(Newswire.net — November 22, 2019) — Space X creator Elon Musk has announced that it will take 20 years and 1,000 spacecraft to build a city on Mars, which is his long-term vision for the project.
Responding to fans on Twitter, Musk estimated that for building a city on Mars Space X needs 1,000 spacecraft that will transport cargo, infrastructure and crew to the Red planet.
The project would last over 20 years, since the planetary alignment only allows flights to Mars once in two years. The energy needed for transfer between planetary orbits is lowest at intervals fixed by the synodic period. For Earth / Mars trips, this is every 26 months (2 years and 2 months), so the next low-energy launch window Musk plans to use is in 2023.
Recently, in celebration of U.S. Air Force Day in California, Musk said that the costs to launch the Space X space ship are only about $ 2 million, and that the ultimate goal is to create “a self-sustaining city on Mars.”
Musk also referred to short-term spacecraft potentials, which will be designed for reuse, and ideally be theoretically able to launch up to three times a day, if the low energy launch span is ignored. This amounts to more than 1,000 spacecraft a year, allowing more than 10 million tons of equipment and supplies to be launched into orbit annually.
Today’s spacecraft capacity is about a hundred Falcon rockets which means about 500 tons a year. Of course, in order to establish a permanent, sustainable city on Mars, the first manmade step on red dust must be achieved.
There is another step in between, and that is an astronaut landing on the moon. NASA has set year 2024 as a target, but an American privately held early-stage company formed by a group of Silicon Valley and space entrepreneurs – Moon Express, hopes to land on the Moon as early as 2022.