How Elon Musk is planning to colonize Mars?

[pulstar]

[pulstar]

[Harkonnen]

Better idea would be to build giant space station, with artificial earth like gravity. O'Neil cylinder is a good concept starting point.

[pulstar]

Better idea would be to build giant space station, with artificial earth like gravity. O'Neil cylinder is a good concept starting point.

Have you seen movie Martian? The Artemis crew used O'Neil cylinder based spaceship to fly to Mars. The spaceship was hovering around Martian athmosphere while the descent module brought the astronauts to the Martian landing site near drone made habitat. Five years ago some experts believed such spacecraft would be too big, and too expensive to be build. I wonder if their opinion had changed by now.

[Ford]

Nuke the planet first to melt the ice.

[Ülev]

man oh man, ze Russians already there, watch to the end:
(and turn on English subtitles)

[pulstar]

Nuke the planet first to melt the ice.

You mean the polar ice caps? Its questionable whether or not it would teraform the planet.

[Harkonnen]

Have you seen movie Martian? The Artemis crew used O'Neil cylinder based spaceship to fly to Mars. The spaceship was hovering around Martian athmosphere while the descent module brought the astronauts to the Martian landing site near drone made habitat. Five years ago some experts believed such spacecraft would be too big, and too expensive to be build. I wonder if their opinion had changed by now.

Pekka Janhunen has proposed a design for 200 persons. Not obviously giant station, but a start

We present a two-sphere dumbbell configuration of a rotating settlement at Earth-Moon L5. The two-sphere configuration is chosen to minimize the radiation shielding mass which dominates the mass budget. The settlement has max 20 mSv/year radiation conditions and 1 g artificial gravity. If made for 200 people, it weighs 89000 tonnes and provides 60 m2 of floorspace per person. The radiation shield is made of asteroid rock, augmented by a water layer with 2 % of the mass for neutron moderation, and a thin boron-10 layer for capturing the thermalized neutrons. We analyze the propulsion options for moving the material from asteroids to L5. The FFC Cambridge process can be used to extract oxygen from asteroid regolith. The oxygen is then used as Electric Propulsion propellant. One can also find a water-bearing asteroid and use water for the same purpose. If one wants to avoid propellant extraction, one can use a fleet of electric sails. The settlers fund their project by producing and selling new settlements by zero-delay teleoperation in the nearby robotic factory which they own. The economic case looks promising if LEO launch costs drop below ∼ $300/kg.

https://space.nss.org/wp-content/upl...Settlement.pdf

[Ruggery]

Do you really think humans will be ready in 2024 to travel to Mars? it is likely to be a one-way trip.

[Insuperable]

NASA is working on a manned mission to Mars. China too. Presumably also India. ESA and Roscosmos joined forces. Their planned goal is 2035 or something. Knowing how things turn out to be could be even later.

Apparently Musk knows something all of them don't.