so two weeks ago we talked about the top
ten reasons for colonizing the moon
before Mars and last week we talked
about the scenario the other way around
so the top ten reasons why we should
first colonize Mars but now we finally
want to talk about our preferred
scenario why decide in the first place
why not do both at the same time could
we actually do it and with we we of
course mean SpaceX could SpaceX really
achieve the incredible feat of
colonizing both the moon and mars at the
same time well I'd say let's find out
so the old debate as always should we
first colonize the moon
or first colonize Mars we extensively
talked about the pros for the moon and
the pros for Mars in the last two videos
video links in the description as always
the debate why we would have to choose
one in the first place is of course
because no one thought that it might be
possible to do both at the same time the
Apollo program which is the only time
when people went to the moon cost around
158 billion 2020 inflation-adjusted
dollars NASA's current moon program the
Artemis program is projected to cost
less but still probably around 100
billion dollars by the time the first
Artemis moon base is built at some point
in the second half of the 2020s
according to current plans but a human
mission to Mars would of course cost a
lot more certainly hundreds of billions
of dollars so naturally everyone thought
that this just cannot be done at the
same time impossible
how could NASA whose budget has been in
decline since the late 60s ever get the
necessary budget for both Mars and the
moon from Congress as you can see even
the return to the moon alone without
Mars proved to be quite difficult and
always failed every time a new
administration tried to put forth a new
moon initiative because the costs were
just too high of course one could argue
strangely there has always been enough
money to build giant amounts of killing
machines right well yes if you put the
same amount of money which the military
receives into NASA we would have giant
cities on the moon and on Mars since
decades already
unfortunately however we live in this
funny world where the human creature
dictated by its ancient reptilian brain
to be as egoistic as possible in order
to gain an advantage over the
competition in the eternal fight for
limited resources is more inclined
to spend huge amounts of money on
fighting people from other tribes or
nations in this case than spending the
money on space exploration so
unfortunately we cannot change our
brains we still run on software that is
twenty or thirty thousand years old from
the Stone Age and we would be in dire
need of an update so Elon hurry up with
Neuralink okay so therefore the only
realistic solution is to massively
drastically reduce the costs of
spaceflight enter spaceX spacex's
mission is to massively reduce costs for
spaceflight by so much that we won't
have to decide anymore between the Moon
and Mars we think that thanks to
starship we are going to be able to
colonize the Moon and Mars at the same
time but can it even be done
economically let's look at some numbers
we know that starship will be fully
reusable and after landing it will be
able to launch again very soon
thereafter
according to Elon the fuel for starship
costs around nine hundred thousand
dollars he also said that they want to
build thousand starships with the end
goal of starship pricing to be no more
than two million dollars per starship
but this is only for the later units and
the first tens or hundreds will
certainly cost more and Elon estimated
that the number will be around 20
million per starship for the first
hundred units therefore we have two
billion dollars for the first 100
starships and 1.8 billion for the
following 900 we of course don't know
when exactly starship will be ready and
when it can fly the first moon or mars
missions but let's just say that the
costs will be higher than initially
planned with around five billion dollars
for the first batch of 100 starships
spacex's revenue in 2018 was two
billion dollars and in 2019 2.7 billion
that is already pretty good but still
not good enough to enable starship
development on the long term now sure
NASA has awarded SpaceX 150 million
dollars to develop a moon version of
starship for their Artemis program and
up to 3 billion dollars will be awarded
to a company for the Artemis lunar
lander but we think that NASA won't
decide in favor of SpaceX in the end
because knowing NASA starship is just
too radical for their taste and they
will just stick to an old-fashioned
lunar lander design but the magic will
happen with Starlink if you look at the
current rate with which the starlink
satellites are being launched we can say
with great confidence that by early 2021
starlink will go online for North
American customers the starlink beta
test will already be launched in October
this year so starlink will already
generate some decent earnings for SpaceX
in 2021
but it will really start to take off in
2022 and 2023 when thousands of starlink
satellites are in orbit enabling the
network to go online worldwide then
many customers from all around the world
will want to have this high-speed
broadband internet the military even has
already signed an agreement for starlink use and we think that wall street will
certainly also want to have an advantage
because for those superfast trading bots
every millisecond faster is worth it and
we should not forget that the latency of
Starlink is with 20 milliseconds
compared to 40 milliseconds of regular
sea cables only half as high therefore
massive amounts of revenue will start
flooding in with estimates going as high
as forty billion dollars of revenue by
2025 from Starlink alone for SpaceX that
is an almost twenty times increase from
today this certainly sounds unrealistic
now but this is normal exponential
growth and if
we look at Elon's other companies then we
can see how much can actually happen in
five years Tesla has really shown what's
possible and already as early as 2021
the first few hundred million dollars
from Starlink profit will go fully into
starship development by 2022 probably
more than 1 billion already now we know
that by that year in 2022 Elon wants to
perform the first cargo flights to Mars
and he recently re-emphasized that SpaceX
will stick to that year and also that
SpaceX is now going full in on starship
development in the same year we assume
that SpaceX will carry out an unmanned
landing of starship on the moon in order
to test and validate the starship
systems we know that in 2023 the dear
moon mission is planned where Japanese
billionaire Yusaku Maezawa is going to
circle the moon like back in the day
with Apollo 8 together with a few
artists by 2024 we think that SpaceX
will attempt the first crewed landing on
the moon as a test for Mars will it be
a NASA mission we highly doubt it of
course we could be surprised but as we
said we think that NASA will choose
either the lobby moon lander or
Dynetics' moon lander for the Artemis
moon landings because this classical
lunar lander architecture is more
established than the radical starship
design which is essentially unproven yet
getting a human rating for starship by
2024 is in our opinion if you look at
NASA's bureaucracy overkill
almost impossible therefore it's more
likely that SpaceX will conduct a
private crewed moon landing mission
either with some of their own people or
with some very adventurous and rich
private individuals this will serve as
the big test for starship for future
Mars launches but of course we shouldn't
forget that
landing on Mars is very different than
landing on the moon because the Martian
atmosphere of course requires
aerobraking
it's a quite delicate maneuver and a lot
of course depends on whether the 2022
cargo starship missions
will successfully land on Mars or not
should the cargo starships land on Mars
without incidents and on top the 2024
moon landing also goes flawlessly
spacex might indeed be able to send the
first people to Mars in the 2024 launch
window now should either one of those
two events encounter some serious issues
we can be quite sure that the first
attempt to land people on Mars will be
postponed to the 2027 launch window it
will be early 2027 by the way because
Mars and Earth align not exactly every
24 months so every two years but every
26 months Elon recently said that the
moon starships have no heat shield
because they will just remain on the
moon that's what we were suggesting all
the time even our older videos we
suggested to land starships on the moon
and use them as moon bases they are
really huge and offer a thousand cubic
metre interior volume if the tanks are
additionally utilized actually quite a
lot more up to 2400 cubic meters of
total interior volume per starship most
of the starships will just be left on
the moon with a few probably returning
to moon orbit in order to dock with the
lunar gateway and bring the astronauts
back to earth from the gateway possibly
with an Orion capsule but even cooler
would be if a dragon capsule would
actually dock to the moon starship in
orbit and bring the astronauts back to
earth so while the moon base will be
growing and more starships will join in
the Mars launch window will approach
and either in late 2024 or in early 2027
a massive fleet of starships with the
first colonists on board
will launch for Mars and by that time
the necessary funding will be absolutely
no problem anymore
because as we said by the mid-2020s
Starlink will generate probably around
two times NASA's annual budget every
single year which will fully flow into
starships for the Moon and Mars colonies
and since we said that thousand
starships only cost around four billion
dollars with refueling and the whole
additional infrastructure needed let's
say pessimistically ten billion dollars
there will be a lot of additional budget
left for building the actual colonies
themselves we can even imagine SpaceX
acquiring expandable habitat technology
from the leftovers of Bigelow Aerospace
we see SpaceX utilizing Tesla battery
storage systems and solar panels both
for the Moon and Mars or although on
Mars a lot more solar panels would be
needed then on the moon since the solar
flux on Mars is on average only half
that of the moon with 590 watts per
square meters on Mars compared to 1390
watts per square meters on the moon but
we think that SpaceX might have some
difficulties in utilizing nuclear
thermal electric generators because
currently only NASA has space grade
nuclear generators and as we said if
starship is not NASA human-rated then
NASA will most likely not participate in
these missions and therefore also not
provide their space grade nuclear
generators and the rest will be history
the Moon and Mars colonies will grow and
grow and if we are to believe Elon by
2050 1 million people will be living on
Mars even only 100,000 people by 2070
would already be absolutely amazing but
Elon has always been able to surprise us
by then we will have even more people
living on the moon in giant cities lunar
crater domes for example a
shackleton dome would be a great idea
these domes could even contain outer
rotating ring segments in order to
create higher artificial gravity by
means of the centrifugal effect and then
what then after having established two
other worlds for Humanity to live on what
comes next
well many things come next for example
probes to other star systems discovery
of alien life colonizing of other solar
system bodies such as Enceladus Titan
Callisto Triton Miranda Mercury Venus
and many more but as for Mars we believe
that by the end of the 21st century or
at the beginning of the 22nd
terraforming efforts will start being
undertaken in earnest and how exactly Mars terraforming can be done and
if it is even doable
we will analyze it in our next week's
video so if you want to know the top 10
reasons why it makes more sense to
colonize either the Moon or Mars first
you can watch the videos right here so
thanks for watching the JS space report
on Friday and I would say on 2 to the future
