Elon Musk On His Plan To Establish A ‘City On Mars’ And Unveil A Megashuttle, Too

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reportedly revealed his plans for Mars on Tuesday, during a much anticipated talk session. The details of the Interplanetary Transport System, which the company wants to build to launch the first human colonists to the Red Planet, were revealed at the talk event.  

According to reports, the first spaceship will be called 'Heart of Gold' in reference to the spacecraft in 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', and measure around 17 meters in diameter. The cargo limit for the spaceship will be up to 450 tons, and the capacity will also depend on how many refills a tanker can do. The megashuttle will be launched from our planet on top of a booster, and then make the rest of the journey to Mars alone. The rocket booster itself will be 12 meters in diameter and have a stack height of 122 meters.

Musk plans to send about 100 people on every trip, ultimately raising that number to 200 or more per flight to make the travel more cost effective.  The travel time to the Martian surface can vary from 80 to 150 days, depending on the year and technology. The billionaire CEO hopes that in the more distant future the trip time can come down to 30 days.

As per Musk, the Mars spaceship will be reusable and it will be refueled in orbit, which will bring down the cost of the trip, hence making it more practical. In a similar manner, bringing propellant for the return trip is also inefficient, therefore the ideal plan will be to construct a propellant plant on the Red Planet itself, which is apparently possible because Mars has natural resources.  

Itinerary For The Mars Trip

The trip to Mars will, of course, start with the launch of the spaceship on a booster, which is incidentally being developed right now at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida's Cape Canaveral. At liftoff, the booster will have 127,800 kilonewtons (28,730,000 pounds) of thrust at liftoff, after which it will separate from the spaceship.

While the spaceship will proceed on its journey, the booster will make its way back to Earth in around 20 minutes. Once it lands on a launch mount on our planet, a propellant tanker will be loaded onto it so that the entire unit is filled with fuel and is ready to liftoff again. The booster will join the spaceship, which will then be refueled in orbit. The propellant tankers will go up approximately three to five times to fill the spaceship's tanks. After, being refueled, the spaceship will depart for the Martian surface.

There will be a full on entertainment system on board. To make the trip more attractive for the passengers to Mars, Musk aims to equip the spaceship with a varied entertainment and recreation system comprising of a restaurant, games, cabins, movies and zero-G games. The ticket for the ride to Mar will cost $200,000, which Musk ultimately wants to bring down to $100,000.

Once the spaceship reaches Mars, it will land on the surface with the help of its rocket engines which will gently lower the craft down. The crew members will then make use of the hardware, cargo and supplies that had already been previously sent to Mars, to colonize Mars. Musk also said that it will take about 40 to 100 years, depending on the number of trips which can be around 20 to 50, to set up a self sustaining civilization on Mars, with a population of one million people. Musk feels setting up a colony on Mars is about "minimizing existential risk", because according to him history suggests there will be an extinction event eventually. Therefore, humans can either remain on Earth or "become a space faring and multiplanetary species", with Musk rooting for the latter obviously.   

Elon Musk aims to send the first crewed spaceship to Mars in a decade, as per reports. He also added that it won't be a one way trip, as SpaceX needs the spaceship back, giving people on Mars the option to return back too. The trip to Mars will require only a few days of training as per Musk.

At the moment, Musk hasn't given any details of where the colonists will live or what they will eat, nor addressed health related concerns. It is also not quite clear how the passengers will deal with microgravity, solar radiation or for that matter adapt to conditions within the spaceship itself.  However, the SpaceX Chief does mention that the mission is going to be dangerous, and needs a sense of adventure. "I think the first journeys to Mars will be really very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high. There is just no way around it," Elon Musk said. "Are you prepared to die? If that's okay, then you're a candidate for going. The risk of death would be quite high."

For now, you can watch the video released by SpaceX, and decide if you want to be part of it. "What the video shows it what we will build,' Musk said. "This is not what it might look like; this is what it will look like."