On Sept. 27, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk revealed his company’s plans for the colonization of Mars.
The goal of Musk’s project is to establish a self-sustaining colony on Mars. The company has proposed an Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), which would combine the most powerful rocket ever built in history and a large spaceship to carry a crew in. The craft would be able to carry up to 100 people at a time, and the company plans to take them there by the year 2024.
According to space.com, Musk said, “What I really want to do here is to make Mars seem possible — make it seem as though it’s something that we could do in our lifetimes, and that you can go.”
The ITS rocket will be a near replica of the company’s previous rockets, but it will feature much more powerful engines, called “Raptors.” Previous rockets have utilized nine engines; the ITS rocket will have 42 boosters on it. This will give the ITS the capability of lifting up to 300 tons out of orbit, more than any spacecraft has ever been able to lift before.
The plan seems simple, but it is going to be far from easy. The ITS craft will launch with little fuel in its tanks in order to maximize the amount of cargo, and then another tanker will be launched shortly after to fill the craft’s tanks. Then, when Earth and Mars are favorably aligned, the spaceship portion of the ITS will engage its engines and blast towards the Red Planet.
The powerful Raptor engines will allow the ship to make the trip in about 80 days, depending on how the planets are aligned, Musk said, as reported by space.com.
That’s a very fast journey, considering any current spacecraft take anywhere between six and nine months to make the trip.
This will not just be a one-time trip, however. SpaceX plans to have around 1,000 of these ITS space ships launch to Mars every 26 months or so, which is the time it takes for Mars and Earth to align favorably.
“The Mars colonial fleet would depart en masse,” said Musk, according to space.com.
The fleet will land on Mars using a concept called “supersonic retropopulsion,” which will slow the ship down fast enough with onboard thrusters. This will be more efficient than using parachutes, the traditional method, because it will allow the craft to touch down softly and will minimize any risk of damage to the cargo and crew.
The journey does not have to end once the crew reaches the Mars, either. SpaceX has also revealed plans of harnessing solar energy and elements on Mars to produce methane gas, the primary fuel source for the ITS. They plan to have the colonists build launching stations on the planet itself, so that eventually the crew could be able to fly back home. The gravitational pull on Mars is weaker than the pull on Earth, so the launch would require significantly less fuel.
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the entire project is this: tickets to go to Mars will cost only $200,000. This amazingly low price is a result of the ITS craft’s reusable rocket boosters. These new and powerful engines reduce the cost of space travel significantly, making space travel more inexpensive than ever before. Musk even suggested that the cost could drop to as low as $100,000 in the future.
“The objective is to become a space faring civilization and a multi-planetary species,” Musk said to space.com.
This new SpaceX project gives space-enthusiasts the hope that someday humans may become exactly that, a species that can live on multiple planets.
