When he delivered his Mars colonization presentation at the International Astronautical Conference in September, SpaceX founder Elon Musk spent a lot of time discussing the Interplanetary Transport System rocket and spacecraft, But he offered precious little information about what the firsts visitors' life on Mars would look like.
During an AMA on Reddit Sunday afternoon, he filled in a few of those details. After a user named El-Psy-Kangaroo asked about initial missions to Mars, Musk replied that the first "Red Dragon" spacecraft sent to Mars, possibly in 2018 but more likely 2020, would prove the company could land propulsively on the red planet, and then experiment with chemical reactions to find the best way to derive methane and water from the Martian atmosphere. The resulting propellant would, eventually, be used for return missions from Mars.
The first large ITS spacecraft sent to Mars, nicknamed "Heart of Gold" after the ship in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, would likely be filled mostly equipment to build a propellant plant on Mars. The first crewed mission would then carry perhaps a dozen colonists and the equipment needed to build a "rudimentary" base and finish the propellant plant. The company would then try to double the number of flights every 26 months, during each Earth-Mars orbital rendezvous. "We are still far from figuring this out in detail," Musk acknowledged.
Another user, Ulysius, asked about permanent habitation on Mars. "Initially, glass panes with carbon fiber frames to build geodesic domes on the surface, plus a lot of miner/tunneling droids," Musk said. "With the latter, you can build out a huge amount of pressurized space for industrial operations and leave the glass domes for green living space."
Musk also answered a number of questions about the nature of the ITS rocket itself, including vacuum and sea level thrust values, as well as the number of g's the booster would be able to sustain on its return to Earth for reuse (an astounding 20 g's, or more). He also suggested the name of the Mars architecture, previously known as the Mars Colonial Transporter, will likely change again. "ITS just isn't working. I'm using BFR and BFS for the rocket and spaceship, which is fine internally, but..." So if you have suggestions, hit the man up.
The tech mogul, however, did not address perhaps the most important question of all, asked by a couple of redditors—how SpaceX will go about raising the $10 billion, or considerably more, needed to get the ITS rocket and spacecraft off the ground and on the way to Mars.
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