제 7 호 The Space Immigration Plan to Mars
KICKER: SCIENCE (SPACE EMIGRATION)
The Space Immigration Plan to Mars
Mars Will be Another Option to Live
By Dong-Wook Kim, Reporter
SpaceX, a company that Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk set up, has launched a missile capsule recently. The launched missile was destined to reach space with two astronauts. Amazingly, the launched projectile was successfully collected from Earth after shooting the missile capsule. SpaceX also announced that they will send civilians to the Moon by 2024 and planned to emigrate the human race to Mars ultimately. How can SpaceX plan this fairy-tale like planet immigration? In other words, how specifically are they planning to do a giant emigration?
What is SpaceX?
Space travel has always been an unsolved task that humanity should manage to succeed. Until then, Tesla’s largest shareholder, Elon Musk, established SpaceX on the 6th of May in 2002. He has dreamed of going to space, because he knew someday, the resources in Earth will be depleted and that is not the right direction for the human race living on Earth. It was the moment that a private enterprise has started to dive into the space industry. Their ambitious plan was to migrate most of mankind living on Earth.
Another goal for SpaceX is to significantly save the cost for space transportation. Since SpaceX is interested in going to space, it is natural for them to be interested in the cost of going to space. However, the cost for the space experiment is known to be astronomical. In 1989, when the US fired a space rocket, they spent about 500 billion dollars for a single launch. This made a lot of countries to cut their budgets for exploring space. This made SpaceX to do research on how to save the cost of space travel.
SpaceX's Spacecraft Falcon9
In 2008, SpaceX launched their first rocket which uses liquid fuel. Its name is Falcon 1, and it is reported that the rocket has entered Earth’s orbit successfully. Well, this was just a start for SpaceX. In 2010, SpaceX cooperated with NASA to make Falcon 9 to enter the orbit and for the Falcon Heavy, Dragon, sequentially. For Falcon Heavy, the projectiles of the rockets are used again, which made SpaceX to reduce the cost up to 1/3.
How is SpaceX going to Carry Out the Plan to Live on Mars?
We all have understood how fast SpaceX is continuing to succeed at launching rockets. The question is, how is SpaceX planning to migrate most of mankind to Mars? How can rockets travel to Mars with hundreds or thousands of people aboard?
Mars does not have a typical temperature for humans to live in and also Mars is not a suitable environment for humans who are living on Earth. However, part of Mars is covered with ice, and atmosphere which is quite similar to early Earth. Elon insists that if we could warm Mars up, Mars will be covered with a thick atmosphere and liquid oceans. Additionally, he says that Mars is about half again as far from the Sun as Earth, so decent sunlight will be provided which means that we don’t have to think about global warming. The atmosphere consists of CO2 with some nitrogen and Argon, which means that humans can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere to the elements that we use on Earth.
He also talked about the procedures from landing on Mars to building a civilization. SpaceX would start off by sending Space commissions to Mars without any foundation on it. They will arrive on Mars by sending the spaceship up to orbit just like they did with the rockets. There is a time constraint in traveling to Mars, which is two years. The moment that the Earth and Mars become the closest distance which means there is a chance to fly to Mars every two years. By 2024, SpaceX will try to fly four ships to Mars to find the best source of water. After finding water, they will send off 6 extra spaceships to install a large array of solar panels, and they will create a machine to convert the natural minerals to store for needs.
The foundation will get bigger and when the resources get abundant, SpaceX will gradually send multiple ships to start building up the city. Until 2050, SpaceX said that they will make ships that can carry up to a thousand people to Mars. This will make cities expand as more spacecraft land on Mars and eventually terraforming Mars.
Space Plan of Elon Musk's SpaceX to Build Colonization on Mars
Elon Musk’s SpaceX vs Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin
There is another private enterprise that can be comparable with SpaceX. Blue Origin was founded by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and at the same time who is officially known to be the richest person on the Earth. As one of the space developing companies, Blue Origin has also presented about going to space. Blue Origin’s focus is slightly different to SpaceX’s migration. They said that Mars does not have a better environment than Earth. They say that Mars is farther away then we think it is.
Jeff Bezos introduced about the “manufactured” world floating in space. This world has a massive machine to create gravity for people to feel the same as on Earth. The world consists of a lot of structures. Basically, this world is like a floating halo except it is really big. Inside, there will be high transportation for shipping products, agricultural areas and even drones.
Blue Origin's Plan to Live on Space "Manufactured World'
Migration to Mars has been expected to solve the population problem on Earth from 80 years ago. Back then, humanity thought it was not possible to think beyond the Earth. Due to all the geniuses on Earth, the great dream of the human race is getting close. Now, or sometime soon, I hope there will be a day when we can add the planet’s name when we write down our addresses.
Sources:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/08/tech/spacex-mars-profit-scn/index.html
http://thesciencelife.com/archives/237
https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20191120002200075
https://www.cnet.com/news/book-a-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-ride-online-for-as-cheap-as-1-million/
