Fatal risks of colonising Mars
specifically with the purpose of colonising Mars, is one of several private and government-funded ventures vying to put people and cargo on the Red Planet and other destinations beyond Earth’s orbit.
Mars is typically 225 million kilometres from Earth and landing the first humans there, after what traditionally has been a six- to nine- month journey, is an extremely ambitious goal.
Musk expects his rocket to be able to cut the transit time to three months and released a four-minute video showing the craft. (http://bit. ly/2dipzuU)
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space venture is also designing a heavy-lift vehicle and capsule called New Armstrong, that will be capable of Mars transport, the company’s president, Rob Meyerson, said.
The US government is also stepping up efforts to venture beyond the moon.
Nasa is supporting SpaceX’s first mission to Mars, which is targeted for launch in 2018. SpaceX wants to send an unmanned capsule, called Red Dragon, to the surface of Mars to test descent, entry and landing systems and Nasa will provide deep-space and Mars communications relays for SpaceX and consulting services in exchange for flight data.
Nasa wants to be able to land payloads weighing up to about 30 tons on Mars. So far, the heaviest vehicle to land on Mars was the one-ton Curiosity rover.
For now, Musk said SpaceX’s top priority is tracing the cause of its September 1 accident. “It’s the most vexing and difficult thing. We’ve eliminated all the obvious possibilities,” Musk told reporters.
He characterised the accident, SpaceX’s second in 14 months, as “a small thing on a long road”, saying the company has not lost a single customer.
SpaceX has a backlog of more than 70 missions for commercial and government customers. – Reuters