Earlier this week at a press conference in Mexico, SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced his plans to develop a colony on Mars. Musk explained that the newly unveiled Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), a hugely powerful and reusable rocket, will be able to transport a spaceship containing at least 100 people per trip to Mars. The trip, he says, will only last 80 days, eventually dropping to just 30 days.
Mars will no longer be a one-way trip with plans to build solar panels upon arrival for the production of rocket fuel for the voyage home. Carrying enough return propellant to the red planet would increase the spaceship’s mass by 500 per cent.
Emphasis was placed on the reusability and affordability of this kind of interplanetary travel. Comparing the ITS to a Boeing 737, which costs $90 million to manufacture, Musk explained that if a Boeing was single use only – like current space travel – it would cost all 180 passengers on board $500,000 each to take a trip from LA to Las Vegas.
www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars_presentation.pdf
