Talk:SpaceX Mars Colonization Program

"Facilities" details in a Mars mission architecture article; let's discuss

In recent edits, an editor made good faith efforts to improve the article, and begin to flesh out the facilities section, to broaden this beyond merely launch facilities. The intent is commendable.

My sense however is that Mars-specific TOC-subsection on vehicle manufacturing and vehicle testing would be more appropriate in some other article, unless we have sources indicating Mars-specific intent for these locations.

As it is, BFR is SpaceX only LV for all missions. BFR will be flying all Earth-orbit, and cislunar, and Mars, and interplanetary, and Earth point-to-toint missions. It seems we should probably cover the details on build and test facilities in the article(s) on the launch vehicles, and not the article on the Mars mission architecture (this one).

We have little or no info on Mars-specific facilities; just the 2014 mention to the Texas legislature that stuff could launch to Mars from South Texas. This could change, and likely will, after the early 2020s if SpaceX begins launching Mars-bound craft. But is this really enough, in 2018, to justify a Table-of-Contents listing for facilities related to the Mars architecture? ... with TOC-subsections on vehicle manufacturing and vehicle testing? I think not; but am interested in what others think. Cheers. N2e (talk) 01:58, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

I also think it fits better in the BFR article. BFR facilities are relevant for both the Mars transportation and other transportation. --mfb (talk) 08:00, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

User:anxietycello, what do you think? N2e (talk) 17:29, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Is this article not intended to cover the whole Mars transportation at the overall system level? The title is "Mars transportation infrastructure" after all. As I see it, that system will have several components, which are designed to work together to deliver the ultimate goal. These components are ground infrastructure on Earth (which I started to cover in this article), the BFR booster, the BFS spacecraft (crew/cargo/tanker), the raptor engines that power them, and ultimately ground infrastructure on Mars (including the sabatier plant).

Why would it make sense to include ground infrastructure in the BFR article? These are two subtopics of this article; it doesn't make sense to contain one within another. I would suggest moving the text in the BFR article into this top-level article instead. Anxietycello (talk) 18:40, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for commenting, Anxietycello. It would be a normative view to say that this Mars-specific article on Mars transport architecture by SpaceX is the "top-level" article for BFR.

BFR is simply SpaceX next-generation launch vehicle, for all of SpaceX LV market segments: Earth-orbit sats, commsat launch, cargo transport to various commercial and potentially government space stations, plus interplanetary destinations like Mars. It doesn't follow that the Mars article is top level for that. Cheers. N2e (talk) 02:04, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

True, BFR will have many uses, but I would argue that all those other uses are secondary to the primary purpose - human missions between Earth and Mars. Since day one, the primary aim of Space X was to enable human settlement of the red planet. Again, everything else they do is secondary to that. All these other activities happen in order to build the knowledge, confidence, equipment, and funding to allow colonisation to take place.

I suppose this is a matter of debatable perspective though. I think that both viewpoint are equally valid, it would just be a matter of deciding which we should follow? As a compromise, perhaps the (Earth) ground infrastructure should be contained within the SpaceX launch facilities article and linked both here and BFR articles? Obviously that article should then be renamed "SpaceX facilities" or something similar - pads are important of course, but no more so than factories or test sites (the latter of which is oddly already included). Sound good? Anxietycello (talk) 08:06, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

It's been a week now, and only three editors have weighed in. Looks to me like two mfb and N2e think that all this recently-added detail, and requests in article tags for even more detail, on facilities for building the Mars infrastructure is excessive detail for this article. One editor, Anxietycello, the editor who first added all the new subsections, sees it having value here, in this article. I think under standard WP:BRD process, we should just remove the detail since no consensus for the change/addition has been secured on the Talk page.

How do you want to proceed, Anxietycello? Just remove it, or do you want to explicitly ask more editors to weigh in via a more formal proposal to keep your changes, and give it a full month of discussion to see if you might gain a consensus? N2e (talk) 13:40, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Nah, that's it fine if you guys want to remove it from here. Can any useful text be ported to the BFR article though? Seem a shame to delete the text entirely. Anxietycello (talk) 08:26, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I would agree to WP:PRESERVE useful additions by moving them to more appropriate articles, such as BFR and SpaceX launch facilities. The spaceship may be promoted by Musk as dedicated to Mars (it used to be called the "Mars Colonial Transporter"), but even Musk's own COO Gwynne Shotwell has recently commented that Earth-to-Earth hypersonic transportation may be the most promising application of this technology. I'm pretty sure that BFR/BFS variants for Mars transport will soon diverge significantly from their "airline killer" and "mass satellite delivery" sister ships. — JFG ^talk 07:34, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Please also consider contributing to the generic Exploration of Mars or Human mission to Mars articles. — JFG ^talk 07:47, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

So Anxietycello, do feel free to WP:PRESERVE any of the stuff that might be useful by moving them to more appropriate articles. We can clean this one up in a few more days; but you can always get the details from the history if you don't get a chance to directly move it yourself. Cheers. N2e (talk) 15:15, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

 Done, made the changes to the article per above; will leave the Facilities details for the launch vehicle article, BFR (rocket). N2e (talk) 04:14, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Reverting whitespace changes

@N2e: What is this all about? KuboF Hromoslav removed unnecessary whitespace (spaces after paragraphs or double space between sentences), fixed a "but"->"But" at the beginning of a sentence, improved one link and added quotation marks for reference names. All fully uncontroversial improvements, and no text was shifted around. The only change to the article text is the now capitalized "b". Why exactly does this need to be reverted - twice? --mfb (talk) 02:48, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for jumping in to review mfb to avoid an edit war. Perhaps it is the settings of my edit comparator, but when the original edit summary said only "typos" (diff), yet quite a bit of text had showed as having been added and substracted to the article, something didn't add up. So I flagged it, and reverted.

On the second time KuboF Hromoslav made the same edit, the edit summary did add more info, but it also included a not good faith set of comments that were borderline insulting. So, I don't have time for this, and suggested KuboF take it to BRD. KuboF might also have chosen a good faith explanation, acknowledged the incorrect edit summary, and things might have gone smoother. Obviously, we're dealing with busy humans here, and bad faith comments with real humans often fail to bring about the desired results, if improving Wikipedia is the desired result.

In any case, you are an outside editor. If you review the changes declared as "typos" and decide the many edits there that were not typo fixes are acceptable, I'm good with that.

Or if it's still there in a few days when I have time to read the edit comparator for "typos" more carefully, with a lot more time on my hands, I'll change it if it really is such "small changes." This was not small changes. Cheers. N2e (User talk:N2e) 03:32, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't know if it is active by default, but you can click the "Delta" symbol to get a better comparison. I gave a full list of the changes in the comment above. It is really just whitespace, invisible syntax, one link target and the "but" typo. The first two types could have come from some script. As I did review the changes I put them back into the article. --mfb (talk) 04:51, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

For information N2e, my first's edit summary "typos" was about "typography", so the whitespaces. I recognize you may have a little time, so I asked you to leave the changes for review by someone who have the time (thanks, mfb!). And also, I can utilize my time better too, not by re-reviewing my old edit which was reverted by someone who does not have time for review and so reverts it, so just please, next time just really review the edit or leave it. Thanks. --KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 11:39, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Total Rewriting Needed

The Mars Transportation Infrastructure has changed significantly since 2016. It is time for the articles surrounding it to change too.Ultimograph5 (talk) 19:25, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

The article seems to summarize the overall SpaceX Mars transportation infrastructure, which is the current article title, pretty decently from the beginning of substantive disclosure by SpaceX through mid-2019. What in particular would you think still needs to change, Ultimograph5?

It will, of course, continue to evolve as SpaceX works the iterative design process on the mongo launch vehicles/stages that can make the access to interplanetary space and Mars possible for them. Some, even, on 24th of this month when SpaceX CEO is expected to provide a substantive update and review of design decisions to date. N2e (talk) 19:32, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

At some point we can rename it to "History of ..." - as it is mainly historic. We got a lot of information about Mars plans in 2016-2017, we know they changed a lot since then but we don't know the new status. We did get many updates about the rocket and the progress is tracked in Starship (rocket) and similar articles, but you don't see these updates here ("Construction of the first of the Super Heavy vehicles would begin in 2018, according to Musk."). --mfb (talk) 01:29, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

"Interplanetary Transport System" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Interplanetary Transport System. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. --Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 04:55, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 21 July 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 14:37, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

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SpaceX Mars transportation infrastructure → SpaceX Mars program – More WP:CONCISE and WP:NATURAL. Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 13:19, 21 July 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. Bingobro (Chat) 09:36, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Support --mfb (talk) 00:00, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

opposition to mars expeditions

Is there any serious opposition to mars expeditions? I am personally against any attempt to go to mars, not to speak to send humans, it seems to be such a really childish pursuit. Not particularly technically clever, just hugely expensive, an overgrown child dream like going to the moon or the space station. Plus the contamination issue. The most reveling justification is the one of the backup location for a specie which might be destroying the planet where it could live in harmony if it only would keep quiet.