Gadgetory

what I really want to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible make it seem as though it's something that we can do in our lifetimes Elon Musk finally told the world his vision for colonizing Mars and it turned out to be one hell of a show his talk and Mexico drew insane crowds people actually stampeded into the hall where his lecture was in order to get a good seat they were then treated to a one-hour breakdown of all the vehicles must wants to build in order to bring people to the Red Planet so let's unwrap all of this and talk about what it means it starts off like any science fiction you need a spaceship a vehicle to carry up to 100 passengers maybe more and 450 tons of cargo to Mars first the spaceship will be launched into Earth orbit thanks to a massive rocket booster and I mean massive when completed this rocket would be bigger and more powerful than NASA's Saturn 5 rocket the thing would be powered by a combination of 42 Raptor engines that's the new powerful engine that SpaceX has been working on they also did their first full-scale test of the engine the other day too but unlike the kerosene engines that power the Falcon 9 this one runs on methane more on why later so the booster takes the spaceship into orbit the two vehicles separate and the booster comes back to land on earth it's one of SpaceX's signature moves similar to how the Falcon 9 lands post launch but once that booster lands it quickly gears up for its next launch of a propellant tank that tank then docks with the spaceship in orbit filling it up with the gas it needs to get to Mars musk said it'd take maybe 3 to 5 propellant tanks to fully fuel the spaceship strip then the spaceship is off to Mars once it arrives the entire thing lands using its engines to lower itself down to the ground it's a technique called supersonic retropropulsion and again it's just like the Falcon 9 landings it's also a way of getting super heavy payloads safely down to Mars which doesn't have a very thick atmosphere to help slow falling objects after letting out its passengers eventually the spaceship will lift off and come back to earth and where will it get the fuel for that return trip on Mars you see that's why SpaceX is using methane because it can be made carbon dioxide from the planet's atmosphere or possible subsurface water that saves spacex from bringing the fuel for the return trip over beforehand Elon and the team of SpaceX have showed really well that nothing speaks for itself quite like results so I think the most important thing for for Elon and for everyone who backs Elon and the team at SpaceX to do is to go out and to take some of these technologies that he showed off today like the giant composite tanks and the Raptor engines and just keep developing those and keep testing those so it sounds like he's thought it all through right but for all the things that must did say he left out a few key parts of his human settlement idea namely how these people are going to survive a good analogy for living on Mars is kind of like living in Antarctica but worse we have a science base in Antarctica all the time hundreds of people there all the time but you don't go there to raise a family you don't build playgrounds I love SpaceX I love what they're doing it's fantastic they have changed the way people think of space exploration but I don't think you want to get a colony on Mars all right I'm open-minded of course but it I just if you've ever been to Antarctica there's nothing to eat there is nothing to drink and you can breathe on Mars you can't breathe you can't breathe everybody that's serious yet must said nothing about the types of habitats these people would live in and very little about how they would eat drink and breathe and when asked about the dangers of a space voyage like deep space radiation or solar flares he had this to say so actually the radiation thing is softened brought up but I think it's not not too big of a deal there's certainly some risk of radiation but it's not it's not it's not deadly there is also little talk of in space life support systems and perhaps the biggest issue of all microgravity living in space can lead to severe bone density and muscle loss and things that Mars may not be much better the planet has one-third the gravity of Earth which could also wreak havoc on the body we don't know yet but for spacex these problems aren't the company's primary concern in fact must said that the first colonists would have to be willing to risk death the goal of SpaceX is really to build the transport system it's like building the Union Pacific Railroad and once that transport system is built then there's a tremendous opportunity for anyone who wants to go to Mars and create something new or both the the foundations of a new planet but even some of the engineering claims that musk made were a little ambitious he claimed that the spaceship could eventually make the trip to Mars in just 80 days of accelerated fast enough that's an insane estimate given that most trips to Mars take upwards of six months getting to such a speed would take a lot of energy and then a lot of energy to break he also envisions not just one spaceship going to Mars at a time but eventually a thousand let's do the math there the launch window for Mars opens up every 26 months so you'd have to launch a thousand spaceships in that time frame and then since each spaceship needs at least three fuel launches that equates to three thousand launches in 26 months that's more than 15 times the world's launch rate in an unbelievable amount of reused rockets and then there's the timeline and cost estimates both of which seem super optimistic musk hopes to complete the first development spaceship in four years and then send the first big spaceship to Mars as early as 2024 that's ambitious given SpaceX hasn't ever launched people into space yet he also says that factors like reusability and propellant production on Mars means the entire thing can be done for way less than current Mars estimates the ultimate result 1 million people living on Mars and 42 a hundred years but that timeline is very tentative especially since basics isn't putting a lot of money into the Mars plan just yet less than 5% of the company's resources are going into the development of the interplanetary transport system and even with these low cost estimates must says that he's still probably going to need help either from NASA the government or the private sector so it's clear this is just the starting off point there are a lot of problems to solve ahead but musk says there's only one way to solve them the technology not automatically improved it only improves if a lot of really strong engineering talent is applied to the problem that it improves oh yeah just join the Planetary Society don't forget that no so at the Planetary Society we have 52 thousand members and after this meeting I hope we have 53 thousand of people who love space in want to explore space and they are all running to the front row today I mean those people just this it's an exciting time if we could lower the cost to getting to space it would be great