in the last episodes we already talked
about how we could generate artificial
gravity for a crewed version of starship
how we could protect starship from
cosmic rays and how we could cut down
the travel time to Mars we will put the
links to these videos in the description
today we want to talk about another
extremely important issue of long
journeys to Mars namely the maximum crew
complement Elon often said that the
starship would allow for hundred people
to travel to Mars can this number
actually really be achieved or will
starship have to make do with a lower
crew complement well let's find out
when Elon first revealed the vessel
which would take humanity to Mars back
in 2016 we were presented the giant
behemoth ITS the interplanetary
transport system it was really large
with a diameter of 12 meters and roughly
the same length as the current starship
design back then Elon said that the
ITS would be able to transport hundred
people to Mars at once a number which
seemed credible since that monster would
have had an interior pressurized volume
of more than two thousand cubic meters
hundred people in a two thousand cubic
metre volume seems a bit cramped but
it's still possible for example we could
have had four crew quarter decks with 25
cabins on each deck each cabin could
have had a footprint of four square
meters and a ceiling height of 2.5
meters so in total 10 cubic meters of
private space per passenger however we
all know that in 2017 Elon announced the
next iteration of the Mars transport
infrastructure which was named BFR the
diameter of the upper section then
decreased to 9 meters so only 75% of the
ITS's diameter since the interior volume
of a cylinder is proportional to the
radius squared this means that the
interior volume of starship has
significantly shrunk from 2000 cubic
metres down to only thousand which is of
course still more than the entire ISS yet
only half as much as initially planned
interestingly though the number of
people to be transported to Mars in one
go remains at hundred so wait the
internal pressurized living space of
starship has halved yet the number of
the passengers stays the same this means
that on average one person would only
have 10 cubic meters of space down from
the 20 cubic meters as in the
ITS this is considering the space of
the whole ship not only the private
cabins so psychologically speaking would
this even be possible to have so many
people cramped in such a small volume on
a six-month trip to Mars where there's
no possibility of escape and no turning
back Midway surrounded by the same
people for six months in such a small
volume let's analyze what psychology has
to say to that
intriguingly NASA already conducted some
Studies on this very topic the subject
matter expert consensus session report
for the human research program HRP
titled minimum acceptable net habitable
volume for long-duration exploration
missions from 2014 gonna love these
short and concise NASA headlines comes
to the conclusion that 25 cubic meters
per person would be the minimum
acceptable net habitable volume which
they call NHV link of course in the
description they looked at a standard
habitat module as would have been employed
on a NASA mission to Mars with an
interior volume of 150 cubic meters it
is divided into private quarters or
personal sleeping space dining and
communal activity space work space and
exercise area common hygiene facilities
translation portals or pass throughs and
stowage access they based their estimate
on prior research on board of space
station Skylab Mir and the ISS and took
into account psychological studies in
order to arrive at that number in
another NASA study from 2011 link also
in the description they concluded that
the minimum acceptable net habitation
volume follows a logarithmic function so
first it rises steeply with the mission
duration but later on flattens and then
rises only slowly a trip to Mars with
starship would normally take around 6
months
yes we sometimes hear that three months
might be possible but we still doubt
that number so hundred eighty days
according to this chart would mean about
20 to 22 cubic meters of NHV
quite in line with the 25 cubic meters
from the more recent NASA study okay so
the NHV probably will be anywhere
between 20 and 25 cubic meters this
would mean for starship that a crew
complement of hundred persons is quite
unrealistic since in that scenario each
person would only have 10 cubic meters
of space for the NHV that NASA suggests
we would then get a maximum crew
complement of 40 maximum 50 persons and
this doesn't take into account how much
cargo drinking water food and so on
would have to also be transported to
Mars because 100 people will require
also twice the amount of food and water
than 50 people which would of course
decrease the payload of what could be
transported to Mars along the colonists
now some people said that we are too
conservative we should look at
submarines for comparisons we think that
this comparison might sound logical on
the surface but it actually isn't an
adequate comparison a submarine which
would be close in crew complement to
starship would be a Seawolf class
submarine with a crew complement of
hundred and forty it has a length of
hundred and eight meters and a beam
width of 12 meters so if we approximate
the submarine as a cylinder we would get
an interior volume of around 12,000
cubic meters but of course we have
torpedo Bays machine room power
generation and so on so quite a lot of
unusable space according to some
interior schematics a bit less than half
of the submarines interior volume can be
used by its crew so let's be super
conservative and say four thousand and
five hundred cubic meters this would
result in 32 cubic meters of space per
crew member quite a lot higher than the NHV
of 20 to 25 cubic meters suggested by
NASA
however in Elon's hundred people per
starship configuration each crew member
would only have approximately 10 cubic
meters of space as we already calculated
so around three times less than in a
submarine and our interior volume estimate
of the submarine was really conservative
so the difference factor would probably
be even higher in reality we should not
forget the different psychology either
in a submarine you're days maximum a week
from the nearest harbour so in case
something goes wrong for example some
crew members become sick and need
medical treatment the submarine could
just turn around and reach a harbor
quite fast on a trip to Mars with
starship you don't have this possibility
all crew members would know that you can
not turn starship around on a trip to
Mars once on the way to Mars it's on the
way with no possibility of turning back
Midway this is an important
psychological factor so in our opinion
25 cubic meters of space per passenger
would be the minimum number for trips to
Mars maybe even 30 cubic meters to be on
the safe side now the only scenario
where we could actually imagine hundred
people in a thousand cubic metre volume
on a trip to Mars as offered by the
current starship design would be if
travel time was a maximum of three
months in combination with Neuralink VR
what Neuralink VR yes that would
basically mean that starship would
employ the latest Neuralink technology
in order to send visual feed directly
into the brain thus creating super
realistic holodeck simulations people
could then spend quite a few hours per
day linked into the Neuralink in
virtual holodeck spaces in order to
escape the claustrophobic confinement of
starship but we have to say that we are
not entirely sure if Neuralink will be
ready to offer such immersive and
realistic experiences until the first
crews are sent to Mars with starship
we hope yes however if not and also if
we aren't able to reach Mars in 3 months
but it would take six months then we
only see the option of reducing the crew
complement to a maximum of 40 people per
trip now later iterations of starship of
course such as the often speculated gigantic starship 2.0 which
Elon mentioned would have a diameter of
18 meters will of course drastically
increase the maximum crew complement but
let's assume now a realistic scenario
a starship as we know it so nine meters of
diameter 50 meters height and thousand
cubic meters of interior volume of
course we highly recommend to rotate
starship in some form and shield against
cosmic rays as discussed in our previous
videos because that is doable without a
lot of additional modifications contrary
to faster transit times which would
probably require a completely new
propulsion system so how could the
interior starship then look for a crew
complement of 40 people for a 40 crew strong Mars colony starship enroute to
Mars we found some excellent renders
which show how the crew sections could
be possibly arranged we found this one
here from starship renders highly
realistic
it shows four crew compartment decks with
eight cabins per deck so 32 cabins in
total therefore this configuration could
then consequently host a crew of 32
people we estimate that in this design
here one cabin would have around 4
square meters of living space so that
would suffice for one person other
renders we found are more on the we would
say unrealistic side this is how it
would look to cramp hundred people into
starship in our opinion this is
absolutely not advisable except of
course as mentioned with sophisticated
Neuralink holodeck simulations spaceX's
own rendering is not really precise
it would indicate three crew compartment
decks with around 10 cabins each so 30
cabins in total leading to a crew size
of 30 people here are some other really
excellent ones by Michel Lamontagne he
suggests two crew quarter decks with
eight cabins per deck yielding a total
of sixteen cabins therefore we believe
this is intended for 16 people per starship
now while of course this variant would
offer a luxurious 62.5 cubic meters per
person we think that this might even be too
much space per person even though we
totally love the design and especially
the Rebel X-Wing pilot sitting on
the toilet but yes you get the picture
there are so many possible arrangements
for a crewed version of starship and we
cannot wait to learn how SpaceX will
design the interior of starship for
trips to Mars and how many cabins and
what kind of crew complement starship
will have we suggest between 30 and 40
people for the current iteration of
starship for trips to Mars as this might
be the best trade-off between get as
many people as possible to Mars in one
go and not risking people to go insane
or to have brutal psychological
disorders on the trip we really don't
want our future colonists to arrive on
Mars as mental wrecks but in good shape
both psychologically and physically so
what do you think will be the maximum
crew complement of starship 30 people or
maybe even 40 or do you agree with Elon
that hundred would even be possible be
sure to tell us your opinion in the
comment section so you just watched the
Friday's JS space report in which we
talk about fixing the flaws of starship
for a safe travel to Mars and you can
watch the other videos about that topic
right here so thanks for watching and
I'd say on 2 the future
