Musk describes his vision for humans on Mars
Elon Musk said the first tasks for a crewed mission to Mars by SpaceX would be to construct a “rudimentary base” and a factory to make rocket propellant. The chief executive of SpaceX also described his vision for human habitats on Mars.
“Initially, glass panes with carbon fiber frames to build geodesic domes on the surface, plus a lot of miner/ tunneling droids,” Musk wrote in an online Reddit Ask Me Anything session Sunday that prompted thousands of reader comments. “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.”
The question-and-answer session was intended as a follow-up to Musk’s speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, last month, in which he described plans to send as many as 1 million people to Mars and turn humans into a multiplanetary species in 40 to 100 years.
His vision involves massive, reusable rocket boosters launching spaceships into a “parking orbit” where they are later refueled by propellant tankers. Eventually, 1,000 spaceships carrying 100 people each would embark en masse for the Red Planet.
But there are fewer details on what they would do once they arrive. Musk has said a refueling station would be established on Mars to harvest methane fuel for the rockets so settlers could return to Earth.
On Sunday, Musk said Hawthorne-based SpaceX would establish a refueling station first by sending its Dragon spacecraft on scouting missions, and later sending a spaceship laden with equipment to build the station. He added that he hoped to release more details of Mars habitats when there were “actual live mockups.”
“Maybe in a year or two,” Musk said.
SpaceX has completed development work on a massive, carbon-fiber fuel tank for the Mars ship, and it has test-fired the Raptor interplanetary transport engine, which is powered by methane fuel. SpaceX has said it could send an uncrewed Dragon spacecraft to Mars as early as 2018 to test aspects like landing capabilities and navigation.
At the space conference in Mexico, Musk said the first manned Mars mission could launch in late 2024, with arrival at the Red Planet in 2025, though he acknowledged that date was an “aspiration.”
On Sunday, Musk said the first crewed mission would have about a dozen people “as the goal will be to build out and troubleshoot the propellant plant and Mars Base Alpha power system.”