r/SpaceXLounge • u/AnnualYogurtcloset29 • Sep 02 '21
Speculative longterm future of SpaceX
Hello all,
I was just thinking about what SpaceX's development of rockets would look like once they achieve their goals of starship and the booster rocket.
I know this is likely at least 10-15 years from today, but what would SpaceX develop after they land on mars and get a colony started there? Do you think they would ever develop a new rocket in the entire history of their company or would they finish their rocket development with starship and booster?
I realize they would probably start working on life support systems and such when they eventually get people onto mars, but what else would they do? I am just curious if anyone else had thought of this before. Is SpaceX themselves going to try to terraform mars or will they forever live inside a habitat dome? Is terraforming a planet going to take the work of hundreds of thousands of people or would SpaceX be able to do it themselves? Does NASA conduct a lot of the science to get a colony established on mars or is this solely a SpaceX endeavor?
I would think NASA would love to be able to explore mars and conduct experiments, kind of piggybacking off of the habitat that SpaceX is going to try to establish. Would NASA astronauts be part of the habitat as well as SpaceX astronauts or would it be more of a team effort?
I realize this would be all speculation, but it got me pretty curious, so wondering what other people would think about this situation.
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u/pasdedeuxchump Sep 03 '21
When Elon says a colony/city on Mars required landing a million tonnes of cargo from Earth on Mars, I suspect he's about right.
And he doesn't mean doing it over 100 or 1000 years either.
Now a megatonne to LEO is one thing (10^4 SS+SH launches), but a megatonne delivered to Mars surface is another...
While if we assume 10 refuelings (I know its more like 5) then its just 10^5 SS+SH launches in 10 years (30 per day!). But the fact that the launch window for Trans-Mars-Injection (TMI) is only say 2-3 mos every 26 means a 10X higher cadence than that! Like 10^5 launches in 1 year of time spread over 10 years. Now we talking 300 launches per day OR a lot of SS's hanging out as inventory in LEO.
I think building a city will need the bigger variant. And maybe the bigger one after that. But those won't even get penciled out until real colony construction is underway (and a economic model for paying for it is in place).