The Race for Mars just got heated up. Futurist and Inventor Elon Musk has just days back unveiled ambitious plans to send cargo ships to Mars by 2022. But all eyes are on what he plans to do two years after that.
The founder of SpaceX has said the interplanetary rocket system codenamed BFR (Big F**king Rocket), would be downsized to carry out a range of tasks to help future Mars missions.
Musk unveiled his plans at a global gathering of space experts in Adelaide.
SpaceX will start building the system in six to nine months whose blueprint is ready.
Reportedly the buzz is that at least two cargo ships would land on Red Planet in 2022, with the mission of finding best source of water – currently mooted as a way to power rockets.
The rockets are most likely to place power, mining and life-support infrastructure on the Red Planet to support future missions.
The most talked about move however remains the idea of four ships set to take people, equipment and supplies to the planet in 2024.
Musk says he wants to set up a colony of a million people on the planet by the 2050s.
Meanwhile NASA’s first human mission to Mars is expected approximately a decade later.
The trips funded by a range of activities include launching satellites, servicing the space station and lunar missions.
Interestingly the SpaceX invention will be adding to the transportation network by cutting down intercity travel time. Bangkok to Dubai would take 27 minutes while Tokyo to Delhi will take 30 minutes as per calculations.
What started off as plans to colonize Mars with an unmanned capsule called Red Dragon in 2018, has now turned into plans where SpaceX is focused on a single, slimmer and shorter rocket.
Estimates at the initial stage say BFR would be partly reusable and capable of flight from Earth to Mars with about 100 passengers.
The Musk plan comes at a time when the week-long annual International Astronautical Congress has laid threadbare plans of government space agencies and private firms to send humans to the Moon and Mars in next few decades.
Lockheed Martin Corp announced separate plans for a manned Mars journey, unveiling concept drawings of a “base camp” space station orbiting Mars and landing craft.
International media and science experts write – Mars is typically 225 million km from Earth and landing the first humans there, after what traditionally has been seen as a six- to nine-month journey, is an extremely ambitious goal.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is keen of a heavy-lift vehicle named New Armstrong capable of Mars transport.
The 157-foot (48-meter) long spaceship BFR would have six Raptor engines, four of which would be vacuum Raptors.
Additionally, it would have a pressurized volume of 29,100 cubic feet (825 cubic meters), enough space for 40 cabins, a large common area, central storage, galley, and a solar storm shelter for transits to Mars.
Supersonic retro-propulsion will make the new system fully and rapidly reusable. SpaceX demonstrated that technique 16 times over the last 21 months.
BFR stats include a a 48 meter length, a dry mass of 85 tons, and 1,100 tons propellant mass.
The payload bay of BFR will be eight stories tall.
Fuel tank will hold 240 tons of CH4. The oxygen tank holds 860 tons of liquid O2.
The booster would return to launching pad; the spaceship would continue to orbit.
Entry to Mars would be at 7.5 kilometers per second. The B.F.R. would be able to lift 150 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.
Industry experts are eager to know how Musk plans to keep people alive on Mars for months or years on end.
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