Elon Musk has revealed a ton of newfangled information about his plans for the future of infinite exploration . This include his idea for going to Mars , and the difficulty in launching a vast new rocket .
The SpaceX CEO revealed the titbit yesterday at a typically pack talk at theISS R&D conferencein Washington DC . For starters , he said that they were no longer considering using their existing Dragon abridgment to perform remote-controlled landings on Mars as ahead of time as 2020 , known asRed Dragon .
“ There was a sentence when I thought that the Dragon approach to landing on Mars … would be the right way to put down on Mars , ” he aver . “ But now I ’m moderately confident that is not the right elbow room . There ’s a far good approach shot . That ’s what the next generation of SpaceX rocket and ballistic capsule is pop off to do . ”
While not elaborating on this approach per se , he did tweet later on that the plan was still to do power landing , but with a “ vastly swelled ship ” . We do n’t yet get laid what this would be , and whether it ’s related to to his broader program to get humans to Mars with theInterplanetary Transport System(ITS ) .
Red Dragon was supposed to be the start of the party ’s forays to Mars . SpaceX had been develop thrusters for its Dragon ejector seat , which is used to transport cargo to the International Space Station ( ISS ) , so that it could performpowered landingson the solid ground . Currently , it uses to parachute to drop into the ocean , require considerable renovation .
This same technology was supposedly going to be used to localise a modified Dragon , Red Dragon , on the surface of Mars . That now looks unlikely .
“ It was a tough decision , ” he said in a Q&A session . He added that the next Dragon the company is developing would technically still have the ability to perform a powered landing place , but “ you ’d have to land it on some pretty sonant landing pad because we ’ve deleted the small legs that pop out of the heat energy shield . ”
One of the reasons for strike down this was supposedly to do with safety gadget , as get a homo - rated space vehicle safe enough to perform powered landings could have been very difficult .
Musk take up immense crowds , as usual
While not disclose any fresh details about getting 1 million people to Mars in a hundred with the ITS , Musk did say they had evolved the mission quite a bit since he gave a public lecture on it at the International Aeronautical Congress ( IAC ) in Mexico inSeptember 2016 . He also suggested that a smaller version of the ITS may be used to launch commercial-grade freight .
Most notably , he said he ’s image out how to compensate for the whole thing . “ It ’s exceedingly expensive , ” he added . More detailsmay be revealedat this twelvemonth ’s IAC in Australia in September .
He also talked about SpaceX ’s huge new upcoming rocket , different from the ITS , call theFalcon Heavy . This is have a bun in the oven to launch for the first meter later this year , or too soon next . In doing so , it will become the most powerful rocket in operation today . But Musk take down the first launch might be exciting for all the wrong reasons , if the arugula finish up irrupt .
" There is a lot of risk of infection consort with Falcon Heavy , a very good chance that that vehicle does n’t make it to orb , " he say . " I hope it make it far enough away from the pad that it ’s not going to cause scathe . I would consider that a win , frankly . Major ruck factor is the only fashion to describe it . ”
Musk also said that SpaceX was go for to recycle the first stages of their Falcon 9 skyrocket in 24 minute by next year . The company has already successfully landed a handful of these rockets , and now hope to up the reusability game .
While there may be some disappointing news for SpaceX fans , Musk seems to mostly have been quelling prospect . Excitingly , though , they ’ve still got 12 more launching planned for this year . If they pull all those off , they ’ll have launched 22 rockets in 2017 , more than double they ’ve ever done before .
Here ’s the talk of the town in full for your watch delight
