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Introduction

The recent projection of our Earth’s climate has alarmed many scientists and citizens. Efforts are being made to reduce carbon emissions in order to stop climate change, but the clock is ticking on how much longer until the damage to the environment is irreversible. In fact, a new clock in Times Square, New York City is illustrating just that. The clock portrays an estimate of how much longer humans can affect the environment at this rate until there is permanent damage to the Earth’s system. According to this estimate, this damage will be irreversible in the year 2028. While much of the Earth is attempting to save the planet and our species by cutting our emissions, Elon Musk and the SpaceX team are leading the charge in their own way: colonizing Mars.

Elon Musk has made a name for himself as one of the most innovative men of the twenty first century. His involvement in the cofounding of PayPal, Tesla, and Neuralink, as well as the founding of The Boring Company and SpaceX has proven his expertise in engineering and creativity to improve the human race. His biggest focus, SpaceX, is planning to launch men to Mars in four years, and later begin commercial trips. Musk is determined to create an alternative location for humans to thrive in time for his prediction of Earthly human extinction (Musk, 2017).

Alternative Thinking

Overview

Elon Musk is primarily known for his founding and innovation of Tesla, Inc., but he has described this endeavor as a means to an end. “The main reason I am personally accumulating assets is in order to fund this,” he wrote in a recent journal article. “I really do not have any other motivation for personally accumulating assets except to be able to make the biggest contribution I can to making life multiplanetary.” Many people are on board with this idea. An outspoken supporter of Musk’s plan is the famous astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who was the second man on the moon.

Some supporters, like Aldrin, are in favor of colonizing Mars to satiate the exploratory nature and desires of the human species. Others, however, are far more interested in Mars as a self-sustaining colony to begin to move the human race off of Earth in the hopes of saving the environment and possibly our species. One of the most important pieces of technology for this to be successful is the ability to land and reuse rockets. With this hurdle being conquered, SpaceX is on its way to finalizing their multiplanetary rocket system.

“Elon Musk Royal Society” by Duncan Hull is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Expectations

Created in 2002, SpaceX has been able to evolve its plan for space travel for many years. Through its 18 years of experience, Elon Musk has now set details, goals, and expectations for the future of SpaceX and its Mars endeavor.

The target price of a commercial ticket to move to Mars is $200,000. It may seem as though this price allows for only the rich to make this trip, but this price was very deliberately achieved. As the average price of an American home, Musk’s goal is to incentivize every day citizens to have the opportunity to sell their Earthly home in exchange for a ticket to Mars. SpaceX plans to transport one hundred passengers in the first phase of colonization, and then move the passenger count to two hundred. The trip itself will be six months long (SpaceX, 2020).

A self-sustaining colony will take years to develop. Elon Musk is unsure that he will live to see that goal reached. He estimates that the colony will take forty to one hundred years to reach a point where it is no longer reliant on Earth’s resources. Rocket launches to Mars are planned to start in 2022 and continue to launch every 26 month launch window. The company has publicized their expectation of manned Mars missions by 2024 (SpaceX, 2020).

A Multiplanetary Species

Testing, Missions, and Preparation

SpaceX is heavily testing and refining their rocket launch and land process. The goal of sending manned rockets to launch and land smoothly requires absolute precision and confidence in the ability to safely deliver humans. The first successful precision landing of a reusable rocket took place December 15, 2015, when the Falcon 9 rocket booster returned safely back to Earth on a Cape Canaveral Air Force Station pad. Since then, SpaceX has landed over 60 rockets, further testing, refining, and proving the ability to safely land and reuse rockets.

SpaceX successfully launched their second manned rocket, the Crew-1, to the International Space Station on November 15th, 2020. The precursor, Crew Dragon Demo-2, successfully delivered NASA astronauts to the ISS in May of 2020, making it the first private astronaut delivery to the Space Station. SpaceX has 23 planned rocket launches for the year of 2021. Three of these launches will be ‘crewed,’ meaning there will be humans on board, and one of these launches will be crewed by tourists. This is a large step forward for space exploration, SpaceX, and the evolution of space tourism. SpaceX is selling private seats for Sun-Synchronous Orbit, Low Earth Orbits, and Polar Orbit flights (Rocket Launch Live, 2020).

Sun-Synchronous Orbit is an orbit of a planet where the satellite, or in this case, a crewed capsule, will orbit almost along a line of longitude. The capsule will pass over the same point of Earth at the same time every day. This is typically helpful for taking a series of photographs over time. (Rutgers, 2020).

Low Earth Orbit is the most common type of orbital pattern used by human made objects in space. The classification of a Low Earth Orbit is an object between 100 and 1,200 miles of Earth’s surface. The International Space Station is in a Low Earth orbit, travelling at over 17,000 miles per hour. The close proximity to Earth is ideal for cargo and human travel times and is preferred for satellite imaging for its high resolution.

Lastly, Polar Orbit does not follow a specific line of longitude, but has a pole-based orbit, unlike Low Earth Orbit. Polar Orbits do travel vertically along longitude lines, crossing over each pole, but instead of being fixed to one line, the object’s path also rotates, meaning it travels on a different longitude line during every orbit. Typically, this type of orbit is used by satellites to map the Earth or for telecommunications. (Rutgers, 2020).

Mars will need to be prepared for the first arrival of humans. The current plan for surface preparations is two unmanned flights to drop modules for water extraction and fuel production. Water has been found under the surface of Mars and will be pumped from underground aquifers. The crust is such that the freezing temperatures of the surface are not able to solidify the subterranean water. The first period of Mars colonization will likely use water recycling systems, similar to the strategies used in the International Space Station for years (Rainey, 2017).

Technology

One of the biggest restrictions for Mars enthusiasts in the past has been the reliability and safety of transportation to Mars. Without a viable plan, any subsequent plans to inhabit the planet are impossible. The innovation of the Falcon rockets (both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy) have allowed for greater creativity and forethought for exploration. These two rockets, however, are only the precursor to the final goal: the Super Heavy Rocket. The Super Heavy, capable of 72 billion Newtons of thrust, dwarfs the Falcon 9’s 7.6 million Newtons, making the trip to Mars 6 months (Wall, 2019)(SpaceX, 2020).

“BFR at stage separation-2018 design” by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is in the Public Domain, CC0

Standing atop the Super Heavy will be SpaceX’s Starship. It will be outfitted with 100 passenger seats. After launch, Starship will detach from the Super Heavy, which will fall back to Earth and perform a propulsive landing. This means the rocket will reignite before landing, slowing down, and landing upright on its feet. Starship will continue its journey to Mars and meet up with a second tanker ship to perform On-Orbit Refueling, in which the tanker refuels Starship before falling back to Earth to land like the Super Heavy.

Challenges

Atmosphere and Climate

The atmosphere of Mars is vastly different from that of Earth. While our atmosphere is made primarily of nitrogen and oxygen, Mars’ is almost entirely made up of carbon dioxide. The complete lack of oxygen would make unaided breathing impossible. Exposure to the atmosphere for more than a few breaths would result in a rapid onset of confusion, high heart rate, quick breathing, and soon death (MedlinePlus, 2020). A similar challenge to a Martian habitat is the temperature. At -80° fahrenheit, the ambient air temperature is far too cold for prolonged human exposure. SpaceX has a plan to address both problems. They have released renderings of enclosed habitats to contain breathable air and maintain a livable temperature.

Food and Water

The most obvious difference between Earth and Mars is the amount of water on the latter. Water is the most important ingredient to all life on Earth, so the absence of water on Mars is the equivalent to the absence of life. Fortunately, the martian planet’s water is hidden beneath the surface, so extraction is a viable option. Another plan highlighted by Musk is the use of readily available ice (Musk, 2017). Two unmanned missions will help establish a water production apparatus as well as a fuel production plant.

Due to the composition of Mars’ atmosphere, plant life is expected to thrive. The carbon in the atmosphere will not only lead to rapid plant growth, but the compression of the carbon-nitrogen atmosphere will lead to an effective fertilizer to aid growth even more. The movie The Martian portrays a small potato farm in an enclosed shelter on Mars. While the movie is science fiction, many biologists are confident that the success of the farm is largely plausible.

“Dust Devil on Mars” by NASA/JPL is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Gravity

The Earth’s gravity is an important aspect of life on Earth. The perfect amount of force toward the Earth gives humans enough resistance to keep their muscle structure dense yet light. The gravity on Mars, however, is a challenge not yet addressed. Only 38% of Earth’s gravity, Mars’ downward force will seem much lighter than normal for humans. According to SpaceX, this will allow inhabitants to lift heavy objects and jump higher, but similar to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, muscle atrophy occurs when not under the stress of the Earth’s gravity. Martian humans will evolve to have smaller muscle mass, and the objects that once seemed light will once again feel heavy. This challenge has yet to be addressed by SpaceX or Elon Musk, but Harvard University may have a solution. Their cited studies show that a food supplement called resveratrol may help combat the muscle atrophy experienced in low gravity environments (Mitchell, 2019).

References

Kluger, Jeffrey. “SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Putting Boots on the Moon and Mars.” CBS News, 21 July 2019.

MedlinePlus. “Respiratory Failure | Lung Disease | Lung Problems.” MedlinePlus, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 19 Aug. 2020, medlineplus.gov/respiratoryfailure.html.

Mitchell, Jacqueline. “Martian Gravity.” Martian Gravity | Harvard Medical School, 19 July 2019, hms.harvard.edu/news/martian-gravity.

Musk, Elon, et al. “Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species.” Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., Publishers, 1 June 2017, www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/space.2017.29009.emu.

Rainey, Kristine. “Water Production in Space: Thirsting For A Solution.” NASA, NASA, 21 Oct. 2015, www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/benefits/water_in_space/.

Rocket Launch Live. “SpaceX Launch Schedule.” SpaceX Launch Schedule – RocketLaunch.Live, 15 Nov. 2020, www.rocketlaunch.live/?filter=spacex.

Rutgers. Types of Orbits, 2020, marine.rutgers.edu/cool/education/class/paul/orbits2.html.

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. SpaceX, 2020, www.spacex.com/.

Wall, Mike. “Starship and Super Heavy: SpaceX’s Mars-Colonizing Transportation System.” Space.com, Space, 9 Oct. 2019, www.space.com/spacex-starship-super-heavy.html.

Williamson, M. “News Analysis – Space: Can Musk Achieve His Mars Dream?” Engineering & Technology, vol. 11, no. 10, 2016, pp. 18–19., doi:10.1049/et.2016.1017.