Elon Musk

An article about [[Elon Musk]] exists at [Wikipedia]

Elon Musk has stated that he hopes to die on Mars. But preferably not at the point of impact.

Elon Musk is the CEO of SpaceX, a company that has the official mission statement of making humanity a multiplanetary society. The company is developing a interplanetary transport system, currently (2019) named Starship and Falcon Super Heavy. SpaceX builds and flies the Falcon 9 and Falcon heavy rockets, as well as the Dragon and Dragon 2 capsule type vehicles.

Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy first stages are recoverable and reusable, and the Dragon capsules are recoverable as well. This makes them the first step in an evolution towards entirely recoverable vehicles Two Stages To Orbit vehicles (TSTO), that would reduce the cost of access to space by many orders of magnitude.

The personality of Elon Musk is controversial. However, the achievements of the companies he has created are clear.

Elon Musk has created a number of companies or products that are oriented, at least partly, towards a Mars settlement:

• SpaceX aims to provide the transportation service to Mars with the entirely recoverable Starship vehicle.
• SpaceX is developing a communication constellation, that will at term include between 3000 and 4000 satellites. Besides providing ample opportunity for space access and the improvement of space technologies, the satellites themselves may have applications in Mars orbit, and a group of these sent to Mars could provide communication services far in advance of what is currently available. It is expected that the profits from the Constellation will serve to finance the development of the Starship vehicle.

• The Boring Company is a start up that specializes in tunneling. This has obvious Mars settlement applications.
• SpaceX has conducted experiments for NASA in supersonic retro propulsion that has applications in Mars landing scenarios.
• Tesla produces Solar cells and battery power systems that could be used on Mars. Tesla vehicles could serve as platforms for Mars rovers.
• SpaceX is likely to be developing life support systems for Starship that will have settlement applications.
• SpaceX has developed a methane-oxygen rocket for its Starship and Booster vehicles with the explicit goal of making it refuelable in-situ on Mars.
• A first Moon mission is planned for Starship, Dear Moon.

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