Tesla Motors' Elon Musk has been trying to redefine transportation on earth as well as in space since a long time. In a step forward towards that direction, the South African-born Canadian American business magnate recently unveiled his plans of colonising Mars and how he aims to achieve the same. In addition to the Mars project, Musk enthusiastically also talked about how rockets can be used to transport people anywhere on Earth in under an hour.

Taking the podium at the International Astronomical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, Musk revealed that he has conceived a business plan for pumping money in his ambitious new spaceship called the “Big Fucking Rocket” or BFR.



Musk aims to achieve his mission by cannibalising every other SpaceX spacecraft—the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon and then resembling all the resources extracted from the drive into a new spaceship.

“We can build a system that cannibalizes our own products, makes our own products redundant, then all the resources we use for Falcon Heavy and Dragon can be applied to one system,” Musk said.

For the uninitiated, founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, Space X designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company aims to revolutionise space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.

SpaceX has gained worldwide attention for a series of historic milestones. It is the only private company ever to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in December 2010. The company made history again in May 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft delivered cargo to and from the International Space Station — a challenging feat previously accomplished only by governments. Since then Dragon has delivered cargo to and from the space station multiple times, providing regular cargo resupply missions for NASA.

In 2017, SpaceX successfully achieved the first reflight of an orbital class rocket – a historic milestone on the road to full and rapid rocket reusability.

Coming back to BFR, Musk revealed that 48-meter tall rocket will be used not only to send people to Mars, but also to establish a lunar colony on the Moon, send satellites to space, replace airplanes for long-distance Earth travel and service the International Space Station (ISS).



According to Musk, the rocket, which is still in its early stages of production, has potential of becoming a viable means for interplanetary travel some years down the line. A short video showed a cryo tank with 1,200 tons of liquid oxygen exploding in a stress test, but only after reaching a level what Musk believes will be sufficient for a trip to Mars.

BFR, according to Musk, will have the “highest thrust rate engine of any kind ever made,” with 31 Raptor engines, which is a decrease from the 42 engines Musk pitched for the Interplanatary Transit System last year.

With BFR, Musk’s final goal is to colonize Mars, but he does acknowledge that we’re still far away from realising that scenario. According to Musk, one would require thousands of rockets and tens of thousands of refill operations to establish a self-sustaining base on Earth’s neighbour, Mars. Currently, about 60 orbital launches occur on Earth every year.



Musk also revealed that measuring 9 meters in diameter, the rocket would have enough space to house 40 cabins, large common rooms, a galley, central storage area, and a solar storm shelter. According to Musk, the rocket is large enough to fit “a stack of Falcon 1 rockets” in its payload bay. Drawing an everyday analogy, Musk shared that BFR is greater than the double-decker Airbus A380.

The Tesla boss’ plans to store enough fuel to get the rocket to Mars is pretty simple. He wants to launch off the BFR straight from Earth with a 150-ton tank and meet a tanker in orbit for complete re-fueling purposes. Musk is optimistic that with this, the BFR will be successfully able to reach Mars without making any additional stops on the way.

The conference also saw Musk sharing his vision of how the BFR will be able to service the ISS and shoot satellites into space. He then also demonstrated a concept for establishing a lunar base.

Musk also shared his plans to build a society on Mars. According to the timeline revealed by him, there will be two cargo missions to Mars by 2022 and four (two cargo, two crewed) missions by 2024.





Explaining his fascination with colonising Mars, Musk revealed that he’s doing this simply because it “beats the hell out of being a single-planet species.”

“The future is vastly more exciting and interesting if we’re a space-faring species and a multi-planetary species than if we’re not,,” said Musk. “You want to be inspired by things. You want to wake up in the morning and think, ‘The future’s going to be great’,” he added.

At the conference, Musk also showed a concept video about how BFR could take humans on most long-distance trips around the Earth in less than 30 minutes, and anywhere in under an hour.

This development was first reported in DailyDot.
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