Kim Stanley Robinson: Musk’s Mars Scenario “Not Believable”
The Interplanetary Transport System compared with other boosters. (Credit: SpaceX)
Science fiction author Stanley Robinson of Mars Trilogy fame says he finds a lot of familiar elements in Elon Musk’s plans for Mars. But not necessarily in a good way. Below are excerpts from a Q&A he did with Bloomberg News.
Q. It’s 2024. Musk figures everything out and gets funding. He builds his rocket, and 100 people take off. Several months later, they land (somehow) and have to get to work remaking a planet.
I have to note, first, that this scenario is not believable, which makes it a hard exercise to think about further. Mars will never be a single-person or single-company effort. It will be multi-national and take lots of money and lots of years.
Musk’s plan is sort of the 1920s science-fiction cliché of the boy who builds a rocket to the moon in his backyard, combined with the Wernher von Braun plan, as described in the Disney TV programs of the 1950s. A fun, new story.
Q. What needs to happen for the Mars colony to live sustainably and give humanity the lifeboat Musk envisions?
It’s important to say that the idea of Mars as a lifeboat is wrong, in both a practical and a moral sense.
There is no Planet B, and it’s very likely that we require the conditions here on earth for our long-term health. When you don’t take these new biological discoveries into your imagined future, you are doing bad science fiction.
Read the full interview.
97 responses to “Kim Stanley Robinson: Musk’s Mars Scenario “Not Believable””
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I think Robinson is off base in his criticism. It’s not Space X’s responsibility to foresee and kick start the efforts of others, only their own actions. The reason Space X’s proposal happens in a vacuum is because nobody else is making a real stab at the problem. That said, of course there are a ton of holes in what was presented, but they’ll fill in as Mars colonization becomes more of a reality than a power point presentation. That problem will take care of itself.
The biggest hole in what he presented is tens of billions of dollars. He said ten, but of course it’s ludicrously low estimate. Remains to be seen how that hole is supposed to be poured full.
Second big hole is a long list of missing technologies required to make it there, with no credible path presented ( for now ) of how does one get from where we are today to what the vision showed. “A red dragon every two years and then boom, ITS” is not credibly going to do it
I agree. When I saw the presentation my first thought was 40 to 60 years.
Gentlemen, methinks we have grown too accustomed to the wastage of government spending and Old Space sloth. And that is understandable. Before Musk, no one honestly tried to make space affordable which by necessity meant shortening production times.
In the case of the ITS, the man is quoting for the services of his own company. HE is going to build it and THIS is his projected cost and THIS is how long it will take and THIS is how much skin he already has in the game. We can squint at his timelines which in fairness have shown elasticity, but not 40-60 years worth. What about his track record makes anyone think he couldn’t do it? And with Bezos chasing him?
Look, it’s ok, we have arrived at the future; and there is no reason to be afraid of it.
Consider that Falcon 9H is 5 years late and it uses its vast majority of hardware from a flight proven parts train. Yet the extra complications of strapping them together and cross tanking has pushed the program 5 years beyond the orig deadline. Also consider the fact that 6 years into a flying program the helium system is apparently not yet finished in its development. All this in a program that has paying customers to pay for tests and serves an existing market.
Now, take the ITS. 4000+ PsI chamber pressures on the main engines. Huge LOX tanks made of carbon composite. Oh, and they’re reusable. Up masses of 600,000 lbs when nothing in the most wild fantasy of current satellite manufactures could ever make use of that kind of capability. Oh, and then the precision landing bit where the booster lands on its launch platform and is refuelled and re flown the same day. Tanking. Tanking large volumes of CH4 and LOX …. In orbit. Then there’s the meat wagon. Life support for 100 people on only 200 kw electrical? My ass. Look at that list, compare that to the Falcon program which is late in every aspect. And that’s okay, the orig time frame was unrealistic. I love Space X and will give them all the time in the world they need. But the list of things needed for the ITS is long, and all those problems are very very hard. 40 to 60 years if Space X does it. 100+ for a government.
A flight proven parts train that is in flux – because it is continuously being upgraded. They seem to want those 9s to be the best they can be before strapping them into a heavy. No excuse, just a possible reason.
The landing is already consistent, even at sea. The same-day turnaround not surprising because in Musk’s own words the boosters are being designed to require just a refuel to fly again.
The Raptor chamber pressure raises my hair too – I’ll give you that. Everything you say may be true. But I’d still not prejudge the system and not give it a chance before it has even gotten underway proper. I can think of dozens of other ways $10B of our taxes is being wasted as we speak.
The real problem with SpaceX, I suspect, is that the ultimate destination of Mars is intruding in day-to-day income-earning, as in with all the attempts to clear a backlog and build the People’s shuttle, the man found time to complete a Raptor test bed and build a big-ass LOX tank. What if he didn’t have to hold back?
The landings are not consistant to the inch, and that’s the kind of accuracy you’ll need ….
Consider that the promises of airpower as a military force were understood as early as the 1920’s. By then much of what we do today was foreseen, and predicted to be right around the corner. Precision bombing was said to be developed in the late 1930’s but we only saw small peeks at the end of the WWII with TV guided bombs but it still took 30 years to turn those into widespread operational systems in the arsenal. The promises of airpower were not delivered until the early 1990’s. We’re looking at promises on a similar scale reaching across many technology disciplines. These promises don’t serve warfare, so government is not going to invest heavily in them with a sense of urgency. Currently our only example of non military technological programs are computers, airliners and cars. Computers are a get rich scheme, space is a get rich slow scheme … at best. Airliners have changed little in the past 30 years. And cars also have been largely stagnant. I just don’t see one company pushing new technologies faster than the US and USSR could when they were dumping national talent and treasure pell-mell into armaments for 45 years in a real life or death arms race. But the happy news is we have leadership in our society that can make this stick, it will probably be done. But not in a decade, and not in two either.
Andrew you miss the point. Right here — ‘..I just don’t see one company pushing new technologies faster than the US and USSR could when they were…’
Government contracting is by nature wasteful, even in life-and-death situations. And because you cited arms race I’ll remind you that there is a reason why America is always at war and cheap things like lasers are restricted from the battlefield. On average, 60% of a govt. cost never makes it to the project in question. It goes to kick-backs and the cultivation of a ‘city’ around the project. This city must be prolonged as much as possible so project time stretches. You know what I’m talking about. The point: you cannot pick the costs and timelines of a company based upon those of countries. How far along do you think I-phones would have been if it were a govt, initiative?
Two things in coming back to base:
1. Mars is a lifetime goal of Musk’s. He wants it to happen before he gets too old.
2. If he is bluffing and fluffing as you say, it’s in our interest to call.
And now I have to go recharge for work at daybreak. Good night/morning, gentlemen. It was a pleasure!
I never said he was bluffing. You said I said that. I think he takes his intentions serious. However, none of his projects come out on time. And that’s fine.
I propose a wager of sorts. I’ll go out on a limb and say that by Oct 2026 the only portion of the Mars architecture that will be mature will be a 1/10th scale raptor 50,000 lbf thrust at 4,000 ish PsI, with a vac Isp of 370+ sec being used on a wide diameter high-er energy upper stage for Falcon. In essence a compromise between an RL-10 LH2/LOX upper stage and LOX RP-1. And that they’ll be deep in the development of a 2nd stage shuttle that will make the Falcon completely reusable. And that it will an evolutionary step to the meat wagon.
As Space X matures they’ll evolve into a prime. Holding back human nature is very difficult. Space X’s real revolution might be in the cadre of young engineers who might go start enterprises of their own. It would take a large number corporations like Space X to pressure other companies into being less corrupt and to cow government officials into accepting a smaller cut. But even if they do, overseas primes will be willing to give US gov officials the cut they expect. It’s a very difficult process to turn off.
Elon Musk has done more to push human space exploration forward than all of the science fiction writers in the world combined. Why should I care what some statist sci-fi author thinks?
To push human space exploration, one would need to go where no one has gone before. Elon has succeeded in putting 1 to 2 dozen payloads into orbit (already been done) and blowing up 2 rockets (already been done). Yes , he has landed a booster, but he hasn’t reused one. What exactly has Elon done to push human space exploration, apart from create a pipe dream?
Really?
Ah, responding to a question with another question. Yes, really.
I was hoping you’d take the opportunity to actually think. Guess not.
Well, I did think. That’s why my comment was a paragraph, and your’s was a word.
I guess if that is what you want to call it… Some people just can’t ever be satisfied.
You still never answered my question. You continue to deflect, making me think you are just another blind fanboy.
Your “question” was ridiculous. Musk built a space company and a rocket company from nothing that is redefining the space launch industry and has now proposed to blow it wide open. That isn’t being a fanboy. That is being objective.
Back to point. I really can’t understand how or why people criticize others when they try to do something when they have absolutely no stake or even really much information, other than its just not the way they would go about it. Human nature I guess.
You mean like he blew those rockets open? Musk didn’t build a rocket company from nothing. He stole intellectual property from many companies. Their Merlin is a FASTRAC engine with a few mods. Dragon is a subscale version of the lunar command module. Seriously, none of their stuff is new, except for their pipe dreams.
‘none of their stuff is new, except for their pipe dreams.’
Then I guess we have to wonder what Ariane and ULA is responding to.
Price, mostly.
Which is what happens when a company is innovative.
LOL. Oh okay. You’re one of those people. Good day, sir.
Yeh. I’m out, too. 🙂
I think ya’ll quit too early. You are missing out on a glorious opportunity for ToOrbit to educate us all on how tech that stolen and obsolete is able to upend an industry. Then we can be taught how a dozen cancelled NASA programs represent more progress than a company that is actually flying hardware.
You, sir, just won this “conversation” 😀
Huh. What intellectual property did he steal? The main guy that developed fastrac, brought part of his work over, but there was no IP associated with.
He’s talking (poorly and non-specifically) about Tom Mueller, one of the co-founders of SpaceX alongside Elon Musk, who worked at TRW Inc. for 15 years before coming on with SpaceX in 2002. Shortly before the formation of SpaceX, TRW was bought out by Northrop Grumman. Among Muller’s work at TRW was a HydroLox engine with a pintle-type fuel injector, the TR-106. Some proprietary TRW documentation (now NG property) was found among Mueller’s things and that resulted in a lawsuit from Northrop Grumman back in 2004, but it was settled out-of-court in 2005 with no admission of wrongdoing, since there’s no evidence the proprietary information was in any way used by SpaceX.
This is a very brief summary and there are plenty of news articles about this lawsuit and the head-butting SpaceX and NG did back in the mid 2000s.
Most all modern rocketry is built “by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Most engineering is an incremental improvement on existing technology. Sometimes it’s a revisit of discarded ideas with new new materials that weren’t available when the idea was first formed. It’s not stealing if one is designing from published material.
Since the financials of SpaceX are a closely held secret, it’s hard to say whether their aggressive pricing is sustainable. Building a rocket the size of the Falcon 9 is so complex, that one has to build one to get a grip on how much it costs. Any outside estimate is a wild guess. Time will tell if SpaceX is a viable company financially.
“What did Robert Goddard do for human space exploration!!?? That slacker never even reached orbit!!!”
That’s how dumb you sound.
Reduced the cost of launch through better manufacturing techniques and vertical business plan. Reuse will farther reduce cost.
What has he done?
Tackled/tackling the problem.
And reduced reliability.
New technology……young company…..young rocket….time will fix reliability.
Plus SpaceX edge is seeing reused boosters. Next version of F9 will be improved, harder, tougher, better, safer.
SpaceX takes on the risk of development while the others cower in fear until forced by competition.
You are making your remarks because they are the leader.
Again, hardly anything they do is a new technology..
Funny that nobody else has done what SpaceX is doing, then.
I was there
I photographed the debris, in Jacksonville when SpaceX first hit the barge. I watched the history making f9 landing in person from Jetty Park. I saw the first landed booster come into the harbor that night.
If not new technology, they sure are doing incredibly smart stuff with current technology.
Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Actually, he is right on par with industry average.
Actually, SpaceX has done something nobody else has done before: supersonic retropropulsion, a critical technique that NASA is interested in enough to send aircraft to observe, and a key to sending large amounts of supplies and people to Mars.
Booster reuse is coming soon, within 3 months would be a good bet.
This is how you people sound.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Haters gotta hate…
An alarmingly stilted response from an entertainer. He didn’t even answer the first question stated above. He can not actually KNOW what governments will do in the future, let alone on Mars, or what an inspiring billionaire not shy of using his own dime can accomplish wherever. My money remains on Musk and Bezos. Go write a book, K. Robinson.
He did. I haven’t gotten around to reading them yet.
😀
I meant it differently!
I know 😉
He is dead right, though. Musk’s advertised plans are ridiculous. He has done some great things with SpaceX, but one still has to filter the pure marketing BS from the reality. People want to believe it because it is exciting, and seem to switch off their critical thinking hats.
Critical thinking can make you blind to opportunity and possibility.
It can also make people waste a lot of time and effort following irrational paths. Musk isn’t stupid. He knows is plans are BS, but he wants the public to pay for them. It is hype.
Its sad that someone on a space blog can think that much less type it out. Seriously. The one single individual who can and does sticks his neck out to make a bold plan to completely shift the game forward, and the people who are supposed to be able to “get it” can do nothing but bitch and complain.
Oh right, lets all just waste a ton of public money, then, rather than spend it on (space) things that are likely to work. Yeah, sad to be on a space blog and not be a pure fantasist. No, I’m not drinking the kool-aid just to be supportive. Red Dragon, yes, BFR, no.
We already waste tons of public money on things that a lot less useful and for a lot less return on the taxpayer’s dollar.
Ever hear of the expression “aim high to hit the mark”?
Tha’s a pretty low bar to set in terms of public spending choices, frankly. “We waste money on stuff worse”. Sheesh.
Well your argument was a pretty low bar to get over.
Musk is wasting no one’s money but his own. NASA is contracting for launches, NASA is getting launches, and NASA is paying less for those launches than others.
Don’t disagree, but if you think he isn’t angling to get into the public purse, I think you are wrong. He can’t possibly fund it on his own and there is currently no plausible way of making money from it.
We’ll see. He does like running on the ragged edge. “Risk big, win big.”
Cancel SLS Orion and give the money to SpaceX to build ITS
One flies 4 people the other 100…..same cost to gov.
I assume the BFR you are talking about is SLS.
You assume wrong. I think SLS is a total waste, but I’m not sure what it has to do with this.
I want both SLS and BFR–different level payloads.
Keep SLS, and kill- F-35 and the Ford class rip-offs. Use their funds for BFR.
Right on, James. When even the advocates just snipe away, what do we ever expect to accomplish?
Not much. Which… is where we are. A bunch of monkeys squabbling over the color of the bananas…
Really? So far, what of his work in any company has been.hype and BS?
This.
Just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t make it a rant. Please grow up a little.
The solution to your woes is probably not going to a dead planet, though.
ROFL.
I don’t care what you are. You have zero evidence of sabotage, and if a hunch, based on not actually having the facts (unless you work for SpaceX and can release some evidence we are not aware of), is how you inform your opinions, I’d suggest you probably aren’t a terribly good scientist.
When SpaceX say it was sabotage, I’ll listen.
Yeah, because I’m the crank in this conversation…
Let’s leave it.
Christ, I hope you never serve on a jury.
Seriously? Have you read those books? I guarantee you KSR has more knowledge about space colonization than a theoretical physicist and chemist.
I read as much of Red Mars as I could stand. He is no expert on anything.
Please, lay out your *evidence* for sabotage that no one else is privy to.
Your disclaimer doesn’t seem to qualify you as an incident investigator. And you have not cited any evidence. Investigations work based on informed hypotheses and evidence. You have a hypothesis with nothing to back it up at this stage. That might change, but right now, you are just making things up and claiming them as facts. And like I said, that doesn’t make me that impressed by your qualifications to comment.
(disclaimer: I am actually qualified as in incident investigator [albeit in the mining industry] — but that is another story).
Parabolic Arc normally has quality commentary, and it only ever turns into craziness like this when SpaceX is involved.
You don’t understand the English language very well, if you think I was invoking Jesus (really, language doesn’t work like that — not everything is literal).
The interview was woefully short and lacked a whole list of questions I would have asked. I’ve read the trilogy and enjoyed many parts of it. I can see where KSR used some license in glossing over topics that would bog down a story but will be important if a real mission is ever attempted. I can also see where he has done some serious research and talked with many scientists that contemplate just such an adventure. Many of them are people that I know and have worked with over the years.
The problem of creating a self-supporting Mars colony is incredibly complex compared with just getting there. The estimate of decades before humans can be sent with a very high expectation of surviving sounds optimistic to me.
Moon first and then Mars.
i wish that ppl would quit speaking about the moon when talking about mars.
The fact is, that for SpaceX to have ANY launch system that is cheap, they must launch at least 1x / month. Considering that mars launch happens every year, it means that there must be some other use for ITS, or it will be too expensive.
And ITS makes little sense for LEO operations. Again, too big.
As such, Bigelow and SpaceX will be doing to the moon, but not in place of mars, like so many want.
Mars is a lot easier to live on than the Moon, in just about every respect. The only major downside is travel time.
Yes, I agree. The higher gravity, at least some atmosphere and the inventory of chemicals looks to be much better for Mars. Travel time is the huge downside. Once a crew is launched to Mars, they are on their own for over 2 years. Any oversights, equipment failures or health issues could kill. Whereas, the moon is 4 days travel away and a team could possibly evacuate or supplies could be sent if necessary. The moon has some of the same difficulties that would be encountered on Mars. Lunar regolith contamination, reduced G and solar radiation hazards. It will be a good training and testing ground for a trip further out.
Aside from the fact that most of the technology will be different, yeah. Frankly, I think that Earth is a better training and testing ground for Mars.
NASA is being dictated a new plan every 4-8 years. More precisely, every election cycle. Right now they have to spend most of their budget on the Senate Launch System (SLS) rocket to nowhere. In the mean time, planetary exploration and even earth observation are being scaled back.
No, it really isn’t. I don’t think you even know what a crank is, frankly.
If you can barely remember the essays, maybe they weren’t terribly memorable.
KSR can write quite well. Pity he doesn’t know what he’s writing about.
He lost me in Red Mars at the beginning with his stupid little wind turbines being dropped from an airship. Skimmed the rest, had a go at Green Mars and the thought of Blue Mars was vomit inducing.
He’s an insult to Science Fiction and a clueless left wing liberal.
I only liked Red Mars.
Not much of a believer in the teraforming thing.
What’s you thoughts about paraterraforming?
Why should someone’s political leanings matter? If he’s a terrible sci-fi writer then fine. But their politics is frankly irrelevant.
This is America. A number of our conservatives now have more in common with old Europe than with Lincoln, teddy, or Ike.
the problems is this. 50 years of human spaceflight and 1) it has gotten more not less expensive, 2) there is nothing that people do in space right now that is worth the cost of them doing it and 3) it is unclear that there is any product in space but particularly on the Moon or Mars that has any value on Earth.
there is a reason the south pole, the Algerian desert and all the sea floor is easier for humans to live on then Mars would be…and yet for the most part no one does permanently
figure that one out and you figure out why Elon’s ideas though entertaining are fantasy.
SSTO, yet another pipe dream.
If nothing else he has created a national conversation, about space exploration, that I have not seen since the ending of Apollo and the start of the space shuttle..
And strawman. Musk has never claimed that his efforts alone would be sufficient to colonise Mars. In his keynote speech at the IAC he even specifically mentioned that colonising Mars would require input from governments and the private sector in partnership. What a moronic interview.
if you are hinting that human spaceflight created that revolution in semiconductors then you are wrong
the vietnam war had far far more to do with it then did the human spaceflight…thanks for playing
How the heck is the possibility of a bullet (which I don’t deny) the same as “evidence for a bullet”. I just don’t know how to counter that kind of logic, because it is impossible to counter someone who thinks like you do.
Musk doesn’t believe it is sabotage, by the way, but I’m sure you know better.
Like you have “solved” the problem of the SpaceX anomaly. Right. Good work.
The same basic comprehension issue continues to elude you. You are, as you are fond of saying, a crank.
Evidence of the possibility of is not evidence for. I know it is hard to understand, despite my repeated attempts to explain this to you.
I’m called “Stu” in my house as well, funnily enough. If and when the FBI announces they have made an arrest, and if and when there is a trial of said arrestee, then I will – of course – take that on board. Until then, Thomas, self-proclaimed expert in everything (except for social skills — I don’t think even you could try and claim to have any of those?), your reputation does, I’m afraid precede you.
Oh, and proof is a legal concept. Quite an important one unless we want to have crazies like you locking people up for whatever crime you imagine they committed on any given day.
Wow! I thought this would generate some discussion, but didn’t expect this much.
Since this was posted, I’ve also posted another story about the September accident with the Falcon 9 that’s kind of interesting. It’s a bit more relevant to today, and it’s got some interesting information about what might have caused last month’s accident and the June 2015 crash. Feel free to comment there if you feel the need.