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falkor

Member

From: Surrey

Registered: 2004-08-21

Posts: 112

1 man's vision for life on the Red Planet, Elon Musk

By Nina Golgowski PUBLISHED:01:46, 27 November 2012| UPDATED:13:41, 27 November 2012
An ambitious billionaire has revealed his plans to colonise Mars - and charge 80,000 brave souls $500,000 to be flown there.

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, has announced his vision for life on the Red Planet.

He says the settlement plan would start small, with a pioneering group of fewer than 10 people, who he would take there on a reusable rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane.

Musk, already the first private space entrepreneur to launch a successful mission to the International Space Station this spring, says what would begin by first sending less than 10 people could blossom 'into something really big.'

A futuristic design of a protective dome on Mars shows a similar idea to Musk's that would be transparent and pressurized with CO2 allowing Mars' soil to grow life-sustaining crops
'At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big,' he told the Royal Aeronautical Society in London last week while awarded the society’s gold medal for his contribution to the commercialization of space.

Laying out precise details and figures to his 'difficult' but 'possible' plans, the space pioneer says the first ferry of explorers would be no more than 10 people at a price tag of $500,000 (£312,110) per ticket.

'The ticket price needs to be low enough that most people in advanced countries, in their mid-forties or something like that, could put together enough money to make the trip,' he said.

GW Johnson

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From: McGregor, Texas USA

Registered: 2011-12-04

Posts: 5,796

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Re: 1 man's vision for life on the Red Planet, Elon Musk

On Mars there are problems with solar flare radiation,  cosmic ray radiation,  and very harsh UV in direct sunlight.  That suggests the greenhouse should have an opaque roof and transparent walls.  The roof could be a few feet of regolith,  which provides the radiation shield.  Using scattered and surface-reflected sunlight would cut down the harshness of the UV to something tolerable by Earth plants and the people who tend them.  And you won't need some exotic transparency material to filter out the excess UV.  Being in a shallow crater or other depression will increase the surface-reflected sunlight. 

Round is better as a pressure vessel,  so you are probably looking at clear-wall cylinders,  but with plain flat roofs ballasted against the air pressure inside by thick regolith cover.  Put your solar thermal and PV panels up there.  They'll look more like artificial button-stage mushrooms than the classic domes of science fiction.  You'll need some arches inside to hold it all up until you pressurize.  I'd leave them there.  Use more ballast than you need to counter the air pressure.  Safer that way,  in the event of an overpressurization accident. 

The atmosphere inside will have to be more than just compressed Mars CO2,  for Earth crops.  There will have to be some oxygen and water vapor content,  and possibly a diluent for the CO2.  I dunno the details,  I am not a biologist.  But I do know our plants here are adapted to our air,  in which CO2 is a trace,  not a major component.  I have heard of experiments with higher CO2 concentrations,  and I seem to remember that too much CO2 had bad effects.  So,  I rather suspect the air inside these greenhouses on Mars will resemble Earth air more strongly that Mars air,  although the pressure might be much lower than here,  and the CO2 percentage much higher. 

Just educated guesses on my part. Nothing more.

GW

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GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

louis

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 7,208

Re: 1 man's vision for life on the Red Planet, Elon Musk

Musk shows once again he is the only true space visionary around of any note and the only one with any likelihood of implementing his plans.

It's good to know that he still has the fire inside motivating him to realise his vision.

I wonder if he's ever eavesdropped here? Let's hope so, as he will pick on some good ideas - like GW's.

My own preference for phase 1 would nevertheless be multi-level hydroponics powered by PV energy. Much more dependable and workable in the early years when farm hab space is at a premium.

It's pretty clear from what Musk says about ticket pricing that he intends to subsidise the foundation of the colony, after which he conceives that it could be self-supporting, I think.

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