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?

Re:Timothy!!!

[lhowaf]

There are new editors. They've eaten Timmay and are submitting stories under his account.

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.

Re:Safely???

[ravenspear]

The rocket is not in question.

Right now the long pole in manned Mars surface missions is not rocket launch technology, it is Mars surface survival.

What kind of structure will people live in on Mars? How will it land? Heavy large structures that would be required for human habitation have not been landed on Mars to date and that is quite tricky.

How will the people live there? What kind of suits and structures will they use for radiation protection? For oxygen and water generation? For food production?

Obviously all of these problems have been addressed on ISS but only in the sense of solutions that can be relatively quickly resupplied from earth which won't be the case with a Mars surface mission.

Re:Safely???

[Rolgar]

Earth is moving about 20% faster than Mars. What this means is that the optimal time to launch from Earth to Mars is when Earth is behind Mars. The space ship will continue to have a speed advantage which will have to be negated. Now, the travel time from Earth to Mars is so long that Earth will long pass Mars by the time the spacecraft reaches Mars. Now, since the Earth will be ahead and getting farther away, to catch the Earth before it goes around the Sun, the space craft would have to speed up the difference plus even more to actually catch up. Fuel efficiency wise, the mission will have to last about half a year before the astronauts have an opportunity to launch and head fly on an intercept course with Earth.

Re:The Musk factor

[cytg.net]

Ill take 2034 over ???? though.

Re:Musk needs to get a grip

[Rei]

So for the CEO of a rocket company, making a rocket is "outside his sphere"? Interesting.

Mars Colonial Transporter

[frank249]

The first demo flight of the 27 engine Falcon Heavy is in April. SpaceX announced in May 2015 that they are positioning Dragon V2 spacecraft variants—in conjunction with the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle—to transport science payloads across much of the solar system, in cislunar and inner solar system regions such as the Moon and Mars as well as to outer solar system destinations such as Jupiter's moon Europa. Details include that SpaceX expects to be able to transport 2,000–4,000 kg (4,400–8,800 lb) to the surface of Mars, including a soft retropropulsive landing using SuperDraco thrusters following a limited atmospheric deceleration. When the destination has no atmosphere, the Dragon variant would dispense with the parachute and heat shield and add additional propellant.

SpaceX began development of the large Raptor rocket engine for the Mars Colonial Transport before 2014, but the MCT will not be operational earlier than the mid-2020s. SpaceX have not yet publicly released details of the space mission architecture nor all the system components of the MCT, nor a timeline for earliest MCT missions to Mars. Elon Musk hopes to unveil the space mission architecture at the International Astronautical Congress in September 2016.

The super-heavy lift launch vehicle for MCT is intended to be fully-reusable. Mars Colonial Transporter has been notionally described as a large interplanetary spacecraft capable of taking 100 people or 100 tonnes of cargo at a time to Mars.

Sounds far fetched but based on Musk's track record, I would not be surprised if he goes for it.

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.

Re:Mars Colonial Transporter

[Rei]

Meh. CH4, H2 and RP1 are all clean, cheap fuels - the levels of pollution and fuel costs are practically non-issues here. ISP, thrust and density are what matter. Methane simply lies on the curve between RP-1 and H2 in terms of thrust, density and ISP (significantly closer to RP-1 than H2). H2 is easier to produce on Mars than methane, which is in turn easier to produce than RP-1 - in this regard, methane is closer to H2 than RP-1 (the mass fractions of current hydrocarbon synthesis from CO2 and H2 tend to produce more methane than heavier hydrocarbons, although the ratios depend on the catalyst, and new catalysts could change this, and you could always do subsequent steps to combine light hydrocarbons)

Methane probably is a good balance for Mars if you want local propellant production. And really, since Mars round trips are so far down the rocket equation chain, you pretty much have to either use extremely high ISP fuels, or go with local propellant production. SpaceX has chosen the latter.

Re:Musk needs to get a grip

[ColdWetDog]

Everybody knows rockets are cylinders, not spheres (unless, of course, you are a rocket physicist).

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?