{"id":18610,"date":"2018-03-11T23:19:30","date_gmt":"2018-03-11T15:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/elon-musk-qa-first-mars-spaceship-is-being-built-with-flight-tests-set-for-2019\/"},"modified":"2018-03-11T23:19:30","modified_gmt":"2018-03-11T15:19:30","slug":"elon-musk-qa-first-mars-spaceship-is-being-built-with-flight-tests-set-for-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/elon-musk-qa-first-mars-spaceship-is-being-built-with-flight-tests-set-for-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk Q&#038;A: First Mars spaceship is being built, with flight tests set for 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_403610\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-403610\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-403610\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/180311-musks-630x354.jpg\" alt=\"Musk brothers\" width=\"630\" height=\"354\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/180311-musks-630x354.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/180311-musks-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/180311-musks-1260x709.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/180311-musks.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-403610\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Billionaire Elon Musk (in the black hat) and his brother, Kimbal Musk (in the white hat), join in a rendition of \u201cMy Little Buttercup\u201d at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. (SXSW via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>SpaceX is building its first Mars transport vehicle, also known as the BFR, and \u201cmaking good progress\u201d toward short-hop test flights on Earth by the middle of next year, CEO Elon Musk said today.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re actually building that ship right now,\u201d Musk said at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, during a Q&amp;A with \u201cWestworld\u201d co-creator Jonathan Nolan, a longtime friend.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s conversation ranged over all things Musk&nbsp;\u2014 from SpaceX and Tesla, to The Boring Company, Neuralink and the billionaire\u2019s concerns about artificial superintelligence.<\/p>\n<p>Musk and Nolan showed off a video recap of last month\u2019s maiden flight of SpaceX\u2019s Falcon Heavy rocket, including views of the mission\u2019s Tesla-riding Starman mannequin&nbsp;cruising through space and the first publicly released shots of the rocket\u2019s core booster splashing into the sea:<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Falcon Heavy &amp; Starman\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/A0FZIwabctw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>There was even a sing-along with Kimbal Musk, Elon\u2019s brother, to the tune of \u201cMy Little Buttercup.\u201d (Note to Elon: Don\u2019t quit your day jobs.)<\/p>\n<p>It was Musk\u2019s long-range plan for sending settlers to Mars that took up most of the attention. He said he took up his drive to establish humanity as a multiplanet species in part because he was dissatisfied with the pace of space exploration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere are the space hotels that were promised in \u20182001\u2019 the movie?\u201d he asked. \u201cIt just wasn\u2019t happening, year after year. It was getting me down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The other big motivation has been to ensure that humanity would survive in the event of a catastrophe on Earth. Today he specifically cited the risk of a Third World War and its aftermath. Having settlements on Mars could \u201cshorten the length of the Dark Ages\u201d to come, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Toward that end, Musk is shifting his focus to developing the BFR, which could stand for \u201cBig Falcon Rocket\u201d or \u201cBig F**king Rocket.\u201d (Musk coyly said that the acronym was a \u201cbit of a Rorschach test.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX\u2019s timeline calls for the first BFR cargo flights to head for Mars in 2022, but Musk acknowledged he\u2019s been told that \u201csometimes my timelines are a little \u2026 optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m trying to recalibrate to some degree here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=DahRypEoeM4<\/p>\n<p>If the fully reusable BFR is as cheap to operate as Musk expects, that would reduce the cost of spaceflight by orders of magnitude and open the way for the super-rocket\u2019s use to send people and payloads to the moon and other destinations as well.<\/p>\n<p>Musk said he expected that creating the BFR would cause other rocket ventures to \u201cup their game\u201d and unlock the entrepreneurial energy required to create cities on the Red Planet, complete with iron foundries, pizza joints and Mars bars.<\/p>\n<p>When Nolan asked what his fans could contribute to making those Martian dreams a reality, Musk replied that their \u201cgeneral support and encouragement, and goodwill\u201d was enough for now&nbsp;\u2014 something that the cheering SXSW crowd had in abundance.<\/p>\n<p>He cautioned that the first people to head to Mars would face situations \u201cfar more dangerous\u201d than past settlement efforts, with a \u201cgood chance you\u2019ll die [but] excitement for those who survive.\u201d The presentation included a stock audience-participation question: How many people would go?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cActually, not many hands raised, by the way,\u201d Musk noted.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Other morsels from Elon Musk\u2019s Q&amp;A:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Musk retold the tale of how he almost went bankrupt in 2008, and said that if he were to rank the most profitable business opportunities, he\u2019d put \u201cbuilding rockets and cars really close to the bottom of the list.\u201d He also admitted that \u201cI didn\u2019t really have a business plan\u201d for his current ventures. Nevertheless, he persisted&nbsp;\u2014 and Musk\u2019s net worth is now estimated at more than $20 billion.<\/li>\n<li>The Tesla CEO predicted that by the end of 2019, \u201cself-driving will encompass essentially all modes of driving\u201d and be at least 100 to 200 percent safer than human-controlled driving.<\/li>\n<li>Musk repeated his concerns about the potential rise of superintelligent AI agents. \u201cMark my words: AI is far more dangerous than nukes,\u201d he said. When Nolan reminded him that some AI experts see his fears as overblown, Musk said such experts think they\u2019re smarter than they really are. \u201cI\u2019m very close to the cutting edge in AI, and it scares the hell out of me,\u201d Musk said. His recommendation? Governments should exert more regulation and oversight over the use of AI.<\/li>\n<li>Musk said The Boring Company is an outgrowth of his long-held view that bringing down the cost of tunneling would be a worthy technological goal. \u201cWe\u2019re funding the company through merchandise sales,\u201d he said. \u201cSo thank you to anyone who\u2019s bought our flamethrower.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Nolan asked Musk what the world will look like when people born today are as old as he is now. The 46-year-old said that he hoped the world in 2064 will have a sustainable system for generating and consuming electricity, with a stabilization of climate change\u2019s effects. There\u2019d be bases on the moon and Mars&nbsp;\u2014 and there\u2019d be \u201cbenign AI\u201d that\u2019s in symbiosis with humans, thanks to the high-bandwidth brain interfaces that Neuralink is looking into.<\/li>\n<li>As for those future societies on Mars, Musk said he thought they should be governed by direct democracy, under a system that makes it harder to pass laws than to have them expire. Maybe it should take 60 percent to enact a new law, but only 40 percent to eliminate an old law. Laws should also be kept short, he said: \u201cIf the size of the law exceeds the word count of \u2018Lord of the Rings\u2019 \u2026 then something\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>On less weighty topics, Musk was asked who inspired him. \u201cWell, Kanye West, obviously,\u201d he replied gamely. And when asked whether the HBO show \u201cSilicon Valley\u201d was true to life, Musk said he found that it was, starting with Episode 4 of the first season. If anything, the depiction of the tech world may not be crazy enough. \u201cThe reality is way crazier than that,\u201d Musk said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Billionaire Elon Musk (in the black hat) and his brother, Kimbal Musk (in the white hat), join in a rendition of \u201cMy Little Buttercup\u201d at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. (SXSW via YouTube) SpaceX is building its first Mars transport vehicle, also known as the BFR, and \u201cmaking good progress\u201d toward short-hop test flights [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[130,2873,1045,678,367,5262,5263,21,316,5264],"class_list":["post-18610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-bfr","tag-elon-musk","tag-falcon-heavy","tag-mars","tag-neuralink","tag-south-by-southwest","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-sxsw"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}