The open road still softly calls
A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a rather spectacular video on Youtube that has haunted me ever since. The video, produced by video artist Erik Wernquist, is simply called Wanderers, and features some hauntingly beautiful visualisations of potential human exploration/habitation of the solar system, all covered with an equally haunting voiceover by the late Carl Sagan. Watch it in its entirety, it's more than worth it.
It got me thinking again about what exactly humanity was doing, whether all that is depicted in the video is just a pipe dream, a vision almost forgotten by a global civilisation seemingly infatuated with selfies, inane clickbait, and useless warfare. I myself have always believed that we must do all we can to get of this rock, but it seems that for much of the last 50 years, humanity, instead of listening to that soft call of the open road that Carl Sagan referred to, preferred to spend its time with intellectual navel-gazing. Well, some people are still keeping the flame alive, it seems. This week, on September 27th, 2016, Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX unveiled something never before seen in the history of humanity. What he has presented is nothing less than a workable interplanetary transport system, workable because it is built on technology that already exists and is, at least partially, tested. And what's more, he has costed it and presented a business case that makes it feasible. So, what are we looking at?
Well, the system is as simple in its principle as it is audacious in its scope. The Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) consists of just three major components. A single stage booster, an orbital tanker, and the actual interplanetary craft. However, all of them are gargantuan in scale. The booster alone dwarfs the entire Saturn V rocket that carried humans to the moon. The plan is to first launch the empty interplanetary craft into orbit, with the booster returning to the launch pad using the procedures and technologies SpaceX is currently perfecting on its Falcon 9 launches. It then takes onboard the orbital tanker, both get fuelled and the tanker is launched into orbit, where it docks with the interplanetary craft, refuels it, and transfers any additional cargo, before returning to Earth. after 3-5 such cycles, SpaceX estimates that the interplanetary craft and its crew of around 100 (Yes, you did read that right) will be ready to depart for Mars. It really is that simple, even though on a scale never before seen in spaceflight.
I admit, the idea of such a system still sounds like science fiction, but the very fact that a for-profit enterprise like SpaceX is not only considering such a plan, but actively allocating around 5% of its workforce and tens of millions of dollars a year to it speaks volumes. Of course, as much of a visionary as Elon Musk is, and he really IS a real-life Tony Stark, he's not just doing this out of altruism, or his apparently real desire to make humanity less susceptible to extinction level events. In providing a reliable, workable transport system to Mars, and working on establishing a colony there, he will create a transport market between Earth and Mars, one that SpaceX will be ideally suited to serve. Musk himself compared it with the Union Pacific Railroad company, and the building of the transcontinental railroad in the US, a pretty good and valid comparison in my eyes.
And they're certainly not wasting any time. In his keynote address, Elon Musk stated that they could start doing suborbital tests with the ITS within 4 years, with a first manned flight to Mars departing within ten years from now, if all goes well. The first prototypes of the Raptor rocket engine that will power both the booster, and partially the orbital tanker and the interplanetary craft as well, are already on the company's engine test stands and undergoing static fire tests. As development on SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, as well as on the manned Dragon V2 and Red Dragon capsules winds down, more engineers will be assigned to the ITS project, further accelerating work on the project. They are aiming to reduce the cost of flying a man from Earth to Mars from around 10 billion US Dollars to 140.000 US Dollars.
Furthermore, SpaceX will soon begin testing out the schedule they are planning to run their ships on. Orbital Mechanics dictate that a launch window from Earth to Mars opens roughly every 26 months, however not much use of this regularity has been made until recently. That will change from 2018 onwards, when SpaceX will launch a mission to Mars in every launch window, starting with Red Dragon, a modified Dragon V2 capsule. In a change from previous missions to Mars, SpaceX is actually planning to market at least part of the cargo capacity of these missions, which would make them the first commercial interplanetary missions in human history.
This week's keynote announcement can justifiably described as a bombshell. For the first time, plans to colonise another planet have been presented by a privately owned company. The question remains why, and as I mentioned before, commercial aspects are definitely a part of it. There is another, much deeper issue at play here. Elon Musk referred to "not having all eggs on one planet", and he certainly has a point. However, the underlying reason for this desire lies deeper still. At our heart, we humans are, and have always been, explorers. Whether it happened out of necessity, out of greed, or out of pure curiosity, an unbroken chain of wandering and exploration stretches back all the way from us to our early hominid ancestors in what is now east Africa. Once again, I'll leave it to Carl Sagan to sum this up:
I admit, the idea of such a system still sounds like science fiction, but the very fact that a for-profit enterprise like SpaceX is not only considering such a plan, but actively allocating around 5% of its workforce and tens of millions of dollars a year to it speaks volumes. Of course, as much of a visionary as Elon Musk is, and he really IS a real-life Tony Stark, he's not just doing this out of altruism, or his apparently real desire to make humanity less susceptible to extinction level events. In providing a reliable, workable transport system to Mars, and working on establishing a colony there, he will create a transport market between Earth and Mars, one that SpaceX will be ideally suited to serve. Musk himself compared it with the Union Pacific Railroad company, and the building of the transcontinental railroad in the US, a pretty good and valid comparison in my eyes.
And they're certainly not wasting any time. In his keynote address, Elon Musk stated that they could start doing suborbital tests with the ITS within 4 years, with a first manned flight to Mars departing within ten years from now, if all goes well. The first prototypes of the Raptor rocket engine that will power both the booster, and partially the orbital tanker and the interplanetary craft as well, are already on the company's engine test stands and undergoing static fire tests. As development on SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, as well as on the manned Dragon V2 and Red Dragon capsules winds down, more engineers will be assigned to the ITS project, further accelerating work on the project. They are aiming to reduce the cost of flying a man from Earth to Mars from around 10 billion US Dollars to 140.000 US Dollars.
Furthermore, SpaceX will soon begin testing out the schedule they are planning to run their ships on. Orbital Mechanics dictate that a launch window from Earth to Mars opens roughly every 26 months, however not much use of this regularity has been made until recently. That will change from 2018 onwards, when SpaceX will launch a mission to Mars in every launch window, starting with Red Dragon, a modified Dragon V2 capsule. In a change from previous missions to Mars, SpaceX is actually planning to market at least part of the cargo capacity of these missions, which would make them the first commercial interplanetary missions in human history.
This week's keynote announcement can justifiably described as a bombshell. For the first time, plans to colonise another planet have been presented by a privately owned company. The question remains why, and as I mentioned before, commercial aspects are definitely a part of it. There is another, much deeper issue at play here. Elon Musk referred to "not having all eggs on one planet", and he certainly has a point. However, the underlying reason for this desire lies deeper still. At our heart, we humans are, and have always been, explorers. Whether it happened out of necessity, out of greed, or out of pure curiosity, an unbroken chain of wandering and exploration stretches back all the way from us to our early hominid ancestors in what is now east Africa. Once again, I'll leave it to Carl Sagan to sum this up:
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