SpaceX is spending “10s of millions” of company funds on an ambitious architecture to fulfill founder Elon Musk’s dream of setting up a self-sustaining human “civilization” on Mars, with a development cost he estimated at $10 billion.
At the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) here Sept. 27, Musk presented a Hollywood-slick outline of his engineers’ plan to use reusable boosters to launch huge tanker spacecraft filled with superchilled cryopropellants to low Earth orbit (LEO), where they would fuel a massive human “spaceship” for a relatively fast trip to Mars.
The spacecraft would be able to take 450 tons to Mars – at least 100 settlers and the cargo they need, for $100,000 apiece. The reusable boosters would enable multiple refuelings, delivering several tankers full of propellant in rapid succession (see illustration) to fill a waiting spaceship launched the same way, with the crew on board or transferred later, Musk said.
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