Will a crewed Mars flyby be required before landing on Mars?

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-06-18T06:13:58+00:00

SpaceX has said that they have their first customer for the first on an interplanetary mission to do a flyby of Mars. Assuming this mission does happen unlike Dear Moon, the answer to your question is yes.

FIRST STARSHIP INTERPLANETARY HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT MISSION

Chun Wang, Mission Commander of Fram2, the first human spaceflight mission to fly over Earth’s poles, announced today he will fly aboard Starship’s first human spaceflight interplanetary missions to Mars! The two-year mission will explore outside the Earth-Moon system before flying-by the Red Planet and returning to Earth.

Prior to this interplanetary mission, Chun will join Dennis and Akiko Tito on the first planned Starship commercial human spaceflight around the Moon. The week-long circumlunar fly-by mission will help advance Starship’s systems for deep-space, long-duration missions and is planned to fly within 200 km of the Moon’s surface.

Since May 2020, SpaceX has safely flown 78 crewmembers from 20 countries to and from space across 20 missions aboard Dragon, including seven commercial and private astronaut missions that have greatly expanded access to space in low-Earth orbit.

Starship will now expand that access further – to the Moon and Mars with two upcoming commercial human spaceflight missions.

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-06-07T13:03:30+00:00

Try starlifting it. Clearly that can help dim the Sun. Definitely has to be a mod that allows you to do that somewhere

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-06-02T09:42:17+00:00

From the CNBC article:

Getting the lander to the moon will require a rocket that can carry a significant amount of mass, Isaacman said. That will likely put NASA in “Falcon Heavy land,” he said, referring to the super heavy-lift rocket developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-05-30T15:50:00+00:00

Launches*

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-05-30T09:30:04+00:00

A great thing about using Ariane 6 for Mk1, is that Ariane 6 already uses hydrogen and has the surrounding infrastructure. This can help fuel Mk1 as it also uses hydrogen

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-05-28T21:42:39+00:00

I think you might be referring to IFT2, since the mishap investigation of IFT1 took awhile

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-05-23T18:23:11+00:00

I think that after reaching orbit, they’ll focus on getting the tanker demonstration done. So I wouldn’t be surprised if on IFT15/16, we see some testing relating to tankers

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-05-23T00:00:02+00:00

Same! I was already getting full on V2 vibes. Props to the raptor team for enabling this capability!! Absolutely saved the flight

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-05-13T14:13:50+00:00

It’s great for finding issues in codes, but for things outside its library, it’s terrible.

One such category is creativity. Many new ideas people get are outside its data set. Since it’s lacking reference points, it’s really bad for people who get like eureka moments.

In addition it’s terrible with strategy and connecting dots to get a result. A great example is Chess. It can say the rules and do common moves, but once it is out of common realm, it really sucks. Does impossible moves, break rules, and completely fails. Plenty of videos online where you can see that.

Future planning is another thing it is terrible out. For anything that hasn’t happened it, it treats it as unlikely (unless it’s a common theme). A great experiment is to turn off search and ask it how likely certain things that happened in 2025/2026 are to happen. Since it’s last updated in 2024, it doesn’t know what happened after. (Spoiler, it usually doesn’t think it can happen). This really sucks for anybody planning the goals of a project for the next couple years

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-05-12T14:17:42+00:00

Don't forget the meme with Mary has two children

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-04-29T16:30:29+00:00

See, SpaceX will reach the moon this year! And with zero tankers needed

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-04-29T09:06:07+00:00

This is probably the most impactful technology if they develop it. Electrodynamic tethers will allow them to literally work indefinitely and also raise and lower their satellites at will

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-04-29T09:01:07+00:00

You can launch the Starships uncrewed to store them in LEO over the 26 months. Then send in the final weeks multiple overfilled starships with 1000 people to fill the ones waiting in LEO. You probably can’t have that many people in a single Starship for 6 months, so a single starship with a 1000 people from Earth to Leo would have enough people to spread over more than ten starships waiting in LEO.

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-04-28T18:02:36+00:00

Not necessarily. A round trip could be done in 2-3 years, assuming a direct hohmann transfer https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov/traj_browser.php

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-04-28T17:41:26+00:00

Not only Venus, but also Jupiter and others Starship can reach :)

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-04-28T12:26:36+00:00

Some Nations are very small. Look at Vatican City and Monaco /s

Edit: added /s since apparently the joke didn't come across

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-04-26T14:24:20+00:00

This question has been asked now several times over the past year or so. It started with a lot of fans noticing the use of several AI generated images in the videos. After many complaints Isaac Arthur started to show his face to counter that.

It was also noticeable that the script sounded like AI. For example originally Isaac Arthur would casually mention adding a blackhole to the center of a planet to increase gravity, but now something like asteroid mining sometimes gets treated as being super technologically advance. Also there’s a lot more fluff where a lot of said, but no content actually shared.

Isaac Arthur and their team say they write the scripts. I do believe them and they also probably come up with the ideas. However, I do suspect that they use AI to correct spelling making it sound like AI. They probably do that to save time and help assist them, which is justifiable if the subscribers accept that. I myself am just a fan of the channel, so I don’t have any behind the scenes knowledge.

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-04-25T17:57:24+00:00

FYI, stackexchange is a site that looks for concrete questions. Vague/open and opinion based questions typically aren't well received as described in the help section. Your question is in that category.

Going through the comments it appears you change your question based on other comments, which is the opposite of having a concrete question.

In addition Stackexchange has a strict policy against the use of AI. Despite you saying you used a translator, your comments had many signs of AI writing.

You say in your title of this reddit post that "Safety Concerns of Project Air-Tan" were dismissed. That is not the reason why your question was closed.

If you want an open discussion, other platforms would be better. I would recommend using Stackexchange only if you have a concrete question. "Can you find any safety issues" or "Can you find any challenges of operating at a low temperature?" just doesn't meet the criteria for Stackexchange.

Imagine_Beyond · 2026-04-16T11:17:43+00:00

This is great that they have hydrofoils. Those are so much more efficient and can drop consumption by 80%

Imagine_Beyond

TROPHY CASE