19 thoughts on “Elon’s Mars Plans”

  1. I love the idea of a regular shipment to Mars every time the orbit window opens. The best way to think of a Mars expedition is as a contract for services, not a project.

      1. “and more than one a window..line 3 or 4 up at least…”

        Correct…if Musk succeeds and rockets become reusable it becomes feasible for you to have multiple launches to Earth orbit in the weeks/months prior to the approx. every 2.14 years Earth/Mars Hohman transfer orbit window opening up. You could launch them to orbit (even better if there was in-orbit fueling depots) do whatever assembly or fueling needed and wait for the launch window opening for your Earth to Mars insertion burn. To make colonizing Mars practical you need to make maximum advantage of that narrow time window.

  3. It looks as if Elon is trying to open up that SLS/Orion money that is ostensibly Mars money to some competitive procurement.

  4. “By the next launch window, in 2020, Musk said the company would aim to fly at least two Falcon Heavy rockets and Dragon spacecraft, loaded with experiments. “By that time there will be quite a few organizations … that are interested in running experiments on Mars,” he said.

    Then in 2022, Musk said he hoped to launch what the company now sometimes refers to as the Mars Colonial Transporter, designed to bring a colony to Mars.”

    2022. There is currently no factory or launch site for that rocket. Would they not have to be already building elements of that system to launch it in only six years?

    2. It may help to remind yourself of what SpaceX was up to just six years ago. Specifically, it was launching its very first Falcon 9 V1.0 with a boilerplate Dragon mockup as payload. Look at what SpaceX has managed to accomplish in the intervening six years.

      Among the less visible things on that list would be the bulk of the development work on the Raptor engine that will power the BFR-MCT vehicle. The first all-up test of a complete Raptor engine is no more than a year away, possibly as little as six months.

      While it is true there is currently no known production facility and launch site for the BFR-MCT, there is room for such at both Brownsville and Canaveral/KSC.

      It is also possible that SpaceX intends that BFR-MCT operate from some “greenfield” site – perhaps the site in Puerto Rico that was considered, but passed over in favor of Brownsville, for SpaceX’s first private spaceport. Most places in Puerto Rico are at least 10 degrees closer to the Equator than either Brownsville or Cape/KSC.

      As to a production facility for BFR-MCT, there seems no reason to suppose SpaceX won’t use essentially the same fabrication technologies for BFR-MCT components it has used for F9/FH components. The tooling will have to be larger, but a lot of SpaceX’s production equipment, such as the friction-stir welding gear used to produce F9/FH 1st and 2nd stages, was designed in-house and should be straightforwardly scalable. I don’t doubt that CAD models, and even completed key parts and subassemblies, for the coming BFR-MCT plant may already be in-hand.

      Musk has long employed a significant number of world-class production engineers at Tesla. I would be amazed if these folks haven’t had a lot to do with the current F9/FH production setup, so the BFR-MCT plant is likely to be in their hands as well. Both Tesla’s production facility and its gargantuan new battery plant have been run up with noteworthy dispatch.

      I suspect siting for the new BFR-MCT production plant/launch site to be among the things revealed by Elon Muk when he speaks about the SpaceX Mars Colonization Architecture in Guadalajara in Sept.

  5. In order to get enough cargo to mars for crew in 2024 I speculated (Behind the Black) the MCT would fly in 2022 and multiple Dragons each launch window, but I’m really surprised to see it confirmed.

    Sending at least one Dragon every window from now on is a smart move SpaceX can probably afford indefinitely until they are ready for crew.

    My crystal ball is working scary well.

  6. My prediction: the first successful Dragon landing on Mars won’t happen until the 2020 launch opportunity, either because they won’t manage to meet the 2018 deadline or because they won’t manage a successful landing on their first try. It’s a lot to get done, and get done right, in a short timeframe. But it’s fantastic that they are setting the goal of launching something to Mars at every opportunity going forward. Hopefully they will have the money they need to make that happen. It’d be great if the first landing is followed by big contracts from NASA and other parties to put their payloads on the surface, i.e. to make Mars another destination in the SpaceX price list, alongside LEO and GTO.

  7. It’s interesting to think they might be able to partially defray the cost of their regular Red Dragon flights by selling part of their payload capacity. NASA says they can’t get a payload together in time for the first launch in 2018 (if it happens that soon) but by 2020 they might have NASA and other space agencies as customers.

      1. As far as I’m concerned, I’d be happy if NASA killed off just SLS/Orion, but kept the #JourneyToMars hashtag. It’d be just as viable without SLS/Orion as with it.

        I also think it’s rather illustrative that NASA couldn’t get a payload ready for a ride to Mars by 2018, but SpaceX, if all goes well, will be doing both a payload and everything else in that timeframe.

        SpaceX is known for schedule slips, so I’m taking their timetable with a huge grain of salt, but even if I double it it’s still impressive as heck.

        It also looks like SpaceX is accepting risk, in a very Rand Simbergian way (and I commend them for it;)
        “It’s dangerous and probably people will die—and they’ll know that,” he continued. “And then they’ll pave the way, and ultimately it will be very safe to go to Mars, and it will very comfortable. But that will be many years in the future.”

        1. I also think it’s rather illustrative that NASA couldn’t get a payload ready for a ride to Mars by 2018, but SpaceX, if all goes well, will be doing both a payload and everything else in that timeframe.

          Yup, and SpaceX wont be the only ones preparing payloads for that launch.

    1. Any time I’ve had personal knowledge of a thing I’ve never seen a journalist get it right. One time a friend’s sister was spouting off about a terrorist event that had happened in a Greek airport. I’d just come back from a three month vacation there and knew the airport well (including the manned armored car that sat at the end of the runway.)

      Anyway she was going on about the plot that blew a hole in the side of a 747 taking off (only one passenger killed amazingly.) It was complete nonsense from whatever sources she got the story from.

      At the time anybody with 20 bucks could get a bomb through their ‘security’ which was a complete joke. But getting past that armored car she didn’t even know about would have been a different story.

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