Giving a little more screen real estate to the illustration in this one.
background: Illustration by Luis Peres for Scratching the Surface
Video clip 08: Frontier creativity
background: illustration for Scratching the Surface by Luis Peres
No ordinary spacecraft
I’m not sure there is such a thing as an “ordinary spacecraft”, but there certainly has never been a spacecraft like SpaceX’s BFR. The sheer audacity of someone trying this is balanced by the earnestness of the effort, and the whole process is fascinating to watch unfold. This article investigates some of the challenges SpaceX is facing.
“To be able to launch, refuel in orbit, endure months of flying through space, land on Mars, leave that planet, and safely return to Earth — then do all that over again — the BFR can’t be an ordinary spacecraft.”
Business Insider Space business
Admit it: you’ve always been curious.
Business Insider Terraforming, counterpoint…
“The article’s basic mistake is in thinking Mars is a closed system. But no planet is a closed system.”
X (formerly Twitter) Whither terraforming?
Humans love the idea of a rebel. But only the idea. Take action too far outside the box of current experience and you begin to hear the Greek Chorus of naysayers heckling you, gleefully glomming onto anything that might pull you back within accepted norms.
Such has been the case recently regarding a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, which reported that there does not appear to be enough CO2 on Mars to allow for terraforming. I can’t count the number of articles that have floated through my various feeds starting with the mocking phrase “Sorry Elon…” Google it yourself and see what I mean.
3D printing
With all the flashy transport-related progress from SpaceX and ULA and Blue Origin and NASA, it’s easy to miss the small developments that are just as important to our eventual habitation of Mars.
3D printing will be key to the development of colonies on Mars. From tools and parts to buildings and skateboards, colonists will create much of their world from scratch, eventually even producing their own plastics as the raw material.
““Once Nasa approved the wrench, we sent the file to the printer – essentially we emailed it to space and hit print,” says Jason Dunn, Made In Space’s co-founder and chief technology officer, sitting across the table in a conference room at the company’s headquarters in Moffett Field, Santa Clara County. “I get goosebumps every time I think about that story.”
For Dunn, that wrench is symbolic of an entirely new frontier in space exploration, one in which his eight-year-old company is a pioneer: manufacturing items in space, rather than relying only on those objects you can find room to pack on a rocket from Earth.”
the Guardian 
NPR.org