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SpaceX wants to send people to Mars. Here's what the trip might look like. - Space.com
May 26, 2020 1 min, 57 secs

Even as SpaceX prepares to launch astronauts for the first time, the company is sharing its dreams for human spaceflight on a much grander scale: missions to Mars.

"In terms of the vision that we're moving toward, it's really to enable cities on Mars and everything that comes with having a city, having a large and growing population," Paul Wooster, principal Mars development engineer at SpaceX, said during a May 20 meeting of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) focused on human missions to Mars.

But the company is targeting a characteristically ambitious timeline of perhaps 2022 for the first uncrewed missions to Mars, Wooster said.

Nevertheless, Wooster said, SpaceX hopes the pair will come together rapidly enough that the company could consider launching the first uncrewed test missions to Mars during the 2022 window of opportunity.

(Mars aligns with Earth favorably for spacecraft missions every 26 months; the upcoming window, in late July and early August 2020, may see three different robotic missions launch to the Red Planet.).

A Super Heavy booster would launch an individual Mars-bound Starship to Earth orbit, where it would rendezvous with a previously launched Starship full of fuel, which would then pass along that propellant.

Although the Starship is discussed as holding 100 people, early missions would likely carry much smaller crews to leave more room for cargo necessary for setting up camp on the Red Planet, Wooster said.

Starships are designed to run on liquid methane-oxygen fuel, Wooster said, in part because of the low cost of those ingredients on Earth but also because scientists believe they can be produced on Mars.

Next will come basic infrastructure like landing pads, habitats, power-generation systems, radiation shelters and greenhouses, Wooster said, although he emphasized that SpaceX is focused on transportation and leaving the development of other pieces to other organizations!

Once a final site is selected and missions begin, Wooster said that he thinks SpaceX might find itself with a little deja vu from its experience developing its Starship testing site near Boca Chica in South Texas.

"This site was very undeveloped when we came in," Wooster said, "so I think we've also been going through a lot of the same types of things as you might eventually experience on Mars in terms of having to set up infrastructure, although obviously a lot easier in terms of having air and such available to you.".

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