back to article SpaceX: We'll land on Mars in 2018 (cough, with NASA's help)

SpaceX, a rocket upstart known for making bold promises, has announced its intention to send one of its Dragon capsules to Mars in two years. Planning to send Dragon to Mars as soon as 2018. Red Dragons will inform overall Mars architecture, details to come pic.twitter.com/u4nbVUNCpA — SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 27, 2016 This …

  1. Ugotta B. Kiddingme

    on the plus side

    Wall-E um... Sarcastic Rover will have a place to put all that stuff it's been collecting.

    1. Kharkov
      Gimp

      Talking about stuff...

      Never mind the scientific payload, never mind the instrumentation, never mind going to the Moon first.

      The REAL question is (SpaceX fanbois will love this), will there be a big wheel of cheese in the capsule when it lands?

      A big piece of cheese in a 'First!' achievement isn't tradition, but by cracky, let's make it one!

      1. Afernie

        Re: Talking about stuff...

        Given the rules on contamination, it'd probably have to be a plastic replica of cheese.

  2. Kugutsu

    Surely the best time to set off is sometime /before/ May 2018? Sometime in March, probably, if KSP as taught me anything :P Otherwise the deltaV required will be crazy...

  3. hplasm
    Thumb Up

    Aha....

    I'm very excited by this!!

    **how odd!!

  4. bozoid

    Surely a Moon landing would be an easier test? Half the gravity, no pesky atmosphere, and a cruise phase that lasts three days instead of eight months.

    1. Someonehasusedthathandle

      They might kill some innocent whalers!!!!

      (https://youtu.be/60BjkUtqxPE)

    2. Brangdon

      He's not doing this because it is easy. He's doing it because he wants to put a million people on Mars and he sees this as a necessary step. He is probably one of those people who see the Moon as a distraction.

      That said, if he did want a Moon landing he could do it virtually any time the rocket is ready. With a Mars landing, he is restricted to a launch window of a few months every 24 years. If he's not ready in 2018, he'll have to wait until 2020. Making the announcement now is making a commitment to hitting the earlier launch window, which conditions the timetable of all the SpaceX activities leading up to that.

  5. TeeCee Gold badge
    Meh

    .... if SpaceX can put all of the pieces together...

    I don't doubt they can, that's not hard......it's keeping them together that's the complicated bit.

    1. Mikel

      Let's hope they get it in one go.

      Rapid Unplanned Disassembly on rockets headed to Mars make for slow iteration, what with there's only the one launch window every two years.

  6. The Nazz

    SUV sized capsule you say?

    And precisely where on Mars are they gonna find yellow lines, street junctions and proximity to school gates to park the damn thing?

    1. ian 22
      Windows

      Re: SUV sized capsule you say?

      Many homeless folk in the USA live in SUVs for years. What is the problem?

  7. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    "...the US government has strict rules about decontamination..."

    The USA is now making up rules about other planets?

    Thus setting the new record for the maximum distance 'extraterritorial jurisdictional' claim.

    So much for my 'Nigerian Sewage Lagoons on Mars' proposal. Sigh...

    1. Nik 2

      Re: "...the US government has strict rules about decontamination..."

      The rules apply to planets much further away than Mars, but they probably only apply to companies that operate in the US, or use banks that deal with the US, or send e-mail through servers in places that deal with the US. :-/

      XKCD, as usual, deals with this well:

      [quote]Spacecraft carry bacteria, although we do our best to sterilize them before and during launch. This sterilization is important, because we don't want to contaminate another planet or Moon with Earth bacteria. There are two big reasons for this—one ethical and one practical. The ethical one is that we don't want to accidentally introduce Earth life that disrupts and/or destroys a native ecosystem. The practical one is that if we find life on some other planet, we don't want to have to struggle to figure out whether it was contamination from one of our probes.

      But sterilizing spacecraft is hard. NASA has an employee specifically assigned to this task, and she has possibly the best job title of all time: Planetary Protection Officer.[/quote]

      There's also a reference somewhere to the fact that the Planetary Protection Strategy for most launches is 'try not to hit any planets'

    2. DropBear
      Trollface

      Re: "...the US government has strict rules about decontamination..."

      Meh, why get bogged down with frivolous details like capsule sterilization...? Just send the spacecraft to Mars straight through the Sun...

  8. Shady

    How on Earth (or Mars)...

    ...will they get the drone-barge there to land it on? And water for the barge to float on? Is he going to melt the ice-caps? Seriously?

    Tsk, tsk, sounds like he hasn't thought this one through.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: How on Earth (or Mars)...

      > Is he going to melt the ice-caps? Seriously?

      Musk did mention an idea to continuously detonate nukes above the Martian poles, to create two temporary 'suns'. Was he serious? I don't know. My assumption was that it would be pointless trying to create an atmosphere on Mars without a magnetosphere to protect it from solar wind, but then Musk has access to people a million times more expert than myself. If someone can point me towards an informed online discussion on this subject, I'd be grateful.

      Surprisingly, some of the homework for creating what is in effect a magazine-fed nuke gun has already been done for Project Orion - the idea of launching a massive spacecraft from Earth by firing a nuclear bomb behind it every second.

      http://mashable.com/2015/10/02/elon-musk-nuke-mars-two-suns/#nWFrq_I7Vqqh

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

  9. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    !!!*!!!*!!!*!!!

    ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS — EXCEPT EUROPA

    ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE

    1. TheProf

      Re: !!!*!!!*!!!*!!!

      Erm MARS!

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: !!!*!!!*!!!*!!!

        An entertaining movie (seemingly) inspired by an event in 2010: Odyssey 2:

        http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/europa_report/

        Critics Consensus: Claustrophobic and stylish, Europa Report is a slow-burning thriller that puts the science back into science fiction.

  10. lglethal Silver badge
    Boffin

    Planetary Protection - not quite the right reasons

    Having worked on a Mars mission in the past I had to take part in the Planetary Protection course at ESA. It's very interesting, but bloody hard (and expensive) to achieve the levels of cleanliness you need, I can assure you. But just to correct one thing, the reason for Planetary Protection is not to protect potential life on other planets or to stop contamination of other planets, but its purely there to protect future science missions. i.e. making sure that when a future mission declares that they have found XYZ, then there is no doubt that they actually have found native XYZ, and not XYZ coming from a previous mission. (XYZ could be life, water, organic materials, titanium deposits or whatever). No one wants to have to send up 3 or 4 missions to confirm they have found something just because someone earlier might have screwed up.

    That's the real reason, the protecting of other potential lifeforms and prevention of contamination is really just a side benefit.

    Mind you, if I ever get on another interplanetary mission then I'm stealing that Interplanetary Genocide line. Brilliant! :P

  11. Spudley

    Why send it empty?

    So according to the sarcastic rover, the capule will be empty.

    Why?

    If you're going to the trouble of landing it gently on Mars, and you already know that you intend to send further missions including people, why not pack to the gills with stuff that might be useful for those future missions?

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Why send it empty?

      A manned mission would require a much larger spacecraft, so the addition of what little you could fit in this Dragon module won't be super helpful. Then you have the problem of the retrieving whatever useful gear the dragon is loaded with - a manned mission might land dozens or hundreds of miles away.

      I'm sympathetic to your point though... how about some scientific equipment, or a rover?

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Why send it empty?

        "so the addition of what little you could fit in this Dragon module won't be super helpful."

        Fill it with as many rolls of gaffer tape as will fit!! And a few packs of chewing gum and maybe a ball of string for good measure.

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: Why send it empty?

          >as many rolls of gaffer tape as will fit!! And a few packs of chewing gum and maybe a ball of string for good measure.

          According to 1950s Sci Fi B-movies, it's the underwires from ladies' bras that are used to fix some critical machine, for some odd reason. It would seem technology has moved on since then!.

    2. Killing Time

      Re: Why send it empty?

      I am sure you are not really taking the current reporting literally and make a valid point.

      I think it would be safe to say that some significant science will be planned and conducted.

      To mimic a realistic atmospheric entry it makes a lot of sense to reflect the likely mass of a manned attempt. No doubt there will be multiple projects vying to be payload, probably funded and therefore making a valid business case for Space X's proposition. If the payload supports future missions then all the better.

      They are a commercial business after all.

  12. Spudley

    Zero contamination

    The whole zero contamination thing is going to have to go out of the window when they send actual astronauts.

  13. Tim Brummer

    Sure, just like they were going to launch the Falcon Heavy from Vandenberg three years ago. It still hasn't flown.

    As for decontamination, a guy I worked with put a note inside the Viking lander the night before launch and after it had been decontaminated that said "made by Sanchez".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > "a guy I worked with put a note inside the Viking lander the night before launch and after it had been decontaminated that said "made by Sanchez"."

      Ah, but what you don't know is that I was waiting in the shadows, and after Sanchez left I took the liberty of editing that note, pointing out the pivotal role played by Big Johns thruout history.

  14. captain semtex
    Facepalm

    Ironic that Musk will land a vehicle on Mars before he delivers all the current Tesla Model 3 pre-orders!!

  15. RJFlorida

    late but....

    Late to the party but the main thing is seeing how the capsule does with cosmic and solar radiation. Total protection for astronauts requires FOUR FEET of shielding.

  16. Torchy

    It's 2018.

    It's 2018 now and still no word on this project. Ho Hum.

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