced materials which are being trialled for reducing CO2 emissions.

It also has a very dramatic change in the terms of space based power harvesting and the possibility of bringing it back to earth. If you took Elon out of this you would be lauding the progress. You are falling into the same trap that so many others have. If not for Elon nobody would even be trying this. Blue Origin (Orifice comes to mind)? Don't make me laugh, the also ran who wants to take the "not Elon" limelight with second rate products claiming progress and invention.

Time to get with the program. You are a very clever and very capable person WM. Go and look up the full flow staged combustion rocket. Look up why both the USSR and the US failed to create a working one. Go and look up the N1 and understand how fiendishly difficult it is to control a rocket with over 30 rocket motors on the bottom of it. Then go back and watch that video. Flight 4 of the most advanced and incredible piece of technology that ever launched into space. This rocket has fully more than twice the liftoff power than the SLS without a single SRB.

This is the most ground breaking change in our world since Apollo 11. People are missing it through nothing more than Elon Hate.

[Workingman]

Err, we have to terraform Mars before we send 1,000 ships with 100 people to inhabit it. Terraforming is not going to happen for hundreds of years, or maybe thousands, we do not have the means. Mars also does not have the resources - water, air, plant life, insects, animals, a magnetic metal core to deflect cosmic rays. It's a dream

I am with the programme; we are stuck on Earth. If we can continue with our technical progression we might be able to go beyond. But if we continue to procreate at our present levels, forget it. We will run out of our own resources.

Mining the asteroids and comets wont help.

[Suff]

With you on procreation.

But terraforming? For 1m people? I don't think so. The Dutch have already shown that we can live on greenhouse produce and space based research shows you can even grow food on space stations if they are big enough.

My point is we have to keep reaching for the stars because if you don't some religious nutjob is going to turn up and burn our whole civilisation down in the name of "faith".

[Workingman]

Building a gigantic greenhouse on a planet conductive to life where the air and water can flow in and out of the greenhouse is a bit different from building one on an inhospitable one millions of miles away. It's a pipe dream.

There is a reason Mars does not have an atmosphere to speak of and is a barren desert - it has no magnetosphere. We cannot produce that. Mercury has a weak one and the gas giants have tremendous ones, but we could never live there.

We might be able to make a few pods for tens of people on Mars, and they would need constant resupply - oxygen, but millions?

Honestly!

To answer you question, the goal is 1,000 ships which can carry 100 people to Mars, plus also equipment drops. That's ten journeys to Mars for those 100,000 people to get to the 1m people suggested as required to maintain a self sustaining outpost.

My maths can't work that out.