Gauge Newsletter September 2017 | Seite 5

MAKING HUMANS A MULTI-PLANETARY SPECIES The vision of Elon Musk for the Past, Future and Present. T he date was 27th September 2016. Like on any other day, there was a live stream on YouTube from the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. But the vision- ary who conducted it is none other than Elon Musk, whose life- long dreams have been set on colonising Mars. And today, he unveiled his detailed plans on how his team is planning to achieve this seemingly unimaginable target. BUT WHO IS MUSK, TO MAKE THIS LONG-LASTING CONCEPT A REALITY ? We are talking about a person who read the printed version of Encyclopaedia of Britannica at the age of eight because he ran out of books in the library. Born in South Africa, after a rough childhood he migrates to Canada and eventually to the USA. Double majoring in phys- ics and economics, and ditching the PhD studies in Applied Physics and Material Science from Stanford University after two years, he moves on to pursue his entrepreneurial aspira- tions. In 1995, Musk Co-founded Zip2, a web software company and then the proceeds of its sales were spent on developing PayPal in 2001. After the eBay acquisition of PayPal, Musk directed USD 100 million of its proceeds to incorpo- rate SpaceX in 2002, with the goal of creating a “True spacefaring civilisation”. Further, in 2004, he directed his funds to Tesla Motors, with the sustainability of transpor- tation in mind. While expanding on these dreams, Tesla acquired SolarCity in November 2016 to Musk power up their all-around solar Elon Source - i.ytimg.com energy solutions. With the plans and resources to be at the forefront of land and space transportation, Musk focused on underground transportation. This was done with his new company named “The Boring Company”, in 2017, which is a tunnel- ling venture which came to light after a Tweet, tweeted while stuck in a traffic jam. WHAT’S THE BASIS FOR TAKING THIS HUGE STEP FORWARD? SpaceX has been playing a major role in resupplying International Space Station (ISS) and in many other private and government space-cargo ven- tures after Space Shuttles retired. Currently, SpaceX is employing Falcon 9 rocket with a height of 70m and weighted at 549 054kg, which is a two- staged rocket capable of delivering payloads up to 22 800kg to Low Earth Orbits (LEO). These incorporate the Dragon, a free-flying spacecraft capa- ble of transporting both humans and cargo. Even though the Dragon is only transporting cargo for now, SpaceX is currently working with NASA to develop refinements to enable human transportation soon. And the agency is currently developing Falcon Heavy rocket with same height but capable of delivering payloads up to 54 400kg to Low Earth Orbits (LEO). However, the specialities surrounding these rockets come in the form of economic benefits. These are developed to be reused, which cut the costs drastically. This will account for an affordability factor with space travel, which was not under consideration in the last decade. Another revolutionary step taken by SpaceX is the vertical landing of rockets, such that they can be reused. In December 2015, they could land the first stage of the rocket on land. Developing on that, in April 2016, they landed it on a barge, off the coast of Florida. Landing on barges ensured that the first stage can return to the ground, straight off from where they separated in space and hence, save a significant amount of fuel as the barge will be positioned just in the correct position. The success was achieved in the fifth attempt, where the previous four ended up with the first stage going up in flames. WHAT’S THE PLAN? The one-hour long presentation was focused on a four-part system which will enable the interplanetary travel. Rocket and a Spaceship, which together adds up to a height of 122m will take off and the rocket booster will return to the launch pad after delivering the spaceship to an earth orbit. Then it will take off with a fueling tanker, which will refuel the spaceship to travel to its destination and both the rocket and the tanker will return to the earth. The fueling tanker might take up to five runs to refuel the spaceship. Then the spaceship will reach Mars in 80 days or 150 days, depending on the relative position of the two planets. This pro- cess is deemed to be optimised to cut down the travel time to 30 days, in the distant future. The initial spaceship is equipped with a propellant depot, which can produce a propellant when it is on Mars and hence, power the return journey of the spaceship. As the gravitational field of Mars is lower than that of the earth, it would not demand a rocket booster to overcome the gravitational pull. These four components are the key features which will power the dream of Elon Musk to conquer the red planet and beyond. In the present, the interplanetary trip will cost USD 10 billion per head. But Gauge Magazine University of Peradeniya 5