Mars is there, waiting to be reached.
—BUZZ ALDRIN
I would like to die on Mars—just not on impact.
—ELON MUSK
4 MARS OR BUST
Elon Musk is a bit of a maverick, an entrepreneur with a cosmic mission: to build the rockets that one day will take us to Mars. Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, and von Braun all dreamed of going to Mars, but Musk may actually do it. In the process, he is breaking all the rules of the game.
He fell in love with the space program as a child growing up in South Africa and even built a rocket on his own. His father, an engineer, encouraged his interests. Early on, Musk concluded that the risk of human extinction could only be avoided by reaching for the stars. And so he decided that one of his goals would be “making life multiplanetary,” a theme that has guided his entire career.
In addition to rocketry, he was compelled by two other passions, computers and business. He was programming at the age of ten and sold his first video game, called Blaster, for five hundred dollars at the age of twelve. He was restless and hoped one day to move to America. When he was seventeen, he emigrated to Canada on his own. By the time he received his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania, he was torn between two possible careers. One path led to the life of a physicist or engineer, designing rockets or other high-tech devices. The other led to business and the use of his computer skills to amass a fortune, which would give him the means to bankroll his vision privately.
The dilemma came to a head when he began his Ph.D. studies at Stanford University in 1995 in applied physics. After spending just two days in the program, he abruptly dropped out and plunged into the world of internet start-ups. He borrowed $28,000 and founded a software company that produced an online city guide for the newspaper publishing industry. He sold it to Compaq for $341 million four years later. He netted $22 million from that sale and immediately plowed the profits into a new company called X.com, which would evolve into PayPal. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion, from which Musk received $165 million.
Flush with cash, he harnessed these funds to fulfill his dreams, creating SpaceX and Tesla Motors. At one point, he invested 90 percent of his entire net worth in his two companies. Unlike other aerospace companies, which build rockets based on known technology, SpaceX pioneered a revolutionary design for a reusable rocket. Musk’s goal was to reduce the cost of space travel by a factor of ten by reusing the booster, which is normally discarded after each launch.
Almost from scratch, Musk developed the Falcon (named after the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars), which would boost a space module called the Dragon (named after the song “Puff, the Magic Dragon”) into outer space. In 2012, SpaceX’s Falcon rocket made history by being the first commercial rocket to reach the International Space Station. It also became the first rocket to land successfully back on Earth after an orbital flight. His first wife, Justine Musk, says, “I like to compare him to the Terminator. He sets his program and just…will…not…stop.”
In 2017, he scored another major victory when he successfully relaunched a used booster rocket. The previously launched rocket had landed back on its launchpad, been cleaned up and serviced, and was sent up a second time. Reusability may revolutionize the economics of space travel. Think of the used-car market. After World War II, cars were still out of reach for many people, especially GIs and the young. The used-car industry enabled average consumers to purchase cars and changed everything, including our lifestyles and social interactions. Today, in the United States, about forty million used cars are sold every year, which is 2.2 times the number of new cars sold. In the same way, Musk hopes that his Falcon rocket will transform the aerospace market and allow rocket prices to plunge. Most organizations will not care if the rocket that sends its satellite into outer space is brand-new or previously used. They will opt for the cheapest, most reliable method.
The first reusable rocket was a milestone, but Musk shocked audiences when he laid out the details of his ambitious plans to reach Mars. He expects to send an unmanned mission to Mars in 2018, followed by a manned mission by 2024, beating NASA by about a decade. His ultimate aim is to establish not just an outpost but a whole city on Mars. He imagines sending a fleet of a thousand modified Falcon rockets, each carrying one hundred colonists, to create the first settlement on the Red Planet. The keys to Musk’s plan are the dramatically falling cost of space travel and new innovations. Calculations of the price of a Mars mission usually range between $400 to $500 billion, but Musk estimates that he can create and launch the Mars rocket for only $10 billion. At first, tickets to Mars would be expensive, but they would eventually drop to about $200,000 per person round trip because of the falling price of space travel. This is comparable to the $200,000 necessary to ride just seventy miles above the Earth on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, or the $20 to $40 million estimated price of a trip to the International Space Station on a Russian rocket.
Musk’s proposed rocket system was originally called the Mars Colonial Transporter, but he renamed it the Interplanetary Transport System because, as he said, “This system really gives you freedom to go anywhere you want in the greater solar system.” His long-term vision is to build a network that would connect the planets as the railroad connected American cities.
Musk sees potential for collaboration with other parts of his multibillion-dollar empire. Tesla has developed an advanced version of the fully electric car, and Musk is heavily invested in solar energy, which would be the primary source of power for any Martian outpost. Therefore, Musk is in an ideal position to supply the electrical machinery and solar arrays required to advance a Mars colony.
While NASA is often painfully slow and sluggish, entrepreneurs believe they can introduce fresh, innovative ideas and techniques quickly. “There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA,” Musk said. “Failure is an option here [at SpaceX]. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
Musk is perhaps the contemporary face of the space program: brash, fearless, and iconoclastic in addition to being innovative and smart. He is a new kind of rocket scientist, the entrepreneur-billionaire-scientist. He is often compared to Tony Stark, the alter ego of Iron Man, a suave industrialist and inventor who is at home with business tycoons and engineers alike. As a matter of fact, part of the first sequel to Iron Man was filmed at the SpaceX headquarters in Los Angeles, and when visitors drive up to SpaceX, they are greeted with a life-size statue of Tony Stark in his Iron Man suit. Musk even influenced a space-themed runway collection at New York Fashion Week by menswear designer Nick Graham, who explained, “They say Mars is the new black—it’s incredibly top-of-the-mind trending in terms of everyone’s ambitions. The idea was to show the Fall 2025 collection, based on the year Elon Musk wants to get the first people on Mars.”
Musk summed up his philosophy by saying, “I really don’t have any other motivation for personally accumulating assets,” he said, “except to be able to make the biggest contribution I can to making life multiplanetary.” Peter Diamandis of the XPRIZE has said, “There’s a much bigger driver here than just profitability. [Musk’s] vision is intoxicating and powerful.”
NEW SPACE RACE TO MARS
All this talk about Mars, of course, was bound to stir up rivalry. The CEO of Boeing, Dennis Muilenburg, has said, “I’m convinced that the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding on a Boeing rocket.” It was probably no accident that he made these startling remarks one week after Musk announced his Mars plans. Musk may be grabbing all the headlines, but Boeing has a long tradition of successful space travel. It was Boeing, after all, that manufactured the booster rocket for the famed Saturn V, which took our astronauts to the moon, and Boeing currently has the contract to build the massive SLS booster rocket, the foundation of NASA’s planned mission to Mars.
Supporters of NASA have pointed out that public funding was crucial for major space projects of the past, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the jewels of the space program. Would private investors have funded such a risky endeavor with no hope of generating returns for stockholders? The backing of large, bureaucratic organizations may be necessary for ventures that are too expensive for private enterprise or have little hope of generating revenue.
There are advantages to each of these competing programs. Boeing’s SLS, which can lift 130 metric tons into outer space, can send bigger payloads than Musk’s Falcon Heavy, which can carry 64 metric tons. However, the Falcon may be more affordable. At present, SpaceX has the cheapest rates for launching satellites into space at about a thousand dollars per pound, or 10 percent of the usual rate for commercial space vehicles. Prices could drop further as SpaceX perfects its reusable rocket technology.
NASA has found itself in an enviable position, with two suitors bidding for a plum project. They can, in principle, still decide between the SLS and the Falcon Heavy. When asked about the challenge from Boeing, Musk said, “I think it’s good for there to be multiple paths to Mars…to have multiple irons in the fire…You know, the more the better.”
NASA spokesmen have said, “NASA applauds all those who want to take the next giant leap—and advance the journey to Mars…This journey will require the best and the brightest…At NASA, we’ve worked hard over the past several years to develop a sustainable Mars exploration plan, and to build a coalition of international and private sector partners to support this vision.” In the end, the spirit of competition will likely prove an asset for the space program.
There is some poetic justice to this contest, however. The space program, by forcing the miniaturization of electronics, opened the doors to the computer revolution. Inspired by their childhood memories of the space program, the billionaires created by the computer revolution are coming full circle and putting some of their wealth back into space exploration.
The Europeans, Chinese, and Russians have also expressed a desire to send a manned mission to Mars in the 2040 to 2060 timeframe, but funding for these projects remains problematic. It is fairly certain, however, that the Chinese will reach the moon in 2025. Chairman Mao once lamented that China was so backward it could not launch a potato into space. Things have changed completely since then. Improving on rockets bought from Russia in the 1990s, China has already launched ten “taikonauts” into orbit and is proceeding with ambitious plans to construct a space station and develop a rocket as powerful as the Saturn V by 2020. In its various five-year plans, China is carefully following the steps pioneered by the Russians and the United States.
Even the most hopeful visionaries are fully aware that there will be a host of dangers facing astronauts on a Martian journey. Musk, when asked whether he would personally like to visit Mars, acknowledged that the probability of dying on the first trip to the planet is “quite high” and said that he would like to see his children grow up.
SPACE TRAVEL IS NO SUNDAY PICNIC
The list of the potential hazards of a manned mission to Mars is formidable.
The first is catastrophic failure. We are more than fifty years into the space age, yet the probability of a disastrous rocket accident is still around 1 percent. There are hundreds of moving parts inside a rocket, and any one of them may cause a mission to fail. The space shuttle had two horrendous accidents out of a total of 135 launches, or about a 1.5 percent failure rate. The overall fatality rate of the space program has been 3.3 percent. Of the 544 people who have ever been in space, 18 have died. Only the very courageous are willing to sit on top of a million pounds of rocket fuel to be blasted into space at twenty-five thousand miles per hour, not knowing if they are coming back.
There is also the “Mars jinx.” Three-fourths or so of our space probes sent to Mars never make it there at all, mainly because of the vast distance, problems with radiation, mechanical failure, loss of communication, micrometeors, etc. Even so, the United States has a much better track record in this regard than the Russians, who have suffered fourteen failed attempts to reach the Red Planet.
Another issue is the length of the journey to Mars. Going to the moon with the Apollo program only took three days, but a one-way voyage to Mars will take upward of nine months, and a complete round-trip will take roughly two years. I once toured the NASA training center outside Cleveland, Ohio, where teams of scientists analyze the stresses of space travel. Astronauts suffer from muscle and bone atrophy caused by weightlessness when they spend extended periods in outer space. Our bodies are fine-tuned to live on a planet with the gravity of Earth. If the Earth were even a few percentage points larger or smaller, our bodies would have to be redesigned to survive on it. The longer we are in outer space, the more our bodies deteriorate. Russian astronaut Valeri Polyakov, after setting a world record for being in space for 437 days, could barely crawl out of his space capsule when he returned.
An interesting fact is that astronauts become several inches taller in outer space due to the expansion of their spinal columns. Once back on Earth, their height reverts back to normal. Astronauts may also lose 1 percent of their bone mass per month in space. To slow down this loss, they have to exercise at least two hours a day on a treadmill. Still, it can take astronauts a full year to rehabilitate after a six-month tour on the International Space Station—and sometimes, they never fully recover their bone mass. (A further consequence of weightlessness that wasn’t taken seriously until recently is damage to the optic nerve. In the past, astronauts noted that their eyesight deteriorated after long missions in space. Detailed scans of their eyes show that their optic nerves are often inflamed, probably due to pressure from the fluid of the eye.)
In the future, our space capsules may have to spin so that the centrifugal force can generate artificial gravity. We experience this effect every time we go to a carnival and enter the spinning cylinder of a Rotor or Gravitron. The centrifugal force produces artificial gravity and pushes us back to the cylinder’s wall. At present, a spinning spaceship would be too expensive to produce, and the concept is difficult to execute. The rotating cabin would have to be quite large, or else the centrifugal force would not be evenly distributed, and astronauts would get seasick and disoriented.
There is also the problem of radiation in space, especially from the solar wind and cosmic rays. We often forget that the Earth is blanketed by a thick atmosphere and covered with a magnetic field that helps to shield us. At sea level, our atmosphere absorbs most of the deadly radiation, but even on a normal plane ride across the United States, we receive an extra millirem of radiation per hour in the jet—the equivalent of a dental X-ray every time we take a cross-country flight. Astronauts traveling to Mars would have to pass through radiation belts that surround the Earth, which could expose them to heavy doses of radiation and increase their susceptibility to disease, premature aging, and cancer. Being on a two-year interplanetary trip, an astronaut would receive about two hundred times the radiation of a twin who stayed on the Earth. (However, this statistic should be placed in context. The astronaut’s lifetime risk of developing cancer would rise from 21 percent to 24 percent. While not insignificant, this threat pales in comparison to the far-greater danger faced by an astronaut from a simple accident or mishap.)
Cosmic rays from outer space are sometimes so intense that astronauts can actually see tiny flashes of light as subatomic particles ionize the fluid in their eyeballs. I’ve interviewed several astronauts who have described these flashes, which look beautiful but can cause serious radiation damage to the eye.
And 2016 brought bad news concerning the effects of radiation on the brain. Scientists at the University of California, Irvine, exposed mice to large doses of radiation equivalent to the amount that would be absorbed during a two-year ride through deep space. They found evidence of irreversible brain damage. The mice showed behavioral problems and became agitated and dysfunctional. At the very least, these results confirm that astronauts must be adequately shielded in deep space.
In addition, astronauts have to worry about giant solar flares. In 1972, when Apollo 17 was being readied for a trip to the moon, a powerful solar flare hit the lunar surface. If the astronauts had been walking on the moon at the time, they might have been killed. Unlike cosmic rays, which are random, solar flares can be tracked from the Earth, so it is possible to warn astronauts several hours ahead of time. There have been incidents where the astronauts on the International Space Station were notified of approaching solar flares and ordered to move to better-protected sections of the Space Station.
Then, there are the micrometeors, which can tear the outer hull of a spacecraft. Close examination of the space shuttle reveals the impact of numerous micrometeorites on its tiled surface. The force of a micrometeor the size of a postage stamp traveling at forty thousand miles per hour would be enough to rip a hole in the rocket and cause rapid depressurization. It may be wise to separate space modules into different chambers, so that a punctured section can be rapidly sealed off from the others.
Psychological difficulties will present a different kind of obstacle. Being locked up in a tiny, cramped capsule with a small group of people for an extended period of time will be challenging. Even with a battery of psychological tests, we cannot definitively predict how—or whether—people will cooperate. Ultimately, your life may depend on someone who gets on your nerves.
GOING TO MARS
After months of intense speculation, in 2017 NASA and Boeing finally revealed the details of the plan to reach Mars. Bill Gerstenmaier, of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, revealed a surprisingly ambitious timetable for the steps necessary to send our astronauts to the Red Planet.
First, after years of testing, the SLS/Orion rocket will be launched in 2019. It will be fully automatic, carrying no astronauts, but will orbit the moon. Four years later, after a fifty-year gap, astronauts will finally return to the moon. The mission will last three weeks, but it will just orbit around the moon, not land on the lunar surface. This is mainly to test the reliability of the SLS/Orion system rather than to explore the moon.
But there is an unexpected twist to NASA’s new plan that surprised many analysts. The SLS/Orion system is actually a warm-up act. It will serve as the main link by which astronauts will leave the Earth and reach outer space, but an entirely new set of rockets will take us to Mars.
First, NASA envisions building the Deep Space Gateway, which resembles the International Space Station, except it is smaller and orbits the moon, not the Earth. Astronauts will live on the Deep Space Gateway, which will act as a refueling and resupply station for missions to Mars and the asteroids. It will be the basis for a permanent human presence in space. Construction of this lunar space station will begin in 2023 and it will be operational by 2026. Four SLS missions will be required to build it.
But the main act is the actual rocket that will send astronauts to Mars. It is an entirely new system, called the Deep Space Transport, which will be constructed mainly in outer space. In 2029, the Deep Space Transport will have its first major test, circling around the moon for three hundred to four hundred days. This will provide valuable information about long-term missions in space. Finally, after rigorous testing, the Deep Space Transport will send our astronauts to orbit Mars by 2033.
NASA’s program has been praised by many experts because it is methodical, with a step-by-step plan to build an elaborate infrastructure on the moon.
However, NASA’s plan stands in sharp contrast to Musk’s vision. NASA’s plan is carefully fleshed out and involves the creation of a permanent infrastructure in lunar orbit, but it is slow, perhaps taking a decade longer than Musk’s plan. SpaceX bypasses the lunar space station entirely and blasts directly to Mars, perhaps as early as 2022. One drawback, however, of Musk’s plan is that the Dragon space capsule is considerably smaller than the Deep Space Transport. Time will tell which approach or combination of approaches is better.
FIRST TRIP TO MARS
Because more details are being revealed concerning the first Mars mission, it is now possible to speculate on the steps necessary to reach the Red Planet. Let us trace how NASA’s plan may unfold over the next few decades.
The first people on the historic mission to Mars are probably alive today, perhaps learning about astronomy in high school. They will be among the hundreds of people who are expected to volunteer for the first mission to another planet. After rigorous training, perhaps four candidates will be carefully chosen for their skills and experience, probably including a seasoned pilot, an engineer, a scientist, and a doctor.
NASA’s Deep Space Gateway will orbit the moon and serve as a fuel and supply station for missions to Mars and beyond. Credit 2
Sometime around 2033, after a series of anxious interviews with the press, they will finally climb aboard the Orion space capsule. Although the Orion has 50 percent more room than the original Apollo capsule, things will still be cramped inside, but it doesn’t matter, since the trip to the moon will last only three days. When the spaceship finally blasts off, they will feel vibrations from the intense burning of rocket fuel from the SLS booster rocket. The entire trip so far looks and feels very similar to the original Apollo mission.
But here, the similarity ends. From this point, NASA envisions a radical departure from the past. As they enter lunar orbit, the astronauts will see the Deep Space Gateway, the world’s first space station orbiting the moon. The astronauts will dock with the Gateway and rest a bit.
They will then transfer to the Deep Space Transport, which looks like no other spacecraft in history. The spaceship and crew’s quarters resemble a long pencil, with an eraser at one end (which contains the capsule in which the astronauts will live and work). Along the pencil, there are series of gigantic arrays of unusually long, narrow solar panels, so, from a distance, the rocket begins to resemble a sailboat. While the Orion capsule weighs about twenty-five tons, the Transport weighs forty-one.
The Deep Space Transport will be their home for the next two years. This capsule is much bigger than the Orion and will give astronauts enough room to stretch a bit. This is important, since they have to exercise daily to prevent muscle and bone loss, which could cripple them when they reach Mars.
Once on board the Deep Space Transport, they will turn on the rocket’s engines. But instead of being jolted by a powerful thrust and watching gigantic flames shoot from the back of the rocket, the ion engines will accelerate smoothly, gradually building up speed. Staring outside their windows, the astronauts will only see the gentle luminous glow of hot ions being steadily emitted from the ship’s engines.
The Deep Space Transport uses a new type of propulsion system to send astronauts through space, called solar electric propulsion. The huge solar panels capture sunlight and convert it to electricity. This is used to strip away the electrons from a gas (like xenon), creating ions. An electric field then shoots these charged ions out one end of the engine, creating thrust. Unlike chemical engines, which can only fire for a few minutes, ion engines can slowly accelerate for months or even years.
Then begins the long, boring trip to Mars itself, which will take about nine months. The main problem facing the astronauts is boredom, so they will have to constantly exercise, play games to keep alert, do calculations, talk to their loved ones, surf the web, etc. Other than routine course corrections, there is not much else to do during the actual voyage. Occasionally, however, they might be required to do some spacewalks in order to make minor repairs or replace worn parts. As the journey progresses, however, the time it takes to send radio messages to Earth gradually increases, eventually reaching about twenty-four minutes. This may prove a bit frustrating for the astronauts, who are used to instantaneous communication.
As they gaze out their windows, they will gradually see the Red Planet come into focus, looming in front of them. Activity aboard the spaceship will rapidly quicken as the astronauts begin to make preparations. At this point, they will fire their rockets to slow their spacecraft down so they can gently enter into orbit around Mars.
From space, they will see an entirely different panorama than seen on the Earth. Instead of blue oceans, green tree-covered mountains, and the lights of cities, they will see a barren, desolate landscape, full of red deserts, majestic mountains, gigantic canyons that are much larger than the ones on Earth, and huge dust storms, some of which can engulf the entire planet.
Once in orbit, they will enter the Mars capsule and separate from the main spacecraft, which will continue to orbit the planet. As their capsule enters into the Martian atmosphere, the temperature will rise dramatically, but the heat shield will absorb the intense heat generated by air friction. Eventually, the heat shield will be ejected, and the capsule will then fire its retrorockets and slowly descend onto the surface of Mars.
Once they exit the capsule and walk on the surface of Mars, they will be pioneers opening up a new chapter in the history of the human race, taking a historic step toward realizing the goal of making humanity a multiplanet species.
They will spend several months on the Red Planet before the Earth is in the right alignment for the return trip. This will give them time to scout the terrain, do experiments, such as looking for traces of water and microbial life, and set up solar panels for power. One possible objective might be to drill for ice in the permafrost, since underground ice may one day become a vital source of drinking water, as well as oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel.
After their mission is complete, they will go back into their space capsule and then blast off. (Because of Mars’s weak gravity, the capsule requires much less fuel than it would to leave the Earth.) They will dock with the main ship in orbit, and then the astronauts will prepare for the nine-month journey back to the Earth.
Upon their return, they will splash down somewhere in the ocean. Once back on terra firma, they will be celebrated as heroes who took the first step toward establishing a new branch of humanity.
As you can see, we will face many challenges on the road to the Red Planet. But with the public’s enthusiasm, and with the commitment of NASA and the private sector, it is likely that we will achieve a manned mission to Mars in the next decade or two. This will open up the next challenge: to transform Mars into a new home.