Musk has previously said that he would publicly present some specifics of his Mars-colonization plans later in 2015, but it will now be early in 2016.
Elon Musk has clarified his fast Mars terraforming strategy. He wants to have a small repeatedly detonating fusion bomb at each pole. "Not really nuclear weapons," he says. "I think a lot of people don't realize that the sun is a giant fusion explosion. And we're only talking about duplicating that in small form on Mars, essentially having tiny pulsing suns. There would be no radiation or mushroom clouds or fallout.
Early plans for the MCT launch vehicle, made public in April 2014, consisted of one or three cores with a 10-meter (33 ft) diameter which is comparable to the Saturn V. At the time, the rocket was slated to use nine Raptor LOX/methane engines to power each core. The possibility of eliminating any tri-core version design, and modifying the MCT launch vehicle design to a single-core but larger-diameter vehicle—12.5 to 15 meters (41 to 49 ft) core diameter—was raised in late 2014 and further confirmed by Musk in early 2015.
All sources have indicated that the MCT launch vehicle is intended to be reusable—making use of the SpaceX reusable technology that is currently being developed for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.
Initial information indicated liftoff thrust would be approximately 62 or 190 MN (6,300 or 19,000 tonnes-force) (formerly roughly sized at greater than 40 or 120 meganewtons (9,000,000 or 27,000,000 lbf)) of thrust based on the assumption of 9 Raptor engines per rocket core). Later information has indicated that the total thrust of the MCT launch vehicle is not fully pinned down.
The Space Launch System has a first stage planned total thrust of 7,200,000 lbf (32,000 kN). The Saturn V had a 7.6 million pounds of thrust in its first stage. Second stages had about 1 million pounds of thrust. The Mars Colonization Transport would thus be about equal to a SLS or Saturn V or up to three time the thrust and size.
There may be more than one design in a family of SpaceX super-heavy lift launch vehicles.
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Reposted via Next Big Future
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