SpaceX’s INSANE Plan to Get 1 Million People on Mars by 2050

SpaceX’s INSANE plan to get 1 million people on Mars by 2050

SpaceX has been at the center of the private space race for years now. It has become the leading private space company in the world. Being one of the first companies to master reusable rockets, SpaceX has completely revolutionized the space industry.  

Personally led by Elon Musk, SpaceX is now dedicated to developing an interplanetary rocket, the Starship System. Starship is the first rocket being designed that can carry humans to another planet. It is the first part of Elon Musk's plan to colonize the red planet, Mars. Today we will be looking at SpaceX’s insane plan to get 1 million people on Mars by 2050. 

SpaceX insane plan to produce 1000 Starships 

Setting up a thriving colony on Mars just doesn’t mean getting 1 million people there. But it also means transporting millions of tons of cargo and equipment. This cargo would be essential to creating a habitable colony on Mars. According to Elon Musk, a self-sustaining city on Mars would likely require somewhere in the region of one million tons of cargo.

Each Starship has the capacity to send 100 tons of cargo or 100 people per flight per ship. Since 1 ship can only do so much, we need 1000s of Starships to actually get the million tons of cargo from Earth to Mars. This is where Elon Musk’s plans to produce a fleet of 1000 starships per year came from. 

But why Mars?

But why exactly Mars? Why has Elon Musk chosen the red planet as the first planet to be colonized by humans? 

Well, there are many reasons why a colony on Mars would be ideal. The first reason being that Mars is the closest planet to Earth in the solar system. This means it will take less time to get to Mars from Earth. We will also be able to deliver cargo quicker as well. We already have experience sending things to Mars. USA and China both have sent unmanned ground rovers to the Martian surface already. 

But that is not the only reason. There are other ideal things about Mars as well. For starters, Mars gets a decent amount of sunlight. Mars is in the zone that Astrophysicists like to call the goldilocks zone. 

That means that Mars is not too close to the Sun like mercury that any living thing would be burned to a crisp. But at the same time, Mars is not so far away to not get enough heat for living things to survive. Mars is, on average, a little bit colder than Earth since it is a little bit far away than Earth from the Sun. 

The Martian atmosphere is primarily CO2 with some nitrogen and argon and a few other trace elements. According to SpaceX, we can technically grow plants on Mars by compressing the atmosphere. This is called terraforming. Terraforming, as the name sounds, means ‘earth-shaping.’ This is the act of deliberately modifying the atmosphere, temperature, surface topography, or ecology of a planet, moon, or other body to be similar to the environment of Earth and make it habitable. The term is mostly attributed to works of science fiction. But who knows, one day, terraforming might become a reality.  

NASA Program to Train people 

If it feels like the Mars colonization mission is something very far in the future, it actually isn’t. We are currently we are closer to 2050 than we are to 1995. In fact, NASA is now recruiting candidates for a year-long simulated Mars mission. NASA plans to study highly motivated individuals and how they respond under the rigor of a long-duration, ground-based simulation. 

NASA will use data from these missions to prepare for the eventual colonization of Mars. 

The series of missions are called Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog. The program includes three one-year Mars surface simulations based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The analogs will support research to develop methods and technologies to prevent and resolve potential problems on future human spaceflight missions to the Moon and Mars.

The lessons NASA learns in this simulation will help them prepare future astronauts that will be stepping on Mars.