Are we living through a defining point in Human History?

Is this the start of a defining point in Human History?

There are between 200-400 billion Stars in our galaxy. There are in excess of 200 billion galaxies in the observable Universe. There are more Stars in the observable Universe than grains of sand on planet Earth. The majority of these stars are likely to have accompanying solar systems of planets, so there must be more intelligent life out there right (I am making the assumption that we are intelligent life, I wonder sometimes)? I suspect the most likely answer is no, but the correct answer is “WE DO NOT KNOW”. The part of the equation we do not have is “what is the likelihood of abiogenesis occurring?” Self-replicating molecules can be produced in a laboratory. Once simple living cells exist evolution is fairly straight forward. The problem is what is the statistical likelihood of getting from a self-replicating molecule to a living cell. Even though there are trillions of planets out there, the statistical likelihood of abiogenesis occurring on a planet may be trillions of times less than the total of all the Planets in the observable Universe. WE DO NOT KNOW.

Now let’s get into the mind of (heaven forbid) Elon Musk. Elon (and I have heard others state the same) has stated that if we are indeed alone, then only we have consciousness. Only we can comprehend and therefore give meaning to the vast Universe. This is why we have a duty to survive and spread out. Now Elon talks about great filters. These are filters that we must pass to get to the next progression of our society, steps that lead ultimately to our survival being assured. The next great filter is becoming a space faring species (Elon talks about us becoming multiplanetary). While confined to one planet we are vulnerable. Look how quickly the world changed with coronavirus. Elon believes technology and society does not always advance, over the last couple of hundred years we have become accustomed to advancement, but it could be an aberration. There are many hurdles we face here on planet Earth. Elon believes we may only get one opportunity to become multiplanetary, to hedge our bets, and that opportunity could be right now.  

After a young Elon sold PayPal, he approached Robert Zubrin (nuclear physicist and president of the Mars Society). Elon stated that he had a lot of money after selling an internet company (back then Robert Zubrin did not even know who Elon was). Elon said that his personal spending was modest, that he had more than he could spend on himself in a lifetime. That he wanted to dedicate himself to a purpose. That purpose is the advancement of space, making humans multiplanetary. All this is described in Robert Zubrin’s latest book “The Case for Space” and occurred before SpaceX was founded. Elon is spending his life trying to achieve a goal, and he is in a hurry because it may not be achievable in his lifetime. Everything he has done is a step towards that goal. This possibly makes Elon the most unusual (eccentric) individual ever. When young Elon qualified as a physicist, he has self-taught himself engineering since.

Elon founded SpaceX and invested in Tesla in 2001. Both companies almost went bankrupt in 2012 (only eight years ago). SpaceX’s future depended on one launch (after three failures). If the launch had not been successful that would have been the end of SpaceX. The launch was a success, making SpaceX the first private company to launch to orbit (hard to believe it was only eight years ago, now many private companies routinely launch to orbit). The launch resulted in SpaceX’s salvation. The Obama administration wished to commercialize space so SpaceX picked up a lucrative contract to resupply the space station. Today Telsa is the largest manufacturing business in the U.S. Only 20% owned by Musk. They have also opened giga factories outside U.S. (China, Berlin etc). I saw on the internet that tesla could become the world’s first 10 trillion-dollar company soon. Re: SpaceX – It is a private company with Elon the controlling ownership. Elon has stated that he intends to keep it that way. SpaceX can undercut the competition with their re-usable Falcon Nine rocket. It is a profitable organisation that launches more into space than any organisation or nation. SpaceX is currently launching the largest constellation of satellites ever into low earth orbit. They have launched over 700 x 220 kg star link satellites to date in batches of 60. SpaceX began secretly setting up a satellite factory in Richmond (near Seattle) in 2014. Starlink did not become public knowledge till 2018. The factory currently has 6 satellites per day coming off the production line.  Traditionally internet and communication satellites have been launched to geostationary orbit about 35,000 kms out. Very slow latency time. By launching 12.000 satellites to low earth orbit (about 300 kms altitude) an internet system faster than fibre optics can give worldwide coverage. In Australia our Government does not seem to have caught up, still investing in NBN. Once Starnet is up and running SpaceX will quadruple in value and have revenue substantially higher than NASA.

 All of the above is one of the great stories of our time but Elon has not finished. Everything Elon does is an incremental step towards his one driving ambition, to make humans multiplanetary.

Starship- Starship is Elon’s dream launch system. It is being developed at Boca Chica (on Gulf of Mexico near Mexican border). Elon spends a lot of his time at Boca Chica and lives in a small cottage there. There was nothing at Boca Chica two years ago apart from a small group of cottages mainly owned by retirees. SpaceX offered the residents three times the market value for their houses and now owns the village. Boca Chica is now starting to look like a major production facility, the latest building nearing completion is 90 metres tall.

The following seven points need to be part of a launch system in order to make space affordable, that will open up space.

1. One that is simple. Starship is simple, the orbiter (cargo variant) just looks like a giant stainless-steel bullet with thermal tiles on one side and two sets of fins. Will just crash back through atmosphere in horizontal position like a traditional capsule then after terminal velocity attained will re-orientate to vertical position and propulsively land vertically. Starship is being made from a highly polished new alloy of stainless steel that is extremely heat resistant. The windward side will then be covered in a new improved ceramic tile. They will be a lot thinner than shuttle tiles and also a big improvement. These tiles were recently developed by NASA and further refined by SpaceX. They will need to be a vast improvement as shuttle tiles caused major problems.
2. Economies of scale. Two aspects, a) starship is designed to be mass produced spreading development costs and b) starship is large (entire launch system 1.5 times larger than Saturn five, orbiter about three times size of space shuttle orbiter).
3. Versatility. Can be modified for other purposes, e.g. become manned, will become re-fuel able in space, landing legs for landing on earth can also be used for landing on Mars (in future). A skirt around the engines both protects engines during re-entry and also allows for back to back docking in orbit for re-fuelling.
4.  Rapid reusability. Rapid is so important, refuel and re-launch, not six months refurbishing like the Space Shuttle.
5. Re-fuel ability We could throw away our cars and aeroplanes after one use but only an idiot would do so.
6. Fuel stations in space. No good you having a re-fuel able car if there are no service stations to re-fuel it.
7. In-Situ resource utilization. When colonizing Australia, the pioneers did not bring all the timber, bricks, food with them. They hunted, grew crops, made bricks, chopped down trees. In-situ is just a nerdy term. Situ is short for situate. Situate means place. Using in place (off planet) resources. SpaceX’s plan to manufacture methane and O2 from Mars CO2 and water using energy from a large array of solar panels (set up robotically on Mars after an unmanned mission) is an attempt to set up a fuel station on Mars using Martian resources. Starship cannot get off the Surface of Mars unless it is re-fuelled with almost 1,000 tonnes of Methane and liquid oxygen (LOX).
8. I have decided to add one more point for the global warming people. Methane can be made from Earth CO2 and water. Then it burns back to CO2 and water therefore greenhouse gas neutral if used in a launch system (provided green power (my first choice would be nuclear) is used for the production of).

All the above may seem insane but bear in mind that Elon Musk does everything in an incremental manner. The above is the big picture but initially Starship will just be a large unmanned transporter dumping stuff in low earth orbit. Elon has stated that there is an 80-90% chance of the first orbital flight of Starship occurring in 2021. If not it will be the following year. It is believed Starship will reduce the cost to low Earth orbit by a factor of five. SpaceX has again stepped out from the crowd, no other organisation on the planet is developing anything anywhere near like Starship. Its early function will be to launch more star link satellites and take over the launch requirements of SpaceX’s existing launch vehicles. The U.S. military has approached SpaceX. An unmanned cargo starship (if expended) can get 80 + tonnes of military equipment from the U.S. to any crisis point on the planet (as it lands vertically) in just over half an hour. SpaceX has considered producing a passenger carrying variant in the future. For a bit more than twice the cost of a first-class airliner ticket each, two hundred passengers can be launched into orbit then descend, arriving opposite side of globe in just over half an hour. The possibilities are endless but will start out as an unmanned payload service to low earth orbit. Where SpaceX is different is that they design with a long-term objective and versatility in mind. This way you do not need to go right back to the drawing board when ready to progress.

We are living through what could be the beginnings of something historic. People living through history changing times often have no awareness of what is happening. Sure, Elon is in many ways flawed, nobody is perfect. I cringe when he tries his hand at public speaking, that role he should leave to someone else. Regardless, what is happening will go down in the history books.

In the short few days since I wrote this Microsoft has gone into a major partnership relationship with spaceX and will focus on Starlink ground systems, The U.S. defence department has signed a deal for SpaceX to manufacture some early warning satellites (based on their Starlink satellites, this is major as till now, apart from starlink, SpaceX has not manufactured satellites) and SpaceX has done a static test fire (successfully) of three raptor engines at the same time under a new Starship prototype. It is hard to keep up, things are happening fast.

The above is a prototype orbiter starship which will attempt to do a 15 Km altitude flight, desend horizontally, then flip vertically and propulsively land vertically. The orbiter is maybe 3-4 times larger than the Space Shuttle, and will sit on top of a booster 50% higher still making a launch system 150% larger than previous largest, the Saturn Five.

Three Raptors in engine bay