SpaceX Mars program

The SpaceX Mars program is a set of projects through which the aerospace company SpaceX hopes to facilitate the colonization of Mars. The company claims that this is necessary for the long-term survival of the human species and that its Mars program, including the ongoing development of the SpaceX Starship, will reduce space transportation costs, thereby making travel to Mars a more realistic possibility.

Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX, first presented his goal of enabling Mars colonization in 2001 as a member of the Mars Society's board of directors. In the 2000s and early 2010s, SpaceX made many vehicle concepts for delivering payloads and crews to Mars, including space tugs, heavy-lift launch vehicles, and Red Dragon capsules. The company's current Mars plan was first formally proposed at the 2016 International Astronautical Congress alongside a fully-reusable launch vehicle, the Interplanetary Transport System.


Since then, the launch vehicle proposal was altered and renamed to "Starship", and has been in development since. The company has given many estimates of dates of the first human landing on Mars.
SpaceX plans for early missions to Mars to involve small fleets of Starship spacecraft, funded by public–private partnerships. The company hopes that once infrastructure is established on Mars and the launch cost is reduced further, colonization can begin.
The program has been criticized as impractical, both because of uncertainties regarding its financing[1] and because it only addresses transportation to Mars and not the problem of sustaining human life there.

Program manifest

SpaceX plans to build a crewed base on Mars for an extended surface presence, which it hopes will grow into a self-sufficient colony.[31][32] A successful colonization, meaning an established human presence on Mars growing over many decades, would ultimately involve many more economic actors than SpaceX. Musk has made many tentative predictions about the date of Starship's first Mars landing including 2029.

Exploration

A scene of astronauts on Mars in the 2016 IAC presentation
Musk plans for the first crewed Mars missions to have approximately 12 people, with the goals of "build[ing] out and troubleshoot[ing] the propellant plant and Mars Base Alpha power system" and establishing a "rudimentary base." He has claimed that, in the event of an emergency during travel, the spaceship would be able to safely return to Earth. The company plans to process resources on Mars into fuel for return journeys, and use similar technologies on Earth to create carbon-neutral propellant.

Colonization and terraforming

Artist's conception of the process of terraforming Mars
The program aims to send a million people to Mars, using a thousand Starships sent during a Mars launch window.[40] Proposed journeys would require 80 to 150 days of transit time,[35] with averaging approximately 115 days (for the nine synodic periods occurring between 2020 and 2037)..

Interplanetary Transport System :

SpaceX illustration of the 2016 Interplanetary Transport System
On 26 September 2016, a day before the 67th International Astronautical Congress, the Raptor engine fired for the first time.[52] At the event, Musk announced SpaceX was developing a new rocket using Raptor engines called the Interplanetary Transport System. It would have two stages, a reusable booster and spacecraft. The stages' tanks were to be made from carbon composite, storing liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Despite the rocket's 300 t (660,000 lb) launch capacity to low Earth orbit, it was expected to have a low launch price.

The spacecraft featured three variants: crew, cargo, and tanker; the tanker variant is used to transfer propellant to spacecraft in orbit.[53] The concept, especially the technological feats required to make such a system possible and the funds needed, garnered a large amount of skepticism.


In September 2017, at the 68th Annual International Astronautical Congress, Musk announced the BFR (Big Falcon Rocket),[55] a revision to the Interplanetary Transport System's design. The rocket was still going to be reusable, but its launch capacity to low Earth orbit was reduced to 150 t (330,000 lb), and its body was smaller. Unlike its conceptual predecessor, the potential applications for the BFR were more varied. Variants of the BFR would be able to send satellites to orbit, resupply the International Space Station, land on the Moon, travel between spaceports on Earth, and ferry crew to Mars.[56] In April 2018, the Mayor of Los Angeles confirmed plan for a BFR rocket production facility at the Port of Los Angeles, but it was cancelled around May 2020.



A year later in September 2018, Musk updated about the spacecraft's new two forward flaps at the top and three larger aft flaps at the bottom. Both set of flaps help control the spacecraft's descent, and the aft flaps are used as landing legs for the final touchdown.[59] Two months later in November 2018, the rocket booster was first termed Super Heavy and the spacecraft was termed Starship..