Elon Musk has provided details about his plans for reaching on Mars and developing a sustainable city where people can actually live, talk of the town since Elon revealed Starship. Musk believes it will take 1,000 Starships and 20 years.
Elon’s other company, SpaceX revealed a giant Starship rocket. It is a big space cargo and transportation rocket previously given the name of Big Falcon, sometimes F*****g, Rocket (BFR) Starship has a cargo capacity of 100-metric tons. Since then people are more curious about how close we are now to reach Mars and start living there. A more definite timeline is however now given by Elon Musk who is aiming to create a “self-sustaining city on Mars”.
Elon Musk today has replied to such a few queries on Twitter from followers and fans.
He added that as Mars and Earth align every two years so it will take around 20 years to transport a million tons to Mars Base Alpha, SpaceX name for planned Mars base, which is enough to make it sustainable.
Talking about the operational costs two days before at Air Force’s annual pitch day to Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, Air Force Space Command, at Los Angeles Air Force Base Musk told one Starship launch would require around $2 million. He further added, “This is much less than even a tiny rocket, so it’s something that needs to be made.”
Replying to another tweet, Musk said that if they build as many Starships as they have Falcons (around 100) then each Starship, which is designed to fly 3 times a day making 1000 flights a year, can be used to take huge 100 tons of cargo to lower earth orbit. This explains another potential use of Starships in the near future.
On the other hand, NASA has set 2024 as its target to send the first American man and woman to the Moon and make it sustainable in the next 5 years. The American politician and administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Jim Bridenstine has announced that astronauts could land on Red Planet by 2035.
READ: See you soon, Mars! NASA aims to land by 2035
The goals set by Musk look incredible and it is clear Musk visualizing the space to be a much more futuristic place not only for travel but for logistics. The future when the human race will be interplanetary looks more realistic and soon.