On September 27, entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk spoke about his plans to send humans to Mars. And it's not about a few astronauts: he's planning to send a lot of people there. In his talk, which combined a presentation of purely scientific data and outright science fiction, Musk talked about how entire fleets of spaceships with hundreds of colonists on board will be sent to Mars and how these people will live in the dusty airless deserts, where we obviously, very soon we will build nuclear reactors and create artificial magnetic fields.
Many would probably reject much of what Musk was talking about, calling it a rich man's pipe dream. We were shown many images of rockets and even told that the cost of a ticket to Mars would be relatively affordable. (“It will be roughly equal to the average cost of a US home.”) Musk, however, said almost nothing significant when it came to the tight deadlines and concrete steps to implement plans for interplanetary migration. First of all, we still don't know who will pay for all this.
So far, we know the following: SpaceX's main short-term goal - sending robotic lander to Mars over the next few years - is undoubtedly achievable. We also know that the Interplanetary Transport System, which Musk talked about in detail yesterday, cannot materialize without enormous amounts of financial and technical assistance from the international community.
"I believe SpaceX will indeed be able to ship the Dragon capsule in 2018 or 2020," said Bobby Braun, professor of space technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
As SpaceX said in April, the company intends to begin launching unmanned Red Dragon missions to Mars as early as late 2018. Each of these missions will include the Falcon Heavy rocket - an improved version of the Falcon 9 rocket that SpaceX plans to launch next year - and the Dragon 2 robotic capsule, based on the Dragon capsule that SpaceX is developing as part of NASA programs.
“The plan is to send Dragon 2 to Mars in a few years and another capsule in 2020,” Musk said during his speech. “We want to achieve a steady rhythm in sending missions,” he added, having in view of the launch window, which occurs every 26 months, when the distance between Earth and Mars is minimal.
The main objective of the Red Dragon missions will be to test and improve the jet technologies used to enter the atmosphere of Mars, for descent to its surface and soft landing. All robotic missions to the surface of Mars so far have used parachutes to slow their descent through the atmosphere of Mars. Dragon 2 will be the heaviest human-made object to land on the surface of the Red Planet, which is why it will need much more powerful brakes. Undoubtedly, SpaceX intends to use its jet braking system to enable much more ambitious crewed missions to Mars in the future, which, from what we heard yesterday, will require huge spaceships by modern standards.
It's unclear how many uncrewed Red Dragon missions SpaceX hopes to send to Mars. It is also unclear how much these trial interplanetary missions will cost. In July, Jim Reuter, deputy administrator for space technology programs at NASA's directorate, told Space Policy News that he estimated SpaceX would spend about $ 300 million on the program.
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NASA will also contribute to the Red Dragon missions, mainly in the form of engineering consulting, which Reuters has estimated at about $ 32 million over four years. In exchange for advice and communications during SpaceX's robotic missions to Mars, the space agency will be able to take advantage of valuable flight data that will be collected when Dragon 2 enters, descends and lands on Mars. The agency needs this data in order to develop its own strategy for sending people to the surface of the Red Planet in the 2030s.
At the moment, the timing and cost of the Red Dragon missions looks quite feasible and feasible - if SpaceX quickly recovers from the recent disaster with an explosion at the launch pad, it could well hit the launch window in 2018. “There is no doubt that this is technically feasible - anyone with the money can send something to Mars,” said a senior aerospace official who wished to keep his name a secret.
Flight to Mars by SpaceX
However, the leap from small robotic missions to an Interplanetary Transportation System capable of sending thousands of settlers to the Red Planet will be extremely difficult and costly. This transport system, which connects a giant "zero-gravity" rocket with an equally grand spacecraft capable of carrying "at least 100 passengers", was at the center of Musk's report yesterday. However, he acknowledged that this may not happen.
“There is no doubt that funding this bold endeavor will be extremely difficult,” Musk said. “We are now trying to make maximum progress with the resources we have at our disposal and keep moving forward.”
If we had any doubts that SpaceX and Musk's entire career should have led to such a vision, then yesterday they dissipated. This billionaire is not just counting on his company's future profits - "launching satellites and maintaining a space station" - to finance the cosmic diaspora of humankind: this electric car salesman appears to have no other motivation to amass his personal fortune.
But even if Musk spends all his fortune on building the largest rocket in history - a launch accelerator with a diameter of 12 meters, a spacecraft with a diameter of 17 meters and a hull of 122 meters - it is now difficult to believe that his funds will be enough to create more than one prototype. He needs help from either venture capitalists or government space agencies. NASA could partner with SpaceX, but so far the agency has been slow to declare its readiness to support Musk's colonial ambitions other than with good wishes, prayers, laughter and tears.
“NASA applauds all those seeking to take the next giant leap forward and advance the ability to fly to Mars,” a NASA spokesman said in an email. “We are delighted that the world community is striving to cope with the difficulties on the path to a permanent human presence on Mars.
How about a giant rocket? “This is a SpaceX initiative in the conceptual phase,” said a spokesman for the space agency. "As we develop it, NASA may find elements that will interest us."
In other words, NASA prefers to watch from the outside for now and maintain a healthy skepticism. And he can hardly be blamed for that. After all, NASA has already taken a huge risk by initiating the Commercial Crew Program, in which they are already at least a year behind.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk during the International Astronautical Conference
Even if SpaceX doesn’t succeed in securing support from NASA, there may be another space agency that decides to stake on the billionaire’s aspirations. The list of countries capable of sending their spacecraft into space is growing rapidly, and new players such as Luxembourg have already expressed their interest in risky and potentially highly profitable commercial ventures. In addition, there is always the possibility that some other ambitious billionaire will also decide to invest his fortune in the idea of colonizing Mars.
If the optimistic forecasts are realized, according to Musk, we will be able to send the first humans to Mars in 10 years. In reality, SpaceX has not yet sent a single person into orbit and not a single spacecraft to Mars. The company's rockets still explode from time to time for unknown reasons, and its leader has not yet learned to do everything on time.
It would be delightful to watch SpaceX take its first steps towards Mars. However, between the private manned spacecraft development program, the Red Dragon missions, and the Battlestar Galactica-style future of humanity, there are a huge number of intermediate steps and events that Musk has passed over in silence: the development, construction and testing of larger and more advanced rockets. invention of the technologies needed to extract resources and maintain life on Mars. If SpaceX is lucky enough to have investors, it will take decades to overcome these hurdles.
Max is not at all stupid, and he knows that he has to do the impossible to achieve what he said yesterday. The purpose of his speech was not to prove that SpaceX can handle all the difficulties on its own, but to convince the world community that this is really worth striving for.
Perhaps the seed that Musk has planted now will be the first step towards a million-strong human colony on Mars in the 2100s. “My grandmother is 103 years old,” Brown said. “She saw how the first planes rose into the sky, how the first cars began to appear on the streets. She saw how people landed on the moon and learned how to treat previously incurable diseases. Over the course of 100 years, my grandmother has seen a change as amazing as what Elon is talking about."