SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently unveiled his plan to colonize Mars, a brilliant idea if he has the resources and technology to back it. The plan of course is a dream come true for humanity, because eventually the Earth is going to deplete and it will not be inhabitable anymore. However the technology used in the program seems the most interesting. How can Elon Musk make it affordable to travel to Mars en masse?
The project relies on 3 key factors:
- Full rocket reusability
- Refueling the spacecraft in orbit
- Propellant production on mars
It will start with a big rocket, something around 200 feet tall, which will deliver the crew capsule in orbit, then the booster will return to Earth, pick up a fuel tanker and carry that into orbit, after which it would fuel the spaceship for the trip to Mars. During the flight to Mars the spaceship will deploy solar panels to gain energy from the sun. Fleets of these crew capsules will hang around in the orbit until there is a favorable planetary alignment, which is every 26 months. (Drake, 2016)
All this will lead to the main goal: making the human race a multiplanetary species. Tickets to Mars will start at a price of around $200.000 and continually drop down to when almost anyone can buy it. Flights could harbor 100 passengers and could start within a decade if things go well. The timeline seems ambitious. Technological his plan seems plausible, however no one has ever attempted to do it at this scale before and the rocket Musk wants to use is 4 times as big as the Saturn VI, the biggest rocket of NASA. Another hurdle is the financing of the project. Putting someone on Mars costs around 10 billion dollars now. Fair enough investors will get attracted by the sheer idea of colonizing another planet and the idea of helping the human race as a whole. Musk said himself to this problem: ‘’As we show that this dream is not just a dream but can be made real, the support will snowball over time.’’ Also there is a possibility that there are minerals or materials found on Mars, which could benefit the profitability of the project, but will it be enough? Something very important to also point out would be the human factors like radiation or the effects of space on our body not to mention the conditions on Mars itself.
How Musk will deal with these unknown hurdles? Only time will tell. A very short amount of time in his opinion. Musk has to realize some groundbreaking things. He has done a lot of great things in technology already, but if he could make this project work at all, he should be called one of the greatest minds of this generation. All in all the announcement was great for publicity and definitely put SpaceX on the map if it wasn’t there already.
This video explains how the Interplanetary Transport System works:
Sources:
Blankesteijn, 2016. Plan van Elon Musk om Mars te koloniseren grenst aan bedrog [online]. Available at: https://fd.nl/opinie/1170040/plan-van-elon-musk-om-mars-te-koloniseren-grenst-aan-bedrog
Drake, 2016. Elon Musk: A Million Humans Could Live on Mars By the 2060s [online]. Available at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/elon-musk-spacex-exploring-mars-planets-space-science/
Plumer, Resnick, 2016. Elon Musk plans to colonize Mars. We have many questions [online]. Available at: http://www.vox.com/2016/9/27/13079382/elon-musk-spacex-mars-colony-plans
Van Noort, 2016. Vraagtekens bij de Marsmissie van Elon Musk [online]. Available at: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/09/28/vraagtekens-bij-de-marsmissie-van-elon-musk-4508438-a1523806
Hull, Johnsson, 2016. Musk Offers Mars Vision of Reusable Rockets, $200,000 Fares [online]. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-27/elon-musk-s-vision-for-mars-travel-focuses-on-reusable-rockets
Hi Ming! The stories about SpaceX has been going around for some while, and more and more people are getting excited (including me). Even though the rocket company made a lot of progress over the years, I am still a bit worried about its ability to meet its launch commitments. In 2014, SpaceX has scheduled about 12 missions in the books and it only launched 6 times. In 2015, it made only 6 successful launches, while it was supposed to be 17. So i am wondering what your thoughts are about this and if there are any measures that has been taken
Hi Ming & Min,
Indeed a highly interesting topic, Elon Musk is suprising the world once again. Indeed there are quite some big hurdles to overcome, in my opinion the top 5 (random order) is:
1. Cosmic radiation
2. Deep space communication
3. Money feasibility, as the costs need to be slashed by 51.000 times
4. Acquisition of vital resources at Mars
5. International protocols that prohibit seeding other planets with life
@Min, you also point out a interesting fact that is still worrying. All in all, it will be a very challenging project for Musk and his team, however, it wouldn’t be the first time he surprises us. But probably more surprising is the fact that Boeing is working on a similar project (see: https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/05/a-new-private-space-race-as-boeing-ceo-says-hell-beat-spacex-to-mars/) and their CEO states that they are even planning to beat SpaceX with regard to their time-line. I’m very curious how this will play out the upcoming years!
Robbert