1,000 Starship spacecraft on Mars in 20 years: Elon Musk reiterates his commitment

Elon Musk has very clear ideas about colonizing Mars, and he reiterated his future plans recently. In a speech at SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, he gave an update on how to do that. Starship rocket advance The company's dramatic reduction in launch costs could one day lead to thousands of spaceships being shipped to the red planet at once.

The SpaceX founder has never hidden his ultimate goal: Colonizing Mars to transform humanity into a multi-planetary organism. Although he had already made somewhat optimistic predictions about when he intended to send the first pioneering spacecraft to begin colonization, he remained steadfast to his vision of populating the solar system, as a protection against the fall of civilization and possible human extinction.

Musk expects that SpaceX will soon grow to account for 90% of all orbital space launches, and that its new rockets will significantly reduce the costs of these operations. According to Musk, The first colonies will appear on Mars within 20 years It appears that his company is already preparing launch sites to support this project. In his vision, this city would not be a small site like the one planned by NASA on the moon, visited only occasionally, but a city inhabited by a million people who would live there for life. Among other things, it also plans to build its own moon base.

The key is the rapid development of the launch vehicle and Starship, which has already made three orbital test flights and could soon face a fourth test.

That's expected to happen in May, and Musk expects it to happen this time Up to 90% chance of safely recovering the Super Heavy first stage with the new Mechazilla capture turret The company uses giant arms to deflect the rocket during its propulsive landing. The second stage of the propulsion lander will come later with new modifications.

In addition to, Six boosters and other spacecraft are under constructionThe pace of assembly is expected to accelerate significantly. Musk also outlined changes to the spacecraft's design. Group DAnd Raptor engines Used in the current series of tests provide a thrust of 280 tons each. This is predicted The thrust will soon be increased to 330 tonsThis gives the spacecraft launch system a total thrust of 10,000 tons. This is partly due to the significant simplification of engines by incorporating elements such as cooling systems within them, making them lighter and more reliable.

In addition, the missile The height of the spacecraft will increase by 10 meters It will be able to carry much larger payloads 200 tons in low Earth orbit. The second-stage spacecraft will also be able to transport fuel to orbit, with SpaceX already testing the technology in simulations.

However, Musk is not satisfied with this. He wants to build A fleet of spacecraft with specialized variants for Earth, the Moon and MarsThe latter was designed to be dismantled upon landing to provide building materials for the colonists. It involves a convoy of a thousand ships assembling and refueling in Earth's orbit while waiting for the optimal time to depart for Mars, and as previous lost experiments on the Red Planet teach us, the optimal window occurs approximately every 26 months.

He then concludes with projects bordering on science fiction, even going so far as to talk about nuclear power plants on Mars to power the first structures. What do you think? Is this pure science fiction or do you consider such goals sustainable? Let us know in the comments. For those who want to hear Elon Musk's full speech again, we suggest the video below.

At starbase, @ElonMusk It provided an update on the company's plans to send humanity to Mars, the best destination to start making life multi-planetary pic.twitter.com/PiX8XOgQs5

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 6, 2024