Guest: Golden Oldie Elon Musk from Oct. 24, 2001; Topic: Golden Oldie Archive Play regarding the Mars Oasis plan and Elon’s ideas for a multi-planet species by settling on Mars. Please direct all comments and questions regarding Space Show programs/guest(s) to the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments and questions should be relevant to the specific Space Show program. Written Transcripts of Space Show programs are a violation of our copyright and are not permitted without prior written consent, even if for your own use. We do not permit the commercial use of Space Show programs or any part thereof, nor do we permit editing, YouTube clips, or clips placed on other private channels & websites. Space Show programs can be quoted, but the quote must be cited or referenced using the proper citation format. Contact The Space Show for further information. In addition, please remember that your Amazon purchases can help support The Space Show/OGLF. See www.onegiantleapfoundation.org/amazon.htm. For those listening to archives using live365.com and rating the programs, please email me as to why you assign a specific rating to the show. This will help me bring better programming to the audience. This is a Golden Oldie program from Oct. 24, 2001. At this time, The Space Show was known as Business Without Boundaries and was aired on a Phoenix radio station. The formatting of the program was that of the radio station as they divided the 60 minute discussion into 5 short segments. All the commercial breaks and music from back then are included in this discussion. Elon was the 16th guest on The Space Show (Business Without Boundaries). In the first segment, we talked about the why of Elon's interest in space and the need to be on a second planet. Mr. Musk talked about the different reasons for wanting to go to space but for him it was to insure survival of our species by being a multi-planet species. Elon then discussed his Mars Oasis Project which was time lined for 2005 as a private mission. He wanted to rally American public opinion for the need for a human presence on Mars. Our guest took us deeper into Mars Oasis with his greenhouse plans and some of the crops he thought would be suitable for the project. In the second segment, Elon again said they were looking for a 2005 launch with a landing on Mars in 2006. A listener asked him about using off the shelf technology and Bruce from Stanford wanted to know about Russian-US cooperation since the plan was to use a converted Russian SS18 ICBM for the launch vehicle. Our guest also identified some of the equipment that would be part of the Mars Oasis payload. John in St. Louis asked Elon if this was a commercial project with an expected ROI. The answer was that it was a humanitarian project and no ROI was expected. In the third segment, Elon was asked to estimate the costs for the project. He said that NASAs cheaper missions were around $200-250 million and full cost missions were higher. In this segment he suggested the costs might be 10-15% of the lower NASA costs. He was also planning two missions since it was possible for one to fail. In the fourth segment, Elon was asked additional questions about the costs which he approximated at $20-$30 million. Another question dealt with regulatory issues. Here, Elon did talk about ITAR but said at present there were no laws or regulations regarding a private mission to Mars. Remember now, our discussion took place in 2001. Near the end of this short segment, questions about using the NASA DSN came up as Mars Oasis would need to communicate with Earth. Elon suggested a design for his own communication network which he said might be commercialized down the road for other upcoming commercial space users. In the fifth and final short segment, Elon summarized our discussion and said that he wanted to both change the world & create a world. He also said we were closer to being able to go to Mars than JFK was when he said we would go to the Moon. Post your comments on The Space Show blog but remember, this discussion aired Oct. 24, 2001. 9/11 had just happened. We were preparing for war, our nation was very different then than it is today. If you listen to later interviews with Elon, you will hear him discuss why Mars Oasis was tabled and why he thought it necessary to build his own rocket and rocket company. You can find these archived programs using the GuestSearch tool on our website. Search for his name. You want the programs where he was the guest, not just talked about by others. Hats off to Elon Musk for his flexibility and for his work in making sure his vision eventually comes to life and reality.
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