Doesn't have to contain a human, doesn't have to land on Mars, doesn't even have to successfully reach Mars. That just needs to be the target. (Landing, orbit, or close flyby are all acceptable targets. Simply going out past Mars orbit, but not actually approaching Mars, does not count.)
If they replace Starship with a similar heavy lift vehicle, that'll count too. But it does need to be nearly the whole rocket, not just a small satellite.
If there's a mission that is half-jokingly described as aiming for Mars, but clearly had no hope whatsoever of actually getting there, that doesn't count. It must be a serious attempt. (But something as low as a 10% chance is still a serious attempt. Just like how the first ~dozen Falcon 9 landings had a low chance of succeeding, but were still serious attempts.)
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Can anyone do a sanity check on these numbers for an off-window starship launch?
Seems as if many people are forecasting based on readiness by the single pre-2028 launch window but if payload cost isnt that much higher off-window then they’ll have many more shots on goal & odds should seemingly be much higher 🤷♂️
Additionally, Starlink will likely do $20+ Billion revenue by then with ~60% operating margins.
@elf The AI missed the ball on this. If you go "off-window" then it's not just more fuel, it becomes pretty much impossible to do. You need a much higher maximum delta-V than you can fit in your rocket, and additionally you arrive with such a high relative velocity that there's no way you can survive the aerobraking.
To get intuition for this I can only recommend playing KSP or something similar. Otherwise I can give you charts like this but it's hard to make it intuitive.
A fully fueled Starship from LEO does about 7000 m/s delta-V, or about 8000 without payload, so it could in fact do the red areas, and go a bit beyond the windows. But not much into the white ones.
It doesn't make sense to take the green area in 2027, because the flight time will be >2 years, and you'd arrive around the same time if you just wait for the 2028 window like normal.
Yep, I agree there is no way you are getting 75t off window. (At least, not for a long time, like until you can do at least 300t in the window.)
In fact, Elon presentation says in the window towards end of 2026 payload to Mars per Starship will only be 10 tonnes and will rise to 75 tonnes in the 2028/9 window.
I suspect the reason for this is that Starship will not be properly developed for Mars by end of 2026. The header tanks in the nose cone used for landing burns is where it needs to be for Earth descent but the wrong place for Mars aerobraking and they won't have time for redesign to move this for the 2026 window.
Easiest way to go off window is to do an Earth gravity assist at the time you would launch for the next window, but this is basically 'using the next window'. ESCApade is planning to do this, launching ~Q3 or Q4 2025 and doing Earth gravity assist late 2026 to arrive Nov 2027. That is for other research goals. For Mars, as Mqrius indicates, this doesn't make sense "just wait", or even better, do more preparations and development of Starship and the payload and then launch in next window.
I could see Elon doing this as a publicity stunt, like the Tesla. He has a bunch of Starships already and they're relatively cheap, so he could just launch one towards Mars with the plan to not worry about landing and just crash into it. (Still a decent technical challenge to actually get there, but with no payload he has plenty of spare delta-v to brute-force it.)
Unless planetary protection plans are voided or ignored, from a very short amount of reading, this leaves a landing plan (which is the current plan) with a serious unsolved problem… I suppose since Musk is now buddies with Trump bettors are predicting this hurdle will just be bypassed completely and other issues will take precedence?
@parhizj I doubt it's that serious. The Outer Space treaty says this:
States Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter and, where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose.
Note that it's only concerned with contamination of Earth, not of Mars. It's "backward" protection.
Now, there is a committee (COSPAR) who's thought about it real hard and which has come up with a bunch of policy requirements, and those care about contaminating Mars, but they're not actually binding.
Note that delivering large payloads to Mars is absolutely in the interest of "pursue studies of outer space". So too landing people there.
SpaceX could try to sterilize the hell out of an unmanned mission, but IMO it's a bit pointless if they're going to land people a few years after that. People are fundamentally dirty, from a contamination standpoint.
I think COSPARS recommendations will be extended to allow Starship (and crewed landings), or they will be ignored, slashed, and burned. Depends on which presidency this stuff actually happens under.
@DanHomerick I want to add that I think SpaceX as an organization will care about contamination, and will care a lot. It's a company that is full of passionate, talented people, and they understand what a big deal the search for life on Mars is.
But they also have a colonization goal, and are pragmatic realists. Some parts of Mars are going to get contaminated, at least a little. Don't do your life-hunting right under the lander.
Also, while there are extremophiles adapted to some crazy-harsh environments, life is generally quite fragile, and Mars is very unlike southern Texas or Florida. Maybe lets just not bring along any long-buried artic life, hmm?
Glad someone already asked this question and that probability is so high :)
Doing anything useful might be a tall order as it’s a completely separate set of problems to solve but getting to Mars and landing will be attempted.
@Philip3773733 Whilst SpaceX is likely to do a test flight whether they have a customer or not, sending stuff to Mars is something humanity already occasionally spends large amounts of money to do. And if the Starship program pans out, it'll will be cheaper than the way we currently do it so they ought to have at least some paying customers.
@Philip3773733 They are already nearly finished building booster 13 and ship 31. Prototypes are way more expensive than production models. If SpaceX can afford to do this development effort then the cost of the rockets and fuel needed is clearly within the profitability of SpaceX. Why do you think it is expensive let alone insanity?
Sure the numbers are big enough that they can be made to sound scarily expensive but better tong term survival prospects for humans seems like something worth paying a lot for. How much should we pay for that? 1% of GDP might be justifiable and the cost is way less than that. If it was government spending when government spending was running way out of control that might give pause for thought but when a private company is doing it on profits from its other activities, shouldn't the reaction be great?
If the private company sees it as a worthwhile investment in launch infrastructure rather than spending its profits, that is even better, yes? SpaceX will earn more from more launches with starship than from fewer launches with falcon. So is it mainly spending and a tiny bit of investing or does it create a vastly larger space industry sector such that it is all investment?
There may well be a lots of NASA contracts which is government spending if not already started with moon landing contracts. But if SpaceX is winning competitive tenders providing much more mass capability for lower costs then surely SpaceX is increasing capabilities and providing better value for money so doesn't this show that it is worth developing this vastly larger space industry for the cost saving it is and will produce?
@ChristopherRandles they have never done the refuelling in orbit needed to reach mars. They have never reused any on the rockets. So it’s basically a mars flight without any of the advantages of spacex. You can look up what a mars flight costs. And the Starship is much bigger than normal mars rockets.
@Philip3773733 5000 @ 50% limit order is up if you’re interested.
Refueling in orbit is the only thing they haven’t done before. I don’t see why it would be much more difficult than normal docking, which has been done numerous times since 1960s.
My other concern is rapid reusability of the heat shield. Test flight 4 used ablative layer behind ceramic tiles. If a tile falls off and ablative layer is burned off, this will require lengthy refurbishment.
@Philip3773733
>"they have never done the refuelling in orbit needed to reach mars"
I think a small test went reasonably well but even if completely true, so what? If you are arguing that something new should not be attempted then following that we would still be living in caves.
Starship is going to be both much more capable and much cheaper. One off missions take huge amount of design work making it expensive, Starship once fully designed will be production line assembly This creates a massively increased space industry.
@ChristopherRandles I was replying to the top comment that said „doing anything useful“ will not happen. I think it should be attempted. But I don’t think it will be without a viable strategy, and that is just not here yet.
@Philip3773733 Do I think SpaceX have it all planned out in a viable manner? I would have to agree that no they do not. They seem to be concentrating on starship as the priority, no point putting cart before the horse.
How much of a viable strategy is needed? Does lack of full strategy mean you cannot test the first steps like landing on Mars?
If going to Mars to test landing and have some payload capacity, may as well take some useful stuff right?
What to take? Perishable foods doesn't seem a priority. Will want some power to run processes so solar panels before fuel production process. This sort of thing doesn't take genius amount of strategy nor need a full strategy to get that far.
Planning to take solar panels for Mars environment may be relatively easy compared with the planning needed to be able to unload them from rocket and lay them out and either connecting them up or keeping them connected. A few optimus robots able to do that and adapt to other tasks later would be nice but coping with uneven ground and lower gravity might be a stretch in 2 years.
So 2 years seems ambitious in many respects. However, lack of a full viable strategy I do not view as an immediate concern. I suggest it can develop as we go along.
If the target was Mars orbit rather than landing on Mars, does that count even if it fails to get into Mars orbit?
Also, if it blows up on pad before launch, does that mean it is not sent?
@ChristopherRandles Sounds to me like it would. Maybe as long as it gets close to Mars, you could say they have sent something to Mars?
@ChristopherRandles IMO if the target is actually to have a Starship orbiting the planet Mars (although I think that might be difficult, as Starship might not have enough fuel to slow down and enter orbit without the use of aerobraking), that should resolve as YES, even if it explodes a few minutes after launch and never even makes it to space.
If, however, the mission is just yeeting a starship out into deep space in a random direction as a test launch, and then Elon claiming on twitter that it's "going to mars" because the heliocentric orbit of the launched object will roughly cross the orbit of mars around the sun (but never come anywhere close to the actual planet), as was the case for Elon's Tesla Roadster launched on the first Falcon Heavy launch... IMO that isn't going to mars and definitely shouldn't count at all.
@JacksonWagner Actually, after Hohmann transfer orbit you need to speed up to stay in Mars orbit as you are going too slow and would drop back to ~1AU [edit perigee oops I mean perihelion. However it you aim it correctly you can use the planets gravity to help pull you along so that not much effort is needed to get into Mars orbit.
>"if it explodes a few minutes after launch and never even makes it to space."
I am thinking perhaps that should resolve no but perhaps it also depends on the flight plan:
If the flight plan is launch to LEO, refuel it in LEO, send to Mars. Then I don't think it has been sent to Mars. They may need to get through 99% of the burn from LEO to send to Mars to get close enough but given the "doesn't even have to successfully reach Mars. That just needs to be the target." it looks like it does not need to complete that burn. I am thinking until that burn from LEO cannot be cancelled, they could cancel doing that burn and leave it in Earth orbit or send elsewhere.
If there is no refuelling just sending a practically empty Starship to test the landing on Mars and this is directly to Earth escape velocity without first orbiting Earth then perhaps 20-25? minutes after launch might be 99.98% of way through the burn and sufficient to get it somewhere close to Mars. In this case, unlikely the refuel in LEO, after final 'go no go poll' before after launch it will be all automated and unlikely to be stopped. Though perhaps it isn't sent on its way until a second after launch.
@ChristopherRandles my impression, based on "doesn't even have to successfully reach Mars. That just needs to be the target", is that this market is about whether SpaceX makes the political/financial/etc decision to actually launch something to Mars, rather than the technical question of what exactly they choose to do near Mars (orbit vs landing, etc), or whether they succeed vs blowing up 2 minutes into launch.
ie, many people might be thinking "Sure, SpaceX says they are focused on colonizing mars, but they have put off launching stuff to mars for years and years now, preferring to focus on their moneymaking Starlink / etc launches, instead of expensive mars stuff with $0 payoff. Besides, they are too busy with NASA moon contracts to spare any starships for Mars anytime soon. So they probably won't actually launch anything to mars before 2030."
In my view this market is about whether SpaceX pivots to being "serious about mars" by actually launching something, rather than about the more technical / luck-based question of whether their first mission actually succeeds.
@JacksonWagner
>"this market is about whether SpaceX makes the political/financial/etc decision to actually launch something to Mars, rather than the technical question of what exactly they choose to do near Mars"
So if they "make the political/financial/etc decision to actually launch something to Mars" but something prevents it reaching t=0, have they actually done the action required of "send a starship to Mars"? I think the answer is clear, it has to be sent but it doesn't have to reach so it is a no for not sent.
If they send it to Earth orbit for refuelling but something prevents that, then it is more nuanced: The starship has started the relevant journey so perhaps it is sent and the claim could be judged true based on that but it can also be interpreted as it has only been sent to Earth orbit not to Mars. I think the "send to Mars", quite literally, should be a no.
I really don't see the usefulness or need for introducing your "serious about mars" / "political/financial/etc decision to actually launch" terms. We agree at least a launch is necessary.
The difference between us seems to be in interpreting the wording of "send a Starship to Mars" Do we interpret the send on it own so it sent when it starts it journey? or do we interpret the "send" together with the "to Mars" so it is 'sent to Mars' only when the interplanetary engine burn starts?
This market is out of whack with https://manifold.markets/MetaculusBot/will-spacex-land-anything-on-mars-b?r=SmFja3NvbldhZ25lcg
The last launch window for Mars that could arrive by 2030 would need to depart by Q4 2028 / Q1 2029, making these questions basically the same.
The market linked above would, on the bright side, include that last bit of the final launch window that peeks into Q1 2029. BUT, that other market also requires the totally-untested 8-month deep-space cruise and mars reentry & landing to be successful! So, if anything, IMO that market should have a lower probability than this one.
@JacksonWagner This one doesn't include the 2028 launch window so I think it's probably a lot lower. For the rest I agree with you.