SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk has been talking about the Mars Colonial Transporter (MCT) since around 2012, and has said that SpaceX will not hold an initial public offering until the MCT is flying regularly. The MCT was said to be able to deliver 100 tons of cargo to the surface of Mars, fly using upgraded "Raptor" rocket engines fueled by liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid methane, and achieve full reusability on all stages.
Now, ahead of a session at the International Astronautical Congress on Sept. 27th, Musk has decided to change the name of the Mars Colonial Transporter to reflect broader and more ambitious planned capabilities:
For most of its 14 year existence, SpaceX has focused on designing and developing the hardware that will lead to its ultimate goal: colonizing Mars. These plans have remained largely secret from the general public, as company founder Elon Musk has dropped only the barest of hints. But that is expected to change on Sept. 27, during a session at the International Astronautical Congress, when Musk details some of these plans for the first time in a public forum.
However, on the eve of the meeting, Musk dropped a surprise on Twitter. The workhorse spacecraft that will carry approximately 100 tons of cargo or 100 people to the surface of Mars, which until now has been popularly known as the Mars Colonial Transporter, can't be called that, Musk said. "Turns out MCT can go well beyond Mars, so will need a new name..." he tweeted on Friday evening. By Saturday evening he had a new name dubbing the spacecraft the "Interplanetary Transport System," or ITS.
Mars, it turns out, isn't the solar system's only marginally habitable world for would-be new world colonists. The Moon, Venus, the asteroid Ceres, and outer Solar System moons Titan and Callisto all have some advantages that could allow for colonies to subsist. However, Mars has generally been the preferred destination—due to its relative proximity to Earth, a thin atmosphere, and sources of water ice. Musk now seems to be suggesting that some of these more distant destinations, especially moons around Jupiter and Saturn, might be reachable with the Interplanetary Transport System.
Also at TechCrunch.
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Here it is, the grand plan for the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) as presented yesterday at the the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico:
On Tuesday (Sept. 27), Musk unveiled SpaceX's planned Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), a rocket-spaceship combo that the billionaire entrepreneur hopes will allow humanity to establish a permanent, self-sustaining, million-person settlement on the Red Planet. Mars is the first planned stop for ITS, but it may not be the last. "This system really gives you freedom to go anywhere you want in the greater solar system," Musk said Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico. With the aid of strategically placed refueling depots, "you could actually travel out to the Kuiper Belt [and] the Oort Cloud," Musk added. The Kuiper Belt is Pluto's neck of the woods, while the Oort Cloud, the realm of comets, is even more distant; it begins about 2,000 astronomical units (AU) from the sun.
[...] The ITS booster will be the most powerful rocket ever built, capable of lofting 300 tons to low-Earth orbit (LEO) in its reusable version and 550 tons in its expendable variant, Musk said. This rocket will blast the spaceship, which will carry at least 100 people, to LEO, where further launches will fuel the smaller vehicle. When the time is right — Earth and Mars align favorably for interplanetary missions just once every 26 months — a fleet of these spaceships will depart from LEO, arriving at the Red Planet in as little as 80 days, Musk said. The ITS — both the rocket and spaceship — will be powered by SpaceX's Raptor engines, which run on a combination of methane and oxygen. Both of these ingredients can be manufactured on Mars and other places in the solar system, Musk said, meaning that the spaceship can and will be refueled far from Earth.
[...] The ITS spaceship could therefore go very far afield, provided it could access refueling stations along the way. "By establishing a propellant depot in the asteroid belt or one of the moons of Jupiter, you can make flights from Mars to Jupiter no problem," Musk said. "It'd be really great to do a mission to Europa, particularly," he added, referring to the ocean-harboring Jovian moon, which many astrobiologists regard as one of the solar system's best bets to host alien life. Building additional depots farther from the sun — perhaps on Saturn's moon Titan and Pluto, for example — could theoretically extend the ITS spaceship's reach all the way out to the Oort Cloud, Musk said. "This basic system, provided we have filling stations along the way, means full access to the entire greater solar system," he said.
The first Mars ferry will be named "Heart of Gold". Unfortunately, these bold settlers will have to be kept away from potential microbial life.
Additional Coverage:
Making Humans an Interplanetary Species - Video of Musk Presentation at IAC [1h4m46s]
Same, but with Q&A session [1h58m22s]
Making Humans an Interplanetary Species - Slides of Presentation at IAC (pdf)
SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System - Video mockup presented at IAC [4m21s]
SpaceX - Mars
Musk’s Mars moment: Audacity, madness, brilliance—or maybe all three story at Ars Technica
Elon Musk envisions 'fun' but dangerous trips to Mars (Update 4) at phys.org
Previous coverage:
SpaceX's Mars Colonial Transporter Becomes the "Interplanetary Transport System"
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @09:58AM
You know you want a Musky rocket to plant a colony up Uranus.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @12:23PM
EGOSeX. Ooh now baybeh yeah let's make love, sweet love.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Tuesday September 20 2016, @12:28PM
Nah man. Moon is the logical choice for the first step. Much closer. Mars' atmosphere is too thin to be an advantage, and there still is no clear proof your supply of water ice planetwide would add up to anything substantial.
Once a permanent base is established on Luna that will make a better launch point for further expeditions to more distant spheres.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday September 20 2016, @12:45PM
In the long run, if we don't have a base on every one of those objects, then the space experiment has failed.
Bases need to be self-sufficient, capable of manufacturing using materials from the surface, and constructed by robots in advance.
The cost of setting up the base needs to be as cheap as possible. $1-3 billion preferred, including multiple launches to send construction bots and humans. Hopefully full reusability of rockets will make this conceivable. There are also schemes to assemble ships or fuel in orbit.
Landing humans on Phobos could be a cheap alternative to Mars, since robots on Mars could be teleoperated from Phobos, and a lot less fuel is needed to get to Phobos. It probably won't be the first choice for Mars planners just due to the prestige of landing on Mars. And Mars has a decent surface gravity.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday September 20 2016, @10:33PM
Moon dust though is extremely abrasive, without the benefit millions of years of weathering to take off the sharp edges. That's going to wreak havoc on moving parts and (formerly) airtight seals. Also there's negligible readily accessible water or oxygen on the moon, whereas Mars has huge ice caps, potentially useful amounts of subsurface liquid water, and unlimited oxygen delivered to your doorstep as CO2 just waiting to be concentrated and fed into your greenhouses or artificial air-crackers.
Also, the Moon is really only closer in terms of transit time - in terms of energy requirements (i.e. transportation cost of non-perishable supplies) it's not actually that much more expensive. So theoretically you could send emergency supplies much faster, or evacuate to Earth without carrying any food or water, but realistically that's only an advantage at the early outpost stage. Once you have a few hundred or thousand people living in the colony, we're unlikely to have the necessary rocket infrastructure to be able to transport the necessary people or supplies fast enough to make a difference in a real crisis. Colonization is going to be dangerous, the early colonists will simply have to accept that, or build in sufficient redundancy to their systems that any disaster that leaves them alive at the end of the day can be recovered from.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Tuesday September 20 2016, @01:33PM
I thought that the orbits around the gas giants is a hazardous place due to the radiation, lack of magneto-spheres, etc.
I would think that a work-around/mitigation techniques just for the radiation, add considerable costs, but what do I know?
Interesting, nonetheless.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday September 20 2016, @01:54PM
What you want is the Acme Magnet Field Generator 2000(TM). And build your base underground.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 20 2016, @02:04PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons#Callisto [wikipedia.org]
Titan's atmosphere is denser than Earth's and could block radiation.
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(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday September 20 2016, @07:01PM
Titan's atmosphere is denser than Earth's and could block radiation.
And we could fly in it! [xkcd.com]