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
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