Elon Musk was presenting today the plans he has with SpaceX to develop a transport system to Mars.
Elon Musk doing a comparison of the Mars Vehicle with the Saturn V
Even thought the development right now just takes around 5% of the work capacity at SpaceX, the progress they made is remarkable.
For example: The renderings for this video where made using the existing 3D models of the construction.
So the shown spacecraft is not a designer dream, but actual planed design.
Not only the CAD artists were busy. The development team managed to put in a lot of hard work and build the carbon fiber tank for the spacecraft.
While carbon fiber is a really strong material, building a tank for a spacecraft is still a difficult feat
Not leaving themselves outdone by the other teams, the Raptor engine development team had a hard hustle aswell and were successful in testing the engine last weekend.
The Raptor engine operates with 3 times the pressure of a Merlin engine and can develop three times its thrust without being bigger in size
Elon Musk told he was surprised by their success and noted with a smirk, that he wouldn't have been surprised if it blew up. A compliment to the engineers working with very difficult technology in a very tight schedule.
The spaceship + booster. Note the person standing at the bottom.
While the complete spacecraft + booster is quite enormous. The most important part may be the spacecraft at the tip. The booster itself is just the javelin thrower that gets the spacecraft off the earth. Once this is done there are not many frontiers left inside the solar system.
Elon Musk noted the benefits of a propulsion landing system: while a parachute needs an atmosphere and wings need an atmosphere and a runway, a ship with propulsion can land on any hard or liquid surface in the solar system. Additionally it has the potential to lift off again.
There is a caveat thought: The ship needs refueling stations to expand its reach, but with a network of stations it can be used to reach every part of the solar system.
The spacecraft on the Jupiter moon Europa
It can be expected that with a number of stations, there is an incentive to have a spaceship purely for space travel. These spaceships wouldn't return to Earth or Mars and would explore objects in the solar system for companies and research agencies. We are now experiencing the first generation of actual space ships.
The spacecraft would be able to carry 100, later maybe even 200 people to Mars in reasonable comfort. Elon Musk noted that the trip has to be fun, to increase the number of interested people.
On Mars, cargo and people would exit the spacecraft and refuel it for its trip back to Earth. For this purpose, there would be fuel processing facilities previously send to Mars. The trip back to Earth would also have space to carry people back.
While Elon Musk had detailed ideas for the colonization of Mars, he is focusing on building the bridge to the red planet. This in turn means that there is space for you to look for business opportunities.
What do you think could be used on Mars? A whole industry has to be build there and thought the spacecrafts are huge, they still have limited cargo. In the end a new civilization of 1 million people has to be supplied.
Right now you got about 6 years to the end of 2022, until the start of the first Mars Vehicle is planned. That will give you enough time to come up with a valuable idea for a product and go through all 13 steps of the development, that I laid out in my engineering development series.
But even after the 6 year preparation time the colonization will take several years ( 10,000 trips @ 100 people) and give you a little buffer time.
You may contact me if you need help with your project: here on Steemit, on facebook or on www.engineercampus.de
Thank you for reading!
Watch the complete presentation here:
