Elon Musk Publishes His Vision for Mars Travel – Popular Mechanics

Elon Musk has put his manifesto on the future for spaceflight up online. While it's the same speech he gave last year as the keynote speaker at the 67th International Astronautical Congress, its online publication in the journal New Space allows for easy searching and a way to hold Musk and SpaceX accountable.

"In my view, publishing this paper provides not only an opportunity for the spacefaring community to read the SpaceX vision in print with all the charts in context, but also serves as a valuable archival reference for future studies and planning," New Space editor-in-chief Scott Hubbard said in a statement.

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If you don't recall the details of Musk's vision for space flight and Martian cities, titled "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species," it revolves around reusable rockets and spaceships. A rocket would take tankers of rocket fuel into space, where the spaceships that would take people to Mars would be waiting in orbit. "Over time, there were would be many spaceships," Musk says. "You would ultimately have upwards of 1,000 or more spaceships waiting in orbit. Hence, the Mars Colonial fleet would depart en masse."

The speech gets into the details of the Raptor engine, which Musks says will have "the highest chamber pressure engine of any kind ever built, and probably the highest thrust-to-weight." He talks about rocket boosters, liquid oxygen tanks, propellant plants, and numerous other crucial factors needed to even imagine a flight to Mars. We gave it a close reading at the time.

He also discusses pricing, which is a good thing to have on paper. "Right now," he says "we are estimating about $140,000 per ton for the trips to Mars. If a person plus their luggage is less than that, taking into account food consumption and life support, the cost of moving to Mars could ultimately drop below $100,000."

Ideally, Musk wants to start making these flights in ten years. SpaceX has delivered on reusable rockets and testing has already begun on the Raptor. There's a long way left to go before we start naming Martian cities, like figuring out how not to get cancer on the flight. But at least we can measure Musk's many promises in writing now.

You can download the paper here.

Source: Space

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Elon Musk Publishes His Vision for Mars Travel - Popular Mechanics