Mars Mission Update: June 2020

drifting alone through the darkness of space a small capsule traverses the void on board the two pioneers prepare for the next step of their voyage mere hours ago history had been made for the first time astronauts had launched into orbit in a commercially built spacecraft the first crewed launch from the United States in nearly a decade looking down from orbit they carried the hopes and dreams of a whole world knowing that this was just in the beginning countless worlds would soon be explored igniting a vibrant future amongst the stars in today is Mars mission update we're going to be taking a look at what comes next for human spaceflight after the first crew dragon launched by NASA and SpaceX will cover the commercialization of low-earth orbit the ongoing endeavours to build starships in Texas the plan to return astronauts to the moon in a sustainable way and finally how all these ingredients were able the first human missions to the Red Planet [Music] [Music] on May 30th 2020 NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken were strapped into a SpaceX Dragon capsule atop a falcon 9 rocket with their successful launch into orbit one day later they docked with the International Space Station but this was not just any routine mission it was the first launch of astronauts by a private company and the return of human spaceflight to the United States after the retirement of the space shuttle back in 2011 this mission known as demo 2 marks the culmination of NASA's Commercial Crew program the central goal of Commercial Crew is to reduce the cost of sending astronauts to space by commercializing low-earth orbit the idea being that this would free up nasa's resources to focus on missions to deep space back in 2012 a similar initiative the commercial cargo or cots program saw a commercially built and operated spacecraft SpaceX's dragon begin regular resupply missions to the International Space Station building on the success of commercial cargo in 2014 NASA rewarded Commercial Crew contracts to two companies SpaceX with a 2.6 billion dollar contract and Boeing with four point two billion each company was tasked with building a crew capable spacecraft flying to demonstration missions and beginning astronaut transport services to the international space station though the first crewed flights were initially planned for 2017 the Commercial Crew program is finally reaching fruition spacex developed the dragon 2 cord crew dragon in its astronaut configuration which saw its first flight to the space station the uncrewed demo one mission in March 2019 they follow this with a successful in flight abort test in January 2020 where a dragon demonstrated its ability to escape from a malfunctioning Falcon 9 and returns safely to earth most recently of course we all saw the incredible launch of the crewed demo2 mission meanwhile the other partner in the Commercial Crew program Boeing remains around a year away from flying astronauts Boeing's Starliner capsule are conducted its first orbital test flight in December 2019 launching on an Atlas 5 rocket unfortunately multiple software issues during the mission required it to abandon docking with the space station and instead return to Earth Boeing are now planning to repeat this with an uncrewed test flight in November with a crude demonstration flight following if all goes well early next year so what comes next for the Commercial Crew program well first Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken will complete an operational mission aboard the space station their mission will last for one to four months with the limiting factor being the time scale for degradation of the Dragon solar arrays due to atomic oxygen in the upper atmosphere which restricts this flight to a maximum of 120 days once their mission is complete they will board the dragon detached from the space station enter the Earth's atmosphere deploy parachutes and finally splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean completing the demo2 mission the Dragon capsule will then be refurbished and prepared to fly again for a future mission with the completion of demo two SpaceX will be fully certified to regularly fly astronauts for NASA the first operational flight called crew 1 will be a six-month mission to the space station targeting a launch on August 30th 2020 crew 1 will carry a complement of 4 astronauts 3 being American and one Japanese looking ahead from the crew to mission early next year onwards Russian astronauts are expected to start joining dragon flights it's worth pausing for a moment to reflect on just how good a deal Commercial Crew has been since 2011 nASA has spent 6.2 billion dollars on Commercial Crew in comparison the development of the Apollo command module cost 31 million dollars after adjusting for inflation while developing the Space Shuttle Orbiter cost 27 billion dollars so for one-fifth the cost of these programs NASA helped develop two new human capable spacecraft and this capability will only save more money with each launch because for the last nine years NASA has paid the Russian space agency an average of 18 million dollars per si for Soyuz flights to the space station while SpaceX's crewed dragon flights will be much cheaper at fifty five million dollars per seat Commercial Crew has also provided valuable experience for SpaceX because NASA's stringent safety requirements specified no more than a 1 in 270 probability of a loss of crew event this is over three times safeand space shuttle crew dragon itself achieved a rating of 1 in 276 with most of the remaining risks coming from the chance of space debris or micro meteorite collisions in orbit so SpaceX have created the safest spacecraft in history and because this is a commercially owned spacecraft they are also free to sell crew dragon flights to other customers opening up access to low-earth orbit in an unprecedented manner for example in February the company space adventures reached a deal to fly up to four space tourists on a crew dragon in late 2021 or early 2022 this three to five day mission would reach a maximum altitude of over 1,000 kilometers two to three times higher than the International Space Station with the participants observing earth distance not seen since the Gemini 11 mission in 1966 space adventures are certainly no stranger to space tourism having facilitated the flight of the first space tourists Dennis Tito to the space station and flights for six others since space adventures are currently in discussion with several interested people with the price per seat estimated to be less than fifty million dollars the commercialization of low-earth orbit will not just be confined to trips to space as NASA has long-term plans to open up the International Space Station itself to commercial activities early this year NASA selected the company axiom space to design build and launch three modules and an earth observation window to the space station these modules will provide habitation for astronauts and tourists hosts research and manufacturing facilities and test critical systems for future deep space missions axiom we'll start by flying one of their own professional astronauts and three private ash on a minimum eight day crew dragon mission to the space station in the second half of 2021 they plan to launch their first module in the latter half of 2024 attaching to the forward end of the space station with the commercial extension modules fully assembled in 2028 once the space station retires towards the end of the decade the axiom modules are planned to detach forming a standalone commercial space station in Earth orbit but low Earth orbit is just the beginning if we want to go beyond Earth and go sustainably we need to scale up a space endeavours we need larger spacecraft capable of carrying more cargo and more people if we truly desire to live on other worlds and this is where starship comes in starship is SpaceX's next generation Launch System a two-stage fully reusable rocket capable of carrying over 100 tons of cargo or up to 100 people to a variety of destinations in our solar system the starship system has two parts a lower booster core super-heavy designed to autonomously return to its launch site during flight to enable rapid reuse and an upper stage spacecraft called starship the namesake of the system standing 120 metres tall the starship system will be the world's most powerful rocket with twice the thrust of the Saturn 5 moon rocket while costing only two million dollars per launch due to rapid reusability the upper stage is the current focus of SpaceX's design and prototype work as currently envisioned it will have two configurations cargo and crew the cargo configuration takes advantage of the large payload volume 1,100 cubic metres over seven times that of the Falcon nine to enable a wide range of mission profiles once in orbit cargo starship can open its payload fairing like a clamshell deploying a single payload of up to nine metres in diameter or multiple payloads via a rotating deployment mechanism cargo starships could also be used as orbital fuel repositories whereby starships bound for deep space missions can dock to them and to end to refuel before departing on their journey but what application I'm especially excited by is the prospect of launching large space telescopes I will be analyzing data from the James Webb Space Telescope when it launches next year in order to examine the composition of exabyte atmospheres and while James Webb will be able to probe rocky planet atmospheres the amount of time required to search for signatures of life inhabited plant atmospheres can easily add up to many hundreds of hours so James Webb will only be able to look for life in a small number of planet atmospheres over its mission lifetime if we want to increase our chance of finding life in the universe we need larger telescopes which have a higher sensitivity due to their greater collecting area one such proposal is the large ultraviolet optical and infrared surveyor Louvois a potential successor to James Webb which could launch around 2035 Louvois would be a space-based telescope up to 15 meters in diameter enabling an extensive search for life on 54 earth-like planets and detailed studies of over 500 non habitable planets over the course of its mission if you're interested in learning more about Lavoie I've added some links down below in the description but due to its large size no rockets currently in service can launch leVoir however the nine meter diameter fairing of starship would easily be able to accommodate Louvois in a folded configuration with the telescope deploying into its final 15 meter operational size after launch though leVoir is one of a number of concepts currently being considered by NASA its compatibility with the reusable starship system would serve to lower the launch cost and reduce the overall complexity of this mission besides launching cargo starship also has a crew configuration crew starships can accommodate up to 100 people for long-duration missions to the moon Mars and perhaps beyond they will include private cabins large common areas central storage solar storm shelters and a large viewing gallery this may sound a little like science fair but SpaceX have already made extraordinary progress in building and testing the first starship prototypes SpaceX started building a scaled-down prototype of starship called star hopper in December 2018 a period of testing began in March 2019 seeing a tethered hop in April a 20 meter hop in July and finally a 150 meter hop in August 2019 this hop tests also saw the first in-flight usage of SpaceX is Raptor engines developed specifically for starship and super-heavy the next step was to build and test full-scale starship prototypes SpaceX initially built two vehicles called mark 1 and mark 2 starting in February and May of 2019 the mark one vehicle was assembled over the course of eight months at SpaceX is Boca Chica facility in Texas before it was ultimately destroyed during a pressurization test in November 2019 and the same time it was recognized at the mark two vehicle which has started construction in Cocoa Florida in May of 2019 was not flight worthy and so was discontinued recognizing that these first prototypes took far too long to build SpaceX is focus in the first half of 2020 has been the creation and optimization of a starship production line at their Boca Chica site back in January the Boca Chica shipyard consisted of a large onion tent a small tent a windbreaker and a workshop fast forward five months to June and the site had undergone a colossal expansion in its production and manufacturing capabilities the starship assembly area principally consists of a series of large tents in which stainless steel cylindrical rings fuel tanks and nose cones are produced a linear flow of these components from tent to tent moves each part of the starship along an assembly-line progressively growing the prototype structure culminating with vertical stacking and integration in the hide this remarkably efficient assembly line has managed to cut the production time for starship prototypes from eight months down to just three to four weeks for the most recent builds SpaceX are now working to further optimize this pipeline potentially down to one starship per week by the end of the year and ultimately to a rate of one starship every 72 hours the rapid expansion of starship assembly operations has also been enabled by a large increase in the number of workers on the site from around a dozen workers in early 2019 the Boca Chica site expanded to over 500 employees by February and is now just shy of 1,000 workers potentially growing to as many as 3,000 employees by early next year the call reasoning behind the new buildings and mass hirings in Boca Chica is to implement a simple design philosophy a high production rate enables a high iteration rate with each new starship prototype being rapidly assembled SpaceX can continually improve the design using lessons from those that came before so once a prototype is complete the next step is to transport it around three kilometers of the road the starship launched in landing site now being used as the starship testing area the main constituents of the test site are a stand where starship prototypes are mounted for tests a farm of tanks containing liquid nitrogen liquid methane and liquid oxygen the old star hopper prototype now serving as a mount for cameras and radar system also a flare stack to burn excess methane and finally a launch pad under development from where the combined starship and super heavy rocket will eventually liftoff from now that we've seen how the starship assembly line works let's take a look at the progress the starship testing program has made so far in 2020 using lessons learned from mark 1 and mark 2 SpaceX started building the mark 3 starship later renamed SN 1 or serial number one in October 2019 the SN 1 design was a marked improvement weighing 20% less than the mark 1 but ultimately succumbed to a similar fate when its tanks were pressurized with cryogenic liquid nitrogen in February 2020 this cryogenic tests would prove the bane of early starship prototypes in the case of sn1 the root cause of the failure was some bad stainless steel wells in the thrust pop a structure near the base of the lower fuel tank where the engines would eventually be mounted over the course of a month a small test tank called SN 2 was built to try out a solution a full redesign of the frost puck for sn2 ultimately resolved the issue with the tank passing a cryogenic pressure test in March 2020s m2 was then retired with SpaceX returning to work on full-scale starship prototypes hopes were high with the construction of SN 3 in March which went to the test and in April but alas the cryogenic curse returned once more albeit via a different failure mode while both the lower and upper tanks were being pressurized with liquid nitrogen a valve inadvertently released pressure from the lower tank causing SN 3 to crumple due to the weight of the pressurized upper tank unlike the previous structural failures with Marquand and sn1 the failure of SN 3 was simply a test configuration error which was quick to rectify just three weeks after the demise of SN 3 in late april spacex began testing their next prototype SN 4 on April 26th SN 4 became the first full-scale starship prototype to survive the dreaded cryogenic pressure test having been pressurized to four point nine bar with liquid nitrogen the tank pressure required for an operational flight is six bar a target exceeded by a second cryogenic test on May 9th which reached seven point five bar cryogenic pressurization is the first of three main stages in testing a starship prototype the second stage is a series of static fires whereby a raptor engine attached to the prototype undergoes a burn while the starship is fixed in place finally if all goes well with the static fires the prototype moves to flight tests with ever increasing our toots much like we saw with the star hubba Essen for successfully completed its first static fire test on May 5th becoming the first full-scale starship to be tested with a Raptor engine for further static fire tests took place over the course of may testing two different Raptor engines while occurring a wealth of data on the performance of the vehicle and the engine but unfortunately shortly after the fifth static fire on May 29th a liquid methane leak near the base of the vehicle caused a catastrophic explosion which engulfed s and foreign flames leaving behind the smoldering remains of this pioneering prototype this recent failure was an unfortunate setback especially given that SN 4 had been expected to attempt a 150 meter hop test shortly afterwards but nevertheless the delay is likely to be marginal as the next prototype is more or less complete starship SN 5 start a construction in April and is already fully stacked bar the potential addition of a nose cone as SN 5 becomes the focus of testing in the weeks to come construction will continue on SN 6 which began production in April at the same time another small test tank Essen 7 has just finished construction and moved to the test site SN 7 has been built from a different stainless steel alloy than previous prototypes three or four L instead of 301 so testing this prototype should elucidate the ideal material properties to pursue before SpaceX ultimately shifts to a custom steel alloy in the future so what can we expect to see in the starship program this year well with reconstruction of a test stand essentially complete we should first see SN 5 roll out the test and and commence cryogenic pressure testing and Static fires if these tests succeed SN 5 would then move ahead with a 150 meter hop with a single rapture engine the next milestone will be a 20 kilometers suborbital hop for which the Federal Aviation Administration has already granted approval such a hop will require a starship prototype equipped with three Raptor engines and fins which we could see accomplished with the sm6 prototype a few months down the line the ultimate goal of this year's testing program would be a 100 kilometer orbital flight of a starship prototype this is certainly an ambitious goal which would require the construction and testing of super-heavy boosters before it could proceed none of which have yet been built but this being said super heavy ring segments would employ the exact same build techniques and facilities as the starship prototypes if SpaceX are to remain on track for an orbital flight this year we should expect to see super-heavy prototypes sometime in the second half of this year perhaps undergoing tests with a reduced complement of Raptor engines and though this timeline is clearly unmatched in its ambition and some slips are to be expected one thing is for certain when the day finally comes where a starship soars into the sky over Texas a new era in spaceflight will begin and from that day on we will have unlocked the limitless potential of our solar system so now that we've seen the near-term future of human spaceflight in low-earth orbit and the progress of the next generation starship system let's turn to the next great endeavor in a human space flight the return of astronauts to the moon one year ago NASA announced the Artemis program a 21st century initiative to enable human exploration and development of the moon the headline goals of Artemis are to achieve a human landing near the moon's South Pole by 2024 and establish an outpost on the moon from 2028 unlike the Apollo program Artemis has been designed from the get-go to be sustainable using public-private partnerships similar to the Commercial Crew program to minimize the overall cost of this endeavor the Artemis program begins with the Artemis one mission in late 2021 NASA's new Space Launch System or SLS rocket will launch an uncrewed Orion crew capsule on a 26 to 42 day mission to loop around the moon and return worth a year later in late 2022 or early 2023 the Artemis - mission will see a crewed flight of Orion on a free return trajectory around the moon booth Artemis won an artemis - will verify the hardware and software of orion in advance of expanded human operations at the moon around the same time as artemis 1 and 2 from 2021 NASA's commercial lunar payload services or Clips initiative will start sending robotic missions to the moon the goal of Clips is to test landing technology conduct surface science Scialfa lunar resources and demonstrate in situ resource utilization in preparation for human landings clips follows a similar model to the commercial cargo program for the International Space Station when nasa will contract private companies to launch and land the payloads on the lunar surface one of the most important early Clips missions will be Viper a rover mission which will land in the lunar South Pole region in 2023 why is this region the focus of the Artemis program well in 2008 and 2009 both India's Chantry and one mission and NASA's L cross mission deployed impactor probes in the south polar region with the resorting ejecta indicating millions of tons of water ice must lie in shadowed craters near the South Pole so we know the water ice is there on the moon but many of its properties remain unknown the goal of Viper is to measure the depth purity and distribution of water ice over a 100 day mission because to build a sustainable presence on the moon we will need to understand how to use such ice deposits to produce breathable oxygen rocky propellant and perhaps drinkable water with these early missions complete the stage will be set for the first human landing on the moon in over 50 years in 2024 the Artemis 3 mission will see an Orion capsule launch to the moon in lunar orbit two of the crew members will transfer into a human landing system detached from Orion and is send to the lunar surface Artemis 3 will be a huge milestone for human spaceflight seeing the first woman walk on the moon the first human landing in the south polar region the two astronauts will stay on the surface for six point five days and conduct four surface excursions of up to six hours each before launching from the surface to redock with Orion and return to Earth one of the key elements required to accomplish Artemis three is the human landing system in April NASA announced three companies will share nearly 1 billion dollars to design the potential human-rated Landers over a ten-month period Dianetics the national team collaboration and SpaceX in November NASA will start evaluating each design ultimately deciding whether to down select to two providers or keep three in February 2021 so let's take a look at these three proposed human landing systems and how they will work Dianetics are designing a two-stage lambda called alpaca which would launch from Earth uncrewed on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket our Packer uses to drop tanks to fuel its engines which are jettisoned priors are touching down on the lunar surface the national team led by Blue Origin will see Lockheed Martin Northrop Grumman and Draper combine their expertise to design a three-stage lunar lander the lander itself is a variant of the blue moon lander announced last year by Blue Origin which notably uses liquid hydrogen and oxygen to power its be7 engines these viewers can be produced by electrolyzing ice deposits allowing the vehicle to refuel using local lunar resources before taking off from the surface finally SpaceX are planning to use a specially adapted lunar lander variant of starship comparing this with the base starship design on the right the lunar starship has no heat shield or fins a curved solar array near its tip integrated landing legs and white paint for enhanced reflectivity the lunar starship also features triple thruster engines higher up its body minimizing the effect of regolith kickback during landing once landed cargo or up to four astronauts can leave the two airlocks 26 metres above the surface and be taken by a crane system guided by rails down to the ground one key advantage of the starship system is the large amount of cargo it can deliver opening the possibility of ambitious lunar base architectures so now that we've seen how SpaceX are poised to play a critical role in NASA's efforts to return to the moon let's go back to our starship timeline to see precisely how they plan to support the Artemis program for reference I've added the tentative dates for the first three Artemis missions to the timeline SpaceX have proposed a series of milestones to prove the fidelity of the starship system once orbital flight of a starship prototype has been achieved they will demonstrate end-to-end propellant transfer in orbit other milestones include a long duration orbital flight test the reef light of a landed starship and a starship flight beyond low-earth orbit know that the precise dates of these milestones will be largely contingent on how the testing program in Boca Chica proceeds so their position and ordering on this timeline should be viewed as illustrative within around a one-year uncertainty window with these tests complete SpaceX will aim to land an uncrewed starship on the moon in 2022 and complete a flyby around the moon with Japanese billionaire yasaku Misawa as part of the privately funded deer moon mission in 2023 following all these steps SpaceX will have proved the reliability of the starship system to support the Artemis three landing in 2024 from then the focus of the Artemis program will transition to establishing a sustained human presence on and around the moon there are two key components to this plan the lunar gateway and Artemis at Basecamp gateway will be a small station in orbit around the moon serving as a staging post for astronauts moving to and from the lunar surface and the platform for detailed scientific investigations beyond Earth's Van Allen radiation belts the nucleus of Gateway consisting of an integrated power and proportion element along with a habitation module is planned to launch in November 2023 on a commercial rocket probably the Falcon Heavy but this will be decided later in the year the Gateway nucleus we use solar electric propulsion to maneuver to lunar orbit over the course of nine to ten months arriving in the second half of 2024 if ready in time eta could potentially provide communications relay support for Artemis 3 but currently it is envisioned to mostly support yearly landings from the Artemis for mission in 2025 onwards building on the collaboration at the heart of the International Space Station many countries will work alongside the u.s. to expand the capabilities of Gateway with additional modules in particular the European and Japanese space agencies plan to contribute an international habitation module Canada will be providing an external robotic arm and Russia is interested in providing an airlock these international editions are currently envisioned to be complete by around 2028 with the final configuration of gateway designed for a 15 year lifespan much like the International Space Station today keeping gateway well supplied will be vital to maintaining its science operations and support capabilities for human crews for this NASA will offer gateway logistics services contracts to the private sector following the same model as the space stations commercial cargo program these resupply contracts will be worth up to 7 billion dollars over a 12 to 15 year time frame shared between multiple contractors the first award was announced in March given to SpaceX designer new vehicle called Dragon XL this will be a variant of the cargo Dragon capsule launching on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket and capable of transporting more than 5 tons of cargo experiments and supplies to Gateway once it arrives dragon XL will spend 6 to 12 months dr. Gateway before autonomously maneuvering to a lunar graveyard orbit when you combine dragon Excel the lunar starship and fall cat heavy launchers for the clips program it becomes clear that SpaceX is set to play a critical role in NASA's efforts to return to the moon alongside Gateway lunar surface operations will expand dramatically from 2025 with the establishment of the Artemis Basecamp this consists of three components the lunar terrain vehicle the habitable mobility platform and the foundation surface habitat the lunar terrain vehicle will extend the range of human surface exploration being capable of transporting two astronauts and materials weighing 500 kilograms for at least 2 kilometers next the habitable mobility platform will be a pressurized Rover capable of extending human expeditions to tens of kilometers from the landing site and extending surface durations from a week to 30 to 45 days finally the foundational surface habitat will support up to four crew members for stays of up to two months these initial components of the Artemis Basecamp on vision to be in place by 2028 though a specific site for the base has yet to be determined promising locations could be near crater rims at the Lunar South Pole some of which receives sunlight for 80 percent of the year helping to reduce temperature extremes and maximize solar power potential during stays at the base astronauts will test new technologies including surface power systems in situ resource utilization excavation and construction techniques and lunar dust mitigation both a time the base will be expanded to add communication systems a lightweight efficient power system radiation shielding waste disposal and a landing pad one possibility that I'm especially excited by is the prospect of remotely operating a lunar radio telescope on the far side of the moon from the Artemis base in April NASA selected an idea along just these lines for a phase one innovative advanced concept study the central case is that radio wavelengths longer than around 10 meters are incredibly difficult to study from Earth's surface because they are reflected off the ionosphere but a radio Observatory on the moon would have no such problems opening a new window on the universe for example sludgy Tasco will be able to measure the netic feel strengths of exoplanets by searching for their corresponding radio emission at the end of the day one of the central goals of all this lunar infrastructure is to develop technologies and learn lessons which can be directly applied to human missions to Mars one proposal is to add a large inflatable habitat to Gateway to simulate a Mars mission this would see four astronauts spend a few months living in this habitat simulating the outbound trip to Mars before two crew members descend to the lunar surface to visit the Basecamp for surface operations after which they would return to the Gateway and spend another few months in the inflatable habitat to simulate the return to Earth so now that we've seen the future of human spaceflight in low-earth orbit the development of the starship vehicle and the plans to sustainably return to the moon let's finally take a look at how all these will come together to enable human missions to Mars if we want to land the first people on Mars within this decade the only vehicle which will have the necessary capabilities and be ready on time will be SpaceX's starship system indeed the founding principle behind the starship project was to enable a self-sufficient society on Mars space Lexus Mars mission architecture follows a series of six steps we've already seen the process of launching a starship into orbit and landing the super-heavy booster along with on-orbit refueling for a Mars mission with a surface payload of up to 100 tons as many as four tankers starships will be involved in refueling operations after which the starship or group of starships depart on a multi month transfer to Mars on arrival the starship plummets into the Martian atmosphere orienting itself to maximize its surface area and increase drag the heat from this supersonic entry is absorbed by the hexagonal heat shield tiles on the underside of the vehicle after surviving atmospheric entry the starship Falls like a skydiver with the wings and fins helping control the descent finally it reorients itself vertically and ignites his Raptor engines to arrive at the landing it the target landing site will most likely be Arcadia Planitia as discussed in detail in my October Mars mission update last year once landed each starship can connect to a propellant plant which produces the liquid methane and liquid oxygen fuel for the Raptor engines from ice deposits and carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere this enables starships to readily return to Earth at once refueled to chart a course for the first human Mars missions let's go back to our starship timeline and add the earth Mars launch windows which occur every 26 months the first goal will be to send two uncrewed cargo starships to Mars aiming to confirm or Trice resources identify hazards and place basic infrastructure including power mining and life-support systems starships large payload capacity has clear advantages over any other system currently in development for such a mission as it increases redundancy by allowing multiple instances of vital Hardware to be brought along and allows for large-scale future expansion to be planned from the very first mission SpaceX has been targeting 2022 for this cargo opportunity for many years now but given this is only two years away and SpaceX may want to apply lessons from their lunar starship missions I've added a five-year uncertainty window to the timeline to cover the possibility of slips by to launch windows if all goes well with the cargo mission it would be followed in the next launch window by the first human mission to Mars this would see two crew starships each carrying 20 to 50 people and two cargo starships Landon's separated locations within a few kilometers of each other this suggests that a heavy cargo and crew transportation Rover will need to be developed perhaps similar to the habitable mobility platform envisioned for the Artemis Basecamp the priority of this mission will be to make operational a propellant production plant to refuel the starships the crewed mission will also focus on establishing the infrastructure of Mars base alpha including habitats radiation shelters greenhouses and landing pads the plan is for the first five starships to stay on Mars indefinitely providing an your habitation space through the capability to return to Earth with a starship will be available given that the initial cruise will likely need to reside on Mars for at least 26 months self-sufficiency will be absolutely crucial the base will need to be able to extract over one ton of ice per day to produce drinkable water and air for the base with this ice needing to be both accessible and amenable to purification this is another key area where in situ resource utilization experiments on clips and Artemis missions can provide valuable input for mast base alphas design self-sufficiency will also require the extraction and processing of minerals and metals such that structural materials can be created for base repair and expansion back on earth during the build-up to each subsequent launch window many additional starships will be launched into orbit if we want to create a civilization on Mars as many as three starships per day will need to be launched assembling a fleet of 1000 starships over the course of a year the fleet will depart over a 30-day period when the launch window arrives carrying tens of thousands of people to the Red Planet the ultimate goal of this ambitious endeavor is to create a city on Mars with 1 million people by as soon as 2050 designing such a city is one area where considerable work remains to be done but one organization that has been trying to fill the gap here is the Mars Society in 2018 they announced a competition to design a 1,000 person Mars colony the 100 entries contains some truly innovative designs with the 22 most promising submissions recently published as a book right now the Mars Society are running a second competition this time to design a 1 million person Martian city-state anyone in the world is welcome to submit a design before the end of June so if you have an idea and you're interested I'll post a link to the competition down below well that brings us to the end of this Mars mission update the return of human spaceflight to the US is an incredible achievement but as we've seen it is just one step in our journey a decade of work realized this dream and I wish all the best to Bob and Doug on their historic mission thank you so much for watching everyone and please do let me know if you have any questions or comments down below and never forget that our best days do truly lie ahead of us human ingenuity will always carry us through and it will guide us as we venture out to explore the wonders of our solar system if you enjoyed this video you might also enjoy my Mars bunker series a collection of live streams exploring all manner of topics surrounding missions to Mars to make sure you don't miss future videos hit subscribe and click the notification bell to stay up to date with all the latest developments in our journey to the red planet

Channel: Martian Colonist

Views: 1,872,345

Rating: 4.7992053 out of 5

Keywords: Mars, mars mission, SpaceX, Starship, Mars update, Elon Musk, Mars Colony, SpaceX starship, NASA, humans on mars, spacex launch, spacex starship, spacex starship update, mars mission update, mars, nasa, space, martian colonist, mars update 2020, artemis program, apollo program, Moon mission, #LaunchAmerica, Commercial Crew, Axiom Space, Space Adventures, Mars Society, Blue Origin, lunar starship, SpaceX Moon mission, spacex mars mision, nasa spacex launch, spacex

Id: bmcr2FaoWoU

Length: 42min 0sec (2520 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/DrPepperThanks]

This guy is criminally underrated

[u/Kraknor]

The video provides a summary of Commercial Crew, Starship developments and future plans, the Artemis program, and SpaceX's Mars plans.

[u/fluidmechanicsdoubts]

Isn't he that Mars One guy?