Elon Musk Declares – Mars Colonization Is Possible with Starship
Elon Musk has boldly declared that SpaceX’s Starship makes Mars colonization possible. Starship has surpassed NASA’s Saturn V in power, achieving over twice the thrust. Soon, Elon Musk Declares, it will reach three times the power of Saturn V, making interplanetary travel and Mars habitation achievable.
How Starship Surpasses Saturn V in Power
Starship’s unique design uses liquid oxygen and methane, a low-cost propellant. This design could dramatically reduce launch costs, by as much as 10,000%, making travel to Mars far more affordable. With Starship, Musk envisions building a self-sustaining city on Mars, housing one million people.
The Path to Mars: 1000X Rocket Technology Improvement
Musk has long discussed the challenges of sending a million tonnes of equipment to Mars to establish a city. With a 1000X improvement in rocket technology, the cost of creating a multi-planet civilization could drop to around $1 trillion—an achievable goal over 40 years.
SpaceX’s Breakthroughs Make Mars Colonization Feasible
SpaceX’s recent successes, including the Starship booster catch and precise ocean landings, prove that Mars colonization is within reach. These advancements reinforce Musk’s belief that humanity can become a multi-planetary species.
The Saturn V is a retired American super heavy-lift launch vehicle developed by NASA under the Apollo programme for human exploration of the Moon. The rocket was human-rated, had three stages, and was powered by liquid fuel.
The 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. The stainless-steel vehicle consists of two fully reusable elements: a huge booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50 m) upper stage known as Starship, or simply Ship. Both of these stages are powered by SpaceX’s next-gen Raptor engine — 33 for Super Heavy and six for Ship.
“More importantly, it is designed to be fully reusable, burning 80% liquid oxygen and 20% liquid methane (very low-cost propellant). This enables cost per ton to orbital space to be 10,000% lower than Saturn V,” the SpaceX CEO said.
Starship is the difference between being a multi-planet or single planet civilisation, added Musk.
Musk said that one million people will be able to live on Mars thanks to SpaceX’s recent feat of capturing a massive booster from Starship rocket for the first time.
Explaining further, the Tesla CEO in a post on X explained, “Getting the cost per ton to the surface of Mars low enough that humanity has the resources to make life multiplanetary requires a roughly 1000X improvement in rocket & spacecraft technology.”To build a city on Mars that can grow by itself likely requires at least a million tonnes of equipment, which would therefore require >$1000 trillion, an obviously impossible number, given that US GDP is only $29T.
Starship is designed to achieve a >1000X improvement over existing systems and, especially after booster catch and precise ocean landing of the ship, I am now convinced that it can work, he wrote.
