Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sectiondetail 2377 days ago
>and I'd be shocked if there's a viable company in either the Boring Company or hyperloop.

One of the things to keep in mind about Musk's various projects is that every single one of them has a practical application for Mars colonization. Reusable rockets to get to Mars relatively cheaply, solar panels/grid-scale batteries to keep the colony powered, and mass quantities of phase-array networked commsats instead of laying thousands of kilometres of fiber are the obvious ones, and discussed at length everywhere. But the others are worth fleshing out.

The trick to colonizing Mars quickly is to deliver the most bang-for-the-kilogram in landed mass. If a single Starship can land enough material to build a few big oxygen and methane tanks, all you have is a few big oxygen and methane tanks. If it lands enough mass for a "The Martian" style Aries-type habitat, all you have is a habitat. But if a Starship lands a few fast, miniaturized, automated, and electric tunnel-boring systems and the spare parts to keep them maintained, you can build as many radiation-proof habitats and oxygen/methane storage tanks as you can - underground. I would bet good money on the very first Mars-landed Starships having at least one full tunnel-boring rig (with spare parts) on board each one - if not for immediate use under time-lagged remote control, then in preparation for direct operation by the first landed humans.

As for hyperloop, it's a heavy-cargo electric train designed to run in atmosphere that's 1% the thickness of Earth's. On Mars you wouldn't even need to enclose the rails. This is what you'd want a decade down the road for transporting mass quantities of ice to methalox production/storage sites. Of course it's far less practical on Earth than current alternatives, which is likely why Musk's total Hyperloop involvement is limited to a SpaceX-sponsored tech demo. And I think they're only doing even that minimal investment because they want to see how electric trains work at Martian atmospheric pressure.