Elon Musk To Unveil Mars Spacecraft Later This Year, For 2025 Flight (foxnews.com)

frank249 writes: Fox News is reporting that Space X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk expects to unveil plans for the spacecraft that would send humans to Mars within a decade. Speaking at an event in Hong Kong, Musk said he was 'hoping to describe the architecture' of the spacecraft at the International Astronautical Conference in Mexico in late September. "That will be quite exciting," Musk said. 'In terms of the first flight to Mars, we are hoping to do that around 2025.' As for his plans to go into space, Musk said he was hoping to reach the International Space Station 'four or five years from now.'

Comments

Timothy!!!

[qbast]

The whole page of submissions from 'timothy'. What the hell?

Safely???

[Alomex]

I have no doubt than in ten years he can build a rocket powerful enough to reach Mars. Then if he wishes to do it safely, he would have to send several unmanned missions (I'm thinking three) before he can get a safe certification for the one year (wo)manned journey.

A hell of a lot of things can go wrong in a year, as the ISS proves, and that is within the protective realm of the earth's magnetic field.

You mean Space Coffin

[Anonymous Coward]

This monster is going to get people killed in the name of profit.

Re:You mean Space Coffin

[catchblue22]

This monster is going to get people killed in the name of profit.

Imagine if the above intrepid poster typified decision makers in sixteenth century. They would never have sent out explorers such as Sir Francis Drake or Ferdinand Magellan on their great voyages to map the world. Hell, if all humans were all like this poster (and those who modded him up), these great explorers would never have existed. Judging by many of the comments on this article, we are turning into a society of Statler and Waldorfs who criticize from the sidelines while offering little of substance. So grow a pair, and remember that all of us are going to die. What are you going to do with your life?

Re:Mars Colonial Transporter

[frank249]

Th US Air Force has just given SpaceX a $33m contract to develop the Raptor Engine. Raptor is the first member of a family of cryogenic methane-fueled rocket engines under development by SpaceX. It is specifically intended to power high performance lower and upper stages for SpaceX super-heavy launch vehicles. The engine will be powered by liquid methane and liquid oxygen (LOX), rather than the RP-1 kerosene and LOX used in all previous Falcon 9 rockets, which use Merlin 1C & D engines. Methane rocket engines have higher performance than kerosene/RP-1 and lower than hydrogen, with significantly fewer problems for long-term, multi-start engine designs than kerosene—methane is cleaner burning—and significantly lower cost than hydrogen, coupled with the ability to "live off land" and produce methane directly from extraterrestrial sources such as the surface of Mars.

The Raptor engine will have over six times the thrust of the Merlin 1D vacuum engine that powers the second stage of the current Falcon 9, the Falcon 9 v1.1.

The broader Raptor concept is a highly reusable methane staged-combustion engine that will power the next generation of SpaceX launch vehicles designed for the exploration and colonization of Mars." According to Elon Musk, this design will be able to achieve full reusability (all rocket stages), and as a result, "a two order of magnitude reduction in the cost of spaceflight.