He's planning that SpaceX will build 100 Starships a year, so that by the end of 10 years there will be a fleet of 1000. At every 'orbit sync' (i.e., when Mars and Earth are in opposition) a fleet of 1000 ships would set off for Mars over a 30-day period. They would be prepped for the journey by being refuelled and loaded up first. He plans to use each Starship 3 times a day—presumably for point-to-point on Earth and for lifting cargoes into LEO (low Earth orbit), since the trip to Mars will take at least 6 months there and back, so that they'll be unavailable to work for shorter trips over and near Earth for at least one quarter of the time. However, Starships could fly to Mars, unload fast and return after just a couple of weeks on the surface, and when they weren't being used on the Mars run they could be used for the Moon (4 days each way), lifting stuff into LEO to service space stations and space industries, or flying point-to point on Earth.
So plenty of re-usability, just not as much as what you'd get when a Starship is used only for point-to-point suborbital flights. (Of course, the Super Heavy booster will never go to Mars, so that will be re-usable 100% of the time, and it would make up more than half the total capital cost of the combo.) I dunno how the finances of that work out, and whether Musk's statement that each launch would cost under $2 million will be correct, because re-usability is key. If Starship can be re-used like an aircraft, again and again, thousands of times, its per-launch cost will be very low. On the other hand, it doesn't have to be used thousands of times to slash costs. Even if it is re-used just 100 times, the construction and development costs are reduced by 2 orders of magnitude, because the cost for each ship is spread over 100 launches. Except for Blue Origin's re-usable space ships (which still haven't yet flown in orbit) there is nothing comparable out there. All other launch vehicles are used just once.
Musk had previously talked about a million inhabitants of Mars within 50 to 100 years, but at 1000 ships every 26 months, the target could be reached in 20 years. Hmm. He's obviously relying on the Starships paying their way, even on the Mars route, and hopes to create a market by making journeys so cheap that the market is created. He has previously said that the Starship/Super Heavy combo will cost less than a Falcon 9 to build, i.e., less than $60 million. So 1000 ships would have a capital cost of $60 billion. That's an awful lot for a single firm to pay for. I'm sure Starlink, SpaceX's extraordinary new high-speed, low-latency satellite internet service will be very profitable and will provide the money for this. But SpaceX does after all have other shareholders, who might balk at watching all that money vanish.
The numbers don't add up. Here, I estimate that the first expedition will need 10 Starships, 2 crewed and 4 just to bring the electricity generators (NASA's Krusty nuclear power plants, wind turbines and solar panels, most of which will be needed to produce fuel for the return journey) and another 4 to bring all the other requirements for life on Mars. Of these ships, only one will return at the next 'orbit sync' because there won't be enough fuel for the others to return. Two years later, another 10 ships, with the same crew/cargo ratio will go. This time, two will be able to return. Even if a 1,000 ships launch, 80% will be for energy and other cargo. This is not like letting immigrants loose in America or Australia, where they could build a log cabin, live off the land, and grow food. Everything will have to be created—soil, food production, safe dwellings, energy production, just to start with. Without prodigious sums of money, there is no way we'll have 1,000,000 on Mars in 20 years. Each 'orbit sync', even with 1,000 ships, will only bring 20,000 humans. And somehow those settlers will have to be funded, found jobs, found shelter etc.
But all this analysis assumes that those who go to Mars would in principle like to return. Many may not care. Mars is wilderness. As soon as the dome, food, etc technology is working acceptably, there is a real likelihood that millennial cults or simply people who want to get away from government intrusion and oversight will want to set up communities on Mars. There could potentially be tens of thousands of such settlers. And because they won't be planning on returning, they will not need the huge energy infrastructure required to make methane for the return journey. The ratio of passengers to freight would be much higher. They will be mostly self-sufficient, but there will be some trade. It'll be a while before things like NASA's KRUSTY nuclear power plants will be easily replicated by small Martian communities.
The first Martian export will be tourism. The second will be technology—techniques will have to be developed on Mars to make things work, and these technologies will be useful on Earth and the Moon and the asteroid belt too. Millionaires will fly in with the first ships in the biennial convoy and leave with the last. They'll expect five-star treatment. So they'll want real fruit and real vegetables. Somebody will have to grow them. The construction of the hotels, in Valles Marineris, and on its rim and the rims of craters like Hellas, and on Olympus Mons, will require building material. So there will be miners and their robots mining for water, iron ore, phosphates, nitrates, etc., and there'll be builders (and their robots) building these hotels and their landing pads and eventually the roads between them. Millionaires will go for jet-pack flights over Valles Marineris or craters, they'll luxuriate in spas with extraordinary views across wilderness, they'll trek across the Martian surface to see the sights, they'll want cabarets and entertainment, and they'll certainly expect live servitors not robots. There could be thousands of visitors every 'orbit sync'. And thousands of employees and small businesses, who will remain on Mars, scraping a living between 'orbit syncs'.
So one day Musk's vision of 1000 ships setting off for Mars will happen. But eventually, the Martian run will be made with giant spaceliners carrying a 1,000 passengers at a time, which will never land on the surface of either planet, but will be serviced by shuttles descended from Starship from the surfaces of both planets. Prolly not Battlestar Galactica, but certainly something as spectacular.
The image below shows the liquid oxygen header tank and the nose cone of SN1, the first orbital Starship, being assembled at Boca Chica in Texas. It really is happening.
 |
| SN1 liquid oxygen header tank and nose cone under construction. Source: Elon Musk |
See also:
No comments:
Post a Comment