Elon Musk’s proposed spaceship can send 100 people to Mars in 80 days
Today, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Mars vehicle — the spaceship his company plans to build to transport the first colonists to Mars. The spaceship is meant to launch from Earth on top of the booster and then travel the rest of the way on its own to the Red Planet.
The company's interplanetary spaceship — informally know as the BFS, or "Big Fucking Spaceship” — will have a diameter of 17 meters. The plan is to send about 100 people per trip, though he hopes to ultimately take 200 or more per flight to make the cost cheaper per person. The time can take as little as 80 days or as much as 150 days depending on the year. The hope is that the transport time will be as short as 30 days “in the more distant future.”
The rocket booster will have a diameter of 12 meters and the stack height will be 122 meters. The spaceship should hold a cargo of up to 450 tons depending on how many refills can be done with the tanker.
As rumored, the spaceship will refuel in orbit. This is key, according to Musk, because it makes the trip much cheaper and hence more doable. Similarly, it’s inefficient to bring repellant for the return trip. Ideally, a team would build a propellant plant on Mars and send the ships back that way. (Musk says this is possible given the natural resources on the Red Planet.)
Tags
Who is online
102 visitors
The spaceship heads to orbit, while the booster heads back to Earth, coming back within 20 minutes. Back on Earth, the booster lands on a launch mount and a propellant tanker is loaded onto the booster. The entire unit — now filled with fuel — lifts off again. It joins with the spaceship, which is then refueled in orbit. The propellant tankers will go up anywhere from three to five times to fill the tanks of the spaceship.
The spaceship finally departs for Mars, which is about 240,000 miles from Earth. To make the trip more attractive for its crew members, Musk promises that it’ll be “really fun” with zero-G games, movies, cabins, games, a restaurant.
Once it reaches Mars, the Mars vehicle will land on the surface, using its rocket engines to lower itself gently down to the ground. The spaceship’s passengers will use the vehicle, as well as cargo and hardware that’s already been shipped over to Mars, to set up a long-term colony. At the rate of 20 to 50 total Mars trips, it will take anywhere from 40 to 100 years to achieve a fully self-sustaining civilization with one million people on Mars, says Musk
I don't think you could pay me enough to be on that first trip. Everything looks good on paper.
Did Musk explain how they were gonna deal with deceleration ? That is a critical factor for space travel .