The boring company

getting there is 99% of the problem

I disagree, we could've gotten there sooner if cost didn't matter. We could've built big ass rockets decades ago.

Keeping people alive like that is the hardest part. We have no experience doing this, I don't think Antarctic missions or the ISS are accurate models of what to expect. None of those are self sufficient.
Fuck we've never even grown anything on mars. Sure it'll probably work out, but what if it's only at 50% of the expected yield? Just about anything could go wrong. There is just so much shit we don't know yet.

We seriously need to make a realistic model somewhere in a fucking dessert, and I'm not talking about that psychological experiment they did. I'm talking about the engineering side of this.
Self sufficiency with limit power and resources.

>Humanity may be fucked if we let AI evolve, but we're definitely fucked if we try to become AI.
There's no stopping the singularity, dude. Research in that field, AGI, is so inexpensive and the potential rewards are so great that it's impossible for some international body to effectively control it. So, it's reasonable to argue that if we want to survive the emergence of a superintelligent AI, we need to resemble it more. We're too dumb, dude. Also, the rewards of hooking people up to computers are also so great that it'll certainly happen as soon as it's possible. The risks won't really matter. It'll literally be the creation of post-humans.

>this seems like a pipe dream
You're thinking of Hyperloop. This one's a tunnel dream.

>realistic model

Why not start with the moon? Seems the most obvious thing to do. Why the fuck is Mars so important?

>It's an absurdly large death trap that needs multiple scientific and funding leaps before it happens
There's no "scientific leap" needed for ITS, and the funding required is understandably comparable with that for the development of a large commercial airliner.

One of the easiest things to do with a rocket is scale it up. That's why Saturn V flew a mere decade after the first orbital rocket at any size. The physics favor a large rocket in most ways, and Saturn V was nowhere near the limit of how big a rocket could be.

The recovery likewise gets easier as you scale up. The bigger your atmospheric entry vehicle, the thicker the surface treatment you can afford, and the easier it is to make a good heat shield. For landing, the wind has less effect as you scale up, and being able to use standard engines to land the upper stage is a huge benefit -- it'll be essentially the same problem as landing the Falcon 9 booster.

As for the engine count, Soyuz takes off blasting out of 32 nozzles, and it's one of the most reliable rockets around. Many engines and many flights means that problems show themselves quickly to be fixed. SpaceX will be getting experience with 27-engine lift-offs starting soon, so a 42-engine lift-off will be no big deal.

ITS sounds magical in its capabilities, but is a quite a modest and reasonable step forward from what they've already done. It's not like making the leap from subsonic to supersonic flight.

I don't like cars because their unsafe, i trust the rail system more, so if he can come up with something better i'm all for it.
Taxi's and Uber's are very expensive compared to trains and their still unsafe cars, also i don't like to talk to the drivers.
I can see myself using their autonomous public pods if it's faster and more private than trains.

Neuralink will make us all hot asian cyborgs.

This leaves so many questions. For one, why doesn't he simply have a ramp leading to the transport system?

This is crazy inefficient.

Would be much better to just have improved subway systems, and then have self driving taxis to get people the last mile.

I came here to post this

Isn't this going to fuck with groundwater and aquifers and shit like this?

I feel like this is just trying to merge tesla cars with the hyberloop (which is cool still)

Musk is just trying crazy futurism ideas from the early 20th century.

Without modern solar panels, colonization of the moon/mars would have been impossible.
Long term trips would also have been impossible.

Sure they COULD have built a bigass reusable rocket, but they didn't, that still remains 99% of the trouble.

All those other difficulties are trivial and will be worked out quick enough.
But you can't even start without a big rocket + a big spacecraft.

>car backs up
>falls in hole

>2077
>His car does not have hole detection
Kek, horse drawn carriages are not cars

Why do you need some special undercart to drive there?
Why do you need aboveground roads if you can have layers and layers on underground tunnels?

>Year 2018
>Spacex is ready to launch its first consumer low orbit flight for space tourism
>Elon turns to Amber and tells her that this new chapter of SpaceEx shall mark a new chapter in their relationship
>he gets on one knee
>Amber I love you will you marry me
>Amber is ecstatic, her pupils turn into dollars signs
>she says YES
>Elon stops her
>"under one condition"
>"you take the first flight into low orbit, you trust me right?"
>Amber is confused but reluctantly accepts
>Elon straps her into the harness and kisses her forehead "I love you babe"
>The count down begins
>5...4...3...2...1..
>Blast off
>The thrusters start off beautifully lift off is successful
>Amber looks into the cockpit camera "I love you Elon"
>Elons looks into his camera with strange grin on his face
>"Seems we'll have to postpone the wedding, one of my investments needs my attention"
>"BABYYY I want to get married now, which one is it?"
> A movie babe, Edward Scissor Hands 2 I loved the first one have you watched it?
>amber is visibly worried
>Elons face is now a mangled grin
>his face is 90% grin
>"Ba-abe why do you look like that"
>Johnny Depp steps out from behind Musk
>"You will always remember this as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow"
>I flame shoots up the side of the rocket
>Amber screams on the monitor, fires blazing around her
>Musks face is now simply giant teeth
>The rocket is shredded into a million pieces engulfed in huge billow of flame and smoke
>Edward Scissor Hands 2 breaks box office records and solves climate change

It's such a bad idea on so many levels

>"You will always remember this as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow"
Loving every laugh

I can't help but wondering, if those sled thingies exist, why do i still need cars?

So this is basically the metro you take with your car?

Seems like a horrible idea.

>americans believe its more efficient to dig holes in the ground instead of building public transport

lol you can't do public transit in a multiculti "paradise"

Well at least he's trying things with the billions of dollars he has.
A lot more than other billionaires anyways.

>yeah this seems like a pipe dream at best

You're scared of the future while I hop into a delorean.

>that pic
the end of the 21st century captured in a single image

lmao what

subway and buses are always full of people of color who can't afford cars, service is pretty alright

This. There hasn't been a human outside low earth orbit since 1972 yet we for no reason at all want to go to mars. The future on mars belongs to automation. Sending self sufficient robots that can harvest ressources, rebuild themselves and in the long run create infrastructure. And once the infrastructure is built then maybe humans can go there for no fucking reason at all.

As is going to mars is a gigantic waste of ressources, including human ressources.

I wish he would work on something like fusion instead. Much more important for the future of mankind and fusion hasn't gotten any serious funding and research.

IF your goal is going to Mars, then going to the moon doesn't benefit you at all

Automation still needs people to fix stuff

>Sending self sufficient robots that can [...] rebuild themselves
You forgot to read that part my friend.

Also, I talk about how pointless and inefficient it is to send a person to mars within the next few decades.

Hehe

I'm a geotechnical engineering student and this makes me happy.

>"You will always remember this as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow"

The moon has no pretty much no atmosphere; and on mars the most important resource is the carbon dioxide atmosphere, and the water in the ground. which the moon also doesn't have.

this

no atmosphere is a good thing for some purposes

the moon has tons of CO2 & H2O

The supersonic electric airliner controlled entirely by thrust vectoring takes the cake for me.

What the fuck, how have I not heard of this?
We also somehow forgot about Hyperloop too.

Looks like it's literally ripped off of the film 'i-robot'

>geotechnical engineering
what the actual fuck is this

imagine being stuck in a tunnel like that due to natural disasters or power outages or stuff

>seems like a pipe dream at best
>pipe dream
>pipe

In the same way aerospace engineers work with spaceships and use fluid dynamics, geotechnical engineers work with tunnel boring machines and use rock mechanics.

Just an example, both disciplines do other things too.

Do you think he has a chance of improving the tunnel boring machines. Making it cheaper and faster?

The entire plan relies on him making better bores.

boring machines are driven by electric motors (like a tesla) so maybe they will start there

Yeah but they can't go through bedrock right? Don't you need to do it with explosives?
That seems to be the biggest problem.

>Yeah but they can't go through bedrock right?
they absolutely can.

I see, so are explosives used at all anymore?

Of course. But who in his proximity will look This stupid tube fetish?

Point out *

Wtf auto-correct, this is the power of phonecancer

And those problems will never be solved if we don't just fucking get our asses out there and see what life is actually like. Yes, it's risky, and yes, people may die. But there are plenty of folks who are willing to make the sacrifice and the payoff for such an accomplishment will be huge.

Enough with the ridiculous risk aversion. Enough with the RC cars. It's time to go there ourselves.

>We seriously need to make a realistic model somewhere in a fucking dessert, and I'm not talking about that psychological experiment they did. I'm talking about the engineering side of this.
Self sufficiency with limit power and resources.

This will prepare us in a few ways, but even the most realistic earth-based model of mars is still a far cry from the real thing.

lost at jack sparrow
10/10

>Yeah but they can't go through bedrock right?

This is not Minecraft kiddo

You don't use explosives in tunneling under a city

he should just make this