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In a visionary presentation, SpaceX founder Chief Engineer Elon Musk, outlined the company’s bold strategy for building the first city on Mars within this century, revealing plans to deploy a massive fleet of Starships to send 1 million people to live on the Red Planet. 

The scale of the endeavor is unprecedented, with SpaceX aiming to send between 1,000 to 1,200 Starships every two years to accomplish the mission. “[…] Roughly every 2 years thousands of [Star]ships depart from Earth to Mars, it will look like ‘Battlestar Galactica’ but in a good way,” said Musk, “…It would be an incredible thing to see these thousands of ships departing every 26 months for Mars.” 

Central to SpaceX’s Mars fleet operations is the monumental task of transporting cargo and personnel to the Martian surface. Musk disclosed that the company intends to launch a staggering 1.5 million tons into orbit every two years, with approximately 250,000 tons of cargo destined to land on the Red Planet. People on Mars will need so many things to survive in the planet’s harsh environment, from food to medicine, as well as materials to build homes and greenhouses to grow food. Each Mars-bound Starship would carry a payload of 250 tons, and SpaceX would deploy around 1,000 Starships for the mission.

Achieving this monumental goal requires meticulous planning and execution. SpaceX anticipates conducting six orbital launches per Mars vehicle, necessitating five refueling tanker missions for each Starship. The ships to refuel Starship in space will be like giant “tubes” designed for ship-to-ship propellant transfer. To meet the rigorous timeline, the company aims to conduct approximately 10 launches per day for two years leading up to the fleet’s departure. See the official SpaceX graphics below.

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The logistics of managing such a vast fleet in orbit are impressive. SpaceX envisions a daily routine where two Mars-bound Starships are fueled up and await departure. Over the course of a year, this process would see the accumulation of 500 Starships in orbit, poised for the journey to Mars.

Upon arrival, the first wave of Starships will be tasked with unloading cargo and establishing the groundwork for the first Martian colony. Musk emphasized the necessity of risk reduction, proposing a phased approach with smaller waves of unmanned cargo Starships preceding the main fleet. These precursor missions, comprising approximately ten Starships in the initial wave and a hundred in the subsequent one, will lay the groundwork for subsequent arrivals, including the establishment of Starship propellant creation systems that will require resource extraction from the Martian surface.

Starship’s Raptor engine is designed with Mars in mind, as discussed in the previous Cosmic Chronicles story. Raptors are fueled by a combination of cryogenic liquid Methane (CH4) and liquid oxygen (LOX) which can be created on Mars by extracting subsurface ice-water and carbon dioxide from the Red Planet’s atmosphere. The Sabatier reaction (or Sabatier process) produces methane (CH4) and water (H2O) from a reaction of hydrogen (H) with carbon dioxide (CO2) at elevated temperatures. Hydrogen can be extracted from water through a process called Electrolysis.

The unveiling of SpaceX’s ambitious Mars colonization plan marks the beginning in humanity’s quest to expand the light of consciousness. The company is actively working on the spacecraft’s development at its Starbase facility in Boca Chica Beach, Texas, and is preparing for its next flight test.

Watch SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s presentation in the video linked below.

At Starbase, @ElonMusk provided an update on the company’s plans to send humanity to Mars, the best destination to begin making life multiplanetary pic.twitter.com/PiX8XOgQs5

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 6, 2024

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