Starship, SpaceX’s ambitious rocket under
development, could have an underestimated
effect on society’s interactions with space.
The stainless steel rocket is currently in
the prototyping phase, but when complete it’s
set to unlock some of SpaceX’s most ambitious
targets.
It uses easier-to-harvest rocket fuel, which
could create a planet-hopping network to the
moon, Mars and beyond.
It can also carry over 100 tons or 100 people
into orbit at once, meaning humans can send
more into space than ever before.
There’s still a lot of things to take care
of on Earth for SpaceX, and moving to Mars
is still a far-fetched idea.
But, nothing stops Elon Musk to plan and have
an idea on what it could take to make it a
reality.
All this adds up to a rocket that could smash
current annual launch metrics, CEO Elon Musk
explained via Twitter Thursday, 7th November.
The SpaceX Starships will be essential to
the whole process because of their affordability,
as well as their capacity for cargo and the
fact they are designed to be reusable.
Elon Musk went into a bit more detail about
the timelines and the vehicle requirements
to not only reach Mars, but to set up a sustainable
base on the Red Planet that can serve as an
actual city, supporting a local population.
That’s the long-term vision for Musk and
his space technology company, after all — making
humans an interplanetary species.
The timeline that Musk mentioned at this time,
replying to followers on Twitter, may be extremely
spectacular or extremely formidable, relying
in your perspective.
Musk believes that if his SpaceX company ramps
up production on the Starship rockets, it
will be able to launch much more payload into
orbit each year.
This will be a massive increase from the current
global payload orbit capacity of about 500
tons per year.
Around half of this current capacity is completed
by SpaceX’s Falcon family of rockets, which
covers the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.
Musk addressed more near-term potential for
SpaceX Starship as well, including how much
payload capacity Starship will provide for
Earth orbital transportation.
SpaceX Starship’s design is intended to
maximize re-use, and in fact Musk noted that
ideally it can fly up to three times per day.
That amounts to more than 1,000 flights per
year per Starship, which means that if SpaceX
end up with as many Starships as they currently
have built Falcon rockets (around 100) and
those can each transport as much as 100 tons
to orbit, then on an annual basis, SpaceX
will be able to launch upwards of 10 million
tons to orbit per year.
That’s 20,000 times more payload than the
whole planet is sending to space annually
right now.
That’s a lot of stuff — and it could eventually
pave the way for Musk’s big ambition to
build a city on Mars.
In this video Engineering Today will discuss
SpaceX’s Starship which could transform
humanity's interactions with space.
Why SpaceX wants to send so much stuff to
build the first sustainable city on Mars?
Let’s get into details.
Expanding humanity’s ability to send stuff
into space could offer new opportunities for
the future.
Astronauts on the International Space Station
are already regularly sending cargo into space
to complete scientific studies.
Recent experiments include the first lab-grown
burger grown in microgravity, a biofabrication
facility that could help create organ-like
tissues, and slime to create educational videos
for Nickelodeon.
SpaceX has its own ideas for how it wants
to use the added capacity.
It plans to develop SpaceX Starlink, an internet
connectivity constellation that could eventually
number 42,000 satellites.
Considering the total number of satellites
in space is somewhere around 5,000 it could
vastly increase the number of crafts in orbit.
Using so many satellites at low altitude could
enable faster response times and higher speeds,
while enabling SpaceX to earn more money through
offering internet connection services.
SpaceX has in fact already begun deploying
Starlink, and once this system becomes operational
the company anticipates that selling broadband
internet from space will generate operating
profits to the order of $4 billion per year
by 2021, and as much as $22 billion by 2025
-- at 60% operating profit margins.
Of course, in order to earn the profits that
will make a mission to Mars possible, SpaceX
first has to build the Starlink satellites,
and launch them into orbit.
SpaceX's recently announced and more ambitious
plan to flood the skies with 42,000 Starlinks
could become feasible at a rate of 400 Starlinks
per SpaceX Starship launch.
Launching twice per month, the 105 launches
necessary could be accomplished in roughly
four years.
The company isn’t limiting its satellite
ambitions to its own endeavors, though.
SpaceX Starship’s first mission is expected
to send a telecommunications satellite into
space as early as 2021.
Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX vice president of
commercial sales, said in July 2019 that the
company will encourage others to get creative
with Starship’s capabilities: “You could
potentially recapture a satellite and bring
it down if you wanted to.
It’s very similar to the space shuttle bay
in that regard.
Humans could even track all this extra stuff
in space with even more satellites.
NorthStar wants to send up 40 satellites to
track space debris.
This would help scientists better measure
what’s actually floating around up there,
avoiding the distortion that comes with measurements
through the atmosphere.
Beyond the scientific applications, this could
result in a rush to a newly-expanding market.
A June 2018 panel session at the Space Frontier
Foundation’s NewSpace conference discussed
how the industry, valued at around $350 billion,
could be worth over $1 trillion in the 2040s.
SpaceX’s most ambitious goal is to build
a city on Mars.
This could be enabled by a fleet of SpaceX
Starships, all lifting cargo to the planet.
Musk claimed that each SpaceX Starship flight
which offers a fully-reusable design, could
drop launch prices lower than ever $2 million
— meaning the Mars colonization process
will rack up a bill of about $2 billion just
to sending the rockets off to Mars.
According to Musk, it would take about 1,000
SpaceX Starship rockets to transport all of
the necessary cargo and crew to Mars to start
a city.
The fleet would transport around one million
tons of cargo to the planet, which Musk estimates
would be enough to develop a self-sustaining
city and set up all the necessary infrastructure
to get the city up and running.
Then, Musk suggested, Those trips will have
to take place over the course of about 20
years because, as he noted, the planets only
align once every two years to actually facilitate
the trips.
After carrying an awful lot of cargo, there's
the task of getting people to Mars.
Of course, to set up a permanent, sustainable
city on Mars, we first have to get there with
a crewed flight.
But before getting to another planet, SpaceX
will have to get to the Moon first.
For any mission to Mars, the Moon will serve
as a sort of launch pad — a short jump from
Earth before the big jump to the Red Planet.
NASA has set 2024 as its goal for Moon milestone,
and SpaceX has said it hopes to land Starship
there by as early as 2022.
In the past, Musk has discussed crewed Mars
mission also taking place as early as 2024,
but that goal seems mighty aspirational from
where we sit today.
Musk has a history of making alarming predictions
about his plans to colonize Mars.
Notably he has espoused the idea of targeting
nuclear weapons to detonate just above the
planet's ice caps, thereby causing the frozen
water to evaporate releasing CO2 into the
air and warming the planet's surface - rendering
it more habitable for humans.
The theory has little scientific grounding
however.
A study published in Nature found there is
unlikely to be enough CO2 in Mars' icecaps
to engineer the desired greenhouse effect
and, even if there were, Mars' atmosphere
is constantly leaking into deep space so the
gas would gradually disappear.
SpaceX has big plans to meet these lofty goals.
It’s aiming to build one new Raptor engine
every day next year, with each SpaceX Starship
vessel and Super Heavy booster using around
40 engines total.
It’s aiming to build new Starship prototypes
at both its Texas and Florida facilities.
All of this is in service of a ship that could
transport 100 humans into space at a time.
Space industry venture capitalist Rick Tumlinson
previously told that this could be a major
step in humanity’s history.
“Even if he doesn’t go to Mars or the
moon, the ability to deliver 100-plus people
at a time to orbit, to space itself, is going
to be the beginning of the biggest revolution
in the history of humanity, if not life itself,”
Tumlinson said in February 2019.
“Having the ability to climb out of the
gravity well of Earth means we have the potential
to make life and humanity immortal, unkillable.”
That doesn’t mean hopping on the SpaceX
Starship would necessarily be an enticing
prospect.
Musk himself was keen to stress that the first
humans to make the several-month journey to
Mars will be in for a rough ride.
“In the beginning, assuming you even make
it there alive, Mars will be far more dangerous
& difficult than Earth & take decades of hard
labor to make self-sufficient,” Musk wrote
on Thursday, 7th November.
“That’s the sales pitch. Want to go?”
