Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined more than 100 technology leaders in signing a new letter that urges the United Nations to protect the world from the "dangers" of deadly autonomous weapons.

The letter, released at the opening of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Melbourne, Australia, warns that these weapons "threaten to become the third revolution in warfare."

"Once developed," the letter continues, "they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend."

The letter was signed by more than 116 founders of robotics and artificial intelligence companies from 26 countries, according to the Faculty of Engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Toby Walsh, a professor on artificial intelligence at UNSW, unveiled the letter. It is also signed by Mustafa Suleyman, who is co-founder of Google's DeepMind AI project.

Musk, a billionare whose other business ventures include SpaceX and Mars colonization, has repeatedly warned about the dangers of AI. In July, he told America's governors that people "should be really concerned" about artificial intelligence, which "is a fundamental risk for human civilization." Earlier this month he tweeted that AI is more dangerous than North Korea.

In December 2016, 123 nations that are part of the U.N. Convention on Conventional Weapons agreed to set up formal talks on the dangers of autonomous weapons. At the time, 19 countries called for a complete ban, and Human Rights Watch cheered the move towards formal talks as "a major step toward negotiations for a ban" on "killer robots."

The new letter warns that autonomous weapons could be used by despots and terrorists alike against "innocent populations," and even weapons held by more responsible powers could be hacked.

"We do not have long to act. Once this Pandora's box is opened, it will be hard to close," the letter says. It beseaches the U.N. "to find a way to protect us all from these dangers."

IJCAI previously sent a letter in 2015 about dangers of autonomous weapons, signed by thousands of researchers in AI and robotics from around the world, which included the endorsements of Musk, British physicist Stephen Hawking and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

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Elon Musk signs letter urging UN to protect world from 'Pandora's box' of deadly autonomous weapons - Washington Examiner

Photo Credit: Ancient Aliens/History Channel Image Acquired from A&E Networks Press

Will there be a Baby Driver sequel? by Sooz

Fear Factor finale preview: Get a sneak peek at the the chilling challenges the final crop contestants must face by Cody Schultz

Photo Credit: Ancient Aliens/History Channel Image Acquired from A&E Networks Press

In 1984, a roll of 35mm film was sent from an anonymous source in Albuquerque, NM to the doorstep of filmmaker Jaime Shandera in Burbank, CA. The film contained still pictures of eight top secret pages known as the Eisenhower Briefing Document. The documents are a briefing from the head of the CIA to Eisenhower from 1952, and they inform him of not only the MJ12 organization, but also groups composition and purpose. That purpose is UFOs and communication with aliens.

In April 2017, Giorgio Tsoukolos met with investigator Linda Moulton Howe, one of the first people to see Top Secret documents in 1994. Those documents are from April 1954 and have official Majestic 12 Group markings, as well as a war office stamp.

Regardless of opinions on the matter, many believe the Roswell Incident is incontrovertible proof of Americas involvement and interaction with aliens. In fact, the local newspaper reported that a flying saucer was captured at Roswell Army Air Field in the following days paper. Government officials may have clarified with the whole weather balloon comment the following day, but a close examination of all the available data makes that fairly difficult to believe.

Could the Roswell Incident and the formation of MJ12 be mutually revealing? If not, its awfully coincidental. Furthermore, other Top Secret organizations were formed around the same time:

According to Dwight D. Eisenhowers great-granddaughter, the organization was real, and her famous relative had no choice but to continue what Truman had started. In fact, she says Eisenhower physically met with aliens.

Any secret with more than one person involved risks not being a secret. So its interesting to consider MJ12 as a hoax considering its relative anonymity.

In the first place, MJ12 itself may have actively attempted to throw investigators off the scent. Famous astrophysicist Donald Menzel may have been the perfect person to dissuade potential believers. Menzel was a UFO contrarian and skeptic. In fact, he wrote multiple books on the matter. According to Robert Wood, PhD, Menzels books were nothing more than counter-intelligence. Indeed, while some of the information in MJ12 documents has been disproven, there is certainly more than a grain of truth when it comes to Menzels inclusion in the group.

Americas first Secretary of Defense was James Forrestal, who was also the first man to lead MJ12. Appointed by Truman to be in charge of the secret MJ12 investigations, Forrestal may have uncovered German secrets that needed to be kept secret. The official stance is that he suffered from depression, and committed suicide from the 16th floor of a hospital.

His suicide is highly questionable. Some have mentioned scratch marks were allegedly on the window, and his own brother unequivocally refutes the possibility of suicide. Among his brothers concerns are the plans James had following hospital discharge, the bill of health given by all top level people (including Truman), and the fact he committed suicide a few hours before was to be discharged.

Perhaps James Forrestal was planning on spilling the beans on Americas involvement with UFOs?

JFKs death has been discussed, researched, reported and debated ad nauseam. Those details wont be discussed. Howe provides one extra piece of information. She breaks down one Top Secret document often referred to as the Scorched Memo, recovered from a fire. That document is allegedly from CIA chief Allen Dulles referencing JFK. For example, it says LANCER the Secret Service name for JFK at the time was getting a little too curious for their liking.

The fact that a later portion mentions that it should be wet, makes the document potential authorization to kill JFK if he doesnt cease his inquiries.

Furthermore, author Douglas Caddy was interviewed on the episode about his last interaction with CIA operative E. Howard Hunt. Caddy says he had personal communication with Hunt in 1975, and explicitly asked about a JFK assassination. According to Caddy, the reply was that JFK was indeed assassinated. Apparently JFK was about to give Americas most vital secret to the Soviets.

Much of this Ancient Aliens episode revolves around a second roll of film unveiled in March 1994. According to Howe, its the most compelling document to confirm the MJ12 cover-up.

Howe states the documents titled Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology, Recovery and Disposal have been authenticated multiple ways, one of which includes the typeset. In fact, typeset nuances were traced back to a monotype in a government printing lab, and confirmed by a longstanding employee there.

Other details contained within the second roll of film are four different sketches of UFOs (e.g. Triangle, Long tube, Ice cream cone), a note about mutually agreed upon, alien initiated, obscure location meetups, and an investigation into Interplanetary Phenomena Unit (IPU) in July 1947. The IPU investigation was ordered by President Eisenhower, and conducted at the White Sands Proving Ground by General Nathan Farragut Twining. According to Eisenhower, Twinings report was for the purpose of making an appraisal of the reported unidentified objects being kept there. Additionally, the final report included talks of a possible atomic engine inside a UFO confirmed by Dr. Robert Oppenheimer.

The rest of the Ancient Aliens episode rambles a bit, as most episodes do. If there were a format for 45 minute shows, Ancient Aliens would be a perfect candidate. Speaking of perfect candidates, there is a guy named Corey Goode who alleges to be part of a secret military space program (i.e. Solar Warden) and Mars colonization effort that involves three dozen nations.

Furthermore, a hacker named Gary McKinnon may have found more proof of a link between MJ12 and current space operations. He hacked into NASA and Pentagon servers to uncover files he claims provide undeniable proof of MJ12 and their legacy. In one such document, he found a list of people and ships that were named after original MJ12 personnel. For what its worth, Corey Goode confirms his experiences with Solar Warden.

Both believe the truth is being hidden from the general population, but everything will soon be disclosed.

This episode of Ancient Aliens is a bit different. It deals more with cover-ups than actual aliens. Nonetheless

The total count for the ancient astronaut theorists suggest/say/theorize phrase variation: 3.

Ancient Aliens airs Friday nights on the History channel.

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Ancient Aliens: Did Truman create the Majestic 12 to conceal UFOs? - Hidden Remote

DALLAS, Aug. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Elon Musk, the brilliant mind behind numerous companiesmost notably Teslahad many forces early in life shape him into the ambitious man he is today. Born in South Africa, his mother was a Canadian dietitian and model, and his father an engineer and sailor. He's the oldest of three and was always a cerebral child interested in comic books, video games and Sci Fi. As a teenager his desire to learn continued: He read the entire contents of the local library, then devoured two sets of encyclopedias.

He leveraged his thirst for knowledge and knack for technology as an adult. Just looking at his resume one discovers how his mind works differentlyhow he always thinks of the big picture, and considers ideas that will change the world for decades and centuries to come. He thought up online banking before anyone even considered it with PayPal; mainstreamed electric cars with Tesla; sought to make Mars colonization for the masses possible with SpaceX; and dreamed up high-speed, underground, long-distance transportation with Hyperloop.

In the pursuit of these projects and others, he has had to face work-life balance head on: He now has shared custody of his five sons with his ex-wife. He's a wild business success and visionary, but this article explores whether in Musk's case, that meant paying the price for quality personal relationships.

"One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy."

Elon Musk in the September 2017 issue of SUCCESS

Also Inside This Issue

September is the Priorities issue of SUCCESS. From articles on the importance of maintaining authenticity to the secret for maximizing your performance, this issue will give you the tools you need to put the most important things in life first. You'll also learn about the downside of perfectionism, the solution for a dream job that doesn't pay well and the benefit of having an accountability partner.

For full stories, pick up the September issue, on newsstands August 8. For more information about SUCCESS Magazine and additional personal development content, visit http://www.success.com.

AboutSUCCESSSUCCESSMagazine is a national newsstand publication and your guide to personal and professional development through inspiration, motivation and training.SUCCESSinspires 2 million readers a month, and has a total social reach of 5 million fans. SUCCESSMagazine was founded in 1897 by influential thinker Orison Swett Marden. It is owned byDallas-based SUCCESS Partners founded byStuart Johnson.

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In the September Issue of SUCCESS, Learn About Whether Visionary Elon Musk's Mission to Change the World Has ... - Markets Insider

Whats the Schwarzenegger line from that action movie? Get to the choppa! No, wait. Hasta la vista, babee. No, wrong again. Oh yeah! Get your [self] to Mars! Thats it! Its now been 27 years (yikes!) since Total Recall thrilled audiences with hints of virtual realities and Mars colonization and rebellion. Now, you can play a part in a dream of Mars with Total Recall: The Official Tabletop Game, launching on Kickstarter today.

A game of bluffing and deduction for 4-8 players for players ages 12 and up. Total Recall is from Brian Henk and Clayton Skancke, who have also paired up to bring you New Salem, Good Cop, Bad Cop, and Leaders of Euphoria: Choose a Better Oppressor. Total Recall plays in 20-40 minutes and pits rebels against feds against Rekall scientists.

I played with a pre-launch print & play version of the game. Im told that, while the art is pretty close, it will change a bit so that the rebels and feds are easier to tall apart. Additionally, I had some spiffy player mats, which might not be part of the standard game. Additionally, there will likely be some upgrades that backers can pony up for: plastic minis instead of the cardboard gun standees, metal bars for Turbinium instead of the plastic gems, and more. Finally, like all pre-launch projects, components and art are subject to change!

That said, heres what youll find inside the box:

The artwork is original. That is, it doesnt feature the likenesses of any of the actors in either the Arnold Schwarzenegger or Colin Farrell versions. Im not going to try to understand the licensing that goes on with something like this, but Im sure its complicated and expensive, so I understand the reasons for original art.

While the standees and plastic gems do the job just fine, Ive seen renders of what the plastic minis and metal bars might look like and they are impressive and fun. In line with that, theres certainly no need for the play mats; the game will play the same without them, but adding them to the table definitely helps with the theme and are worth considering.

Each player gets a gun, a piece of Turbinium, and a Plot card. Character cards are sorted, depending on the number of players in the game, to create a deck. For instance, if playing with 5 players, remove the cards marked 6+, 7+, and 8+. The cards for Cohaagen and Kuato are removed, along enough cards from the deck to equal the total number of players. These are shuffled and dealt out, guaranteeing that no single player might be dealt both leaders. Next, the remaining deck is dealt until all players have exactly three face-down Character cards.

Players review their cards and determine if they are on the Fed team or the Rebel team, whether by simple majority of cards or possession of either leader. Next, players place the cards face-down in front of them. Players may look at their own cards at any time, but not move their positions after they have been placed. Bluffing then begins, trying to convince, persuade, or dissuade others of your true or false alliance. Rebels try to root out the Feds and kill their leader, Feds try to get the Rebels in the same way.

On a players turnplayers have four options for actionsthey may take one of the following:

If youre shot, you must reveal any face-down Character cards and return your gun to your side. If you have a leader, apply a Wounded token on that card. If the leader was already wounded, the game ends immediately. If you dont have a leader, you have woken from your dream about Mars and are now part of the Rekall team. Set all of your Character cards aside. Turn your reference card/player mat to the Rekall side. You get to keep the Turbinium you had, but you must give your Plot cards to the character who shot you. You have a new objective: to take all the Turbinium from the Fed and Rebel players.

Rekall Scientists, on their turns, may:

Play continues until one of four endgame conditions presents itself. If Kuato or Cohaagen receive two wounds, the game ends and the opposite team wins. If all the Turbinium is either in the Supply or in the hands of the Rekall Scientists, Rekall players win. Finally, if a player possesses both Cohaagen and Kuato at the same time, that player wins.

Total Recall was a movie that really captured a lot of imaginations back in the early 90s. It was great for geeks toohere was the worlds biggest action star in a sci-fi movie. What a great time! Total Recall: The Official Tabletop Game goes a long way toward capturing those feelings (without putting an oversized probe up your nose). The theme of unsuspected rebels walking among the devious feds is perfect for designers Henk & Skanckes brand of bluffing and deduction.

We liked Total Recall a lot; its wonderful. The tension at the table is often thick enough that you couldnt cut it with a Sharon Stone scissor kick. As long as cards are hidden, players are overly cautious and deceitful in revealing any information about their affiliations. However, with just three hidden characters, allegiances are soon revealed. One might think this would lead to a quick end game, however, plot cards and the role of the Rekall Scientists can lead to chaos; joyous, exciting, and wonderful chaos.

By swapping out cards of the dreamers (Rebels and Feds), Rekall Scientists can cause players to switch sides multiple times in a round and tip the balance of the majority. It is insane. Plot cards can also cause players to swap cards, divert shots, protect hidden cards, and more. (Note: This project will also include some NSFW cards, which are marked NSFW for language, specifically, lines from the film. The language, in my opinion, isnt overly objectionableno f-bombsbut if you want to play without these cards, it wont affect gameplay.) Having the Rekall Scientists is a great touch because if you get shot early, you are still in the game to the end (a nice improvement over Good Cop, Bad Cop).

However, the game is not without faults. Twice, during an afternoon of play, a leader was exposed on a very early turn and the game was over before the third round ended. Maybe that was just bad luck on our part, but it did feel weird. Another complaint is that the Turbinium is limited and, while the Plot deck is rich with great effects and adds greatly to the theme, I felt like we didnt get to experience enough of them in the game because players need to have Turbinium to play a Plot card. Maybe that was due to the play style of some of our players, a bit more aggressive than the others, but it was within the rules.

Still, Total Recall: The Official Tabletop Game is a really good time. Games move quickly enough that even if you have bad luck, like we did, were on the losing side, or just didnt get to shoot anyone, the next game is just around the corner. Like most bluffing/deduction games, Total Recall works best when played with a larger group. It can be played with a smaller group, but isnt as much fun, in my opinion. In a bigger crowd, theres more interaction, more deceit, more chance that the Rekall Scientists get involved, and its just better.

So get to Mars, jump in a Johnny Cab, start the reactor, back the game, and start having a blast!

I work. I play games. Sometimes I work at playing games.

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Kickstarter Alert: Get to Mars With 'Total Recall: The Official Tabletop Game' - GeekDad (blog)

Android Marvel (blog)

Mars colonization Android Marvel (blog) Mars would be a boring place to live according to Physicist Brian Cox · July 29, 2017 Abhin Mahipal 0 Comments Brian Cox, Mars, Mars colonization. According to popular physicist Brian Cox, humans will live in cities on Mars within the next 50 to 100 years. and more »

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Mars colonization - Android Marvel (blog)

Enlarge / SpaceX may be dumping the outer ring of 21 engines for its new Mars vehicle.

SpaceX

Last year, SpaceX founder Elon Musk shared plans for his transportation system to send humans to Mars in the 2020s. But the fantastically huge rocket, with 42 Raptor engines and enormous technical challenges, seemed more like science fiction than reality. Then there was the small matter of who would pay the tens of billions of dollars to develop a rocket that had fewif anycommercial prospects beyond sending 100 people to Mars at a time.

Musk seems to have realized that his ambitions were a tad too ambitious in recent months, and has said he will release a "revised" plan for Mars colonization that addresses some of these technical and fiscal questions. Now, we know this discussion will come duringthe 2017 International Astronautical Conference in Adelaide, Australia, on September 29. And this weekend, Musk dropped a big hint about the change.

In response to a question on Twitter, Musk wrote, "A 9m diameter vehicle fits in our existing factories ..." And this is actually quite a substantial hint, because the original "Interplanetary Transport System" had a massive 12-meter diameter. By scaling back to 9 meters, this suggests that Musk plans to remove the outer ring of 21 Raptor engines, leaving a vehicle with 21 engines instead of the original 42. While still complicated to manage during launch and flight, 21 engines seems more reasonable. Such a vehicle would also have about 50 percent less mass.

At 9 meters the revised Mars rocket would still be considerably larger than SpaceX's current booster, the 3.7-meter Falcon 9 rocket. But it would be smaller than the most powerful rocket ever flown, the 10-meter Saturn V booster that launched the Apollo crews to the Moon.

Downscaling the Mars booster suggests that Musk may be bending toward reality. A 9-meter rocket means that it could be produced in SpaceX's existing facilities, saving the company the expense of building a much larger factory. (Pragmatically, it could also be produced in NASA's rocket factory in Michoud, La., without major renovations). A smaller, but still powerful rocket also opens the door to commercial opportunities and military contracts.

Most notably, the US Air Force is in the midst of soliciting bids for the second phase of a $2 billion competition to develop new launch vehicles that can meet the government's space mission needs. This is part of the Air Force's efforts to end US reliance on the Russian-made RD-180 engine, and this competition is for development contracts to build launch systems capable of flying missions by the early- to mid-2020s. It is possible, then, that SpaceX may bid for some of these funds to help develop the Mars rocket, perhaps for the Raptor engine, or the entire vehicle.

A successful Air Force bid would answer one important question Musk faceshow to pay for the Mars rocket. An answer to another key question could come later this year, whether SpaceX can really manage to control dozens of rocket engines during flight. Although the Falcon Heavy rocket has a different configuration from the Mars rocket, it requires the coordination of 27 Merlin engines during launch. If SpaceX can do that during the Falcon Heavy's maiden launchpossibly later this yearthen controlling 21 engines on the Mars rocket doesn't seem to be that great of a stretch.

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Elon Musk's Mars rocket may be about to lose half of its engines - Ars Technica

There are two types of people in this world: those who walk on Mars if given the chance, and those who would not. Buzz Aldrin recently helped create a virtual reality experience that will help humans experience what it might be like to walk on Mars, if youre so inclined.

Buzz Aldrin famously is the second man to walk on the moon. An acclaimed astronaut and engineer, Aldrin has long been a spokesman in explaining humans journey into the cosmos. He has dedicated his life to furthering our scientific understanding and inspiring more into a path among the stars.

Aldrin doesnt want walking on Mars to be limited to a VR program, however. As he stated in an interview with Futurism, he believes that humans should be interested beyond simple exploration.

One of the things that makes space exploration so exciting is that the possibilities are endless, he told Futurism. Mars is the next actionable step for uswe have never been closer to knowing and exploring another planet. Plus, I believe that Mars has realistic potential for colonization.

That colonization may come sooner than you think. As Aldrin later added, Now is the time to start thinking seriously about what life on Mars might look like in the future. I believe we can have the first Human Martians at Mars by 2040.

With worries rising from the scientific community over climate change, a Mars colonization could prove advantageous. Though Aldrin acknowledges not everyone will be able to step on Mars anytime soon, he does hope these VR and AR programs will stimulate national interest in supporting our nautical journeys.

It is in our nature to explore, Aldrin said. We, as a species, are curious and want to see whats over the next hill, see how fast we can go. It was only 66 years from the point that the Wright brothers flew to us flying rockets to the Moon.

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Buzz Aldrin Says Humans Need To Get Off Earth ASAP - The Fresh Toast

Adam Savage loves space suits. When I interviewed him in March, he spoke about how safety equipment appealed to him, whether it was firefighter gear, the protective armor that bomb disposal personnels wear, or space suits of the fictional variety.

For the last several years, Savage would attend San Diego Comic-Con dressed up in a costume that hides his identity, something he calls Adam Incognito. This year, one of the costumes he suited up in was one used in the production of Alien: Covenant.

After he returned from the floor, I spoke with him about why hes so attracted to these galactic wear.

This interview has been condensed for clarity.

Looking back to how you said youre attracted to safety equipment, how did you find wearing the Alien space suit while walking around the floor today? Were you impervious to the crowds?

Well, I'm not impervious to the crowds, because about 75 people came up to me and said you must be Adam. I've definitely spoiled my own thing because Ive done so much cosplay now that any time people see an elaborate, full suit, they ask if its me.

However, the guys at FBFX did a nice job [with this suit]. This fabric looks heavy duty. It looks like ballistic nylon, but it breathes quite well.

To you, what makes up a good space suit costume? What components do you look for?

The stuff that I really like in a space suit is the detail. In a NASA suit, I love the high-level details that tell the story that this was made by people. If you look at NASA hardware really close up you really can sense that these arent production-made items. They're one-offs, each one handmade by a machinist, designed by engineers. And, the best movie space suits are the ones that also communicate that same kind of hand-hewn attention to detail.

What's an example of a detail that you found stands out in a real or fictional suit?

Right now, I'm totally obsessed with the [Alien] Covenant stuff. They have a number of things like little brass tags and tiny markers, and even things like pressure readings that are based off of what the real pressure of that suit would probably be.

So what can cosplayers learn from real suits, and what can real suit makers learn from science fictional suits?

It's funny because real space suits almost never have lights in the helmet. [Theyre] a totally a movie trope because you have to see the actors. There are almost no lights on any NASA suit.

There is a simplicity to NASA hardware and it's required: you need that simplicity. A film like Alien: Covenant is layering in [details] because theyre thinking of a future where these aren't one-off items: they are [mass-produced.]

With its reveal of the latest Z-2 backpack entry suit, NASA is definitely trying to sexy it up to garner a bit more public excitement. They gave it some color, called it the Mars Colonization Suit. I think that's a reasonable thing for an organization like NASA to do, and the positive benefits from The Martian, I think, led if not directly then were at least partially responsible for the increase in NASA's budget a couple of years later. These things capture the public's imagination.

NASAs running out of space suits.

NASA is behind in their space suit production. Its over a million dollars to make a space suit. They now have a set of replacement parts where they can fit together a suit that fits an astronaut by adjusting the arms and the legs and the various geometries.

But yeah, NASA uses a ludicrously complex set of procedures to make this the multilayer, air-proof suits it uses.

What what trends are you seeing in costume manufacturing that has changed how people are making suits?

There's two major leaps. One is from cosplayers: the advancement of foam building technology using camping mats, hot glue, and contact cement to make really elaborate costumes. Its unparalleled: this is a really exciting time, and budgets are going lower because the materials are more easy to come by. It's just about the sweat equity of making sure the forms look great and curves are good.

The other major advancement that I'm really excited about is screen-printing dimension and texture onto lightweight fabrics, so that they look heavy-duty. Captain Americas Winter Soldier costume was an early, excellent harbinger of what's coming. They took four-way stretch dance fabric, which is really light and easy to wear for the actor, and they printed it with texture that made it look like the old ballistic nylon, which is much heavier and harder for the actor to wear, so its much more comfortable.

It turns out that a primary cost on making feature films is just getting the actors out and back into their costumes so they can eat lunch. No actor wants to sit in some giant space suit and try to eat a burrito. It sometimes takes an entire special effects team half an hour or maybe more to get an actor out of a cumbersome costume.

So, working with lighter-weight materials that breathe more definitely increases the the length of time the actors can spend in those suits, and then increases the amount the production can get done.

How about 3D printing and rapid prototyping? I know for some productions, they end up printing up a number of components or props.

3D printing has totally revolutionized both cosplay and costuming for movies. I know that neck rings that FBFX effects made for The Martian and for this suit were 3D printed. [Even] when you machine something and then cast it, trying to get the parts to couple back together is difficult, with the shrinkage inherent in casting and the shrinkage is dependent upon the volume of the material you're trying to cast. That means that some of these are straight 3D printed high strength resins, and that's kind of the only way you can do stuff like this.

[Pointing to the Alien Covenant Helmet on the table] How about this helmet in particular?

I think this helmet is largely 3D printed. Some of the forms for the carbon fiber pressure panels... the neck rings are totally 3D printed, and then there's all this brass etching and all this custom detail. FBFX and companies like it all around the world are using this to radically increase the shapes and the stuff they can produce, lowering the amount of time they need to make it.

Do you see this trickling into the cosplay consumer market?

It's totally trickling in the consumer market, because you can now buy an Ultimaker printer for a couple of grand, and get really impressive resolution for effectively a prosumer model 3D printer.

Last question: right now, whats your favorite space suit?

Currently right now, it's both of the suits from Alien: Covenant: the hard suit that Tennessee wears, which has all 3D printed bearings. It's an absolute masterpiece of engineering. Those were not off-the-shelf components. That suit would have cost tens of thousands of dollars if they were. That was a completely wearable hard suit. That's simply because those guys wanted to push the envelope of what was possible in movie costumes.

Photography by Andrew Liptak / The Verge

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Adam Savage explains why space suits are his happy place - The ... - The Verge

With NASA still trying to figure out how itll pay for plans to land humans on Mars, it seemed SpaceX could be our best option to get people up there in the next decade. Well, that may not be the case anymore at least not on that accelerated timeline.

While speaking at the ISS R&D Conference, Musk revealed SpaceX will likely scrap plans to use propulsive landing gear (the little engines that blast out from the lower sides of the capsule) to put Dragon capsules on Mars for supply drops and eventual manned missions.

He said the company now believes theres a better way to land there, and the companys next round of rockets and spacecraft would reflect that. Musk, umm, didnt actually give any details of what this figure might look like, though. Despite that, Musk later clarified they still want to use propulsive landing tech just on much bigger ships. You know, when Musk claims Mars as the sovereign nation of Tesla, and all that. Sadly, no timeline on anything yet.

There was a time when I thought that the Dragon approach to landing on Mars... would be the right way to land on Mars. But now I'm pretty confident that is not the right way. There's a far better approach. That's what the next generation of SpaceX rockets and spacecraft is going to do.

Though SpaceX has been working on propulsive landing tech for a while (and its a key part of the emergency escape system for Dragon 2, designed to thrust the capsule away from a potential explosion), Dragon capsules have mostly been using parachutes to land back on Earth anyway. So that wont change. The company had run into some safety concerns with adding landing legs to the Dragon 2, and its not clear if that also played a role in scrapping the tech for wider use on these craft, but it stands to reason it was a factor.

So what is SpaceX cooking up? Something big-ish, surely. Musk wouldnt have dropped this news or made this decision without having a new plan in the works, and he at least seems to think this next generation system is a much better option. Theres also buzz Musk could update his Mars colonization plan later this year, and this could certainly be a part of that. Heres hoping, because we really dont want to wait another 20+ years to reach Mars.

(Via The Verge)

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SpaceX may scrap plans to land Dragon spacecrafts on Mars by end of 2020s - SYFY WIRE (blog)

Elon Musk (left) talks to NASA International Space Station (ISS) program manager Kirk Shireman on July 19, 2017, at the ISS Research and Development conference in Washington, D.C.

Elon Musk may be focused primarily on Mars, but he'd also like to see a human outpost on a world much closer to home.

"To really get the public real fired up, I think we've got to have a base on the moon," the billionaire founder and CEO of SpaceX said today (July 19) at the 2017 International Space Station Research and Development (ISSR&D) conference in Washington, D.C.

"Having some permanent presence on another heavenly body, which would be the kind of moon base, and then getting people to Mars and beyond that's the continuance of the dream of Apollo that I think people are really looking for," Musk told NASA ISS program manager Kirk Shireman, who interviewed him onstage at the conference. [Moon Base Visions: How to Build a Lunar Colony (Photos)]

Musk and SpaceX are working to make the latter part of that vision a reality within the next 50 years or so. Last September, at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) meeting in Mexico, the entrepreneur unveiled plans for a reusable rocket-spaceship combo called the Interplanetary Transport System. The ITS would help colonize Mars and, potentially, allow humanity to explore more distant worlds, such as the Jupiter moon Europa and the Saturn satellite Enceladus.

Musk has been relatively quiet about the ITS since then, but he said he plans to give an update about the architecture at the next IAC conference, which will be held this September in Adelaide, Australia. And he teased an ITS tweak that SpaceX has been working on.

Downsizing the ITS spaceship a bit the originally unveiled version would carry at least 100 people and using it for some profit-generating "Earth-orbit activity" could help make Mars colonization economically feasible, Musk said at the ISSR&D conference today.

"That's one of the key elements in the new architecture," Musk said. "It's similar to what was [unveiled] at IAC, but it's a little bit smaller still big. I think this one's got a shot at being real on the economic front. You know, that's the trick."

Musk also said today that another one of his ventures, The Boring Company, could aid in Mars colonization as well. The Boring Company's main goal is to construct tunnel networks beneath (and, eventually, between) traffic-choked cities such as Los Angeles, enabling speedier travel.

But advanced tunneling technology will also be in high demand on Mars, Musk said, citing the likely need to mine large amounts of ice and other natural resources. And Red Planet colonists may want to live underground, at least part of the time, to shield themselves from the relatively high radiation fluxes encountered on the Martian surface, he added.

"You can build a tremendous amount underground with the right boring technology on Mars, so I do think there's some overlap in that technology-development arena," Musk said.

But Earth-optimized tunneling machines won't do the job on Mars, he stressed.

"The Earth ones are really heavy. Like, really heavy," Musk said. "You're not worried about weight for an Earth tunneling machine; actually, you want one that's nice and heavy. But a Mars one,you'd have to redesign it to be superlight that's a tricky one and then just take into account the different conditions on Mars and everything else."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter@michaeldwallandGoogle+.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published onSpace.com.

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Elon Musk Calls for Moon Base - Space.com

Simulated Mars Mission

Next to an old nuclear bomber hangar in western Poland, a mission to the surfaces of both the moon and Mars is about to begin.

The two-week mission is just a simulation, of course, since no entity on Earth is prepared toinhabit deep space. But the experiment called the Poland Mars Analogue Simulation 2017 will study a group of six volunteer analogue astronauts as they work through a realistic schedule of space exploration, then provide those findings to anyone whos drawing up crewed missions beyond Earth.

This mission will be one of the most comprehensive Mars analogue missions ever conducted in Europe, Mina Takla, spokesperson for thePMAS 2017 mission, told Business Insider in an email.

The experiment, which Business Insider first learned about through theDawn of Private Space Science Symposiumon June 4, is being spearheaded by theSpace Exploration Project Group, or SEPG. (The group is part of the Space Generation Advisory Council and works with the United Nations on its space exploration research and support efforts.)

Many other partners are involved in the mission, too, including The Mars Society, European Space Agency, and European Space Foundation.

The projects central feature is a U-shaped habitat thats connected to a nuclear fighter [plane] hangar near Pila, Poland, Takla said.

To make the mission possible, PMAS 2017 rounded up money from corporate sponsors, and also raised tens of thousands of dollars throughcrowdfundingsites. To create the habitat, the Space Garden Company a partner to the project secured material donations and also did some fundraising.

Organizers have dubbed their faux habitat project the Martian Modular Analog Research Station, orM.A.R.S.

As Marta Bellon of Business Insider Polandreported in May 2016, a previous design for the base, created by British architect Scott Porter, called for four arms and a domed headquarters built by Freedomes (the same company that built the fictional Mars habitats for the blockbuster movie The Martian).

However, organizers have since dropped the four-armed design for a U-shaped one. The habitats planned location in southern Poland also moved to western Poland in the past year.

The new, U-shaped M.A.R.S. facility will have six units, each with its own dedicated purpose, such as scientific research, crew quarters (including a gym), habitation, hygienic facilities, kitchen area, and storage and systems, Takla said. The entry and exit to the habitat will be via an airlock.

Takla did not provide Business Insider with any sketches or photos of the facility in time for publication, nor could he confirm if and when its construction was completed.

Assuming M.A.R.S. is finished in time, sixanalogue astronautswill land in the habitat on July 31, then work and live and work inside it through August 13.

The volunteers hail from Puerto Rico, Israel, Spain, France, India, the US, Nigeria, and other locations. Meanwhile, a larger support team will operate as mission control in the northern Polish city of Torun, including psychologists tomonitor the astronauts.

[PMAS 2017] will be one of the most international, multicultural, and interdisciplinary analogue missions ever conducted, with members from over 28 different countries and representing scientific disciplines ranging from engineering to astrophysics, psychology, geology, and biology, Takla said.

In addition to following a strict schedule of experiments, maintenance, and personal time, mission managers will simulate other realities for a far-off planetary mission, including spacesuits to leave M.A.R.S., and annoying communications delays.

[T]he first three days of the 14 days of the simulation will be in Lunar mode with a real-time communication between habitat and Mission Control, before we go for the remaining 11 days into the Martian mode, Tajana Lui, co-leader of SEPG, told Business Insider in an email.

When the Martian mode starts, Lui said, the time delay will be 15 minutes, and simulates the long distance between Earth and Mars and the related communication delay.

The PMAS 2017 mission isnt the only project trying to figure out how to run a tightly operated lunar or Martian base.

HI-SEAS in Hawaii, for example which former Business Insider reporter Kelly Dickerson visited has astronauts who live and work inside a habitatbuilt on the side of a barren volcano.

Russia, China, and the ESA have also run six willing astronauts through a psychological gauntlet with its $15 millionMars500 experiment.

That project, which ended a few years ago, had the astronauts stay inside for 520 days, or nearly a year and a half, to see what challenges they faced and how to prevent or solve them when real Mars colonization missions actually begin. (Boredom, concludedan exhaustive studyof the project, is one of the greatest hurdles to overcome.)

Such information could prove extremely valuable to the first nation (or private company,like SpaceX) to land people on Mars. Whoever is spending tens of billions of dollars to get the job done, theyll not only want a crew to survive to tell the tale, but also make the best use of their time some 140 million miles from Earth.

Correction (July 10, 2017): Business Insider was initially given and directed to outdated information about M.A.R.S. We have since corrected and updated this story to reflect the projects current details.

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Six Volunteer 'Astronauts' Are About to Lock Themselves Inside a Simulated Mars Colony - Futurism

Spacex is estimating they wil be able to achieve $140,000 per ton for the trips to Mars. If a person plus their luggage is less than that, taking into account food consumption and life support, the cost of moving to Mars could ultimately drop below $100,000.

Cost will be brought down 5 million percent with * fully reusable rocket * orbital refueling * Propellent production on Mars * CH4 / O2 DEEP-CRYO Methalox fuel

The Spacex ITS (Interplanetary Transport Systme) rocket booster is really a scaled-up version of the Falcon 9 booster. There are a lot of similarities, such as the grid fins and clustering a lot of engines at the base. The big differences are that the primary structure is an advanced form of carbon fiber as opposed to aluminum lithium, we use autogenous pressurization, and we get rid of the helium and the nitrogen.

Spcex has been able to optimize the propellant needed for boost back and landing to get it down to about 7% of the lift-off propellant load. With some optimization, maybe we can get it down to about 6%.

Spacex is now getting quite comfortable with the accuracy of the landing of rockets. With the addition of maneuvering thrusters, they think they can actually put the booster right back on the launch stand. Then, those fins at the base are essentially centering features to take out any minor position mismatch at the launch site.

The Raptor engine is going to be the highest chamber pressure engine of any kind ever built, and probably the highest thrust-to-weight. It is a full-flow staged combustion engine, which maximizes the theoretical momentum that you can get out of a given source fuel and oxidizer. We subcool the oxygen and methane to densify it. Compared with when used close to their boiling points in most rockets, in our case, we load the propellants close to their freezing point. That can result in a density improvement of around 10%12%, which makes an enormous difference in the actual result of the rocket. It gets rid of any cavitation risk for the turbo pumps, and it makes it easier to feed a high-pressure turbo pump if you have very cold propellant.

One of the keys here, though, is the vacuum version of the Raptor having a 382-second ISP. This is critical to the whole Mars mission and we are confident we can get to that number or at least within a few seconds of that number, ultimately maybe even exceeding it slightly.

Over time, there were would be many spaceships. You would ultimately have upwards of 1,000 or more spaceships waiting in orbit. Hence, the Mars Colonial fleet would depart en masse.

It makes sense to load the spaceships into orbit because you have got 2 years to do so, and then you can make frequent use of the booster and the tanker to get really heavy reuse out of those. With the spaceship, you get less reuse because you have to consider how long it is going to lastmaybe 30 years, which might be perhaps 1215 flights of the spaceship at most. Therefore, you really want to maximize the cargo of the spaceship and reuse the booster and the tanker as much as possible. Hence, the ship goes to Mars, gets replenished, and then returns to Earth.

This ship will be relatively small compared with the Mars interplanetary ships of the future. However, it needs to fit 100 people or thereabouts in the pressurized section, carry the luggage and all of the unpressurized cargo to build propellant plants, and to build everything from iron foundries to pizza joints to you name itwe need to carry a lot of cargo.

The threshold for a self-sustaining city on Mars or a civilization would be a million people. If you can only go every 2 years and if you have 100 people per ship, that is 10,000 trips. Therefore, at least 100 people per trip is the right order of magnitude, and we may end up expanding the crew section and ultimately taking more like 200 or more people per flight in order to reduce the cost per person.

However, 10,000 flights is a lot of flights, so ultimately you would really want in the order of 1,000 ships. It would take a while to build up to 1,000 ships. How long it would take to reach that million-person threshold, from the point at which the first ship goes to Mars would probably be somewhere between 20 and 50 total Mars rendezvousso it would take 40100 years to achieve a fully self-sustaining civilization on Mars.

Read more from the original source:

The 2016 Spacex Mars Colonization plan has been published ...

Rising seventh- through 10th-graders from Lilburn, Radloff and Osborne middle schools, and Meadowcreek and North Hall high schools have spent part of their summer at a STEM camp at Piedmont College.

The goal is to work collaboratively to determine how to create a sustainable colony on Mars.

The Piedmont College Woodrow Wilson Georgia Teaching Fellowship STEM Camp seeks to foster and enhance education in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

We seek to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders through learning experiences that promote inquiry and critical thinking, said Bill Nye, the camps director and a science department chair at Meadowcreek High. Moreover, we seek to provide high quality, rigorous and authentic opportunities which promote outstanding academic achievement for all students.

The camp aims to increase campers understanding of survival and sustainability on Mars within activities related to environmental science, biotechnology and engineering robotics.

We believe that through collaborative and well-coordinated efforts, students in secondary schools can find solutions to not only the problems of today, but of the future, Nye said. Students must be challenged to explore possibilities for existence beyond Earth. As Mars is the next most inhabitable planet in the solar system, the exploration of a sustainable life on Mars is warranted.

Nye added that students increased their understanding of biotechnology through DNA extraction and completing a genetic transformation lab by transferring a jellyfish gene into bacteria to witness bioluminescence. The campers applied engineering and coding skills to use a drone to explore a mock Mars landscape, and to program robots to explore regions of interest and extract needed resources. Their further exploration of alternative energy sources will apply their content to energy limitations on Earth as well as Mars.

The field of environmental science has also been explored as students work with simulated Martian soil to determine how to grow crops on Mars and create a sustainable colony. Further explorations into urban agriculture tie directly into the need for locally developed produce and community gardens at Meadowcreek cluster schools and across the community, Nye said.

The instructors for the Piedmont STEM Camp are Woodrow Wilson Fellows in a pre-service teacher graduate program at Piedmont College. These STEM-specialized educators have experience in STEM fields. Theyve been embedded for the past year in math and science courses as intern-partners with a certified teacher and will be experiencing their first year as a classroom teacher in just a few weeks.

This model allows new teachers to develop their craft prior to flying solo and consequently are immediate contributors to their respective departments and colleagues bringing new instructional techniques to the classroom with an emphasis on the application of learning to ensure students are college and career ready upon graduation, Nye said.

The final project for the Piedmont STEM campers was to create a plan for a sustainable Mars colony. Students will have the opportunity to submit their Mars colonization proposal to several NASA competitions including the NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest.

Keith Farner writes about education. Good News from Schools appears in the Sunday edition of the Daily Post.

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GOOD NEWS FROM SCHOOLS: Students attend STEM camp at Piedmont College - Gwinnettdailypost.com

Artists illustration showing SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft landing on Mars.

SAN FRANCISCO Humanity shouldn't dally in its quest to colonize Mars, SpaceX's billionaire founder and CEO Elon Musk says.

"Now is the first time in the history of Earth that the window is open, where it's possible for us to extend life to another planet," Musk told a huge crowd here Tuesday (Dec. 15) at the annual winter meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

"That window may be open for a long time and hopefully it is but it also may be open for a short time," he added. "I think the wise move is to make life multiplanetary while we can." [SpaceX's Plan for Mars & Reusable Rockets (Video)]

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk talks to Margaret Leinen, the director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, on Dec. 15, 2015, at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Colonizing Mars has long been a passion of Musk's. Indeed, the entrepreneur has repeatedly said that he founded SpaceX in 2002 primarily to help make humanity a multiplanet species. Having a self-sustaining outpost on the Red Planet would serve as an insurance policy, making humanity's extinction unlikely even if something goes terribly awry here on Earth, Musk said Tuesday.

Colonizing Mars would have other benefits as well, he added; the effort would greatly advance science discoveries and technological capabilities, and it would help inspire and excite people from all walks of life and from all around the globe.

Mars settlement "would be a great adventure," Musk said. "There need to be things that people look forward to when we wake up in the morning."

Colonizing Mars won't be easy, but humanity can do it with a few key technological advances, Elon Musk said. Chief among them are fully and rapidly reusable rockets, and the ability to produce rocket propellant from local materials on the Red Planet.

Currently, rockets are used just once and then ditched into the ocean. That means a lot of money is sinking to the ocean floor after every launch.

For example, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket costs about $16 million to build, but the fuel for each of the booster's liftoffs costs just $200,000, Musk said Tuesday. So finding a way to fly rockets again and again has the potential to slash the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 100, he added.

SpaceX is working hard to do just that. The company has tried twice this year to land a Falcon 9 first stage on an "autonomous drone ship" in the Atlantic Ocean during orbital launches. Both attempts, which occurred in January and April, were near misses; the rocket stage hit the target but ended up toppling and exploding on the ship's deck.

SpaceX will try again soon to bring a Falcon 9 first stage back down for a soft landing this time, perhaps on land at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Musk said recently.

Mars colonization could be complicated by the discovery of indigenous life forms on the surface, Musk said Tuesday; in such a case, scientists and decision makers would have to make sure Red Planet pioneers tread as carefully as possible.

But Musk doesn't think such planetary-protection concerns will end up being a major issue.

"It really doesn't seem like there's any life on Mars, on the surface at least," Musk said here Tuesday. "We're not seeing any sign of that."

The Martian underground is more hospitable, since any life forms there would be protected from the harsh radiation environment and cold temperatures encountered on the surface, he added. But Musk doesnt think subsurface life would or should derail Red Planet colonization.

"I think anything we do on the surface is really not going to have a big impact on the subterranean life," he said.

Musk hopes to be a key player in the spread of humanity to another planet, but he doesn't expect to be around to see the full fruits of his labor.

"It will be superhard to do this, and it will take a long time," he said of Mars colonization. "I suspect I won't live to see it become self-sustaining."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter@michaeldwallandGoogle+.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published onSpace.com.

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Now Is the Time to Colonize Mars, Elon Musk Says

You read that right. A spokesperson for NASA recently went on the record to deny a conspiracy theory that Mars is populated by children who were kidnapped and now serve as slaves.

Guy Webster, a spokesperson for Mars exploration at NASA, responded with the facts about Mars.

There are no humans on Mars. There are active rovers on Mars. There was a rumor going around last week that there werent. There are But there are no humans.

Where did this ridiculous notion come from? It might not surprise many of you to find out it was popularized by an episode of The Alex Jones Show. A guest on the show, Robert David Steele, recently said he believes NASA operates colonies filled with kidnapped child slaves.

We actually believe that there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20-year ride So that once they get to Mars they have no alternative but to be slaves on the Mars colony.

Jones, who is known for spreading conspiracy theories without any supporting evidence (Pizzagate, anyone?), weighed in with his own thoughts on NASA.

90 percent of the NASA missions are secret and Ive been told by high level NASA engineers that you have no idea Clearly they dont want us looking into what is happening Every time probes go over they turn them off I dont about Mars bases But I know theyve created massive thousands of different types of chimeras that are alien life forms on this earth now.

This isnt the first Mars colonization conspiracy theory Ive seen (although the child slavery part might be new), but I think its the first time a NASA representative has given one enough credence to respond. I wonder if the believers will accept the official story, or continue undeterred in their irrationality?

The most important part of all this is that neither Jones nor Steele ever provided a shred of evidence for the ludicrous and offensive allegations. This urban legend made it all the way to the mainstream, and into the mouth of a NASA spokesman, without any supporting data.

People spread ideas when they are interested in them, without regard to whether or not there is a good reason to believe, and thats the real problem. We can help stop this spread of harmful disinformation by consistently asking for evidence and sharing legitimate research.

Read more:

Child Slaves on Mars? NASA Debunks InfoWars Conspiracy Theory - Patheos (blog)

Question: Is there any connection between the fact that the United Nations owns 68% of the national parks in the United States*, and the abnormally high number of disappearances from national parks every year?

Almine: The abductions are part of a multinational initiative, but not by the United Nations. There are several nations involved in populating the human colonies on Mars (theyre underground). This has for decades been done by kidnapping citizens from the various countries involved. Sadly, the underground colonies on Mars are where theyre being sent. For decades this has been one of the biggest causes of the millions of abductions that have happened worldwide (particularly of young people). Theyre abducted from streets, playparks and national forests. In the latter case, they blamed Bigfoot, aliens and others.

Question: What motivates these countries to colonize Mars, and why so secretive?

Almine:

The secretiveness? How are they going to explain where all the people on Mars come from? Or worse why theyve done it? And then if all destructs as they anticipate (remember, they dont know were here and are able to repair and prevent catastrophes), then how are they going to inform people that they have to be left behind while they themselves leave the Earth?

Another impetus for this secret colonization of another planet is that time traveling begins in the 2030s amongst government agencies. The time travelers have been warning of gross overpopulation reducing the quality of life substantially in the future.

Question: Will the opportunity to immigrate to Mars be open to the public in the future?

Almine: Only for large amounts of money.

Related: Why Mars Colonization is Doomed to Failure Abducting Children for Mars Colonization The Age of the Lost Children is in Full Swing (login required)

*(1972 Treaty Grants the United Nations Control over American Historical Landmarks July 2001)

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Why the Secret Mars Colonization? | Almine

Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) has to grow food on Mars, a planet where nothing grows, in "The Martian."

Paul Sutter is a research fellow at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste and visiting scholar at the Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics (CCAPP). Sutter is also host of the podcasts Ask a Spaceman and RealSpace, and the YouTube series Space In Your Face. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Ah, Mars. The place that dreams are made of. As long as those dreams involve a poisonous, tenuous atmosphere, inhospitable cold and lots and lots of red. Still, people seem to want to go there. But will we ever make it?

"Yes," if you ask Elon Musk. I agree, but it probably won't be as easy as you might think, even if you think it's going to be really really hard.

What's the problem? Pick up the nearest object and throw it. I don't care if there are people around you. Do it. This is an experiment. This is science. Note how far the object goes before it hits the ground. Now pick it up and throw it harder. It went further, didn't it?

Part of the reason you didn't throw it as far as your ego thought you would was air resistance. Plowing through the atmosphere like a bull in a molecular china shop, the object quickly loses speed. But the actual "hitting the ground part is due to gravity. If you took away all the air, your thrown object would still eventually hit the ground.

In an airless world, no matter how hard you throw the object, it will reach the ground in the same amount of time. That's because gravity only works in the "down" direction, not the "over" direction, so for all gravity cares, you might as well have just lazily dropped it. But the harder you throw it, the more speed it will have, and the farther it will go before inevitably hitting the ground.

Or maybe not so inevitably. Imagine throwing something so hard that in the few seconds before it hits the ground, it reached the other side of a house. Or maybe a street. Throw it harder and you could get it across town. Across the country. Even faster: across an ocean.

Imagine throwing it so fast that by the time gravity gets around to doing its thing, the Earth has curved away from it. Gravity keeps on tugging at the object, but it frustratingly keeps missing the ground.

Ta-da: orbit!

How fast is orbital fast? Around 18,000 miles per hour (or 11 kilometers per second), give or take. There is, after all, an actual atmosphere to deal with.

You can certainly go slower and still visit space. Just make sure you packed a heat shield, because you're coming back down. You can also go even faster than orbital speed and escape the jealous clutches of Earth's gravity altogether, which is what it takes to get to Mars.

And that's the fundamental challenge. There just aren't many ways of pushing stuff that fast. Our best method so far involvesblowing up stuff in a tube, and making sure to leave a hole in one side. Newton's laws do the rest. It seems primitive, but the engineers tell me these "rockets" are actually quite complicated.

We can easily send robots to Mars, because their feelings don't get hurt if you forget to pack the oxygen and food. But people are a different well, animal, altogether. Humans are heavy. Humans need to carry little bubbles of the Earth ecosystem with them everywhere they go. Humans need room to stretch. Humans want to bring human-centric niceties, like hammers and toothpaste and lima beans.

Oh, yeah, and we need to bring them back home, I suppose. So pack the spare rockets and extra fuel.

Let this sink in: at the time of this writing, we don't have the capacity to send humans beyond Low Earth Orbit, the very edge of space, let alone Mars. Getting to Mars is hard, folks, and it requires a lot of new technology.

And that's just enough stuff for a handful of hominids to poke around the place for a bit. A colony? Look around the city you're in, and marvel at all the junk it takes to get you through the day. Think of all the layers of civilization and organization (spontaneous or otherwise) it takes to get you dinner. Made of food. Cooked. On a plate. That you will clean up with water eventually. In a house. On a street. And on and on.

A city is a massively complicated thing. Sure, we've built them from the ground up before, but colonies on Earth have a few advantages, namely, a) breathable air, b) liquid water, c) dirt and d) proximity to other Earth-based cities. Even the U.S. National Science Foundation's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station the closest to a Mars colony you can get while keeping two feet on the Earth enjoys most of these advantages, and is still a nightmare to keep alive.

And did I mention the cosmic rays? No? Well, now's a good time cosmic rays are high-energy protons (and some heavier nuclei) zipping through the universe, generated inwell, we're not exactly sure, but probably supernovae and other cataclysmic events. The universe is swimming in them, and they cut through DNA like a hot knife through butter. The butter is you in this metaphor, just to be clear. On Earth the atmosphere makes for nice insulation, catching most of the deadliest cosmic rays, but some still make it through, possibly giving everyone especially airline crews a slightly elevated risk of cancer. [Radiation Fears Shouldn't Hold Back Mars Colonization (Op-Ed )]

But a two-year journey to Mars? Exposure on the surface? Better make sure your transports and habitats are well-shielded or buried underground or at least make sure you have some talented oncologists on staff.

Despite these challenges and more, it's notimpossibleto get people to Mars and start a viable colony. It's not like there's any physics-based reason preventing the escapades. It's just a question of engineering. And money.

Lots and lots of money.

SpaceX has an ambitious plan to get a colony on Mars through private investment in ever-larger, cheap, reusable rockets that could deliver a steady stream of people and supplies to slowly build up a colony over decades. It just takes lots of money.

NASA has an ambitious plan to build the Space Launch System, the biggest, most hard-core rocket ever made. With that kind of fire, you could send all sorts of stuff into space, including a crew to Mars. It just takes lots of money.

There are other ideas, such as Mars One ("I know, just leave everybody there, then we don't have to pay for a return ticket!") and Mars Direct, but in the end it takes time. And lots of money.

So eventually, we'll do it. Humans will go to Mars . Babies will be born there. Civilization will flourish or flounder on the Red Planet. It's just a matter of when, and of how much money we're willing to spend. Did I mention the money part?

Sure, if one day everyone decided that we don't need socks anymore, we could use the leftover savings to fast-track a Martian colony. Full of chaffed feet, but a colony nonetheless. We're certainly at the civilizational stage where sending humans to Mars is feasible, which is a huge first step. A hundred years ago, not only did we lack the technology, but also the economic wherewithal to entertain such a wacky notion.

That's the trick to getting to Mars: either we need to be so wealthy as a society that a trip is so economically insignificant that nobody cares, or there needs to be a large political (if led by NASA) or economic (if led by a company) incentive to do it. One or both of those scenarios is bound to happen, sooner or later.

Hopefully sooner.

Learn more by listening to the episode "Will we colonize Mars?" on the Ask A Spaceman podcast, available on iTunes and on the Web athttp://www.askaspaceman.com. Thanks to Ann Fisher for the question that led to this episode! Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul @PaulMattSutter and facebook.com/PaulMattSutter.

Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates and become part of the discussion on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.

The rest is here:

Will We Ever Colonize Mars? - space.com

Having previously teased that he'd like to put one million people on Mars, tech billionaire and serial enterpreneur Elon Musk released the specifics of his plan to colonize space. His paper "Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species" outlines what kind of technology humans will need to make that dream a reality, including how to build a city on Mars, as well as the timeline for this endeavor.

Musk proposes that it's a necessity to make humans a space-faring civilization, citing the inevitable "doomsday event" that will befall us sooner or later. One big goal in making us a "multi-planetary species" would be to create a city on Mars that works not just an outpost but as a self-sustaining settlement that will drive the planet's colonization.

The SpaceX, Neuralink, and Tesla Motors CEO sees Mars as the best destination for such a city because it has conditions better suited for a human colony than other planets - it has atmosphere, it's rich in resources, its day is 24.5 hours, similar to Earth's. In fact, the red planet is so similar to Earth that "if we could warm Mars up, we would once again have a thick atmosphere and liquid oceans," writes Musk.

Here's how Musk compared Earth and Mars head to head:

The big problem in getting people to Mars now? Exorbitant costs of about $10 billion per person, if we were to use traditional "Appolo-style" approaches. Musk wants that number to go down by 5 million percent. If the number is closer to $200,000 per person (a median house price in the U.S.), Mars colonization would become a reality. Musk sees this number dropping even lower eventually, to below $100,000 per person.

How would Musk bridge that gap? Most of the improvement would come from rocket reusability, while other cost savings would lie in figuring out how to refill in orbit and produce propellant on Mars. Choosing the right propellant is also important. Musk says methane would be easier and cheaper to harvest on Mars than, for example, hydrogen.

Getting people to Mars and other planets would be the job of the Interplanetary Transport System, which will feature a booster and a spaceship powered by the Raptor engine, currently in development by SpaceX. It will be 3 times more powerful than the engine currently powering the Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX.

The booster, which Musk aims to make reusable up to a 1,000 times, would have 42 Raptorengines, making it the most powerful rocket in history. The booster would also be capable of launching 300 metric tons into low Earth orbit. Compare that to NASA's Saturn V moon rocket which could lift 135 metric tons.

Here's how the whole system that SpaceX is looking to implement would operate:

Musk also gives some details on how a trip to Mars aboard one of his ships would look like - a trip he estimates would take about 115 days. It's important to make such a journey "fun and exciting," with zero-gravity games, movies, lecture halls, cabins and a restaurant, Musk writes.

Once we figure out how to get humans to Mars in an efficient and consistent manner, Musk imagines that the colony there would need a million people for a self-sustaining city. To get them there would require 1,000 ships, each carrying 100 people. With travelling to the red planet possible every 26 months thanks to having to wait for favorable alignment with Earth, the whole process of colonizing Mars would take about 40-100 years after the first ship goes, which is currently planned for 2023.

Musk also considers going to other parts of the solar system by envisioning a system of planet or moon hopping. Besides creating and improving spacecraft, the key for further colonization of space would be to establish propellant depots in the asteroid belt or the moons of Jupiter or Saturn. That would enable flights to these and other planets.

How realistic are Musk's plans? The prolific enterpreneur has a proven track record in methodically carrying out his visions. He also sees the colonization of Mars as such a personal priority that he says he's making money primarily for that purpose:

"I should also add that the main reason I am personally accumulating assets is in order to fund this. I really do not have any other motivation for personally accumulating assets except to be able to make the biggest contribution I can to making life multi-planetary," writes Musk.

Scott Hubbard, the editor-in-chief of New Space, a peer-reviewed space exploration journal that published the paper, thinks Musk's paper is a great jumping-off point for further discussion:

"In my view, publishing this paper provides not only an opportunity for the spacefaring community to read the SpaceX vision in print with all the charts in context, but also serves as a valuable archival reference for future studies and planning. My goal is to make New Space the forum for publication of novel exploration conceptsparticularly those that suggest an entrepreneurial path for humans traveling to deep space, said Hubbard.

You can read Musk's paper here.

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Elon Musk Releases Detailed Plans for Colonizing Mars and Other Planets - Big Think

Artist's illustration of a "Mars Transfer Habitat" that could carry 100 colonists 96 of them in a hibernation-like torpor state to Mars.

Colonizing Mars may require humanity to tap into its inner bear.

Researchers are working on ways to induce a hibernation-like torpor state in astronauts a breakthrough they say would slash costs and make the long journey to the Red Planet safer and far less taxing for crewmembers.

Such benefits could help lay the foundation for the first footsteps on Mars, and they're essential to the establishment of a long-term human outpost there, project team members said.[Red Planet orBust: 5 Crewed MarsMission Ideas]

"We're not going to colonize Mars, or really settle it, sending four or six or eight people at a time every two years; we're going to have to send larger numbers," principal investigator John Bradford, president and chief operating officer of SpaceWorks Enterprises in Atlanta, said last week at the 2016 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium in Raleigh, North Carolina. "I don't know any other way that you're going to send hundreds of people to Mars."

With current rocket technology, a one-way trip to Mars takes six to nine months. That's a long time to keep astronauts alive, healthy and happy, Bradford said.

He and his team think there's a way to ease this journey lowering astronauts' body temperatures by about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius). This would induce a "hypothermic stasis" that cuts crewmembers' metabolic rates by 50 to 70 percent, Bradford said.

"That reduces the need for consumables in both nutrition and hydration, [and] oxygen demand," he said during the NIAC talk. "That translates to mass, and mass is a critical item trying to support these Mars missions."

Allowing astronauts to more or less sleep through the long trek would also minimize the psychological and social challenges of a crewed Mars mission, Bradford said.

"You kind of get mad at somebody; there's really no place to go," he said. "These are real issues associated with extended-duration spaceflight. If we can cut out the transit phases, we think they'll be much happier when they get to Mars, [and] much more productive." [Buzz Aldrin: How To Get Your Ass To Mars (Video)]

Bradford and his team have received two rounds of funding through NIAC, a NASA program that seeks to encourage the development of potentially revolutionary space exploration technologies.

The researchers don't think any huge leaps should be required to make their vision a reality. They're not shooting for a sci-fi-like "suspended animation" state; rather, they seek to leverage the "therapeutic hypothermia" that's already common practice in hospitals around the world, often as a way to help people recover from traumatic injuries, Bradford said.

"We're trying to pull on this technology that's already in use," he said.

Therapeutic-hypothermia patients generally endure the treatment for just a few days, but there's no reason to think it couldn't be applied to astronauts for much longer durations, Bradford added. (He said he'd like to be able to put Mars crewmembers in stasis for the entire journey but that cycling periods of two weeks or so would have significant benefits as well.)

Stasis could be induced in astronauts via evaporative cooling systems already in use for therapeutic hypothermia for example, two small tubes inserted into the nose that pump in inert gas, cooling the brain. (Sedatives would also be administered to dampen the body's instinctual shivering response.)

Crewmembers would be fed intravenously and catheterized; they would also be "lightly restrained" within the habitat to prevent them from floating around, Bradford said.

Extended exposure to microgravity conditions has a variety of negative health effects, from muscle atrophy and bone weakening to vision problems. But torpid astronauts wouldn't have to worry about such issues, because their habitat would be rotated, generating artificial gravity on board, Bradford said.

There are some inherent challenges in the torpor approach, of course. For example, while the process of going into hypothermic stasis is relatively rapid, waking up from such a state appears to be quite slow; research suggests that body temperature can be safely raised by only about 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 degrees Celsius) every hour, Bradford said.

And it's unclear just how long the recovery process would take, or what the long-term mental effects of prolonged hypothermic stasis would be, he added. In addition, significantly cooling the body suppresses immune function, so torpid astronauts would likely be more susceptible to infections.

But Bradford and his team are attempting to address such issues via their NIAC-funded work, and they haven't found any deal breakers yet.

"It's all manageable," Bradford said. "We think this is a very promising approach."

Bradford and his colleagues think such torpor tech could not only help get astronauts to Mars (which NASA aims to do by the end of the 2030s), but also allow humanity to establish a permanent colony on the Red Planet.

Settling Mars would probably require sending about 100 people there at once, the researchers wrote last year in a study outlining their approach.

"The first settlements at Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, for example, started with 102 and 104 settlers, respectively," they wrote.

Launching that many Mars pioneers in the standard fashion would require 17 six-person habitats, with a total weight of about 700 tons. But that could be reduced to 200 tons by putting the settlers into hypothermic stasis, the researchers argued.

Their plan calls for building a "Mars Transfer Habitat" employing three habitat modules, two of which would hold 48 dormant colonists apiece. The third (much smaller) module would house four fully alert settlers, who would act as "caretakers" and keep everything running smoothly.

"The reduced metabolic rates that are achieved through torpor relax the mission requirements on consumable food and water, and positively impact the design of the habitat environmental control and life support systems," they wrote in the study, which was presented at the 66th International Astronautical Congress in Jerusalem last year.

"Overall, the application of long-duration torpor for humans to space exploration missions appears to be both medically and technically feasible, and shows great promise as a means to enable settlement of the solar system," the researchers added.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter@michaeldwallandGoogle+.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published onSpace.com.

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'Hibernating' Astronauts May Be Key to Mars Colonization

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These Valkyrie R5 robots will help pave the way for future Mars colonization.

NASAs Space Robotics Challenge awarded Northeastern University with a $2-million Valkyrie Robonaut 5 (R5) robot, which is now undergoing tests in a Massachusetts warehouse to prepare for the finalist round this June in a virtual simulation of a red-planet landing.

The robot arrivedat Northeastern in 2015 as part of a proposal that Engineering Professor Taskin Padir sent to NASA for the Space Robotics Challenge software testing, reports Tech Crunch.

Theyve done all of the hardware and were developing these high-level capabilities so Valkyrie does more than just move limbs, Northeastern PhD student, Murphy Wonsick told Tech Crunch. She can autonomously make decisions, move around, and accomplish tasks.

Researchers moved the R5 toNERVE (New England Robotics Validation and Experimentation) Center, a large warehouse space operated by UMass Lowell that houses large obstacle courses designed to put test robots and drones through their paces, just outside of Boston.

On-board vision systems, bipedal locomotion, and navigation in tight spaces are some the criteria being tested at the NERVE research site, according to the same report.

NASA reportedly produced three other R5 models. One was held in-house, and NASA awarded two as research loans to Northeastern University and nearby MIT, while a fourth was acquired by Scotlands University of Edinburgh.

According to NASA, in the finalist round, each teams R5 will be challenged with resolving the aftermath of a dust storm that has damaged a Martian habitat. This involves three objectives: aligning a communications dish, repairing a solar array, and fixing a habitat leak.

The Space Robotics Challenge is part of NASAs Centennial Challenges program set to award $1 million to the team that can developcapabilities of humanoid robot dexterity to better enable them to work alongside and independent of astronauts in preparation for future space exploration.

NASA announced the 20 finalists in February.

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Meet NASA's Mars robot - Digital Trends