There are only a few private space companies that I have any semblance of faith in these days, most notably Armadillo Aerospace (founded by programming genius John Carmack, creator of DOOM) and my current space idol SpaceX. The former’s achievements have been quite impressive with their technology progressing steadily over the past decade. SpaceX has shown everyone that the realm of space is not just for the super-governments of the world, successfully launching multiple rockets and landing numerous contracts for their services. If there’s anyone that can commoditize access to space it will be SpaceX.
Whilst their current plans of reducing the cost of access to space is clear their direction past that has always been something of a mystery. Last year they announced some plans for a number of rockets that had some mightily impressive specifications, rivalling that of rockets of decades past. SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk has gone on record saying that he wants to retire on Mars (and his wife is on board too) but those dreams had always been met with scepticism as we haven’t been past low earth orbit for the better part of 4 decades. Reports are starting to come in though that shows Musk is quite serious about his future retirement plans:
“We’ll probably put a first man in space in about three years,” Elon Musk told the Wall Street Journal Saturday. “We’re going all the way to Mars, I think… best case 10 years, worst case 15 to 20 years.”
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“Our goal is to facilitate the transfer of people and cargo to other planets, and then it will be up to people if they want to go,” said Musk, who also runs the Tesla company which develops electric cars.
Putting that in perspective that could mean we’d have people on Mars by 2021 or at latest 2031. Comparing that to George Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration which had us returning to the moon in 2020 you’d be forgiven for being sceptical of it since if a government couldn’t do it with a lead time of 15+ years and a comparatively large budget what chance would SpaceX have? However SpaceX has shown that they are quite capable of creating aggressive schedules, meeting them and doing it all on a fraction of the budget that has traditionally been used to accomplish such feats. Indeed the recent announcement of the Falcon Heavy saw many people speculating about missions like a Mars sample return mission that has not been feasible due to the launch weight required but was well within the capabilities of SpaceX’s new rocket.
SpaceX has also been making strides with its Dragon capsule, putting the finish touches on it to make it 100% compatible with NASA’s human rating standards. The planned additions to the craft would see the launch abort system, traditionally a large spike on top of the craft that’s discarded once the launch is successful, put on the side of the craft. This would give the Dragon capsule an unprecedented amount of accuracy when it came to landing the craft, enabling it to soft land at a precise location rather than requiring a splash down in the ocean. Consequently a Dragon capsule could very well be used to land on the surface of other planets, including SpaceX’s goal of Mars.
You’d think by now nothing that SpaceX could do would surprise me, but it seems at every turn they manage to pull off another feat that puts their wild claims firmly in reality. Whilst we may still be a decade away from seeing any real progress on this front it still feels a million times closer than it ever did when the same goal was held by a government agency. Even if they don’t meet their aggressive 2021 target there will be a whole host of progress made between now and then, enough so we’ll have a clear picture of when we’ll be exploring our diminutive red cousin.
