“Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species” From Elon Musk. Summarized.
This is a one-page summary of the eponymous 17 pages article from Elon Musk (2017) Enjoy!
Why go anywhere?
The human being of the 21st century is facing a choice, either waiting for an eventual unfortunate massive life extinction on Earth, either becoming a multi-planetary species and spread life around the stars.
Elon Musk is arguing that colonizing other planets is the best choice to do.
Mars seems to be the most accessible planet for a long-term colony. It is very similar to Earth in many aspects, starting with its average distance from Earth which is quite low. Besides, it is one of the few telluric planets having an atmosphere, mostly composed of CO2 which means that we could easily grow plants on Mars’ surface. Finally, we are now sure about the presence of a huge amount of ice-water on the Martian soil which is critical to consider establishing a large-scale colony.
More than a one-man dream, this is SpaceX’s raison d’être. (Elon Musk is the founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX.) SpaceX is the very first space group to achieve launching, landing back and reuse of an orbital rocket booster, the company’s proclaimed purpose is to enable humans to become a space faring civilization and a multi-planet species by building a self-sustaining city on Mars.
How to go anywhere?
We think that going to Mars is possible with an Apollo style mission which would cost about 10 billion dollars per person. It’s not impossible, but establishing a 12 persons outpost is not the point here. SpaceX’s ambition is to send a million people to Mars in the next few decades. Hence, the technical challenge is to improve the cost of a trip from 10 billion to $200 000, which consists of an improvement of four and a half orders of magnitude.
This challenge sounds impossible, but SpaceX is on the way, the whole trick is full reusability of the boosters, and ships plus using tankers to fill up ships in space. Imagine the price of a $43 ticket from Los Angeles to Vegas, if planes were single use, it would cost about $500,000 per flight. The price improvement due to airplanes reusability is around four orders of magnitude.
Moreover, SpaceX will use propellant tankers to fill the tanks with the spaceship in orbit instead of launching the interplanetary spaceship with all the propellant required to reach and land on Mars.
The most striking point is that SpaceX’s interplanetary transport system (Starship spaceship + Super Heavy rocket) is already work in progress. SpaceX is currently (2019) done with the trickiest parts of the BFR such as the thruster or the carbon fiber tanks, and things are moving forward. The Raptor engine (designed for the BFR) is now in test phase!
“Why is there no Flat Mars Society!? — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 28 novembre 2017 — twitter
“Hi Elon, thanks for the question. Unlike the Earth, Mars has been observed to be round. We hope you have a fantastic day! — Flat Earth Society (@FlatEarthOrg) 28 novembre 2017 — twitter
Annex:
- Original article : Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species (2017) from Elon Musk https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/space.2017.29009.emu
- Video : Making life multi planetary, Elon Musk (SpaceX’s YouTube channel, 2017)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdUX3ypDVwI
