Immigrating to Mars in 20 years?
With the advancement of science and technology, human beings' ambitions for space exploration continue to expand. Immigration to Mars has gradually become a possible reality from a fictional plot in science fiction movies.
Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, has long been a promoter of this dream. His ultimate goal is to enable humans to build self-sufficient cities on Mars within 20 years.
Recently, Musk said through the social platform
Image source: X Musk’s Starship Vision
Starships: The giant leap that transformed space exploration
The Starship project began in 2016, and the first Starship Mk1 was successfully manufactured in 2019. It is currently the most powerful rocket in the world. It consists of a super-heavy booster and a Starship spacecraft, with a total height of approximately 122 meters. It can produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, nearly twice that of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.
But this journey has not been smooth sailing. From the initial design to the actual test, the starship has experienced many explosions and failures, including the Mk1 first pressure test explosion in 2020, and in 2023 after the starship was combined with the super-heavy rocket, it flew 4 Disintegrates after minutes.
Under Musk's leadership, SpaceX has broken through many limitations of traditional aerospace technology. The key to future human landings on Mars is whether it can reduce the cost of space exploration. Currently, SpaceX has created the first fully reusable rocket system. ——Falcon 9 launch vehicle (Falcon 9).
According to celestial mechanics calculations, the optimal launch window between the Earth and Mars opens every 26 months. To this end, SpaceX plans to carry out the first unmanned mission to Mars in 2026. If all goes well, humans will be able to fly on the star within 4 years. Ships will land on Mars, and the frequency of starship flights will increase exponentially. In the next 20 years, a self-sufficient Martian city can be effectively built.
Not only Mars, the moon is also planned
While Musk has his sights set on Mars, NASA's current focus remains on the moon.
In NASA's Artemis program, SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System (Starship HLS) was selected to be responsible for sending astronauts to the moon.
Musk is optimistic about this. He believes that whether it is the moon or Mars, SpaceX has the technical capabilities, especially the reusability of the starship, which will significantly reduce the cost of each space mission and pave the way for future space immigration.
