SpaceX's billionaire founder and CEO Elon
Musk outlined some ambitious goals for the
company's Starship Mars-colonization system.
Musk answered a volley of questions over Twitter
on 16th January Thursday evening, providing
more details about SpaceX Starship and how
it will eventually need to work in order to
achieve Musk’s goal of making humans an
interplanetary species with a colony on Mars.
The SpaceX Starship architecture consists
of a big spaceship called Starship, which
Musk has said will be capable of carrying
up to 100 people, and a giant rocket named
Super Heavy.
Both of these vehicles will be reusable; indeed,
rapid and frequent reuse is key to Musk's
overall vision, which involves cutting the
cost of spaceflight enough to make Mars colonization
and other bold exploration feats economically
feasible.
He has discussed some of this before, but
Musk reiterated that SpaceX Starship will
need to operate on a brisk schedule, ferrying
many megatons per year of cargo to the Red
Planet in order to establish and maintain
a human presence there.
In this video Engineering Today will discuss
Elon Musk’s ambitious goals for the company's
Starship Mars-colonization system: where Elon
Musk gives details about sending 1 million
people to Mars by 2050.
Lets get started.
In one of Thursday's tweets, for example,
Musk wrote that the eventual goal is to launch
each SpaceX Starship vehicle three times per
day on average.
Each SpaceX Starship will be able to carry
about 100 tons of payload to orbit, so, at
that flight rate, a total of more than 1,000
flights per year, per vehicle.
Musk didn't specify what, exactly, the rockets
would need to carry to Mars, but lots of food,
water, building materials, tools, and advanced
life support systems are a given.
Thus he estimated he'll need a whole fleet
of Starships to build a permanent settlement.
"Megatons per year to orbit are needed for
life to become multiplanetary," he tweeted
on Thursday.
In total, 1,000 SpaceX Starships could hypothetically
transport about 100 megatons of stuff to Mars;
that's the volume Musk has said he hopes to
send to the red planet.
Ultimately, Musk says that he hopes to achieve
a construction rate of 100 SpaceX Starships
being produced per year, with a goal of hitting
1,000 in total in service over the course
of the next decade, which can transport as
much as 100 megatons per year in cargo, or
about 100,000 people “per Earth-Mars orbital
sync” in terms of human passengers.
"Building 100 Starships/year gets to 1000
in 10 years or 100 megatons/year or maybe
around 100k people per Earth-Mars orbital
sync," Musk wrote in another Thursday tweet.
"Orbital sync" refers to an alignment of the
two planets that's favorable for interplanetary
travel, which comes along just once every
26 months, when Earth and Mars are closest
to one another because of the coincidence
of their respective orbits around the Sun.
Musk clarified in response to another question
that the way this will work will be getting
the Mars fleet into a staging orbit above
Earth, where they can be refueled in space
prior to their synchronized departure.
Then, once every 26 months approximately 1,000
ships will all depart over the course of 30
days for their Mars transit.
While SpaceX Starship will require an in-orbit
refuel to make the trip to Mars leaving from
Earth, because of how much boost is needed
to exit Earth’s atmosphere, the same is
not true for the reverse trip, Musk pointed
out.
Super Heavy won't make the trip to Mars, by
the way; the huge rocket is needed just to
get the Starship vehicle off Earth.
The passenger spacecraft will be able to launch
itself off the moon and Mars, both of which
are much smaller than our planet and are therefore
much easier to escape.
Musk envisions huge fleets of SpaceX Starships
departing during these Earth-Mars orbital
sync windows.
"Loading the Mars fleet into Earth orbit,
then 1000 ships depart over ~30 days every
26 months.
Battlestar Galactica …" he wrote in another
tweet.
Musk wants all of this activity to lead to
the establishment of a sustainable settlement
on the Red Planet.
This goal — making humanity a multiplanet
species — is close to the entrepreneur's
heart.
He has repeatedly stressed that it's why he
founded SpaceX back in 2002, and why he has
been amassing wealth for the past few decades.
Back in mid-2017, Musk said that the SpaceX
Starship architecture which was then called
the Interplanetary Transport System, could
potentially allow a million-person city to
rise on Mars
SpaceX’s goal, according to Musk, is to
ultimately send one million people to Mars
by 2050, something Musk also confirmed in
another reply to a Twitter user.
The goal is to make it common enough and affordable
enough that “anyone can go if they want.
Musk has floated $500,000 per seat with a
guaranteed return ticket if you change your
mind, but this is the first time he suggested
the idea of loans who couldn’t afford it.
Don’t worry, though.
He also says there will be plenty of jobs
on Mars.
Although, it’s not clear what would happen
if you didn’t repay the loan.
Do they waste fuel hauling you back to Earth?
As Musk has emphasized at every step of SpaceX’s
development, reusability in the Starship system
is key.
Musk wants each Starship to keep flying for
a while.
In yet another tweet, he said SpaceX is aiming
for an operational life of 20 to 30 years
for each vehicle — similar to commercial
aircraft today, he noted.
That’s required if the company hopes to
be able to operate at the scale described
above, while doing so in a way that’s anywhere
near economically viable.
He's still working toward such an ambitious
timeline — an even more ambitious one, in fact
SpaceX Starship is currently in development,
with a new prototype under construction at
its Texas facility.
The company already built a sub-scale demonstrator
without a nose cone to test the new engines
it’s working on for Starship, and demonstrated
those working successfully for controlled
low-altitude flight.
It built a larger prototype that it originally
said would be used for high-altitude testing,
but that one failed during an early pressure
test and now it has moved on to a third version
with a refined and improved design, which
the company says will be used for orbital
flight testing this year.
Elon Musk appears to be pretty focused on
SpaceX Starship right now, sharing photos
of the work being done on the orbital Starship
prototype, designed “SN1,” which is currently
under construction at SpaceX’s Boca Chica,
Texas facility.
Musk tweeted a photo of technicians working
on the SN1's nose cone and liquid-oxygen header
tank.
Musk has said a new version of a SpaceX Starship
prototype may launch before the end of March.
"First flight is hopefully 2 to 3 months away,"
Musk tweeted on December 27.
The company could build as many as 20 different
prototypes before engineers settle on a "1.0"
design to fly cargo and people.
The full SpaceX Starship launch system would
also include a 22-story rocket booster Super
Heavy; combined, the whole thing would stand
about 387 feet (118 meters) tall.
During launch, a Starship spaceship would
ride atop the booster then disconnect after
the booster runs low on fuel, and rocket its
way into orbit.
Musk said in September that he hopes to launch
a SpaceX Starship into orbit by mid-2020 and
maybe even fly a person in it before the end
of the year.
Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating
officer of SpaceX, said during a NASA teleconference
that the company is "aiming to be able to
drop Starship on the lunar surface in 2022"
and fly Japanese tech entrepreneur and billionaire
Yusaku Maezawa around the moon in 2023.
Currently, Yusaku Maezawa is looking for a
“life partner” to accompany him on a trip
to the moon as SpaceX’s first private tourist
passenger.
Maezawa, said he was “restarting” his
life having acquired his fortune as founder
of Japan’s largest fashion retail website,
Zozotown.
Maezawa tweeted a link to a website on 12th
Jan, Sunday, advertising his “serious matchmaking
documentary” called “Full Moon Lovers,”
where women could apply to join him on a voyage
around the moon on SpaceX’s Starship rocket
in 2023.
However, all of those timeline came before
the SpaceX Starship prototype explosion.
SpaceX will also have to clear several regulatory
and practical hurdles - including securing
the safety of residents of Boca Chica Village,
which sits within 2 miles of SpaceX's Texas
launch pad - before it can launch any prototypes
to orbit.
"Helping to pay for this is why I'm accumulating
assets on Earth," Musk tweeted on Thursday.
