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Musk standing at a wooden podium talking at the 2006 Mars Society Conference
Elon Musk at the 2006 Mars Society conference. Before founding SpaceX in 2001, Musk had expressed interest in Mars missions and briefly joined the Mars Society's board of directors.

SpaceX has stated its ambition to facilitate the colonization of Mars via the development of the Starship launch vehicle. The company states that this is necessary for the long-term survival of the human species. [1]

Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX, first presented his goal of enabling Mars colonization in 2001 as a member of the Mars Society's board of directors. In the 2000s and early 2010s, SpaceX made many vehicle concepts for delivering payloads and crews to Mars, including space tugs, heavy-lift launch vehicles, and Red Dragon capsules. The company's current Mars plan was first formally proposed at the 2016 International Astronautical Congress alongside a fully-reusable launch vehicle, the Interplanetary Transport System. Since then, the launch vehicle proposal was altered and renamed to "Starship", and has been in development since. On its third test flight, it reached its desired trajectory for the first time on March 14, 2024. The company has given many estimates of dates of the first human landing on Mars; the most recent discussion of which occurred during a company all hands meeting in April 2024. [2]

SpaceX's early missions to Mars will involve small fleets of Starship spacecraft, funded by public–private partnerships. [3]The company hopes that once infrastructure is established on Mars and the launch cost is reduced further, colonization can begin. The Mars program has been criticized by some as far-fetched, partially because of uncertainties regarding its financing [4] and because it primarily addresses transportation to Mars and not the steps that follow. George Dvorsky writing for Gizmodo characterized Musk's timeline for Martian colonization as "stupendously unreasonable". [5] For reference, Musk's timeline for the colonization of Mars involves a crewed mission as early as 2029 and sustainability by 2050. [6]

Some experts, like Robert Zubrin, support the concept due to the prevalence of water ice in the form of permafrost on Mars, as well as other resources like carbon dioxide and nitrogen; [7] some are opposed to the concept, believing the planet's lack of both breathable air and protective magnetosphere to be unacceptable problems. [8] A common sentiment among those opposed to Mars colonization is that humans should focus on solving problems on Earth before moving on to extraplanetary colonization. [9]

Prior Mission Concepts

Mars Colonial Transporter

This section is an excerpt from SpaceX Starship design history § Mars Colonial Transporter.
In October 2012, the company made the first public articulation of plans to develop a fully reusable rocket system with substantially greater capabilities than SpaceX's existing Falcon 9. [10] Later in 2012, [11] the company first mentioned the Mars Colonial Transporter rocket concept in public. It was going to be able to carry 100 people or 100 t (220,000 lb) of cargo to Mars and powered by methane-fueled Raptor engines. [12] Musk referred to this new launch vehicle under the unspecified acronym "MCT", [10] revealed to stand for "Mars Colonial Transporter" in 2013, [13] which would serve the company's Mars system architecture. [14] SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell gave a potential payload range between 150-200 tonnes to low Earth orbit for the planned rocket. [10] For mars missions, the spacecraft would carry up to 100 tonnes (220,000 lb) of passengers and cargo. [15] According to SpaceX engine development head Tom Mueller, SpaceX could use nine Raptor engines on a single MCT booster or spacecraft. [16] [17] The preliminary design would be at least 10 meters (33 ft) in diameter, and was expected to have up to three cores totaling at least 27 booster engines. [14]

Red Dragon capsule

Artist's conception of two Red Dragon capsules on Mars, next to an outpost

Red Dragon

Red Dragon was a 2011-2017 concept mission which would have used a modified Dragon 2 spacecraft as a low-cost Mars lander. If flown, it would have been launched on a Falcon Heavy, and land solely via the use of its SuperDraco retro-propulsion thrusters, [18] as parachutes would have required significant vehicle modifications. [19]

In 2011, SpaceX planned on proposing Red Dragon for the Discovery Mission #13, which would launch in 2022, [20] [21] [22] but it was not submitted. It was then proposed in 2014 as a low-cost way for NASA to achieve a Mars sample return by 2021. In the concept, the Red Dragon capsule would be equipped with the system needed to return samples gathered on Mars. NASA did not fund this concept.

In 2016, SpaceX planned on launching two Red Dragon vehicles [23] in 2018, [24] [25] with NASA providing technical support instead of funding. [26] However, in 2017, Red Dragon was cancelled, in favor of the much larger Starship spacecraft. [27]

Program manifest

SpaceX has stated on several occasions aspirational plans to build a crewed base on Mars for an extended surface presence, which it hopes will grow into a self-sufficient colony. [28] [29] A successful colonization, meaning an established human presence on Mars growing over many decades, would ultimately involve many more economic actors than SpaceX. [30] [31] [32]

Before any people are transported to Mars, a number of cargo missions would be undertaken first in order to transport the requisite equipment, habitats and supplies. [33] Equipment that would accompany the early groups would include "machines to produce fertilizer, methane and oxygen from Mars' atmospheric nitrogen and carbon dioxide and the planet's subsurface water ice" as well as construction materials to build transparent domes for crop growth. [34] [35]

Musk has made statements on several occasions about aspirational dates for Starship's earliest possible Mars landing, [36] including in 2022, that a mission to Mars could be no earlier than 2029. [37]

Exploration

Four astronauts looking at Mars
A scene of astronauts on Mars in the 2016 IAC presentation

Musk plans for the first crewed Mars missions to have approximately 12 people, with goals to "build out and troubleshoot the propellant plant and Mars Base Alpha power system" and establish a "rudimentary base." The company plans to process resources on Mars into fuel for return journeys, [38] and use similar technologies on Earth to create carbon-neutral propellant. [39]

Colonization and terraforming

A series of four illustrations of a planet, each successive one featuring more liquid water, vegetation, clouds, and atmospheric haze
Artist's conception of the process of terraforming Mars

The program aims to send a million people to Mars, using a thousand Starships sent during a Mars launch window. [40] Proposed journeys would require 80 to 150 days of transit time, [32] averaging approximately 115 days (for the nine synodic periods occurring between 2020 and 2037). [41] This plan has been described as 'pure delusion' by George Dvorsky, writing for Gizmodo, [5] and as a 'dangerous delusion' by Lord Martin Rees, a British cosmologist/astrophysicist and the Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom. [42] Serkan Saydam, a mining engineering professor from the University of New South Wales said that we will likely still lack the technology needed to create and maintain a martian colony of a million people by 2050. [5]

Tenets

Further information: Space and survival, Life on Mars, and Space launch market competition

As early as 2007, Elon Musk stated a personal goal of eventually enabling human exploration and settlement of Mars, [43] although his personal public interest in Mars goes back at least to 2001 at the Mars Society. [44]: 30–31  SpaceX has stated its goal is to colonize Mars to ensure the long-term survival of the human species. [4]

Launch vehicle

Main article: SpaceX Starship
Starship prototype assembled and stacked at Boca Chica

Starship is designed to be a fully reusable and orbital rocket, aiming to drastically reduce launch costs and maintenance between flights. [45]: 2  The rocket consists of a Super Heavy first stage booster and a Starship second stage spacecraft, [46] powered by Raptor and Raptor Vacuum engines. [47] Both stages are made from stainless steel. [48]

Methane was chosen for the Raptor engines because it is relatively cheap, produces low amount of soot as compared to other hydrocarbons, [49] and can be created on Mars from carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and hydrogen via the Sabatier reaction. [50] The engine family uses a new alloy for the main combustion chamber, allowing it to contain 300 bar (4,400 psi) of pressure, the highest of all current engines. [49] In the future, it may be mass-produced [49] and cost about $230,000 per engine or $100 per kilonewton. [51]

Starship's reusability is expected to reduce launch costs, expanding space access to more payloads and entities. [52] According to Robert Zubrin, aerospace engineer and advocate for human exploration of Mars, Starship's planned lower launch cost could make space-based economy, colonization, and mining practical. [44]: 25, 26  According to Robert Zubrin, lower cost to space may potentially make space research profitable, allowing major advancements in medicine, computers, material science, and more. [44]: 47, 48  Musk has stated that a Starship orbital launch could eventually cost $2 million, starting at $10 million within 2-3 years and dropping with time. [53] Pierre Lionnet, director of research at Eurospace, claimed otherwise, citing the rocket's multi-billion-dollar development cost and its current lack of external demand. [54]

Reception and feasibility

As of December 2023, SpaceX has not publicly detailed plans for the spacecraft's life-support systems, radiation protection, and in situ resource utilization, which are essential for space colonization. [55]

Notes

References

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External links

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