As many fans of sci-fi and fantasy will tell you, humanity's "destiny" is to go beyond
our world.
Meaning, we're meant to colonize worlds outside of Earth.
Most people think that we'll try and colonize the moon first as that is an entity much closer
to our reach.
However, many are shooting beyond that, many are shooting to reach Mars.
As it's a planet that theoretically could hold a colony if certain conditions are met.
And certain agencies like Elon Musk's Space X feels that we are within reach of making
that happen.
So allow us to show you How SpaceX Will Land On Mars Within Five Years!
5.
The 5-Year Goal Elon Musk says he has a new timeline for his
big Mars project — and it’s sooner than you might think.
“I’ll be surprised if we’re not landing on Mars within five years,” Musk told Time
Magazine, about SpaceX taking humankind to Mars.
Musk, the 50-year-old SpaceX founder and CEO who was named Time’s Person of the Year,
has big plans for the Red Planet: namely, a self-sustaining city with solar-powered
hydroponic farms where humans can permanently live, 34 million miles away from Earth.
“The next really big thing is to build a self-sustaining city on Mars and bring the
animals and creatures of Earth there,” Musk told Time.
“Sort of like a futuristic Noah’s ark.
We’ll bring more than two, though — it’s a little weird if there’s only two.”
In February, space policy expert and Arizona State University professor Greg Autry told
Business Insider that Musk likely won’t reach Mars until at least 2029, with or without
NASA’s help.
Other space experts say Mars probably can’t sustain long-term human settlement at all.
Musk himself told nonprofit XPrize in April that some astronauts will “probably die”
en route to Mars.
Musk — currently the world’s wealthiest person, with a net worth of $247 billion,
according to Forbes — also has a track record of setting unrealistic timelines for moonshot
tech advances.
“Punctuality is not my strong suit,” Musk admitted during an earnings call in 2020.
SpaceX, recently valued at $100 billion, is a major player in today’s space race: In
April, the company was awarded an exclusive NASA contract to put U.S. astronauts on the
moon for the first time since 1972.
But Musk told Time he’s not necessarily trying to make money off Mars.
Rather, he said, it’s more about what feels “exciting,” including an overall goal
“to make life multi-planetary and enable humanity to become a spacefaring civilization.”
And that honestly tracks with how Elon Musk thinks.
Because if you look at the majority of his companies, especially ones like SpaceX and
Tesla, he goes and makes companies that he feels can advance humanity in big ways even
if people don't believe in what he is doing at first.
Tesla and SpaceX were both supposed to fail, yet now, they're making Elon incredibly rich
and powerful (and Time's Person of the Year somehow...) and so while it may not be realistic,
you could argue that this will just make Elon push harder to make his goal come true.
4.
The Starship That Could Take Us To Mars One of the key reasons that a manned trip
to Mars was never attempted or construed before is simple, 140 million miles is a LONG way
away from our home planet.
Even with the best engines the planet has made it's going to take a LONG time to get
there just on a one-way trip, let alone bringing them back in tact.
Yet, SpaceX is going to make that happen in their eyes.
And their craft called the Starship is going to be the thing that takes us there:
"Starship will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability
to carry in excess of 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit.
Drawing on an extensive history of launch vehicle and engine development programs, SpaceX
has been rapidly iterating on the design of Starship with orbital-flight.
Together the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket create a reusable transportation
system capable of on orbit refueling and leveraging Mars’ natural H2O and CO2 resources to refuel
on the surface of Mars.
Starship will enter Mars’ atmosphere at 7.5 kilometers per second and decelerate aerodynamically.
The vehicle’s heat shield is designed to withstand multiple entries, but given that
the vehicle is coming into Mars’ atmosphere so hot, we still expect to see some ablation
of the heat shield (similar to wear and tear on a brake pad)."
The journey is said to take about 6 months to get there.
It's going to be a long-haul, but Elon Musk is confident and has said multiple times that
he's planning to get to Mars in this current decade we're in, which was only backed up
by his recent comments.
Not to mention, technology could help make those engines faster, and the flight even
shorter, 5 years is a long time in terms of advancements that could happen.
3.
The Colony To Be So let's assume that SpaceX does go and get
the Starship ready and they're able to get it to Mars.
What is next?
The plan at present is to have a singular massive base to start the colonization with.
The base itself will be 41 feet tall, 16 feet wide, and have three different air locks that
will allows the colonists to go from the inside to the outside with minimal change in air
pressure.
The base will be sent to the red planet before the Starship with the team launches, obviously.
If it proves successful though, and there are no serious issues with the base in terms
of air pressure, longevity and more, more bases could be sent.
Ones that could connect to each other via pressure tubes not unlike various sci-fi shows
and movies have shown.
Slowly but surely, a vast space colony would be grown.
It's stated that the initial team of colonists would be about 6 people.
These 6 people would be experts in their field and would focus on living on Mars and figure
out things that they can only work out while they're on the red planet.
Because sometimes to get the data you need, you actually have to be there and not just
running models.
Especially since something like this has truly never been done before.
And for those that go to Mars, as Elon warned, they have to be aware that things can and
likely will go wrong, and that it might cost them their lives.
But if they are able to make it through the first phase of this plan, it would be history
making.
2.
Coming Home So now let's say that the colonists make it
to the colony and are able to live there safely.
How long is the initial mission?
The plan is for them to live on Mars for about 9 months.
Then, after that, go back into their ship and head for home.
Once they're back, they'll be tested rigorously.
They'll be examined in terms of their bodies and how they've been affected by Martian gravity,
its environment, the stress of living on Mars, etc.
These tests will determine not only when we send people back to Mars, but how we send
them back.
This may seem like an odd step, but again, you can only know something things by testing
them out, and living on another planet for a set amount of months in an environment you're
not familiar with WILL test your body to its limits and affect it in various ways.
Think about how we adapted later moon missions, or the International Space Station after the
astronauts came back from those ventures.
It's very much a "work in progress" in terms of making it comfortable for all.
1.
Making Mars A Home As you can see, there's a LOT that could go
wrong with this plan, there's no way around that.
Not the least of which is that for things like the starship, or the colony, all it takes
is one malfunction, one bad part, or something completely unexpected to happen for things
to go horribly wrong.
The thing to remember though is that there are always risks in ventures like these, but
the goals are worth doing.
One of the biggest reasons to go to Mars is not just to expand humanity's reach, but to
start taking pressure off of Earth.
Our planet can only do so much, so if we're able to make Mars a home, and one that can
sustain itself with only some assistance from Earth in terms of building the systems cities
to make it work...that's a good thing.
Plus, as Elon likes to say, humanity needs to dream big again.
We used to want nothing more than to get to the moon, then we got there and we stopped
dreaming about going back into space.
SpaceX was born out of the desire to reignite the space race.
And if we can colonize Mars, we can make the moon happen too, or other moons in our solar
system.
So while 5 years might seem like a lofty goal...wouldn't it be awesome if we can honestly get there
by then?
So what do you think?
What do you think of this look at Space X and how they're aiming to try to get to Mars
within 5 years?
Do you think it's an achievable goal?
Do you think that Elon Musk honestly has it in him to go and make this happen?
Or, will there be obstacles that will prevent a colony on Mars from ever being made?
Let us know in the comments below, and we'll see you next time on the channel!