Well , we wait a long time , but today Elon Musk ultimately stepped out on point to rapturous applause at the International Astronautical Congress ( IAC ) in Mexico to reveal his plans to colonize Mars . And there was a set to get through .
As hinted by Musk the other day , his proposal is call the Interplanetary Transport System ( ITS ) . It postulate sending 100 people at a time on a giant rocket , the biggest in history ( bigger even than NASA ’s Saturn V ) , to the surface of the Red Planet .
“ I want to make Mars seem possible to do in our lifetime , ” said Musk in his presentation ( you may watch a replay of the talkhere ) . “ I desire anyone to go if they require to . ”
The unnamed rocket ( currently just given the soubriquet “ Mars Vehicle ” ) certainly look impressive . On top , it will have a specially designed spaceship that can carry either homo or cargo . At the bottom , 42 of SpaceX ’s raw methane - fueledRaptor enginestake the rocket into orbit , and then regress it safely back to the launch tablet at Cape Canaveral in Florida , ready for another launch .
An animation of how the Mars charge would ferment . SpaceX
To make the expedition to Mars , one spaceship will launch with the citizenry on display panel and then another will take the fuel to revolve . The latter will dock with the former , fill it with a methane - based fuel , and then the journeying to Mars can begin . The first would be called " Heart of Gold " , Musk said , a nod toThe Hitchiker ’s Guide To The Galaxy .
It go fanciful but Musk , in typical Musk fashion , gave a enormously optimistic timeline for the first launch – 10 years from now , around 2026 or even as early as 2024 . Yikes .
What ’s more , he even hinted that he need to terraform Mars and make it livable for humans without a spacesuit – although he did n’t give many item on how he planned to do this , other than showing an creative person ’s impression of a terraformed Mars .
What a terraformed Mars might take care like . Elon Musk / SpaceX
To get this rolling , he said SpaceX were design to launch a mission to Mars ( beginning with unmanned Red Dragon missions ) in every available Mars rendezvous launch windowpane starting in 2018 . That ’s every 26 months , when Earth and Mars align for a favorable launch .
He read that , at the moment , about 5 pct of the SpaceX staff are work on the ITS . Ultimately , he is aiming to take a million people to Mars , a total of 10,000 trips across 40 to 100 years . To check that the journeying to Mars is “ merriment ” ( which will take up to five month ) , Musk said the starship would have zero - g games , a eatery , and so on .
And , at the end of the solar day , these spaceships are designed to take off from Mars , too . If people want to return , they can , tell Musk . No Mars Onehocus pocus magichere .
Perhaps most imposingly of all is the cost . The whole thing , skyrocket and starship , is design to be recyclable , building on SpaceX ’s already successful recyclable Falcon 9 test . At the moment , a trip to Mars with current method would cost $ 10 billion per person . Musk wants to make the trip like to buying a house – some $ 200,000 a slate , which is about the same as the short six - second suborbital hops planned by Virgin Galactic .
Musk , pictured talking at the IAC 2016 case . Elon Musk / SpaceX
Looks impressive , but will it do what it enounce on the tin ? Elon Musk / SpaceX
If this seems hugely optimistic , it is . There ’s no dubiousness about that . But Musk was keen to shew his drive to do this . He ’s going to be putting as much of his own money behind it as possible , which considering he ’s a mega - multi - billionaire is no small change .
“ There ’s no other reason for me to roll up assets than to make the bighearted contribution I can to ready life multiplanetary , ” he said .
And that ’s in part the answer to a bigger question surrounding all this excitement . Why chafe ? Mars is a dead world . We ca n’t hold out there without spacesuits or significant substructure . Why do we want to go there ?
The solvent is simple . Musk rightly say that human beings will at one stage confront a doomsday event , be it an asteroid impact or some other civilization - cease scenario . If we ca n’t live on other worlds , we ’re pretty hump .
With that in mind , Musk read he does n’t just desire to stop at Mars . The ITS , he says , could conduct trips to other places including Jupiter ’s moon Europa and Saturn ’s moon Enceladus .
Is it realizable ? Well , that ’s up for a very drawn-out argument . Musk showed some snippets of development already take place towards this goal , admit the Raptor engines that will power the skyrocket and the giant fuel tank that will be used in the spaceship itself .
The spaceship can supposedly launch and shoot down almost anywhere in the Solar System . Elon Musk / SpaceX
An early design of what the spaceship ’s fuel tank might depend like . Elon Musk / SpaceX
But there ’s no doubt there are immense obstacles to overcome . How will the dependency survive on Mars ( this was not made clear ) ? Who will want to go ? How will they deal with actinotherapy ( Musk suggested this was n’t a huge trouble ) ?
These are questions that will be pored over the next few days , months , and age . For now , Musk said his goal is to barrack public and secret companies to get involved with his delegation . He wants a collaboration , he want supporter . This is his call to arm .
“ The first journeys will be very dangerous , the peril of fatalities will be high , ” he said , adding that people must be prepare to die .
But pronounce by the roaring gang , the huge media attention around this event , and Musk ’s own thrust , it ’s not implausible to think it might bump . Musk spotlight how SpaceX had developed from almost nothing in 2002 to its position now as one of the leading launching operator in the world .
Can he really commence a million - strong colony on Mars ? sentence will tell . Either today will go down in history as a JFK - esque moonshot speech , or we ’ll look back and wonder what might have been .
Here ’s hop-skip for the former .
