Recently, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk held a presentation about how he sees the future of SpaceX. He talked about Starship updates, new engines for it and the plan to colonise Mars year by year. The presentation took over 2 hours, but this is a shorter summarised form of it.
STARSHIP BLOCK 3:
The heatshield on Starship Block 3 will be significantly updated due to the Mars atmosphere having double the atomic oxygen of Earth. This creates more oxidation.
SpaceX aims to use the same heatshield for both Earth and Mars and to make it fully reusable, though engineers acknowledge it is one of the hardest parts of the mission.
The new Starship is lighter and structurally refined for overall better performace.
The capacity will also be increased despite not changing the height. Block 3 reportedly holds an extra 50 tons of propellant. How it achieves this is still not clear.
The mounts of central three engines on the booster are reclocked to reduce stress on the flame deflectors and increase the Ship’s stability.
The Ship itself will initially fly with 6 Raptor 3 engines (sea level), with 3 vacuum-optimised Raptors to be added later when the design matures.
A total of 9 engines is planned for the ship.
The new Ship will also be more capable with the added option of orbital refuelling. This will include a probe-and-drogue docking port, similar to Apollo. The Ships will meet in orbit, the Mars-headed Ship will dock with a fuel Ship and the fuel will be transferred between them.
RAPTOR 3 ENGINE:
The Raptor 3 will feature two variants - sea-level and vacuum-optimised versions.
The Raptor 3 features a higher thrust and efficiency than Raptor 2 with a simpler design and fewer components. This means less parts can break and it will be more easily reused.
The Raptor 3 already had over 300 test firings and more than 16000 seconds of runtime recorded.
The engines are also designed for easier installation and handling - forklift compatibility. We know that is weighs less than Raptor 2 (which weighs at around 1,5 tons).
MARS COLONIZATION PLAN:
The colonization is planned until the year 2033. The years of launch are determined by the transfer windows (the location of Mars compared to Earth).
In 2026 five landers are planned to head to Mars. Each ship will carry around 10 tons of cargo. This date will gather data and test how the ships behave in Mars’ atmosphere.
Following this, in the year 2028/2029, there will be another window. There will be more ships launched with each having around 75 tons of cargo. These launches will prepare the landing zones for other ships and confirm the resources are where they should be.
In the years 2030-2031, around one hundred ships will be headed towards Mars. Each will carry around 150 tons of cargo. This window will be the first to carry humans to Mars. The cargo will consist of food, power systems, habitats and everything people need to survive on Mars - resource gathering, propellant production, etc.
In 2033, 500 ships will be heading towards Mars with each carrying 300 tons of payload. This will use the 142-meter tall Starship. This window will ensure that the people on Mars will be a self-sustaining colony. They will gather all they need from Mars and not need the presence of Earth - they will not be dependant on Earth.
This full independence is SpaceX’s goal, though some say that this will be only possible in the 2040s or 2050s, not 2033.
But nontheless, it is an insane thought that we might have a self-sustaining independent colony on Mars in 8 years.
GIGAFACTORY/MASS PRODUCTION:
Regarding the production of this insane amount of Starships, SpaceX aims to produce 1,000 Starships per year from factories in Texas and Florida.
Although, there is the concern of storage as critics note, that there is no room to store thousands on Earth.
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