Apr 20, 2025Interstellar Gateway has surpassed the next YouTube milestone, 10K subs! To celebrate, we put this video together! There have been a lot of successes, some failures, and a ton of learning along the way, but we are excited to continue to grow as a team and to keep providing our audience with the best views in spaceflight!
Watching SpaceX take dowwn the wall at the production site last night reminded me of when I recorded the pulling down of a building down the street from my home. Interesting note: My video caused the developer and the demo contractor to get called into the mayor's office... ---
More like a statement than a question, I can't help but feel that the Starship program would be at the same place it is now if SpaceX took the long way of doing things like old space and tried to make everything work on the first launch.
Side question. Haven't seen it. Are they building a second Starship launch tower at pad 39A?
I think that *if* Mars becomes a real society (more than an ISS style, or even Antarctica style, "outpost/base" but more like a town or city built in remote areas on Earth before modern super-rapid travel, e.g. 19th century Salt Lake City) there will be a lot of spinoffs for Earth, technological and maybe societal too. I think the mere existence of this kind of "modern frontier" will make a surprisingly big difference, for one thing. Also, a Mars effort on this scale won't exist by itself. The Starship launch rate implied would mean really cheap launch costs, which would make all kinds of things practical to do in space that aren't practical today. Especially since Mars travel is synod based, there will be a lot of "spare capacity" at other times of the synodal cycle. In a world where this exists, it's hard to see there *not* being private space stations of some sort, likely space manufacturing, maybe even space solar power I also think a society on Mars in the "intermediate stage" when it's more than just a base but most of the adult population is still Earth-born would be very different from any society that's ever existed on Earth, since it would be really strongly self-selected in ways I really can't think of a historical analogue to. Eventually there'd be "regression to the mean" as the Mars-born generations grew up and came to make up more and more of the population, but depending on the rate of population movement from Earth to Mars vs Martian birthrate, that state might last a really long time. It's hard to know what kind of spinoffs could arise from a fundamentally different society.
I think if people go intending to settle rather than just explore/do science, it will be found out fairly quickly, honestly. Having children in the new area is kind of a core part of settlement.But yeah Earth born people would remain the vast majority for a very long time. I do think there'd be some "regression to the mean" anyway though as populations increased and emigrating to Mars became less exceptional.
Quote from: Vultur on 05/17/2025 05:30 pmI think if people go intending to settle rather than just explore/do science, it will be found out fairly quickly, honestly. Having children in the new area is kind of a core part of settlement.But yeah Earth born people would remain the vast majority for a very long time. I do think there'd be some "regression to the mean" anyway though as populations increased and emigrating to Mars became less exceptional.Maybe you are right and I hope it works out well. But I wouldn't want to have to deal with a child on Mars with some skeletal problem or other handicap.
Quote from: Slarty1080 on 05/17/2025 08:50 pmQuote from: Vultur on 05/17/2025 05:30 pmI think if people go intending to settle rather than just explore/do science, it will be found out fairly quickly, honestly. Having children in the new area is kind of a core part of settlement.But yeah Earth born people would remain the vast majority for a very long time. I do think there'd be some "regression to the mean" anyway though as populations increased and emigrating to Mars became less exceptional.Maybe you are right and I hope it works out well. But I wouldn't want to have to deal with a child on Mars with some skeletal problem or other handicap.I'm not saying it'll be terribly safe. And Mars settlement isn't guaranteed to work - even if Starship sends people there successfully, it could end up like current Antarctic scientific outposts.But what I don't see as plausible is a significant number of people going with the intention to settle permanently, and still no kids being born there for decades and decades.(I personally think it will be basically fine*, that biologically Mars gravity will be vastly more like Earth gravity than zero g. But I can't *prove* that to anyone's satisfaction.*more accurately, that there will likely be some increased development risk relative to 'ideal' conditions, but not risk out of scope to common non-ideal but generally considered 'normal' conditions for pregnancy on Earth. )
Quote from: Vultur on 05/13/2025 07:31 pmI think that *if* Mars becomes a real society (more than an ISS style, or even Antarctica style, "outpost/base" but more like a town or city built in remote areas on Earth before modern super-rapid travel, e.g. 19th century Salt Lake City) there will be a lot of spinoffs for Earth, technological and maybe societal too. I think the mere existence of this kind of "modern frontier" will make a surprisingly big difference, for one thing. Also, a Mars effort on this scale won't exist by itself. The Starship launch rate implied would mean really cheap launch costs, which would make all kinds of things practical to do in space that aren't practical today. Especially since Mars travel is synod based, there will be a lot of "spare capacity" at other times of the synodal cycle. In a world where this exists, it's hard to see there *not* being private space stations of some sort, likely space manufacturing, maybe even space solar power I also think a society on Mars in the "intermediate stage" when it's more than just a base but most of the adult population is still Earth-born would be very different from any society that's ever existed on Earth, since it would be really strongly self-selected in ways I really can't think of a historical analogue to. Eventually there'd be "regression to the mean" as the Mars-born generations grew up and came to make up more and more of the population, but depending on the rate of population movement from Earth to Mars vs Martian birthrate, that state might last a really long time. It's hard to know what kind of spinoffs could arise from a fundamentally different society.The spinoffs from any Mars base have tremendous potential, but I suspect that everyone there will be Earth born for a very long time. We don't know if gestation and birth would be safe on Mars (currently an open question). It's safe in 1g, but I doubt very much it is safe in 0g and as for 0.34g who knows. At the very least it's going to take a long time to find out given the multiple ethical issues involved and the likely backlash if anything goes wrong.
