The same man promised us a Martian city, a multi-level underworld and vacuum trains, all powered by electricity from the Sun. Life spoke with scientists who deal with all these issues professionally.
The first question. When will we live on Mars?
Elon Musk constantly repeats that he wants to understand why he gets out of bed in the morning, why a new day begins, what interesting things await him. And his bird of tomorrow's happiness is not in this world. The dream of the head of SpaceX is something like this: to build a large, large rocket, fly it to Mars and establish a colony there. But in order for the dream to come true, it was necessary to interest everyone, and so far no one argues with the fact that Elon Musk can do this. And he succeeded, and not so much with loud words, as with completely "screaming" numbers:
2019 - the first test flight of the Starship spacecraft
2020–2021 - launching Starship into low-earth orbit
2022 - Shipment of Starship with cargo to Mars
2024 - Starship manned flight to Mars
2025 - landing of the first man on Mars
2028 - completion of the permanent base on Mars
2030s - the construction of a whole city on Mars
And already at the first point, a lag behind the schedule may begin. In any case, it’s only a month until the end of the year, and it’s not clear how and what can fly during this month: the spacecraft was built, demonstrated, even the "insides" were shown, and then they were filled with cryogenic liquid - and got an explosion. But even if everything went, or rather, flew flawlessly, in 15 years we would definitely not see the Martian city, we are convinced of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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"I think this is, of course, a fantasy. These terms are absolutely not realistic. I think this is pure advertising propaganda of my efforts, my business intentions so that there is simply a constant interest in this person, in this businessman in society."
Igor Mitrofanov, Head of the Department of Nuclear Planetology, IKI RAS
But in this city, Elon is thinking of completing his chronicles, that is, going on a well-deserved rest. However, again this is not accurate. With a 70% chance, he said. At the same time, the International Space Station was ignored 100%. Orbit is not his level, right? There people train all their conscious lives, prepare for work in zero gravity. But Elon Musk with a 70% probability will simply sit in Starship one day and fly to Mars.
According to the scientist, in the same Elon Musk there are two different people. One - the serious one who builds spaceships and who needs to be paid tribute - if not for him, there would be no returnable rockets in America. But there is another Elon Musk - one who talks a lot.
Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Igor Mitrofanov supervised many experiments to search for water ice on Mars, and to study soil. He is convinced that the colonization of Mars will take place, but not as soon as Musk says.
The biggest problem of Mars exploration is radiation, Mitrofanov emphasized. And not even the radiation that bombards the surface of the Red Planet - you can still hide from it underground. Worst of all is the dose the crew will receive along the way. And the road is long, it will take several months.
The second question. How not to fly into the pipe?
What is typical. Maybe not everyone knows, so let's make it clear right away: Ilyich was not invented by Ilyich, and it was not Elon Musk who invented the vacuum trains. Start over. And first there was, for that matter, Henry Pincus - an English scientist. I must say that such an idea was also expressed before him, but he, at least, was the first to patent it. In 1835, by the way. And this was exactly the very concept that we are talking about - in fact, a pipe with rarefied air in which the train travels. It was later called the atmospheric railroad.
Carefully, the doors are closing, the next station is the Tomsk Technological Institute. That is, now it is a university, and in 1913 it was an institute.
Right - Boris Petrovich Weinberg. And this is his experience, the world's first experience in moving a body in a vacuum tube. In it, something like the following happens: from the inside, a metal spiral is wound along the entire length, through which a current flows. This is called a solenoid. It creates a magnetic field that moves the body along this tunnel. And the body is a cigar-shaped capsule.
And then the First World War began. And it took another hundred years for us to have Elon Musk. He's read a lot of books, made a lot of money, and now his SpaceX and two other companies - Virgin Hyperloop One and Hyperloop HTT - are racing to build pipes and pump air out of them.
“I personally have not seen a single real calculation. From the standpoint of engineering practice, I’m not speaking from the standpoint of science, it smacks of some kind of bluff. No evidence, no calculations, they say indiscriminately, but it is profitable for them - they collect colossal money.”
Anatoly Zaitsev, professor of the PGUPS of Emperor Alexander I
By the way, Professor Zaitsev has some doubts about the well-readness of the ideological mastermind of Hyperloop and his followers.
The third question. How to avoid failure?
Traffic jam in Los Angeles is awful. But it will be over soon. The light at the end of the tunnel didn’t even appear, but a multi-colored illumination was lit along the entire length. Expectations look like this.
In reality, the beloved city today, for almost a year, has something like the following: a tunnel 1 kilometer long 830 meters, which was drilled at a depth of 6 to 12 meters. The website of either the "boring" or the "boring" company says that the converted Tesla Model X and Tesla Model S with new large chassis will carry 16 passengers each. But so far we have only what is written on the fence.
No capsules, no platform, the car drives by itself, and so that it clearly follows in a given direction and does not go either to the right or to the left, it needs to be equipped with special retractable wheels ($ 300 set). True, at the presentation of the tunnel in December 2018, some journalists noticed that for some reason these wheels did not move back on the "Tesla" on which they were rolled. And as for the speed, we experienced some disappointment - they promised 240 kilometers per hour, but it turned out about 55, judging by the fact that they reached the end of the tunnel in two minutes. However, it is still twice as fast as on a busy highway.
Well, nothing, you won't have to be bored for a long time: a new dig has just begun - in Las Vegas. An underground passage is supposed to connect the buildings of the huge convention center, which are three kilometers apart. There the computer simulation will be embodied. Probably. And then the drilling rigs will proceed with stops: another tunnel under the City of Angels, underground "minibuses" from O'Hare airport to downtown Chicago, from Washington to Baltimore. And all this is only in the observable universe. And in the future, we are all waiting for a multi-level brave new underworld.
"They have these shallow tunnels, that is, they will be built in an open way, most likely. And there, four meters wide behind the eyes is enough to accommodate an electric train, for example."
Dmitry Petrov, Associate Professor, St. Petersburg Mining University
In an open way, it means digging a trench, equipping everything necessary for a transport tunnel and filling it back up. In Moscow, for example, this is most often unrealistic, because we have swamps all around, the soil is loose and moist. Therefore, for example, the Park Pobedy station has settled down at a depth of 84 meters. And they built it, like most other stations, in a closed way, that is, they drilled, drilled and drilled. It is much more difficult and more expensive. And in America, they were more fortunate in this regard.
And although Musk preaches that we only need the sun, in fact, new developments in solar energy have not yet kept up with the growing demand for electric cars. So, according to many experts, electricity will never be "vegan" on chargers, that is, it will not be obtained in a completely merciful way. For example, in Russia most of the electricity is produced by combined heat and power plants (CHP), and they, as you know, “eat” with appetite for a long time out of fashion fossil fuels.
"If it's a coal-fired or oil-fired CHP, that's not very good, and if it's a gas-fired power plant, it's good for the most part, because our gas leaves a lower carbon footprint than the production of a solar silicon panel or wind turbine."
Dmitry Grushevenko, Researcher, InEI RAS
Finally, there is one more problem, very far from moral concerns about the concentration of carbon dioxide. But the most urgent.
“It's cold here, and the battery loses its capacity in cold weather. When leaving a warm parking lot or garage in winter, their battery capacity drops dramatically.
Dmitry Grushevenko, Researcher, InEI RAS
In conclusion
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@Elonmusk, where will we have lunch? This, by the way, is not a proposal, but a question, moreover, one might say, a philosophical one. About the stages of development of civilizations. This is from his favorite book. He will understand.
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