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real life lore elon musk is no stranger
to twitter with over 42 million
followers he ranks 33rd overall on the
site just slightly behind nasa
itself and well yeah elon will often
post some pretty silly memes to his
account
it's also a pretty useful tool to see
inside of his mind
take for instance a tweet he replied to
roughly a year ago where someone asked
about putting 1 million people on mars
by the year 2050
and musk the ever optimist replied with
a simple
yes but how realistic is that really
i mean that's less than 30 years away
from now and a million people is a
whole lot of people essentially it would
basically be like taking the entirety of
austin texas
and transporting everyone who lives
there and all of their infrastructure
over to mars
not to even mention that mars is on
average 100 million miles away
and it takes anywhere between six and
eight months just to get there
and that is only going one way so let's
dive into how possible this really is
first let's begin by discussing the
technology itself and see if this really
even can be done at all
the key component for this insane
migration of people to happen revolves
around spacex's latest rocket ship
known as starship starship is a fully
reusable
super heavy lift vehicle that has been
under development since 2018
still in the prototype stage as of today
the rocket once complete will consist of
two stages
the super heavy booster for the first
stage and the starship
itself for the second once complete and
on the launch pad
starship will stand at 122 meters tall
and weigh a whopping 150 tons
making it the largest rocket ship ever
built
further the rocket will be 3.5 times
as powerful as the saturn v rocket that
sent nasa
astronauts to the moon several decades
ago and will be capable of carrying
100 tons of payload into orbit and
further on
towards mars which in terms of our
favorite reference on this channel means
that each rocket could carry 67
entire toyota corollas to mars on every
trip
as mentioned previously and much like
spacex is accustomed to
the rocket will be fully reusable as
soon as the rocket takes off and is
boosted into space
the first stage will descend back to
earth and land much like the spacex
falcon 9 does today
and further the starship will also be
capable of landing itself upright
too but while you might think great all
that has to be done is design this
rocket ship and begin blasting willing
participants straight to mars
it's obviously gonna be a lot more
complicated than that you see
once launched from earth starship will
need to be refueled before beginning its
journey to mars
this is because although it's a
massively powerful rocket
it will still take the majority of its
fuel just to break free from earth's
gravity
thus for every rocket heading to mars a
subsequent rocket will also need to be
launched to refuel
each ship and to further complicate this
process however is the fact that earth
and mars are also at
ever-changing distances apart that is
because mars follows what is known as an
eccentric orbit
meaning that unlike the orbit of earth
it is far from circular
so while at times the earth is pretty
close to mars amounting to just 33.9
million miles away
at other times it is much much further
or something like 250 million miles
apart
so rather than say launch a rocket
whenever it is much preferred to wait
for the earth mars
transfer window as it's known which just
so happens to occur
every 26 months but the complications
don't stop here because well yeah you
could make it to mars under the previous
circumstances
traveling home wouldn't be possible at
all because all of the fuel would have
been expended during the journey just
getting there
and this is why the first settlers who
get there will have to set up a fuel
production facility straight away
otherwise well i guess good luck ever
coming home or making use of those
reusable
rockets again the fuel that will most
likely power starship on its journey to
mars will be something known as deep
cryomethylox
or essentially just methane and liquid
oxygen the trouble however will be
producing these on mars and finding an
efficient way to do so what is likely
the solution however will be to use the
ice melt found on mars for water
as well as the large amount of carbon
dioxide that can be found in the martian
atmosphere
together along with a complex chemical
conversion process
the propellant can be produced but it
will take
an enormous amount of energy to do so in
fact to fill the 1200 ton fuel tank of
starship
it is expected that roughly 16 gigawatt
hours
of locally martian produced power will
be required
thus if you were to stay on the surface
of mars for the entire 26 months and
wait until the next transfer orbit
you would roughly need to produce
something like one megawatt of
continuous electric power
which at least by today's standards will
take about 10
and a half american size football fields
worth of solar arrays
needless to say you better be packing a
lot of these for the trip
now let's just assume that all of these
incredible technical challenges are
overcome
i mean i wouldn't put it past elon but
there is still
one more massive logistical problem
right now spacex is hoping to launch the
first trips to mars in the mid to late
2020s
this decade which would leave just 25
years left to achieve the goal
of 1 million people on mars by 2050.
over these 25 years there will only be
12 transfer windows to send rockets to
mars
musk has hinted before that during each
transfer window he would hope to send
roughly 1
000 rocket ships towards mars at a time
meaning that essentially
1 000 ships would take off be refueled
and wait in earth's orbit and all move
towards mars together as one colossal
fleet
with each ship carrying roughly 100
people that means that each transfer
window would allow for an additional 100
000 people to make the journey and
across the 12 transfer windows available
between 2025 and 2050 well
then the 1 million martian population
mark can easily be eclipsed
but one important item not to overlook
is the fact that there will likely need
to be
many exclusively cargo missions as well
in order to send the critically needed
supporting infrastructure and supplies
in fact musk has hinted before that the
cargo to person ratio would be something
like 10 to 1
meaning that for every one rocket ship
destined to carry 100 people to mars
an additional 10 would need to be sent
carrying supplies
so in all likely reality it would
probably be something more like
100 000 or even more starship trips
required
just to get to the 1 million people on
mars goal
so with all of that in mind the reality
of meeting the goal becomes quite
complex
with just 12 transfer windows available
between 2025 and 2050
that would be an average of 8 33
ships sent during each of those windows
and not only that but you would also
have to consider
the fact that you would essentially need
double the amount of those ships as
half of them would be stuck on the red
planet waiting to come home until the
next transfer window
opens oh and i also forgot you also need
to consider that even
more additional rocket ships would be
required to perform all of the refueling
required too
so in order to reach the 1 million
people goal it doesn't seem unreasonable
to assume
that something like 15 or 20 000
starships would be required over the
25-year time frame
and i mean that's just not super
feasible even if you built two starships
per week beginning today
that would only get you to a little over
3 000 of them by 2050 which is obviously
pretty short of the required amount
and even further complicate matters is
the actual cost of it all
20 000 rockets even with them being
reused would easily
reach into the trillions of dollars once
accounting for development
material costs and fuel not to be a
downer but
it just doesn't seem practical within
the limited time frame given by 2050.
i mean take another great human
migration as a comparison
shortly after discovering the new world
europeans began migrating from the old
world in droves
yet it still took an incredibly long
time just to reach the one million
person mark
after sailing for roughly six to eight
weeks and traversing something like 5
500 kilometers of open ocean
depending on the start and end points it
could be said that the european journey
to
and colonization of the americas is very
similar
although not exactly known when 1
million european migrants reached and
settled in america
it very likely took a little over 200
years not happening until sometime in
the early 18th century
between 1720 and 1730 so in reality
expecting 1 million people to make a 33
million mile journey over the next 30
years
does seem like a very tall order indeed
regardless though mars will likely be
settled by some
humans at some point in the very near
future
technology is certainly trending in that
direction and the motivation is there as
well
but to expect a million people well i
think we may have to wait until at least
the end of the century or even possibly
a bit longer to see that one
however if you're wanting to learn a lot
more about the dangers and challenges
that humans will face while colonizing
the red planet right
now one of the best ways to do so is by
experiencing one of the best books ever
written on the subject called
the martian by andy weir while it's
obviously a fictional story about an
engineer who becomes stranded on the
planet in the near future
the story is expertly researched and
grounded in real world logistics and
technology issues that document the
incredible
harsh reality of surviving on a hostile
alien
world and delightfully you can get the
entire audiobook that's narrated by will
wheaton for free
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and as always thank you so much for
watching