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Elon Musk outlines Mars colony vision Elon Musk outlines Mars colony vision
(about 2 hours later)
Entrepreneur Elon Musk has outlined his vision for establishing a human colony on Mars for people that can afford a $200,000 ticket price.Entrepreneur Elon Musk has outlined his vision for establishing a human colony on Mars for people that can afford a $200,000 ticket price.
Mr Musk, who founded private spaceflight firm SpaceX, spoke at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Mexico, on Tuesday. Mr Musk, who founded private spaceflight company SpaceX, was speaking at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Tuesday.
His colonisation plan uses a fully reusable transportation system. His colonisation plan uses a fully reusable transportation system that would take 100 people and 80-days to get to Mars and eventually as little as 30-days.
This consists of a spaceship refuelled with methane and oxygen in Earth orbit and also on Mars after landing there. This transportation system consists of a spaceship that is refuelled with methane and oxygen in Earth orbit and also on Mars after landing there.
Mr Musk explained that to achieve the $200,000 price, the entire transportation system has to be reusable.Mr Musk explained that to achieve the $200,000 price, the entire transportation system has to be reusable.
Kicking off his speech at the meeting in Guadalajara, he said that the future would likely bifurcate along two paths. In one, humans would likely experience some event that would drive them towards extinction. He spoke of a colony of a million people to make it self-sustaining and that, with his plan, that could take 100 years.
In the other, humans would become what he called a "a space-faring civilisation and a multi-planetary species" by settling on other worlds, beginning with Mars. To reach a million, Mr Musk said: "I want to make Mars seem possible, something we can do in our life times… and that anyone can go if they wanted too."
Mr Musk said that, using traditional methods, the cost of a trip to Mars would be $10bn per person. To create an outpost on the Red Planet, the cost needed to be brought down using new technologies and innovative "architectures" for the journey. The first Mars flight could take place in 2022, according to SpaceX's timeline for Mars colonisation.
He said that in order to achieve this vision, four key criteria needed to be met: Mr Musk said that he would like to name the first spacecraft that goes to Mars, The Heart of Gold, after a starship in Douglas Adams' book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
At the weekend, Mr Musk announced that SpaceX had carried out its first test of the Raptor rocket engine, intended to be part of an interplanetary launch system. The launch site will be Nasa's Kennedy Space Centre pad 39, from where the Apollo Moon missions flew.
His announcement is being watched closely because SpaceX has already made several landmark achievements for a private space company, including the successful upright landings of orbital rocket stages. The reason why Mr Musk wants to go to Mars is, he said: "Without someone with a real ideological commitment, it didn't seem we were on any trajectory to become a spacefaring civilisation."
But just journeying to Mars, let alone setting up a permanent base, remains a formidable challenge. The prototype spaceship is planned to make test flights in four years, initially going into space, but not into orbit.
Beyond the astronomical cost, there are the technical hurdles - currently unsolved - of protecting humans from the radiation levels they would be exposed to in deep space. At the weekend, Mr Musk announced that SpaceX had carried out its first test of the Raptor rocket engine that will power the spaceship and the booster that puts it into orbit.
For Mr Musk, Tuesday's speech should offer welcome respite from dealing with the fall-out of the company's launch pad explosion in September, which destroyed one of the company's Falcon 9 launchers and its payload - an Israeli-built communications satellite for Facebook. A prototype booster fuel tank has been built and tested and Mr Musk showed a picture of the enormous tank with staff standing next to it.
The combination of the booster and spaceship is called the Interplanetary Transportation System (ITS) and together they stand 122 metres tall, bigger than an Apollo-era Moon programme Saturn V rocket.
The booster will have 42 Raptor engines. Arranged in concentric circles, there will be an outer circle of 24 engines, an inner circle of 14 and in the centre seven Raptors.
Future versions of the ITS could be larger to accommodate bigger spaceships with up to 200 passengers.
The spaceship will have nine Raptor engines, carry 450 tonnes of people and cargo and have an open plan "occupant compartment" for colonists, according to Mr Musk.
He envisages communal living during the eighty-day trip with movies and lectures and zero gravity games.
The ITS' development will be funded by profit from SpaceX, Mr Musk's own wealth. He sees the colonisation of Mars as a "huge public private partnership", and said, "that is how the United States was established".
Spaceships would be sent every two years when Mars is closest to Earth and the two worlds will be 57.6 million kilometres apart in 2018.
At their furthest, they can be 400 million kilometres apart and in the past they have only been as close as 100 million kilometres.
Once it reaches Mars, the spaceship is shaped so that it will naturally be decelerated as it passes through the atmosphere. Its engines will then fire to slow it down to land vertically on legs, like SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket does today.
Mr Musk outlined a future where 1,000 spaceships could be in orbit. "The Mars colonial fleet would depart en masse." He expected a spaceship to last 12-15 flights.
The price could eventually come down to $100,000 to $140,000. If someone wanted to return to Earth they could take a returning spaceship, "for free", Mr Musk commented.
SpaceX also plans to launch the spacecraft it calls Red Dragon to Mars in a couple of years when the Earth and Mars are closest.
Red Dragon is a version of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft that is carrying cargo to the International Space Station, and a human version is being developed for astronauts.
SpaceX will offer the Red Dragon flights to governments and private organisations to send scientific and commercial payloads to the Red Planet.