The 46-year-old South African-born founder and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, was listed by Forbes as one of the most powerful people in the world, and with a 13.9 billion dollar net worth, it is easy to see why. So when Elon Musk comes up with a vision for colonizing Mars with humans and “making life multi-planetary”, people actually take notice and listen to him. His companies like SolarCity, Tesla, and SpaceX seemed to have given Musk the path to be able to achieve that specific goal.
Musk unveiled his grand plan in 2016, explaining his SpaceX vision to populate the red planet with humans because he believes we must become a multi-planet species to survive. A year later, Musk is still working out the kinks and specifics of his latest plans for beyond Earth. We have all seen the advancements that SpaceX has made over the past years, making aerospace history with the successful launching and landing of used rockets. As crazy and as far-fetched as it may seem, if anyone can get us to Mars and hopefully back, Elon Musk is probably the guy with the ways and means to do it. He also believes that many years from now the cost of space travel to Mars might only be a mere $200,000. Around the median price of a house in the United States today. Wow, this really creates a dilemma. What to do? Go to Mars for vacation or buy a house?
5 EARTH’S A GONNER
Musk does not have a prophecy that doomsday is around the corner and coming soon, but he has stated his belief quite adamantly that we can’t stay on our beloved planet Earth forever. He feels there will be some eventual extinction event that takes place on earth, so what’s left but to hit the space superhighway and get out of Dodge. He wants us all to agree that the direction we need to take is to become a space-bearing race. He wants to create a self-sustaining city, not just an outpost, which will literally be its own planet. I guess like the eventually extinct hermit crabs, we will just take our homes with us everywhere we go. Wow, that’s pretty convenient.
4 MARS IS THE NEXT BEST PLACE TO BE
Musk feels our options are limited within our solar system so Mars is the best choice. Earth and Mars are similar in many ways. The day lengths are about the same and it does have some sunlight. It’s a bit cold, but if we warm it up just a bit we can possibly make liquid oceans and a thicker atmosphere. Its atmosphere is mostly CO2, so just by compressing the air plants can grow. Lifting heavy objects would be much easier to do on Mars too because its gravity is about 37% of that of Earth’s. The moons of Saturn and Jupiter are way too far from the sun and us, and Venus is just a big hot acid bath, so Mars is a dream compared to our other options.
3 HE’S GOING TO START BUILDING THE FIRST SPACESHIP NEXT YEAR
In just a few months time, construction of the ‘BFR’ will begin in early 2018. Formally known as SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) Musk gave it a new name, the BFR standing for Big F–king Rocket (seriously). His optimistic projected launch time is for it to happen in about five years and his goal is by 2024 to have flown to Mars at least four times. He is also very anxious to get this project off the ground (pun intended) because this spacecraft will also be able to travel around Earth from any place in as little as an hour.
2 HIS NEW SYSTEM WILL REPLACE ALL OF SPACEX’S OTHER VEHICLES
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets and it’s next-generation bigger brother Falcon Heavy, will no longer get any of the company’s resources poured into them for improvements. These heavy-lift launch vehicles with their two stages will now be put on the back burner. Instead, all effort, time and money will go into building the new BFR spacecraft. The proven track record of the Falcon 9 series, with a 42 out of 44 primary mission success rate, is really quite an achievement. The people who have built it and have made it the successful series that it has become will now focus their know-how on getting to us to Mars.
1 SATELLITE LAUNCHES & ISS TRANSPORTS FIRST
SpaceX makes their money from a large and very diverse group of customers. Some of the many different types of launch missions include working with the United States government for national security purposes, science missions and resupplying the International Space Station (ISS). Just recently the Dragon capsule on top of Falcon 9 rocket brought a whopping 6,400 lbs. of supplies to the ISS. A Supercomputer called the Spaceborne Computer from Hewlett Packard was sent to the space station to test how computers hold up in space. Also, a variety of items needed by the astronauts, such as toilet paper, fresh socks, tortillas and even Picante sauce have been delivered there.
Sources : http://www.theclever.com/15-reasons-elon-musk-wants-to-make-mars-the-next-earth/