SpaceX’s Guide to Surviving The Apocalypse
One planet isn’t enough, Earth won’t be here forever. Global warming, an Armageddon sized asteroid, Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. All existential threats to the sanctity of life on Earth. Much better to have a plan B for the human race than accept the end of days. In recent years Elon Musk has taken it upon himself to organise this escape hatch for humanity — somewhere we can run if things turn biblical. This month he published a paper, “Making Life Multi-Planetary”, detailing SpaceX’s plan to colonise Mars. The following is an imagination of how that plan might play out. The technical details, stats, dates, and mission outline are all in keeping with SpaceX’s estimations. My involvement in the story is perhaps not.
Suppose that we are in the future — it’s 2024. Two SpaceX cargo ships have already blasted into space and found themselves on Mars. They carry a combined stock comprising some 300 tonnes of landed equipment. They’ve been occupying the Martian surface for almost 1 and a half years. Their mission: confirming the planet’s water resources and identifying hazards. Waiting and preparing for humans to join.
In this future I’m friends with Elon Musk. You know, my podcast took off, we sip lagers from time to time, talk about our struggles in love. Have banter.
And then the South African serial-entrepreneur cracks open his 3rd can of Budweiser and turns to me with his chiselled jawline, “Ev mate, d’you want to be part of the first crewed mission to Mars? One of our astronauts just pulled out”. I stare aghast into his eyes, frozen — potentially even momentarily dead. “Absolutely not” I calmly respond.
The next morning I’m at Kennedy Space Centre. I’ve never wanted to be an astronaut, I wasn’t one of those kids. I saw fireworks and thought no thank you, not for me, I’ll be in my room. But I think space is awesome. So maybe Elon had tapped into that somehow, or maybe i’m doing it for the podcast. A big scoop. Something to revitalise the lagging listener numbers after years of spiralling decline.
How Elon had managed to persuade me, it doesn’t matter now. Mars and Earth are aligned, the closest they’ll be for another two years. This is our chance. I’m sitting in the launch seat of a BFR, codename for SpaceX’s biggest ever rocket. 109 metres tall, 9 metres wide. It’s massive, but still a couple of metres shorter and one narrower than the Saturn V rockets that were used by NASA half a century ago. The BFR doesn’t care though, it wins the honours that matter. It is the most powerful heavy lift rocket ever seen, capable of lifting a cargo of 150 tonnes into low Earth orbit. Its Raptor engines have the most efficient thrust to weight ratio on record, and it is capable of taking humans to Mars. Taking humans to Mars, coming back to Earth, and taking humans to Mars again, over and over. The BFR is, like all SpaceX rockets, reusable, and so infinitely affordable in comparison to the Saturn Vs.
So there I am. Poor future me. Absolutely bricking it no doubt. I look at my feet. I’ve read the rocket specs. Below me is enough propellant to not be comfortable with. Enough propellant to lift the 4,400 tonne vehicle straight up. The countdown starts and then, before I can fully find my religion, up we go. The 31 Raptor engines do their job and before long the large booster has broken away and we’re parked in an Earth orbit. We’ve run out of fuel. Traditionally this would be a cause for saying ‘bye bye’, but SpaceX knew this would happen. That the BFR’s fuel tanks would only last it through the atmosphere. So then up comes a refuelling rocket, it docks seamlessly and automatically without any need for manual controls, gently thrusts forwards, and thus transfers its fuel reserves to us by way of momentum. Now we’re ready to set off on our interplanetary mission. We light up the engines and head towards Mars.
The flight duration is somewhere in the region of 3–6 months. Luckily there’s some socialising to be done; over 100 people are onboard with me, all staying in cabins of 3–4. There is a galley, an entertainment area, a central storage area, and a solar storm shelter. A home away from home. Hurtling silently through space. The bearer of the Human seed.
3–6 months go by quickly. People talk to me, I talk to them. And then, just as I have settled into my new spacefaring life, I’m told that we’re approaching Mars. Poor future me, bricking it again no doubt. I remember that I’ve got 1,100 tonnes of propellant below me, minus whatever we used to set our course to Mars.
*Thud*, we’re breaking the Martian atmosphere, travelling at 23,000 kilometres per hour. I thank all of my religions that SpaceX’s engineers have installed an excellent heat shield. One that rarely needs replacing. Mars’ atmosphere is much thinner than Earth’s, but we are moving so fast that the battering is still severe.
Our ‘Delta Wing’ sticks out from the ship and gets to work, steering us like a rudder whilst keeping us balanced. SpaceX had initially wanted to avoid the shark-fin-like addition but realised that it was all too necessary if the ship was to be able to navigate with a wide range of payloads and in a wide range of atmospheric densities. Personally I like it, not just because it keeps us on track, but also because it looks cool.
The surface is getting closer now. SpaceX rockets have been capable of self-landing with extreme accuracy since 2015. An innovation that has defined their affordability advantage. We orient ourselves so that the engines point towards the surface and begin the 40 seconds of supersonic retropulsion that will control our landing. Supersonic retropulsion is like take off in reverse. The thrust from the engines slows down the ship instead of accelerating it. It’s pretty magical to watch.
When we get low enough the 2 sea-level engines start up. These are tasked with landing us upright. They are the acrobatic thrusters that swivel and jive, directing their burn in such a way that ensures a smooth landing. In the unlikely event that one of them shuts off too early, my new friends and I will still survive. There are two of these engines for peace of mind, not out of necessity.
And then there’s cheering. We’re alive. We’ve done it. We’ve successfully travelled from our beloved blue planet, to the dusty wasteland of Mars. It’s not that nice here, but who cares, we’re a multi-planetary species now. Anyway we’ll make it nicer. Look how nice we made Earth.
As the first humans on Mars our task is to make the prospect of joining us more appealing. “How?”, you might ask. Well, by making sure that whoever comes can actually return to Earth. At this stage our rocket has no fuel, she sits majestic, but empty. We arrange a large array of solar panels and assemble the machinery to mine and refine water. This is a good start. We then align the instruments necessary to pull CO2 from the atmosphere. From here the chemists amongst us step forward to create oxygen and methane. At this point we can finally refuel our ship. We’re no longer stranded.
I skype my mum to tell her how cool I am. She tells me she’s cooler and hops on a spaceship that looks eerily familiar. Only she’s not coming to Mars, but travelling from New York to London in 29 minutes. Elon has repurposed his rockets on Earth to create a more readily connected world than ever.
Fast forward to the future future. I’m bored of the red planet. Netflix doesn’t work as well up here, the blue sky at dawn and dusk — and red sky during the day makes me uneasy, and even though we’ve started terraforming Mars, it’s still at least a few millennia away from having a breathable atmosphere. I miss the leafy London suburbs. By this time flights back aren’t all that rare and so I get on one. On my way back I pass another BFR. I crack open a cold one and salute. Elon is on his way to Mars, an ambition of his is to die there. “Just not on impact”.
This piece was transcribed from The Zip Files — an irreverent weekly 20–25 minute podcast that I produce to help the busy millennial catch up with all of the week’s most important tech news. Here’s the episode in which this piece was featured:
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