SpaceX will require a fleet of Starships to enable Life on Mars

Featured Image Source: Reddit r/SpaceXLounge

Would you relocate off-planet to start a new life on Mars? The founder of SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk aims to develop a Starship fleet to enable life on Mars by the year 2050. He believes that creating a spacefaring civilization, would help preserve “the light of consciousness” if some kind of disaster would threaten our species’ existence. – “You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great and that's what being a space-faring civilization is all about. It's about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can't think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars,” he says.

There is a lot of work to be done to eventually transform humanity into a multi-planet species. The aerospace company is currently developing its Mars rocket-spaceship duo at a SpaceX facility located in Boca Chica Beach, Texas. Multiple Starship prototypes are simultaneously under construction, these will undergo a series of tests that will offer engineers insight towards the development of a space-ready launch vehicle. We can expect the next stainless-steel prototype of Starship, referred to as SN6, to conduct a low-altitude test flight this week.

“Given enough time SpaceX will get to Mars,” Musk stated in a recent Humans To Mars conference. “We've got to build upon a Mars base and then we've got to build a city and get to the point where it's self-sustaining.”

“We need a lot of people fired up to go to Mars. It’s going to be kind of risky, but kind of a cool, fun adventure,” he said. “I want to emphasize that this is a very hard and dangerous difficult thing, not for the faint of heart … It's gonna’ be tough going and be pretty glorious if it works out."

SpaceX describes why Mars is a great candidate for enabling life on its website: “At an average distance of 140 million miles, Mars is one of Earth's closest habitable neighbors. Mars is about half again as far from the Sun as Earth is, so it still has decent sunlight. It is a little cold, but we can warm it up. Its atmosphere is primarily CO2 [carbon dioxide] with some nitrogen and argon and a few other trace elements, which means that we can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere,” SpaceX states, “Gravity on Mars is about 38% of that of Earth, so you would be able to lift heavy things and bound around. Furthermore, the day is remarkably close to that of Earth.”

In order to build a permanent settlement and maintain a constant human presence on the Red Planet, Musk estimates that "Building 100 Starships per year gets to 1000 in 10 years or 100 megatons per year, or maybe around 100k people per Earth-Mars orbital sync," he said. "Megatons per year to orbit are needed for life to become multi-planetary." Each Starship would be capable of carrying a bit over 100 tons of cargo.

Launching cargo ahead of humans is crucial, to provide the necessary life-support equipment, such as oxygen tanks, power generators, food, and building material infrastructures to survive on the planet’s harsh environment. “...In order to make something self-sustaining, you can’t be missing anything. You must have all the ingredients. It can’t be like, well this thing is self-sustaining except for this one little thing that we don’t have. It can’t be,” Musk told reporters earlier this year, “That’d be like saying, ‘Well, we had everything except vitamin C.’ Okay, great. Now you’re going to get scurvy and die - and painfully, by the way. It’s going to suck. You’re going to die slowly and painfully for lack of vitamin C. So, we’ve got to make sure we’ve got the vitamin C there on Mars. […] Then it’s like, Okay, rough order of magnitude, what kind of tonnage do you need to make it self-sustaining? It’s probably not less than a million tons,” he explained.

Building 100 Starships/year gets to 1000 in 10 years or 100 megatons/year or maybe around 100k people per Earth-Mars orbital sync

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 17, 2020

Starship voyages would happen once every 2 years, because the time that the orbits of Earth and Mars get closer in alignment is about every 26 months. Taking advantage of closer orbit periods allows for Starship to thrust forward from Earth's rotation and embark on a low-fuel journey toward Mars. Musk explained he would take advantage of that opportunity by "loading the Mars fleet into Earth orbit, then 1000 ships depart over ~30 days every 26 months."

He hopes that by 2050, humans would live sustainably on the Red Planet's surface. “Helping to pay for this is why I’m accumulating assets on Earth,” he shared via Twitter in January.

Helping to pay for this is why I’m accumulating assets on Earth.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 17, 2020

Musk previously said he would like to make the trip to Mars available to anybody – “Needs to be such that anyone can go if they want, with loans available for those who don't have money,” he said, “There will be a lot of jobs on Mars!” Especially jobs involving building a propellant plant to enable voyages back to Earth. Starship's Raptor engines are designed to be refueled on Mars' surface. Raptors are powered by cryogenic methane [CH4] and liquid oxygen [LOX] which can be made upon arrival. “Together the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket create a reusable transportation system capable of on-orbit refueling and leveraging Mars’ natural H2O [water] and CO2 [carbon dioxide] resources to refuel on the surface of Mars,” SpaceX states. Carbon dioxide could be extracted from the planet's atmosphere and sub-surface ice water can be dug up to create methane and liquid oxygen -through electrolysis and the Sabatier process.

SpaceX plans to conduct "hundreds" of Starship missions with "satellites" before launching people on board. The first uncrewed missions to Mars will consist of landing a minimum of two Starships filled with cargo before sending any astronauts there. The cargo mission target year is 2022, when Mars’ orbit comes closer to Earth.