Future Space Colony on Titan?

Instead of just sending humans on a one-shot mission to look for life on the surface, a new paper envisions a future outpost on Titan that could generate power for years.

NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are focused on getting astronauts to Mars and even one day establishing a colony on the Red Planet — but what if their attention is better directed elsewhere? A new paper in the Journal of Astrobiology & Outreach suggests that humans should

By Elizabeth Howell www.seeker.com 7-17-17

instead establish a colony on Titan, a soupy orange moon of Saturn that has been likened to an early Earth, and which may harbor signs of “life not as we know it.”

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SpaceX's Mars Colony Plan: Plans to Build a Martian City

Elon Musk has put his Mars-colonization vision to paper, and you can read it for free. SpaceX's billionaire founder and CEO just published the plan, which he

By Mike Wall Space.com 6-14-17

unveiled at a conference in Mexico in September 2016, in the journal New Space. Musk's commentary, titled "Making Humanity a Multi-Planetary Species," is available for free on New Space's website through July 5.

[...]

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Now we know how Elon Musk plans to get 1 million people to Mars. The SpaceX CEO unveiled the company's Interplanetary Transport System (ITS).

Now we know how Elon Musk plans to get 1 million people to Mars.

At a conference in Mexico today (Sept. 27), the SpaceX founder and CEO unveiled the company's Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), which will combine the most powerful rocket ever built with a spaceship designed to carry at least 100 people to the Red Planet per flight.

By Mike Wall SPACE.com 9-28-16

If all goes according to plan, the reusable ITS will help humanity establish a permanent, self-sustaining colony on the Red Planet within the next 50 to 100 years, Musk said at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara. ...

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SpaceX Rocket Makes History in Successful Vertical Landing | VIDEO

By Tariq Malik
Space.com
12-22-15

      SpaceX, your Falcon 9 rocket has landed, and oh, what a sight it was.

In a history-making launch late Monday (Dec. 21), the private spaceflight company SpaceX blasted one of its two-stage Falcon 9 rockets into space, then returned the first stage of the rocket back to Earth in a stunning nighttime landing. (The upper stage, meanwhile, delivered 11 satellites to orbit for SpaceX customer Orbcomm.) The feat was so awesome we made a greatest hits video of the SpaceX rocket landing here, but SpaceX itself captured the view with some amazing images.

In fact, the rocket's return even surprised SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, who initially thought the Falcon 9 booster didn't actually stick its landing.

"I ran out on the causeway just to watch the landing, and the sonic boom reached me just as the rocket touched down, so I thought at first the rocket exploded," Musk told reporters in a teleconference after the landing. "Then I went back into launch control and saw this amazing video of the rocket on the pad … I can't quite believe it." [...]

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Secrets of "Hyperloop," a Fifth Mode of Transportation Revealed By Billionaire Elon Musk | VIDEO

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By Drew Guarini
The Huffington Post
8-12-13

      Late Monday afternoon, after a year of mystery and speculation, billionaire Elon Musk revealed the plans for the "Hyperloop," a so-called "fifth mode" of transportation "after planes, trains, cars and boats."

The "Hyperloop Alpha," as Musk dubbed the first design, would be a solar-powered, elevated transit system capable of transporting people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in only 30 minutes, according to Musk's interview with Bloomberg Businessweek and a 57-page PDF explaining the Hyperloop on the website for Tesla, the electric-car company helmed by Musk.

Musk, a co-founder of PayPal and co-founder and current CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, has confirmed that he will not have the time to make the Hyperloop himself, but hopes others will take up the plans or offer improvements and feedback. During a live conference call following the reveal however, Musk said he will "probably" build a Hyperloop prototype.

For Musk, the Hyperloop is best used when traveling between cities less than 1,000 miles apart that have considerable traffic on the ground. Travelers would also avoid the long wait times during check-ins, takeoffs and landings necessary for air travel.

Musk told Businessweek that he became inspired to think about reconfiguring public transit after becoming frustrated of the $70 billion construction of California's high speed rail system, set to begin this summer. Citing slow speeds, inefficient costs and logistical nightmares involving land rights, Musk began work on the Hyperloop idea, claiming it can be four times faster than the train system -- nearly 800 miles per hour -- at one tenth of the cost. Musk estimates the cost of the Hyperloop running along California's I-5 to be $6 billion for the passenger-only model and $10 billion for the larger model capable of transporting cars. . . .

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SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Launches

By CNN Wire Staff & Rich Phillips
6-4-10

     Cape Canaveral, Florida (CNN) -- Friday's test launch of the Falcon 9 rocket was "essentially a bullseye," SpaceX officials said after the rocket successfully pushed past the earth's atmosphere and deposited a mock-up of its Dragon space capsule in orbit.

The successful launch is the latest step toward commercial space ventures that could eventually ferry astronauts and cargo to the international space station.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, sent out the technical details of the successful launch, which he said performed its mission to deposit the Dragon mock-up into a 155-mile (250-km) orbit to near perfection.

"Nominal shutdown and orbit was almost exactly 250 km," Musk said in a written statement. "Telemetry showed essentially a bullseye: 126;0.2% on perigee and 126;1% on apogee."

The capsule is expected to orbit for about a year and eventually burn up in the atmosphere.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden congratulated the SpaceX team.

"Space X's accomplishment is an important milestone in the commercial transportation effort and puts the company a step closer to providing cargo services to the International Space Station," he said.

Former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart was high on the launch's possibilities.

"As a former Apollo astronaut, I think it's safe to say that SpaceX and the other commercial developers embody the 21st century version of the Apollo frontier spirit. It's enormously gratifying to see them succeed today," he said.

NASA hopes companies such as SpaceX can take over transportation to the international space station.

"It's time for NASA to hand that over to commercial industry who can then optimize the technology and make it more reliable, make it much lower cost and make it much more routine," said Musk in an interview with CNN last month.

Musk says he believes the United States is at the beginning of a profound, fundamental renaissance in space exploration, perhaps greater than when President Kennedy declared the United States was going to the moon during the infancy of the space program.

"If the country executes and the administration and Congress execute in that direction, the impact of these changes will be on par, perhaps even greater, than ... the task that Kennedy put us on to," he said.

This push toward the privatization of space is part of President Obama's blueprint to allow NASA to do bigger and better things with its budget, such as a mission to Mars.

NASA has been flying shuttles in low Earth orbit and going to and from the space station for 30 years. The administration would like to see whether private companies can do it cheaper and more efficiently, as the shuttle program is about to fly into retirement.

NASA selected SpaceX and another company, Orbital Sciences, to each develop an orbital vehicle because the United States will not have its own way to get to the space station. The United States will be renting space from the Russians aboard their Soyuz spacecraft.

"They're standing on NASA's shoulders, so they're designing rockets based on the experience we've had for 50 years or more, going into space," said George Musser, editor of the Scientific American.

"And any enterprise that learns from past experience will hopefully do better," he said.

But the competition is rabid. SpaceX is the first company to reach the launchpad. So far, its spent almost $400 million to get there.

"They probably hate each other's guts, but the competition is really good for space and for all of us," said Musser.

"Ultimately, what do we want from this? We want to get into space cheaply, so our kids and grandkids someday can go into space and explore the planets," he said.

But SpaceX acknowledges there will be failures, as there have been since the the beginning of aviation.

"This is an all-new rocket. There's a lot that can go wrong, and during the test phase -- that's why you have a test phase, because things may go wrong," he said.

Ken Bowersox is a vice president for SpaceX. In his previous life, he flew five space shuttle missions as a commander and pilot. He also lived on the space station for more than five months as its commander.

"Either way, we're going to learn something," he said. "If we have a problem, we can move forward accepting a higher level of risk. That's how we can be more cost-effective.

If all goes as planned after a series of test flights, Musk says SpaceX will be ready to begin flying cargo to the space station next year. If NASA awards SpaceX a contract, Musk says they can begin ferrying astronauts to the space station within three years. He says his company is profitable, but his motivations go beyond dollars.

"We want to see a future where we are exploring the stars, where we're going to other planets, where we're doing the great things that we read about in science fiction and in the movies," Musk said.

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