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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: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Wednesday September 28 2016, @11:33PM
Luna is the best of both worlds. Shallow gravity well and lack of atmosphere make for cheap launches. You can dig in for radiation shielding. You can mine air, water, fuel, and materials, and there's plenty of sun for energy. On top of that you're close enough to Earth for supplies and emergency help.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Interesting) by el_oscuro on Thursday September 29 2016, @02:18AM
Doing either would benefit mankind immensely. Just one example: sustainable food production. On earth, our current food production methods are horribly inefficient from an environmental, energy, and carbon perspective. Any colonies would have to be much better, and everything they do could be used to benefit life on Earth.
In fact, the knowledge we gain from a sustainable colony could dwarf both the Apollo missions and the development of the Internet.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 29 2016, @01:07PM
Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to improve food production on Earth?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2016, @05:55AM
It is more like the worst of both worlds.
On the moon you have:
* No atmosphere. On Mars, while you would still need a spacesuit, it could be more like a pilot's pressure suit than a full spacesuit needed in hard vacuum. This means much easier working conditions outside.
* A day/night cycle which no Earth plant is adapted for, making crops impossible to grow under natural lighting. Mars has a day/night cycle almost the same as Earth.
* Very low gravity. While there is no proof that Martian gravity is enough to prevent health issues, it has been shown that it is enough to prevent the extreme clumsiness experienced by astronauts on the Moon.
* High radiation. Mars has at least a little bit of atmosphere to help protect from radiation. It is likely that you would need a shielded or underground habitat on either location, but either way it is no advantage to the Moon.
* Incredibly difficult dust. Dust on the Moon is like billions of tiny saw blades. On Mars, while the dust is finer than is found on Earth, it has experienced billions of years of erosion and is much more manageable. Even the famous Martian dust storms are quite manageable compared to the destructive lunar dust.
* No likely usable minerals. The Moon has never had geological or hydrological activity. There is therefore no process which could have produced the concentrations of minerals which are practical to extract on Earth. While Mars has no active geology now, it once did, and is likely to have some concentrated minerals - and untouched by thousands of years of human mining.
* Very little water, and what there is, is concentrated at the poles. Mars has water all over the place.
* No moons. The Martian moons are perfect natural space stations, small enough to have almost no gravity of their own (you could probably jump off of Deimos and go into orbit around Mars) yet large enough to be suitable for construction. And they are conveniently located, too, with Phobos in a very low orbit, easy to access from the surface, and Deimos in a high one, suitable for launching missions to the asteroids.
* Although actually fairly close to the asteroid belt in energy terms, the Moon is much more distant in terms of travel time. Asteroids could only be mined remotely with the mining equipment returning periodically for servicing; from Mars, humans could reasonably fly there (although they might not want to stay unless artificial gravity is provided).
* Much harsher temperatures. Temperatures on the Moon go from really-freaking-cold to surprisingly very hot, with a 500 degree F variation at the equator. While the temperature on Mars is colder than Earth, it is relatively stable, with temperatures at the equator varying over approximately Antarctic levels.
* Buzz Aldrin, who has actually been to the Moon, thinks Mars is a better place to live. That's not proof, but it counts for something.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday September 29 2016, @02:48PM
With the combination of this and your other post (you sound like the same AC), you seem to be saying that every off-Earth place to live sucks.
* No moons. The Martian moons are perfect natural space stations, small enough to have almost no gravity of their own (you could probably jump off of Deimos and go into orbit around Mars) yet large enough to be suitable for construction. And they are conveniently located, too, with Phobos in a very low orbit, easy to access from the surface, and Deimos in a high one, suitable for launching missions to the asteroids.
How are the moons of Mars appreciably different than our own?
So living on Mars would suck, living on the moon would suck, and many of the reasons living on the moon would suck also would seem to apply to living on a space station.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2016, @05:32AM
No, the other AC isn't me. I think Mars is a fine place to colonize. I don't like the Moon, though, because the only thing it has going for it is that it's close. And I actually think that is a drawback, since it encourages "test pilot thinking," in which you treat a moon base like a more difficult version of the ISS, rather than "settler thinking," in which you treat it like a place that's actually going to be a home.
Phobos and Deimos are almost nothing like the Moon. They are more like asteroids. They probably actually are asteroids, although there are dissenting astronomers on that point. They are small enough to be easy places to build (with virtually no gravity, it's easy to build underground, because you hardly need any structure to prevent a cave-in). Building underground protects you from radiation. But they are also great places to stop and refuel or repair or, eventually, do manufacturing from all the asteroid-based resources you're probably bringing back. But they're massive enough that you could attach a skyhook-style launch system to them. And doing all this construction and base-building is great practice for asteroid mining. Even with building underground to protect against radiation, you wouldn't want to live there for more than a few months because of the microgravity, but they're a great place to visit.
The Earth's moon on the other hand is more like a small planet. A planet without much in the way of resources.