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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: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday September 29 2016, @09:56AM
This rocket will blast the spaceship, which will carry at least 100 people, to LEO, where further launches will fuel the smaller vehicle.
You can't do this, because nothing can ever be done for the first time [youtube.com].
More seriously, there are a raft of issues (I didn't watch the presentation, so perhaps some of them were addressed) that must be resolved before this could be viable.
Having the ability to lift large cargoes into LEO in a cost-effective manner would be a good thing™. However, that's just the start. You need to be able to:
1. Create and perfect pretty bulletproof life-support (water, waste extraction/recycling, air filtration) systems
2. Address the issues surrounding long-term weightlessness (centrifugal force generating gravity-equivalent? Something else?)
3. Address the issues surrounding solar and cosmic radiation exposure during the trip
4. Create a pretty bulletproof closed food production ecosystem (cf. Biosphere 2 [wikipedia.org])
5. Invent, engineer and manufacture appropriate tools, machines and devices to harvest and utilize the resources available on Mars.
I'm sure there are *many* more issues which are not addressed by off-the-shelf systems. Some are engineering issues and others will require new science.
All that said, I'd love to see this in my lifetime and, like martyb [soylentnews.org], I'd (if they'd actually let me) love to be on that ship. In fact, even if I knew it was a one-way trip, I'd be all over it.
Despite the lack of intellectual curiosity, fear and lack of imagination among some people, it's nice to see that there are those who still believe "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" [wikiquote.org]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 29 2016, @01:17PM
Gotta love our Musky meme.
Your "bulletproof points" are interesting. I suppose these habitats have to be secure and redundant enough to stop one suicidal/homicidal maniac from killing the other 99 settlers.
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(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday September 29 2016, @02:46PM
Gotta love our Musky meme.
Just a friendly reminder to keep your distance when he's in rut! [wikipedia.org]
Your "bulletproof points" are interesting. I suppose these habitats have to be secure and redundant enough to stop one suicidal/homicidal maniac from killing the other 99 settlers.
I'm going to be deliberately obtuse and assume you're not attempting humor.
Bulletproof (adj): [dictionary.com]
Then again, only a moron would go anywhere without their P90 [wikipedia.org]. Especially when an expended round could decompress the craft (or the habitat on Mars) and kill everyone. Cold, dead hands, friend. Cold, dead hands.
Because you never know when some illegal immigrant* is going to jump out and try to rob you and rape your wife/girlfriend.
*Or in this case, some heathen microbial life that thinks that just because his kind has been living there for billions of years, that it's actually their planet. Manifest Destiny [wikipedia.org], FTW!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 29 2016, @03:20PM
Well, just think about this:
If you construct space/lunar/martian habitats that are only as durable as the ISS, they will probably fail at the hands of a drunkard or suicidal/homicidal maniac. Sending a few physically and mentally screened NASA astronauts is one thing, but having hundreds of settlers on Mars will eventually lead to Earthly problems creeping in. Somebody alive today may be the first person to commit murder on Mars. That person's inevitable Wikipedia page awaits.
Maybe you really want your bulletproof life-support systems to be bulletproof. That could also translate to "resistant to micrometeor impacts" or "maniac doing his damndest to cause destruction with sharp instruments and heavy tools". That might be achievable in specific circumstances: an underground habitat for example. You also want enough redundancy in the life support systems to prevent damage in one area from causing complete loss of life in the habitat. That might be achievable in an underground lunar/martian habitat, but might be much more difficult and expensive in an ISS-scale space station. That's not to say that today's space stations don't already have some built-in safety features, or that a sufficiently determined individual could not destroy a habitat on the ground (by making a bomb with the available chemicals, for example).
And here's a terrifying thought: Musky rides along with dozens of settlers and becomes the first man to set foot on Mars, but then renames his colony Jonestown M2 and kills everybody with the press of a button.
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(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday September 29 2016, @03:58PM
Maybe you really want your bulletproof life-support systems to be bulletproof. That could also translate to "resistant to micrometeor impacts" or "maniac doing his damndest to cause destruction with sharp instruments and heavy tools". That might be achievable in specific circumstances: an underground habitat for example. You also want enough redundancy in the life support systems to prevent damage in one area from causing complete loss of life in the habitat. That might be achievable in an underground lunar/martian habitat, but might be much more difficult and expensive in an ISS-scale space station. That's not to say that today's space stations don't already have some built-in safety features, or that a sufficiently determined individual could not destroy a habitat on the ground (by making a bomb with the available chemicals, for example).
I suppose that's true. It would be important to address how to deal with any sort of impact (whether internal or external) that might compromise the integrity of the air or water supplies. Automated pressure doors come to mind. Adequate shielding against micrometeorites wouldn't be a bad idea either.
In addition to pressure doors and shielding, it might be useful to use "glueballs" as is described in this story [unz.org]. Perhaps we'd also need to create something akin to a Phased Plasma Gun (PPG) [wikia.com] (or, more likely, something like this [wikipedia.org]) to avoid inadvertent hull breaches.
What's more, I suspect that with appropriate screening, we might not have an issue with murder, mass or otherwise. I say that since the global intentional murder rate [wikipedia.org] is about 7.6/100,000 people. Since there would be 100 people, the rate (without any screening) should be somewhere around .0076/100. With psychological screening, that could probably be cut down significantly.
As I mentioned, there are quite a few issues which must be resolved in order to give any long-range (i.e., not into low earth orbit or to the moon) manned space expedition a decent chance of delivering humans to Mars, Europa or other "local" destinations and returning them home safely.
Regardless, even without crazed colonists butchering their compatriots, this will be a risky and dangerous proposition. Exciting, isn't it?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr