SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled plans to put humans on Mars as early as 2024. He also announced SpaceX BFR rocket to drastically reduce flight times on Earth.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk made the announcement on the final day of the 68th International Astronautical Congress.
Elon Musk is also the CEO of Tesla automotive. In December 2016, Musk ranked 21st on the Forbes list of The World’s Most Powerful People. He has also envisioned a high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop.
Elon Musk is a man with revolutionary ideas with the goals of SolarCity, Tesla, and SpaceX revolve around his vision to change the world and humanity.
His goals include reducing global warming through sustainable energy production and consumption, and reducing the “risk of human extinction” by “making life multiplanetary” by establishing a human colony on Mars.
What is SpaceX BFR?
Elon Musk believes humans should be able to travel anywhere on Earth in under an hour. SpaceX is developing a super-heavy launch vehicle, which Elon Musk refers to as BFR.
A rocket built for traveling throughout our solar system could revolutionize travel on Earth, according to Elon Musk. Using a “BFR” flying at a max speed of 18,000 miles (28,968 km) per hour.
BFR has the highest capacity payload of any rocket ever built, meaning it has the lowest launch cost, due to its status as a fully reusable rocket while also being the most powerful.
Overall, the concept is smaller and uses fewer engines than the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) Musk described last year, with added flexibility that makes it suitable for more tasks.
The new BFR is 106 meters tall with a 9-meter diameter, down from the 122-meter height and 17-meter diameter described last year. The booster rocket uses 31 Raptor engines (down from 42), and there are six Raptor engines on the spacecraft itself (down from nine)
The Mission:
The rocket is capable of flying from Earth to the Moon and back without refueling, making creating a base on the Moon, dubbed Moon Base Alpha, achievable in near future.
SpaceX planned to fly two cargo ships to Mars in 2022, and two crew ships and two cargo ships in 2024.
The first mission will be to find a source of water, while the second mission will be to set up a propellant production plant.
BFR could carry a 40-carriage spaceship to Mars with two or three people occupying each carriage.
It would also include a central storage area, solar storm shelter, and entertainment area for about 100 people per flight.
To make the establishment of a self-sustaining base on Mars or the Moon there needed to be thousands of ships and tens of thousands of re-tanking or refilling operations.
The Vision:
Passengers would board a spaceship powered by BFR and launch into orbit around the Earth. The BFR will be capable of taking people from any city to any other city on Earth in under one hour.
For Example:
- New York City to Shanghai in 37 minutes
- London to New York in 22 minutes
- Delhi to Tokyo in 30 minutes
The journey would be considerably shorter than that depending on your destination.
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