Red Dragon to Mars by 2018?

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Hey, yeah, great and all but - what is the actual mission they intend to carry out?

It's clear they plan to land a (new version?) Dragon capsule on the surface. But I've seen stuff in the press about getting samples from the Curiosity rover and returning them to Earth? Sounds like the reporter garbled things... that can't possibly be right.

Don't get me wrong, "just make the landing" would be a tremendous achievement!
 
Carl, I think just getting there and landing the Dragon safely is enough. If they happen the be able to bring some supplies for a future manned landing so much the better.
 
Falcon Heavy is going to have to get out of it's "first launch 6 months from now" holding pattern schedule that it has been on for the last 1.5 years, for Red Dragon to get to Mars in 2018, or 2019, or whenever.

I mean, last fall, FH was scheduled to be launched this April. Last I checked and found a revised date listed about 1-2 months ago after it had slipped again, it was set for September. Unfortunately I don't expect FH to fly this year. Unless the Red Dragon is going to cause a higher priority on getting FH operational. I mean, just because they stopped launching for about 6 months after the CRS-7 launch failure last June, that should not have caused a corresponding 6-month delay in getting Pad-39A ready as well as other ground support related equipment. Indeed, from the quote below, as of February 2016 it moved to more than 6 months away to as much as 9-11 months away (late 2016).

I'll feel better about the prospects for FH once the projected launch date goes from always being 6 or more months away, to 3 months away, then 2 months away..... with less than MANY months in between those "X months away" projections being reduced.

As for Red Dragon itself, I wonder if one of the ISS resupply missions might not end up doing a bit of Red Dragon flight testing after it undocks from ISS. Rather than re-enter soon after undocking, just keep it in orbit for many months, to see if its electronics, systems, and components hold up well enough over the duration of a flight to Mars. Even though a Red Dragon version will be different in some ways, still many core elements would be the same.

Added Info - whenever the first Red Dragon goes to Mars, it'll be an unmanned mission. MANY years away from a manned mission. LOTS of work to do with life support, long-term reliability, and man-rated landing, among other things.

And that is merely for landing there alive, never mind what it'll take to get BACK. And yes I know of some plans for volunteers to do one-way missions (Musk says he would - "Stuff" Elon Says), but I don't expect NASA would ever go for that. One-way missions would be hard-pressed to get resupplied enough, and critical equipment to keep running, to stay alive for years (superb book and movie notwithstanding.....). Of course some would feel it'd be worth it to trade maybe 30-70 years of extra life living on Earth, for the chance of staying alive one year (or a few months) on Mars.... despite a strong risk of not getting there alive.

- George Gassaway

As of April 2015 , the SpaceX manifest has five Falcon Heavy launches listed, but does not show specific dates. By September 2015, and after the failure of Falcon 9 Flight 19 in June 2015, SpaceX rescheduled the maiden Falcon Heavy flight for April/May 2016, but by February 2016 had moved that back to late 2016.
 
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We were supposed to have Tesla battery quick-change stations quite a while ago as well. Fortunately this is just a Mars mission, not as complicated as swapping out a battery.
 
I tend to think that all of Musk's enterprises are privately owned, i.e., there is no public stock issued. The advantage for Musk is that he has more control and he does not have to inform the public where the money goes or how much money people make. The downside is that there is not enough money for expansion.
 
I tend to think that all of Musk's enterprises are privately owned, i.e., there is no public stock issued. The advantage for Musk is that he has more control and he does not have to inform the public where the money goes or how much money people make. The downside is that there is not enough money for expansion.

Tesla (TSLA) and Solarcity (SCTY) are publicly traded. Also, SpaceX is partly minority owned (8.33%) by Google and Fidelity, which brought in a nice round $1B just last year. That isn't the same transparency as being publicly traded, but several seats on the board are held by different venture backers, and they can often dig around with just as much detail as the SEC.

Honestly, I don't know how SpaceX could expand faster. There is only so fast you can go when testing ideas requires actually building something, and trying it out publicly at great expense. The SpaceX timelines always slip, but that isn't surprising when doing things that are hard and have not been done before. I think Musk usually reports the "If everything goes perfectly, no one gets a cold, it doesn't rain, there are no supply chain hiccups right back to the raw material source, etc...timelines. Those kind of timelines never survive, but I think he continues to report them because 1) he is setting aggressive expectations for his people, 2) he genuinely believes these timelines are theoretically possible because if the world were populated with 7B similarly driven people they would be attainable, 3) a non-inconsequential amount of pride/bluster.

I like that he sounds like a crazy man when he says "we're going to do this...". You look at him and think that can't be done man, but how many of those things do his companies then actually pull off? The success rate is quite high given the bar they are jumping over, and they do usually get over the bar even if it doesn't look smooth it usually happens. So I don't think they will get Dragon to a controlled landing on Mars in 2018. I'd put the over/under at mid 2020 (Mars is particularly close then).

Full disclosure: I am an unapologetic Elon Musk fan boy. I can't help but respect people who try hard things, are willing to fail (publicly), and will continue to try hard things.
 
Tesla (TSLA) and Solarcity (SCTY) are publicly traded. Also, SpaceX is partly minority owned (8.33%) by Google and Fidelity, which brought in a nice round $1B just last year. That isn't the same transparency as being publicly traded, but several seats on the board are held by different venture backers, and they can often dig around with just as much detail as the SEC.

Honestly, I don't know how SpaceX could expand faster. There is only so fast you can go when testing ideas requires actually building something, and trying it out publicly at great expense. The SpaceX timelines always slip, but that isn't surprising when doing things that are hard and have not been done before. I think Musk usually reports the "If everything goes perfectly, no one gets a cold, it doesn't rain, there are no supply chain hiccups right back to the raw material source, etc...timelines. Those kind of timelines never survive, but I think he continues to report them because 1) he is setting aggressive expectations for his people, 2) he genuinely believes these timelines are theoretically possible because if the world were populated with 7B similarly driven people they would be attainable, 3) a non-inconsequential amount of pride/bluster.

I like that he sounds like a crazy man when he says "we're going to do this...". You look at him and think that can't be done man, but how many of those things do his companies then actually pull off? The success rate is quite high given the bar they are jumping over, and they do usually get over the bar even if it doesn't look smooth it usually happens. So I don't think they will get Dragon to a controlled landing on Mars in 2018. I'd put the over/under at mid 2020 (Mars is particularly close then).

Full disclosure: I am an unapologetic Elon Musk fan boy. I can't help but respect people who try hard things, are willing to fail (publicly), and will continue to try hard things.

Thanks for the update. That helps clear things up for me.
 
I am not getting any younger. I would really like to see this one and a return to the moon a success in my lifetime.
 
When they do finally launch to Mars there will be months of Total Recall reruns on TV and we'll see the phrase, "Get your ass to Mars" used all over the place.

Musk has confirmed that a manned mission would not use the Dragon as it would be much too small. You can't send people on a multi-month mission in something the size of an SUV.

And the smell at the end of those months!! Whew!!!!
 
Very rich private individuals can accomplish a lot. Just look at John Hammond and his "Park". Spared no expense! Let's just hope the outcome is different.

Joking aside, I really hope some measure of success with this can re-inspire the mass public to support space exploration. Not only as a means for advancing technology in general but also for boosting domestic industry. 21st century industry that is.
 
I really hope some measure of success with this can re-inspire the mass public to support space exploration. Not only as a means for advancing technology in general but also for boosting domestic industry. 21st century industry that is.
I'd argue it already has. At least for me, where my memories of people-in-Space start with watching the Challenger on cable.
 
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