Elon Musk calls on the public to "preserve human consciousness" with Starship

Authored by inverse.com and submitted by mvea

Elon Musk got philosophical on Saturday night in the darkness of south Texas, saying that humanity needs to get to Mars in order to preserve human consciousness.

While we have “several hundred millions of years left” before the sun expands and overheats the Earth, Musk attempted to put that into perspective, noting the Earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years, but humanity has been on Earth for a fraction of that.

“From an evolutionary standpoint, if it took and extra ten percent longer for conscious life to evolve on Earth, it wouldn’t evolve at all because it would’ve been incinerated by the sun,” the SpaceX CEO said at the end of a 40-minute presentation at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Facility.

Elon Musk on Saturday, September 28, 2019.

“It appears that consciousness is a very rare and precious thing and we should take whatever steps we can to preserve the light of consciousness. Only now, after 4.5 billion years has that window been open. That’s a long time to wait and it might not stay open for long. I’m pretty optimistic by nature, but there’s some chance that window will not be open for long, and I think we should become a multi-planet civilization while that window is open.”

The way to make that humanity a multi-planet species, and “extend consciousness beyond Earth,” in the eyes of Musk, was towering behind him.

Starship MK 1, a prototype rocket made of 301 stainless steel, could one day carry humans to the moon and to Mars.

Musk said people could potentially fly into orbit on the Starship next year.

The prototype vehicle will fly between 1-2 months from now.

“This will take off, fly to 65,000 feet and come back and land in 1-2 months. That giant thing is really going to be pretty epic to see that thing take off and come back,” Musk said. “It’s wild.”

MK3, the second, full-size version of the rocket system, will reach orbit within six months, Musk said. Crewed missions will launch from either Cape Canaveral, Florida, or Boca Chica, Texas.

Musk released several new details about the Super Heavy launch vehicle and the Starship that will carry crews into the solar system, though there were few fundamental changes from the master plan he introduced in 2016.

Starship Mk1 is what Musk stood before on Saturday night. It will go on a test flight in 1-2 months.

Starship will carry 150 tons of payload to orbit, Musk said. It will then park in orbit and be refilled with fuel for the rest of its journey to the “moon or Mars or beyond,” Musk said. While it sound complicated to connect a fuel ship to a different ship in orbit, refilling of fuel in orbit is a “simplified version of what SpaceX does with the space station,” he said.

The reusability of Starship and the Super Heavy launch vehicle, means they will return to Earth at a high speed, similar to how the Falcon 9 first stage returns to Earth.

Musk praised the stainless steel used in the rocket system for its strength under extreme heat and cold, strength to weight ratio, and economical price when compared to carbon fiber. The ship was welded together int he outdoors at the launch facility in Texas. He also said that on Mars the steel could be used and modified for other needs. Musk made the decision to switch the material to steel in October 2018, saying it took between four and five months to build.

An artist's rendering of Starship near Saturn.

The Super Heavy launch vehicle could fit up to 37 Raptor engines and a minimum of 24 engines. Each would create 200 tons of thrust.

Musk’s ultimate goal is to build technology capable of sending crews of around 100 people to Mars, to build a self-sustaining city, suggesting that “Mars could help Earth one day.”

Read more: How SpaceX got to this point

VitQ on September 29th, 2019 at 14:53 UTC »

Whenever this topic appears, a passage from the Red Mars comes to mind:

“The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind,” he said in that dry factual tone, and everyone stared at him amazed. “Without the human presence it is just a collection of atoms, no different from any other random speck of matter in the universe. It’s we who understand it, and we who give it meaning. All our centuries of looking up at the night sky and watching it wander through the stars. All those nights of watching it through the telescopes, looking at a tiny disk trying to see canals in the albedo changes. All those dumb sci-fi novels with their monsters and maidens and dying civilizations. And all the scientists who studied the data, or got us here. That’s what makes Mars beautiful. Not the basalt and the oxides.

[...]

Now that we are here,” he went on, “it isn’t enough to just hide under ten meters of soil and study the rock. That’s science, yes, and needed science too. But science is more than that. Science is part of a larger human enterprise, and that enterprise includes going to the stars, adapting to other planets, adapting them to us. Science is creation. The lack of life here, and the lack of any finding in fifty years of the SETI program, indicates that life is rare, and intelligent life even rarer. And yet the whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life. We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. It’s too dangerous to keep the consciousness of the universe on only one planet, it could be wiped out. And so now we’re on two, three if you count the moon. And we can change this one to make it safer to live on. Changing it won’t destroy it. Reading its past might get harder, but the beauty of it won’t go away. If there are lakes, or forests, or glaciers, how does that diminish Mars’s beauty? I don’t think it does. I think it only enhances it. It adds life, the most beautiful system of all. But nothing life can do will bring Tharsis down, or fill Marineris. Mars will always remain Mars, different from Earth, colder and wilder. But it can be Mars and ours at the same time. And it will be. There is this about the human mind; if it can be done, it will be done. We can transform Mars and build it like you would build a cathedral, as a monument to humanity and to the universe. We can do it, so we will do it. So—” he held up a palm, as if satisfied that the analysis had been supported by the data in the graph – as if he had examined the periodic table, and found that it still held true “ — we might as well start.”

Brothengar on September 29th, 2019 at 13:26 UTC »

Take me I want to be a space pioneer, rather die on another planet paving the way for the future of humanity rather than here working my 9-5 bs of a life

Tehold on September 29th, 2019 at 09:32 UTC »

Everyone is thinking just about global warming or the planet becoming less hospitable. Of course we could adapt to that better than we could adapt to space or another inhospitable planet. We could also get wiped out by a cosmic event at any moment and we might never see it coming. We have no idea how big our window is.