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Elon Musk has published a plan to colonize Mars using as many as 1,000 Interplanetary Transport System spaceships to transport a million settlers at a cost of $200,000 per person:
Elon Musk has put his Mars-colonization vision to paper, and you can read it for free.
SpaceX's billionaire founder and CEO just published the plan, which he unveiled at a conference in Mexico in September 2016, in the journal New Space. Musk's commentary, titled "Making Humanity a Multi-Planetary Species," is available for free [DOI: 10.1089/space.2017.29009.emu] [DX] on New Space's website through July 5.
"In my view, publishing this paper provides not only an opportunity for the spacefaring community to read the SpaceX vision in print with all the charts in context, but also serves as a valuable archival reference for future studies and planning," New Space editor-in-chief (and former NASA "Mars czar") Scott Hubbard wrote in a statement.
[...] ITS rockets will launch the spaceships to Earth orbit, then come back down for a pinpoint landing about 20 minutes later. And "pinpoint" is not hyperbole: "With the addition of maneuvering thrusters, we think we can actually put the booster right back on the launch stand," Musk wrote in his New Space paper, citing SpaceX's increasingly precise Falcon 9 first-stage landings.
Also at The Guardian.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 17 2017, @10:22PM (7 children)
Australia wasn't a death sentence. Neither was North America (Not even Roanoke).
Mars is. There's no hope of achieving self sufficiency.
"Transportation" as it was called wasn't always something the prisoners objected to. Free land in a warm continent had a lot of appeal to someone in a stone cold british prison or living on the streets.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:49PM
Not necessarily, but to not be a death trap they'll need to set up a big nuclear reactor with a lot of fuel, and a massive amount of equipment. They also must have successful artificial hydroponics working flawlessly.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 18 2017, @11:13AM (5 children)
You do realize that Mars has all the elements in sufficient abundance, including trace elements that life on Earth needs to survive and manufacturing needs to succeed? That's the only physical restriction to achieving self sufficiency.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 18 2017, @04:10PM (4 children)
You need to bootstrap that industrial base. That's where it becomes hard.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 19 2017, @01:47AM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 19 2017, @04:06AM (2 children)
I did not say impossible. Just hard. Sure it can be done. But it will require a lot of initial funding. It may be extremely profitable once it gets going on its own. But until then it will require a sustained pipeline of money converted into fuel, research and equipment. I also think the priority has to be on facilities that can regenerate what the colony needs to subsist.
The possibility to mine, process and build things in space using solar power also built with in situ materials will likely let loose another industrial boom. It would enable building big space objects like a Stanford torus, high purity materials, special crystals, deep space astronomy, physics research, ability to process toxic substances because there will be no water transporting it around etc.
Some data that are missing is:
* How does low gravity affect humans?
* What substances are present in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter? (fissile material would be a boon for power)
* What is present beneath the surface, on say Mars? or the Moon? Asteroids?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 19 2017, @12:10PM (1 child)
frojack did.
Other data that is missing is what sort of treatment will be needed to remove toxins from Martian soil. There was some indications from the Mars Exploration Rovers, for example, that some soils may have high concentrations of chromium in them. That would need to be removed, if the soil were to be used for agriculture. And how harmful, long term exposure to much higher background radiation is.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 19 2017, @05:30PM
I think I read or saw some technique to reliable clean the Martian soil from perchĺorates. For chromium, I have no idea. But I'll suspect it's a lot harder.