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Elon Musk Reveals How SpaceX Will Colonize Mars

Trending News: This Is How Elon Musk Plans To Take Humans To Mars

Why Is This Important?

Because it's one thing to dream — another to have a plan. 

Long Story Short

Elon Musk just revealed how SpaceX plans to rocket humans to Mars. A video simulation released shortly before Musk took the stage at a conference in Mexico shows how the large rocket will be launched from Earth, refilled in orbit and then coast to Mars with the help of solar panel wings. 

Long Story

Buckle up humanity, we're going to Mars.

That's the promise Elon Musk has been making for years, because we're screwing up the planet we're currently on. But its one thing to make a promise or fire off a dream, another thing altogether to have an explicit plan — and now we know what that plan is. 

Musk's private space exploration company SpaceX released a video simulation on Tuesday afternoon, demonstrating how it intends to carry out an Interplanetary Transport System to Mars.

Cool, huh? What's even cooler is that this isn't just a wild dream or concept. Musk said during a presentation in Guadalajara, Mexico, that the simulation is based on its scientists real models. 

"This is not what it might look like, this is what we plan to make it look like," he said.

The video shows SpaceX's promised new rocket, BFR, or "Big F*cking Rocket" (lol) launching the "Big F*cking Spaceship" into space with 28,730,000 pounds of thrust at liftoff, reports The Verge. The BFS/BFR will be over 50 meters taller than SpaceX's current Falcon 9 (122 meters vs 70 meters). To demonstrate how massive the BFS will be, Musk showed this image during the presentation.

The spaceship needs to be big, because along with enough cargo to feed (there will even be a restaurant on board) and build a fully self-sustaining civilization on Mars it will have to carry between 100 and 200 people at a time. At that rate, and with the capability of only going every two years, Musk said there will have to be around 10,000 trips over a period of 40 to 100 years.

Musk said he wants to make the trip to Mars as accessible as possible, so he says the goal is to make it cost less than $100,000 per person.

But to achieve this dream, SpaceX will need a lot of dough — something that Musk has been struggling with as of late due to less than exemplary numbers from Tesla and a devasting rocket crash. Musk isn't completely sure how he'll raise the money to fulfill this Mars dream, but in the presentation he proposed this idea, "steal underpants."

Jokes aside, the simulation video revealed the the Interplanetary Transport System the ship will be refuelled by a tanker in Earth's orbit. This won't just happen once, but the tanker will make several trips to refuel the ship before it leaves for Mars to cut down on costs. 

When the ship finally exits our orbit, it will deploy solar panel wings, which can generate 200kW of power to allow the ship to coast at 62,000 miles per hour over a period of 80 days. When it arrives on the red planet, BFS will use a technique called supersonic retro propulsion to lower gently and land (if everything goes according to plan). 

The end of the simulation video reveals a mysterious point in Musk's Mars colonization plan. As the red planet spins, you can see green and blue forming — presumably water and vegetation. Musk didn't say how humans will be able to do that on such a hot and dry planet, but the prospect is exciting.

Who knows if any of this can even come close to happen, but you have to respect Musk as a visionary. 

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Will Musk fulfill his dream?

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It shouldn't just be Musk trying to fund this — the entire planet needs to come together to complete this mission to Mars.

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Musk has been accused of getting mad at an employee who missed a work event to witness the birth of his child.

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