Vision for Colonizing Mars

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about Elon Musk’s vision for colonizing Mars.

On 27 September 2016, Elon Musk revealed his vision for colonizing Mars within the next 50 to 100 years by offering relatively cheap flights to the Red Planet. For this purpose, SpaceX works on the development of completely reusable spacecraft and booster that will ferry astronauts and colonists to Mars. The principle behind this idea is very simple and follows today’s commercial aviation. Flights all around the world are only that cheap as each aircraft is used for thousands of flights thus allowing airlines to spread the price for each aircraft across many passengers.

Provided SpaceX can afford to fund the development, the first test flights could already launch within the next decade. The mission profile for a flight to Mars sounds very ambitious but also possible. The idea is to launch the main Interplanetary Travel System (ITS) with only so much fuel on board so that it can barely accellerate to orbital velocity in order to have as much cargo capacity as possible. While the ITS is still on its way to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), the first stage will return and land again at the launch pad in order to get refueled and to launch a tanker into LEO which subsequently will rendezvous with the ITS in order to refuel it.

Once a launch window opens, all ITS that are parked in LEO will depart at the same time and basically fly in formation to Mars where the ITS will enter the Marsian atmosphere and finally perform a propulsive landing. This propulsive landing system also enables an ITS to land on almost any celestial body as no atmosphere for parachutes is needed.

Aside from developing the spacecraft, SpaceX is also working on systems that will generate rocket fuel on the surface of Mars in order to refuel the ITS again thus allowing them to fly back to Earth. For this purpose, SpaceX is also designing a new type of rocket engine that burns a mixture of densified liquid methane and liquid oxygene. The advantage of this type of rocket fuel is that all the required ingredients can be found on Mars.

In the end, Musk’s vision sounds, at least when enough funds are available, possible. However, Elon Musk has not addressed how the first sets of colonists will survive on the surface of Mars after their arrival. Also, Mars‘ surface gravity is only about 1/3 of the Earth’s surface gravity which might be very funny during the first weeks on the planet but can also have negative side-effects on the human body when it is exposed to those conditions for several years.

As a conclusion, SpaceX has a very ambitious but possible plan. However, if this plan is also doable depends on a lot of different factors and also a lot of money. Hopefully, they will succeed with it and allow us to put footprints on other planets as I totally agree with with Elon Musk:

It would be an incredible adventure. I think it would be the most inspiring thing that I can possibly imagine. And life needs to be more than just solving problems every day. You need to wake up and be excited about the future. And be inspired, and want to live.