New York June 15 (IANS) SpaceX s CEO Elon Musk s vision for future manned trips to other planets and specifically the requisites to create a self-sustaining city on Mars has been presented in a study.
Published in the journal New Space in the study Musk explores the planetary options for expanding to a space-bearing civilization and describes the advantages Mars offers.
By talking about the SpaceX Mars architecture I want to make Mars seem possible -- make it seem as though it is something that we can do in our lifetime. There really is a way that anyone could go if they wanted to Musk said.
According to Musk humanity will face an eventual extinction event.
The alternative is to become a space-bearing civilisation and a multi-planetary species he stated.
Why only Mars? It is resource-rich and has 24.5 hours and is far better-suited ultimately to scale up to be a self-sustaining civilisation.
However one major challenge faced by engineers and scientists to create a self-sustaining city is the need to improve the cost per tonne of transporting materials to the red planet by five million per cent Musk said.
Further the paper also provides a comprehensive review of a system architecture required for a rocket and spaceship capable of transporting people and supplies to Mars comparing possible vehicle designs and performance features.
If things go super-well it might be in the 10-year timeframe but I do not want to say that is when it will occur. There is a huge amount of risk and going to cost a lot Musk said.
There is a good chance we will not succeed but we are going to do our best and try to make as much progress as possible he noted.
--IANS
rt/ruwa/vt
Elon Musk s vision of self-sustaining city on Mars explained
