SpaceX plans to construct a “ ego - corroborate metropolis ” on Mars , accord to its beginner Elon Musk . But , while we now know a luck more about how SpaceX plans to get to Mars , details about how people will actually survive up there stay unelaborated .
Musk dribble the news on Tuesday during an name and address at the International Astronautical Congress coming together in Guadalajara , Mexico , where he had promised to reveal how the company planned to send hoi polloi to live on Mars .
“ I do n’t have an immediate doomsday divination , ” allege Musk , but he noted that he see only two possible path frontward . “ One itinerary is to ride out on Earth forever , and there will be some experimental extinction consequence . The option is to become a multi - planetary species , which I hope you will agree is the correct way to go . ”
The programme comesless than a month after the company ’s rockets were grounded following a secret explosionthat caused a Falcon 9 to burst into flaming on the launchpad . Since then , the company has released the results of an initial investigation , tracing the fire back to a breach in the rocket ’s heliumsupply , and denote that it contrive totake to the skies againby November .
decent before the presentation , SpaceX released a mini - preview of what we could wait from its new Interplanetary Transport System . The arrangement was previously called the Mars Colonial Transporter , until just a few week ago , when Musk change the nameafter suggesting that it could take us to other name and address in the solar scheme .
Asnoted before , the picture gives us a pretty expert idea of the sequence of events for how the system would work :
In the video , first , we see the rocket rise - off from Cape Canaveral ’s Launchpad 39a with 28,730,000 lb of driving force behind it . After stage separation , the spaceships parks in orbit while the booster rejoin to Earth — where it lands . A propellant tank ship is loaded onto the booster unit to refuel the starship in orbit for its trip to Mars . The tanker returns to Earth and the spaceship foreland for Mars . The solar arrays deploy and the ships coast until it finally get in Mars ’ orbit . The ship lands on the Martian airfoil and then we get a coup d’oeil of the astronauts look out onto the Martian field .
One of the openhanded roadblock to doing that is the cost , which Musk count on at about $ 10 billion . The SpaceX founder detail four ways that he believe a ticket to Mars would become a possible purchase for many people — alike to buying a house . These method let in using recyclable rockets , refuelling the starship in space , and using a methane fuel alternatively of traditional rocket fuel . in conclusion , that methane fuel could be harvested on Mars itself .
We also learned quite a bit about the roquette and what it would be like to travel to Mars . Just like the Falcon 9 , the rocket booster on the Interplanetary Transport System will land and be re - used . ( SpaceX has landed a number of its Falcon 9 rockets after flight , but has n’t yet take flight one of the used rocket back into outer space . ) A key feature of speech of the rocket salad re - usage program is to place their Mars rockets back into place , so seeing a Falcon 9 rocket successfully make a second trip will be critical to convincing people that the design is plausible .
The new SpaceX rocket will be incredibly enceinte , dwarf even the company ’s Falcon Heavy and the domain ’s last tall Eruca vesicaria sativa , the now - defunct Saturn V.
If being locked into a spaceship for month at a time with a bunch of your fellow humans sounds a little grim , though , Musk say not to vex . “ It ’ll be , like , really fun to go — you’ll have a smashing time , ” he says . primal to doing that will be pass water the interior of the rocket well-off for the long drive , which for initial trip will last 80 days . Musk says that he eventually believe a trip could be brought down to a single month .
But whether this is really doable depends a heap on whether SpaceX can really get the money together . “ I would say it ’s going to be a challenge to fund this whole project , ” Musk noted . He spent a lot of clip today verbalise about the economics of an single ticket , which he said could put down as low as $ 100,000 .
Musk hinted that he would personally be devoting assets to the project . “ I really do n’t have any other motivation for in person amass plus , except to make the with child donation I can to making life multi - planetary , ” he say . But even then , there would still need to be significant away investiture .
“ I know there ’s a lot of multitude in the private sphere interested in fund a trip to Mars , hopefully there will be interest in the government side as well , ” Musk said . “ finally this will be a Brobdingnagian private - public partnership . ”
How quickly all this could happen would , in large grade , depend on whether that funding comes through at all . But if the money is there and all goes as planned on the technological side , Musk say we could see Mars flights start as soon as 2023 — although he cautioned that the timeline was still in - flux density . He also maintain to SpaceX ’s original appointment for when we would see Red Dragon missions head to Mars in 2018 with payloads between 2 or 3 tons .
But while he described the project as a “ self - sustaining city , ” Musk did not go into detail about the kind of longsighted - term substructure that would keep people active once they got there .
“ The destination of SpaceX is really to build up the transfer system , ” said Musk , before suggesting that the Martian settler themselves would do much of the building . “ Who desire to be among the first to progress everything , from refineries to the first pizza joint ? ” Musk call for .
But before we can ramp up a pizza joint on Mars , the great unwashed will need a whole lot of other thing , including but not circumscribe to clean and useable water , a space home ground up to of hold Martian environments , some form of tape drive , and presumptively some more people who would use up there . Musk also failed to excuse who — if anyone — is in reality going to build and maintain that basic base . Without it , the plan is unlikely to succeed .
For what it ’s deserving , Musk says that he ’d like to make the stumble to Mars himself — but only after set together a Plan B for his company , in type of disaster . “ I would by all odds like to go to scope and visit the distance station and then ultimately go to Mars , ” he said . “ I have to ensure if something goes amiss on the flight and I perish there ’s a salutary succession plan and the mission of the company continues . ”
If SpaceX ’s plans to get to Mars do win , though , we could be calculate at trips even further out . As I noted yesterday , Musk has hint at the opening of using this transport system to go beyond Mars — and it appears that future plans could be head that way .
“ If we have a propellent storage , you could go from Mars to Jupiter , no problem , ” Musk pronounce . “ It means full entree to the entire gravid solar arrangement . ” He note a special stake in traveling to Europa .
The first whole tone , though , would be establishing regular travel — or even a first trip — to Mars . And to see if that ’s really possible , we ’ll have to hold off .
Elon MuskMarsMuskNASAScienceSpaceSPACEX
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