Elon Musk's mission to Mars

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Elon Musk's mission to Mars

He's known as the real-life Tony Stark: a billionaire inventor working on electric cars, an 800mph 'Hyperloop' train system and reusable rockets. The plan, says Elon Musk, is to minimise climate change ? and colonise the red planet

 

'It would be pretty cool to die on Mars ? just not on impact' ... Elon Musk with his Dragon space capsule. Photograph: AP

 

Elon Musk has flown so high, so fast, it is hard not to wonder when, and how, he will crash to earth. How could he not? Musk is so many things ? inventor, entrepreneur, billionaire, space pioneer, inspiration for Iron Man's playboy superhero Tony Stark ? and he has pushed the boundaries of science and business, doing what others declare impossible. At some point, surely, he will fall victim to sod's law, or gravity.

He is only 41, but so far Musk shows no sign of tumbling earthwards. NASA and other clients are queuing up to use his rockets, part of the rapid commercialisation of space. His other company, electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors, is powering ahead. Such success would satisfy many tycoons, but for Musk they are merely means to ends: minimising climate change and colonising Mars. And not in some distant future ? he wants to accomplish both within our lifetimes.

 

Musk has a reputation for being prickly but when I meet him at SpaceX, his headquarters west of Los Angeles, he is affable and chatty, cheerfully expounding on space exploration, climate change, Richard Branson and Hollywood. Oh, and what he would like written on his Martian tombstone.

"The key thing for me," he begins, "is to develop the technology to transport large numbers of people and cargo to Mars. That's the ultimate awesome thing." Musk envisages a colony with 80,000 people on the red planet. "But of course we must pay the bills along the way. So that means serving important customers like NASA, launching commercial broadcasting communication satellites, GPS satellites, mapping, science experiments. "There's no rush in the sense that humanity's doom is imminent; I don't think the end is nigh. But I do think we face some small risk of calamitous events. It's sort of like why you buy car or life insurance. It's not because you think you'll die tomorrow, but because you might."

Musk does not look the stereotypical plutocrat. He wears jeans and a T-shirt and sits behind a rather ordinary desk overlooking a car park, beyond which is Hawthorne, California's answer to Slough. He occupies the corner of a ground-floor, open-plan office that barely constitutes a cubicle. Walk just 40 metres, however, and there is a sight to quicken the pulse: SpaceX's factory, a 1m sq ft sprawl where engineers and technicians work on rockets, propulsion systems and casings for satellites. Suspended over the entrance is the cone-shaped capsule of Dragon, which last year became the first commercial vehicle in history to successfully dock with the International Space Station. SpaceX's next step is to fly humans, up to seven per Dragon, starting between 2015-17.

 

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The Mars program is already underway with the development of reusable launcher techs (Grasshopper), the Raptor methane fueled engine family (methane is easy to make on Mars), and MCT - the Mars Colony Transporter, the outlines for which should be announced later this year or early next year.

They're already planning a factory for the big new launcher near their new commercial spaceport, which looks to be built at Boca Chica Beach near Brownsville, Texas. Its first stage is expected to be 8-10 meters in diameter and the assembled rocket >120 meters high, taller than the Saturn V. A beast.