The billionaire founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk has revealed a

new plan to colonize Moon and Mars with giant reusable

spaceships. He provided an update on their Mars colonization
plan at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) Notes
1 in Adelaide, Australia this week. Musk plans to send 1
million people to Mars using BFR Notes 2, and “making life
multiplanetary”. He has highly ambitious plans, like launching
and landing at least two uncrewed cargo ships on Mars as
early as 2022.

The newly announced BFR is smaller than the one Musk

revealed at the same event last year, 106 meters (348 feet) tall
and carrying capacity of 150 tonnes compared to the previous
design’s 122 meters (400 feet) and 300 tonnes. But, (naturally)
it’s way cheaper than the previously announced version, and
according to Musk, “lower cost is the biggest update”. And,
still, it is more powerful than any of SpaceX’s or NASA’s
other planned rockets.

Table of Contents
 “Making Life Multiplanetary”: here are the higlights
o Tests
o Key concepts
o The Evolution of SpaceX Rockets
 Falcon 1
 Falcon 9
 Falcon Heavy
 BFR
 BFS
o Rocket payload capabilities
o Rocket Launch Costs
o The Value of Orbital Refilling
o Funding the Mars voyages
o Lunar Surface Missions and Building a Permanent Moon
Base
o Mars Transportation Architecture
o Initial Mars Mission Goals
o Later goals: building up a Martian city, terraforming Mars
 o Rapid transportation by spaceship between two points on
Earth?
 “Making Life Multiplanetary” – The full presentation
 Notes
 Sources

“Making Life Multiplanetary”: here

are the higlights
“The future is vastly more exciting and interesting
if we’re spacefaring civilization and a multi-planet
species than if we’re not.”
–Elon Musk

Tests
 Liquid oxygen tank test. Making the spaceship light is
very important. So, SpaceX built a huge carbon-fiber
tank which can hold 1,200 tons of liquid oxygen. The
pressure test was successful. Then, to see when it’d
burst, they threw it about 300 feet (91 meters) in the air
and the tank landed in the ocean. Musk says “now we
have pretty good sense of what it takes to create a huge
carbon-fiber tank that can hold cryogenic liquid.”
 Engine test. The Raptor engine will be the highest
thrust-to-weight engine ever made. A total of 42 main
engine tests were carried out with over 1200 seconds of
firing. The longest test was 100 seconds, while 40
seconds is typical for Mars landing. The plan is to put 31
Raptor engines on the bottom of the main booster
(previously, it was announced that there would be 42
engines). They still able to give an extremely powerful
lift that enough to push the spaceship itself plus 150 tons
of payload into low-Earth orbit, about 250 miles (400
km) above the planet.
  Perfecting propulsive landing. In order to land on the
surfaces like Moon where there is no atmosphere or
Mars, where the atmosphere is too thin, you really need
to make the propulsive landing perfect. Musk says “now
we have 16 successful landings in a row. I think we can
get to a landing reliability that is on par with the safest
commercial airliners.” Previously, a Falcon 9 rocket
even landed on a barge in the middle of the ocean.

Perfecting propulsive landing.

Key concepts
 In order to build a self-sustaining base on Mars, or on
Moon, or elsewhere, you need ultimately many
thousands of spaceships which means you need many
launches per day.
 A key technology is automated rendezvous and landing
with very high precision. This would allow easy
refueling of the BFR in space. SpaceX has already
perfected this technique with its Dragon 1 spacecraft at
the International Space Station. Dragon 2, which will be
launched in 2018, will directly dock with the ISS with
zero human intervention.
  Dragon spacecraft also gave SpaceX a chance to work on
the heat shield technology. It is one of the key parts of
any planet colonizing system.

The Evolution of SpaceX Rockets

Evolution of SpaceX rockets

Falcon 1

Falcon 1 was a two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle privately

developed and manufactured by SpaceX during 2006–2009. It
was 21.3 meters (70 feet) tall with a diameter of 1.7 meters
(5.5 feet). Its weight was 38,555 kg (85,000 lb) with a payload
capacity of between 670 kg (1480 lb) to the Low Earth Orbit
(LEO)Notes 3 and 430 kg (990 lb) to the Sun-synchronous orbit
(SSO)Notes 4.

Falcon 1 achieved orbit in September 2008 on its fourth

attempt, with a mass simulator as a payload. On July 14, 2009,
it made its final flight (fifth launch overall) and successfully
delivered the Malaysian RazakSAT satellite to orbit. It was
also SpaceX’s first commercial launch. Following this last
launch, the Falcon 1 was retired and succeeded by Falcon 9.
Elon Musk says “9 years ago SpaceX nearly failed itself out
of existence: the first three launches failed. And fortunately
the fourth launch, which was, that was the last money that we
had for Falcon 1. That fourth launch worked.”
Falcon 9

Falcon 9 is also a two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle like

Falcon 1. It is named for its use of nine first-stage engines.
The “Full Thrust” version is 70 meters (230 feet) tall with a
diameter of 3.7 meters (12 feet). It can lift payloads of up to
22,800 kilograms (50,300 lb) to low Earth orbit, and up to
8,300 kg (18,300 lb) to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) Notes
5. The initial version 1.0 flew five times from June 2010 to
March 2013, version 1.1 flew fifteen times from September
2013 to January 2016, and the current Full Thrust version has
been in service since December 2015.
Falcon Heavy

Falcon Heavy, previously known as the Falcon 9 Heavy, is a

variant of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and will consist of a
strengthened Falcon 9 rocket core, with two additional Falcon
9 first stages as strap-on boosters. With the ability to lift into
orbit over 54 metric tons (119,000 lb) – a mass equivalent to a
737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage and fuel.
Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next
closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third
the cost. Falcon Heavy draws upon the proven heritage and
reliability of Falcon 9. Its first stage is composed of three
Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together
generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal
to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft. Only the Saturn V
moon rocket, last flown in 1973, delivered more payload to
orbit. Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry
humans into space and restores the possibility of flying
missions with crew to the Moon or Mars.
BFR

Announced in September 2017, it is SpaceX’s privately-

funded launch vehicle, spacecraft and space and ground
infrastructure system. The newly updated launch vehicle
system would be a 9-meter (30 ft) diameter technology, using
methalox-fueled Raptor rocket engine technology directed
initially at the Earth-orbit and cislunar near-Earth environment
before, later, being used for Mars missions. The updated
(smaller) BFR is 106 meters (348 feet) tall.
BFS
SpaceX’s interplanetary spaceship – BFS (“Big Fragging
Spaceship”).

SpaceX’s interplanetary spaceship is the BFS, or “Big

Fragging Spaceship”. Its diameter will be the same with the
BFR, 9 meters (30 feet). Its length will be 48 meters (158 feet)
with a dry mass of 85 metric tons (187,393 lb). Its propellant
mass will be 1,100 metric tons (2,425,087 lb). Maximum
ascent payload will be 150 tons (330,694 lb) with a typical
return payload of 50 tons (110,231 lb).
The upper half of the spaceship will be dedicated to the
payload, where enough cargo could fit to fill an Airbus A380
airplane (world’s largest passenger airliner which transports
hundreds of people on long-distance international flights). The
Mars transit configuration will have 40 cabins (each cabin can
hold up to 5-6 people, but Musk says there will be probably 2-
3 people in each cabin) and large common areas. So there will
be around 100 people per flight to Mars.
The fin-like small delta wing at the back the spaceship will
help stabilize the craft during launch and landing, no matter
where it goes in the solar system – Earth, the moon, Mars, or
even more distant worlds. That feature will expand the
mission envelope of the BFR spaceship whether it landing or
entering a planet or moon that has no atmosphere, a thin
atmosphere or a dense atmosphere. There will be also a solar
storm shelter and large entertainment areas.
For refilling, the two ships (BFS and the fuel carrier) will be
connected at their rear sections. They will use the same mating
interface. The propellant will be settled by milli-G
acceleration using control thrusters.

Rocket payload capabilities

Rocket payload cap

abilities to the Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

Here are the payload capabilities of various rocket systems to

the Low Earth Orbit (LEO). BFR will be the largest and the
most powerful rocket system ever developed. As of 2017, the
Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful
(highest total impulse) rocket ever brought to operational
status, and holds records for the heaviest payload launched
and largest payload capacity to LEO of 140,000 kg (310,000
lb). Saturn 5 used by NASA between 1967 and 1973 and took
us to the Moon.

Rocket Launch Costs

Rocket launch costs. BFR will be the cheapest.
According to Musk, the BFR will have the cheapest launch
cost – and the key is reusability. He says “it’s really crazy
that we build these sophisticated rockets, and then crash them
every time we fly. This is mad … reusability is absolutely
fundamental.”

He uses commercial aviation as an example. A small single-

engine turbo-prop aircraft costs $1 million to $2 million, he
says, and it even can’t get from Los Angeles to Australia. But
a fully reusable giant aircraft like a Boeing 747 -while initially
costs at least three times than a tiny expandable aircraft- costs
about $500,000 to charter the flight and can carry hundreds of
people.

The Value of Orbital Refilling

Musk says the orbital refilling is also extremely important. “If
you just fly BFR to orbit and don’t do any refilling, you get
150 tons to the Low Earth Orbit and have no fuels to get
anywhere else. However, if you send tankers and refill in
orbit, you can get 150 tons all the way to Mars.”
Funding the Mars voyages
Musk says once the system is built and shown to work, it
would begin to pay for itself in many possible ways. Here are
some of them:

 Launching satellites into orbit. “Having a 9-meter

diameter vehicle is a huge enabler for new satellites. We
can actually send something that is almost nine meters
in diameter to orbit. For example, if you want to have a
new HubbleNotes 6, you can send a mirror that has 10
times the surface area of the current HubbleNotes 6 as a
single unit, doesn’t have to unfold or anything. Or you
can send a large number of small satellites. You can also
collect old satellites and space debris.”

BFS putting a satellite into orbit

Servicing the International Space Station. BFS also can do

what Dragon spacecraftNotes 7 does today, with a much larger
volume: transporting cargo and people to the International
Space Station.
BFS servicing the International Space Station.

Lunar Surface Missions and Building a Permanent

Moon Base

Lunar surface missions

Musk says we could use the BFS for future Lunar surface
missions with no propellant production on the surface of
Moon. If we send the spacecraft to a high elliptic “parking
orbit”, we can go all the way to the Moon and back with a
trans-lunar fuel injection.

SpaceX BFS at the Lunar Base

Musk says “That (lunar surface missions) would enable the
creation of Moon Base AlphaNotes 8 or some sort of lunar
base. It’s 2017 – we should have a lunar base by nowNotes 9.
What the hell’s going on?”

Mars Transportation Architecture

Mars Transportation Architecture
In order to send one BFS to Mars, we’d need four
other spaceship (fuel tankers) launches. But with a fully
expendable vehicle, the cost would be relatively small to do
this.
1. Booster accelerates the BFS and tankers and returns back
to the launch site on Earth.
2. The ship flies into Earth orbit.
3. Tankers refill the ship and return to the Earth.
4. The refilled ship travels to Mars.
5. Ship refilled on Mars using local resources.
6. Ship performs Mars ascent and direct return to
Earth. “Because Mars has lower gravity than Earth, you
do not need a booster – you can go all the way from the
surface of Mars to the surface of Earth just using the
ship,“ says Musk.

Initial Mars Mission Goals

SpaceX is really pursuing an aggressive timeline to make the
BFR and BFS a reality. Here are the initial Mars mission
goals, as early as 2022. “We’ve already started building the
system,” says Musk. “The tooling for the main tanks has been
ordered. The facility is being built. We will start the
construction of the first ship around the second quarter of
2018. I feel fairly confident that we can complete the ship and
be ready for a launch in about five years.” Notes 10
The Earth has a shorter orbital period than Mars, it passes in
between Mars and the Sun approximately every 780 days, or 2
years and 50 days. So, in every two years, there’s an
opportunity to fly to Mars.
 2022: Cargo Missions (Musk says 2022 was not a typo)

o Land at least 2 cargo ships on Mars

o Confirm water resources and identify hazards
o Place power, mining, and life support infrastructure
for future flights

 2024: Cargo and Crew Missions

o 2 crew ships take first people to Mars
o 2 cargo ships bring more equipment and supplies
o Set up propellant production plant
o Build up base to prepare the expansion

Later goals: building up a Martian city,

terraforming Mars
Making Life Multiplanetary – building up a Martian city…
…and Making Mars really a nice place to be.
Musk says “…building the base starting with one ship, then
multiple ships, then start building up the city, then making the
city bigger, and even bigger… and over time terraforming
Mars, and making it really a nice place to be.”
Rapid transportation by spaceship between two
points on Earth?
At the end of his presentation, Musk offered another practical
use of a spaceship that capable of going to Mars: a very rapid
transportation between two points on Earth. Here’s the
animation of the proposed travel scheme below.
The BFR will be capable of taking people from any city to any other
city on Earth in under one hour.

“Making Life Multiplanetary” – The

full presentation
Here is the full presentation published by the SpaceX
Channel titled “Making Life Multiplanetary”.
On September 29th at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC)
in Adelaide, Australia, SpaceX CEO and Lead Designer Elon Musk
provided an update to his 2016 presentation regarding the long-term
technical challenges that need to be solved to support the creation
of a permanent, self-sustaining human presence on Mars.

Notes
1. Every year, the International Astronautical Federation
(an international space advocacy organisation based in
Paris) together with the International Academy of
Astronautics (a non-governmental organisation of
experts committed to expanding the frontiers of space,
established in Stockholm, Sweden in 1960) and the
International Institute of Space Law (IISL), holds the
International Astronautical Congress (IAC) which is
hosted by one of the national society members of the
IAF. They are an annual meeting of the actors in the
discipline of space and are generally held in late
September or early October.
2. BFR – the first and last letters stand for “big” and
“rocket”. It is probably the acronym of “Big Fragging
Rocket”. The name coined by Musk personally in
reference to the BFG 9000 (Big Fragging Gun) from the
1993 video game Doom. It can also be the acronym of
“Big Falcon Rocket”.
3. Low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with an
altitude between 160 kilometers (99 mi) (orbital period
of about 88 minutes), and 2,000 kilometers (1,200 mi)
(orbital period of about 127 minutes).
4. A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO, also called a
heliosynchronous orbit) is a nearly polar orbit around
Earth (also called geocentric orbit) in which the satellite
passes over any given point of the planet’s surface at the
same local solar time. Such an orbit can place a satellite
in constant sunlight.
5. Geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) is a highly
elliptical Earth orbit with an apogee of 42,164 km
(26,199 mi), or 35,786 km (22,236 mi) above sea level,
which corresponds to the geostationary altitude.
6. Musk refers to the Hubble Space Telescope which was
launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in
operation. Its dimensions are 13.2 × 4.2 meters (43.3 ×
13.8 feet). Its mirror is 2.4-meter (7.9 feet).
7. Dragon is a reusable spacecraft developed by SpaceX. It
is a free-flying spacecraft designed to deliver both cargo
and people to orbiting destinations. Dragon made history
in 2012 when it became the first commercial spacecraft
in history to deliver cargo to the International Space
Station and safely return cargo to Earth, a feat previously
achieved only by governments. It is the only spacecraft
currently flying that is capable of returning significant
amounts of cargo to Earth. Currently, Dragon carries
cargo to space, but it was designed from the beginning to
carry humans. Under an agreement with NASA, SpaceX
is now developing the refinements that will enable
 Dragon to the flight crew. Dragon’s first manned test
flight is expected to take place as early as 2018.
8. Moonbase Alpha is a fictional Moonbase and the main
setting in the British science fiction television series
Space: 1999 which was aired between 1974 and 1977.
9. Musk again refers to Space: 1999 TV series. In the
1970s, people were dreaming a large, complicated Moon
base (Alpha) by 1999. Now, in 2017, we are still so far
away from that.
10. Keep in mind that Musk has a reputation for setting
deadlines that he cannot meet.
Dragon Spacecraft

Sources
 iac2017.org
 International Astronautical Congress on wikipedia
 Low Earth orbit on wikipedia
 Sun-synchronous orbit on wikipedia
 Falcon 1 on wikipedia
 Falcon 9 on wikipedia
 Geostationary transfer orbit on wikipedia
 Falcon Heavy on wikipedia
 Falcon Heavy on SpaceX.com

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