Earlier this week on Tuesday, September 27th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave an important talk at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. He revealed his plans for the long anticipated project to colonize the planet Mars. SpaceX, expanding on their commitment to efficiency, wants to bring the costs of travel to Mars down from $10 million per colonist to $200,000 per colonist. While difficult, an improvement in efficiency of that scale is not impossible nor unheard of. Musk intends of draw on the improvements in efficiency his company has already developed in the period between the company’s founding in 2002 and today. Technology from the falcon 9 rocket, which was discussed in an earlier post, will cut down on costs by making the booster rocket reusable (rather than expendable, which has been the norm throughout the history of space travel). But Musk’s plan involves much more than drawing on his companies recent technological improvements, but rather he foresees the need for much further improvements in efficiency, many of which are under development.
The Merlin rocket, used in the falcon 9 and many other SpaceX rockets, boasts unprecedented thrust for its size. But last Tuesday night Musk discussed SpaceX’s on-going development of a rocket engine three times as powerful, yet at around the same size and weight as the Merlin. This rocket engine will be dubbed the Raptor, and is critical if Musk’s plan is to succeed. The entire rocket which Musk intends to build in order to reach Mars is projected to be much larger than the Saturn V, the current holder of the title of tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket. The Saturn V has gone unchallenged as the most powerful rocket since he 1960’s,when it was used throughout the Apollo Program. But in order to reach Mars, Musk needs not just to build a rocket larger than the Saturn V, but one much more powerful. Musk’s rocket needs to be disproportionately more powerful than Saturn V was if he is to succeed in getting his spacecraft into orbit. The distance from here to Mars is not the problem, the lack of atmosphere in space means there is no friction or air resistance that would otherwise slow down and eventually stop a vehicle. In space, spacecrafts and space probes glide huge distances without the need for propulsion. The issue for Musk is the sheer weight of the craft he intends to launch into orbit. Never before has anything near the size of Musk’s craft been launched into orbit. It would need to hold around 100 colonist, plus the resources necessary to sustain them on their 3-6 month journey to Mars (the length of the journey depends on the distances between Earth and Mars at the time a spacecraft is launched, the shortest trip being 80 days in the early 2030’s). The Raptor’s unprecedented power relative to its size is a crucial component to the plausibility of a Mars colony in the near future.
But Musk discussed much more than rocket engines. The details of his plan include other factors such as funding, which the company receives in part from their contract with NASA to deliver cargo to the ISS, but would necessarily need to rely on the charity of wealthy private donors (which, Musk says, are eager and willing to contribute) and probably on government aid. Eventually after colonists have established themselves, Musk dreams of terraforming Mars (a composite word which means to make a planet more like Earth in that it will have liquid water and plant life indigenous to Earth. Terra = Earth; + Forming). Scott Hubbard, a professor at Stanford University, endorses the plausibility of Musk’s plan to colonize the Red Planet.