Musk's latest speech: Mars may become the savior of the Earth, Tesla robots will go there next year, and the structure of human civilization will be rewritten
Stay away from politics and focus on technology. This is Musk’s recent slogan.
As X/xAI and Tesla are in the process of releasing key technologies, he recently announced on social media that he would devote all his energy to these technology companies, even sleeping on the floor in the factory, which made people dream back to the "007 state" of giving his all and fighting hard.
However, all this did not bring him good news.
Even if he supervised the battle on the spot, he could hardly reverse the starship's "three consecutive defeats" curse. However, just now, SpaceX released a keynote speech hosted by Musk: Making Life Multiplanetary.
There could not have been a worse moment than the first Starship explosion, and Musk's Mars dream continues. As he put it:
You want to wake up every morning and feel like the future is going to be better - that's what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. This represents confidence in the future and the belief that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. And I can't think of anything more exciting than going into space and being among the stars.
Some key points are summarized as follows:
SpaceX is building out production capacity with the goal of producing 1,000 Starships per year.
Even if supplies from Earth are cut off, SpaceX plans to give Mars the ability to develop on its own, achieve "civilizational resilience," and potentially come back to rescue Earth if problems arise.
SpaceX's next key technology is to "catch" the Starship itself. It plans to demonstrate this technology later this year and is expected to be tested within two to three months. Starship will be placed on top of the booster, refilled with propellant and take off again.
The third-generation versions of Starship, Raptor 3, and boosters will have key capabilities such as rapid reuse, reliable operation, and orbital propellant replenishment, which are expected to be achieved on Starship 3.0. The first launch is planned for the end of the year.
The version of the rocket that is about to be launched is sufficient to support humanity's goal of multi-planet survival, and will continue to improve efficiency, enhance capabilities, reduce cost per ton, and reduce the cost of traveling to Mars in the future.
The launch window to Mars opens every 26 months, with the next one coming late next year (in about 18 months).
During the future Mars window, SpaceX plans to send humans to Mars. This assumes that a previous unmanned mission has successfully landed. If all goes well, the next launch will bring humans to Mars and begin infrastructure construction.
To ensure the success of the mission, SpaceX may conduct an Optimus robotic landing mission as a test for the third launch to ensure the smooth progress of the manned mission.
Attached is the original video URL:
Making humans a multi-planet species
Okay, let's start today's speech. The gateway to Mars has been opened, and we are now at the newly established "Star Base" Texas.
This would be the first time a new city has been built in the United States in decades, at least that's what I heard. It’s a cool name, too, and it’s called that because this is where we’ll develop the technology needed to allow humans, civilization, and life as we know it to travel to another planet for the first time — unprecedented in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history.
Let's watch this little video. At first, there was basically nothing here. Originally, this was just a sandbar. Nothing? Even the few small facilities we built were, of course, built later.
That was the original "Mad Max" rocket. That’s when we realized that lighting this “Mad Max” rocket was really important.
Yes, a few years ago this place was basically deserted. And in just five or six years, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the SpaceX team, we built a small city, built a giant launch platform, and a huge factory for making giant rockets.
Even better, anyone who sees this video can actually visit it in person. Our entire production facility and launch site are located along a public highway. That means anyone who comes to South Texas can see the rockets up close and tour the factory.
So if you're interested in the largest flying machine on Earth, you can come anytime, just drive down that road, it's really cool. And then we made it all the way to the present day - Starfleet Base, 2025.
We are now at a point where we can build a spacecraft about every two to three weeks. Of course, we don’t produce one every two or three weeks, because we are constantly upgrading the design. But our ultimate goal is to be able to produce 1,000 ships per year, or three per day.
This is the progress so far. I'm standing in that building right now. That's our hovercraft. We're getting a booster up to the launch site, and you can see those mega bays.
Like I said before, the cool thing for those of you who are watching this video is that you can actually come here and drive along this road and see all of this with your own eyes. This is the first time in history that this opportunity has ever been available. The road on the left, that is a highway, is open to the public. You can always come and have a look, I highly recommend it, I find it really inspiring.
We are building out our integration capabilities to reach our goal of producing 1,000 Starships per year. It's not built yet, but we are building it. It is a true mega-project that, by some measures, could be one of the largest buildings in the world. It is designed to produce 1,000 starships per year. We are also building another plant in Florida, so we will have two production sites in Texas and Florida.
It is actually difficult to judge how big these buildings are with the naked eye. You need to put a human next to it to see how small they are, to really appreciate the sheer size of the building.
If we use "annual production of launch vehicles" as a comparison, such as the number of aircraft manufactured by Boeing and Airbus, at some point in the future, the annual production of Starship may be on par with the commercial aircraft of Boeing and Airbus. The scale of this project is truly enormous.
Moreover, the carrying capacity of each starship far exceeds that of a Boeing 747 or Airbus A380, and can truly be called a "giant".
Next is the content about Starlink satellites. The annual production of the third-generation satellites is about 5,000, and may be close to 10,000 in the future. Each third-generation satellite is roughly the size of a Boeing 737, which is very large. It's not an exaggeration to compare it to the B-24 bomber from World War II.
Of course, this scale is still small compared to Tesla. In the future, Tesla's annual production may be double or even triple this.
These comparisons help us build the concept that it is actually feasible to build large numbers of starships for interstellar travel. Even from a gross tonnage perspective, companies like Tesla and other car companies are still making more complex, higher-volume products than SpaceX.
In other words, these seemingly exaggerated numbers are actually fully achievable by humans, as other industries have already achieved similar scales.
One measure of our progress is the time it would take to achieve a self-sustaining civilization on Mars. And every launch of the starship, especially in the early stages, is a continuous learning and exploration, laying the foundation for humans to become a multi-planet species, allowing the starship to be continuously improved, and eventually being able to send thousands or even millions of people to Mars.
Ideally, anyone who wants to go to Mars would be able to do so, and we would be able to deliver all the equipment needed to make Mars self-sufficient so that a society could develop independently.
Even in the worst-case scenario, we are reaching a critical turning point where Mars can continue to develop even if supplies from Earth are cut off. By then we will have achieved "civilization resilience" - even when serious problems arise on Earth, Mars may come back to rescue Earth.
Of course, it could also be that the Earth comes to Mars’ aid. But most importantly, the coexistence of two independently viable, powerful planets will be critical to the long-term survival of human civilization.
I think any civilization that was multi-planetary could have a lifespan that was ten times longer, or even much longer than that. A civilization on a single planet is always faced with unpredictable threats, such as self-destructive conflicts among humans - such as World War III (although we hope it will never happen), and natural disasters such as asteroid impacts and super volcanic eruptions.
If we only had one planet, a disaster would probably end civilization; but if we had two, we could survive and even expand beyond Mars to places like the asteroid belt, Jupiter’s moons, and even further, into other star systems.
We can truly go among the stars and make "science fiction" no longer just a fantasy.
To achieve this goal, we must build a "rapidly reusable" rocket to make the cost per flight and the cost per ton sent to Mars as low as possible. This requires that the rocket must have the ability to be quickly reused.
In fact, we often joke internally that this is like "rapid, reusable and reliable rocket", the three "R"s, which sounds like the pirate cry "RRRR", and the key is these three "R".
Now the SpaceX team has made amazing progress in capturing the giant rocket.
Think about it, our team has successfully "caught" the largest aircraft ever built by humans many times, using a very novel way - catching it from the air with giant "chopsticks". This is truly an incredible technological breakthrough.
I want to ask, have you ever seen such a scene before?
Congratulations again, this is truly a fantastic achievement. The reason why we have to "catch" the rocket in this unprecedented way is because it is crucial to achieve rapid reuse of the rocket.
The Super Heavy Booster is massive, about 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter. If it lands on the platform with its landing legs,
We then need to lift it up again, retract its landing legs, and then put it back on the launch pad, which is a very complicated operation. And if we can use the same tower that originally installed it on the launch pad to catch it directly from the air and put it back in place again, that would be the best way to achieve rapid reuse.
That is, the rocket was caught by the same pair of robotic arms that originally placed it on the launch pad and then immediately placed back in launch position.
In theory, a Super Heavy booster could be relaunched within an hour of landing.
The flight itself takes only 5 to 6 minutes, after which it is caught by the tower arm and lowered back to the launch pad. It takes about another 30 to 40 minutes to refill the propellant and put the spacecraft back on top - in principle, this would allow us to launch once an hour, and at most once every two hours.
This is the limit of rocket reuse.
The next big thing we have to do is to "catch" the starship itself. We are not there yet, but we will get there.
We hope to demonstrate this technology later this year, and could potentially be testing it in as little as two to three months. Afterwards, the Starship will be placed on top of the booster, refilled with propellant, and take off again.
However, the Starship's re-flight time will be slightly longer than the booster because it needs to fly around the earth several times until its flight trajectory returns to over the launch site. Despite this, Starship is also planned to be able to make repeated flights many times a day.
This is the new generation of the Raptor 3 engine, and it performs very well. We have to give a thumbs up to the Raptor team, this is really exciting.
The design concept of the Raptor 3 does not require a traditional heat shield, which greatly saves weight at the bottom of the engine and improves reliability. For example, if a Raptor engine were to experience a small fuel leak, the fuel would simply leak into the already hot plasma and cause little to no problems. If the engine were enclosed in a structural box, such a leak would be very dangerous.
So this is Raptor 3. We may have to iterate a few times, but this engine is a huge leap forward in payload capacity, fuel efficiency, and reliability. It can be said that it is a revolutionary rocket engine.
I would even go so far as to say that the Raptor 3 almost seems like a product of “alien technology.”
In fact, when we first showed images of the Raptor 3 to industry experts, they said the engine wasn’t even fully assembled. Then we tell them: this is the “unfinished” engine, it has achieved unprecedented efficiency levels, and it’s running.
Moreover, it runs extremely cleanly and stably.
To create this engine, we made a lot of simplifications to the design. For example, we have integrated secondary fluid circuits, electrical circuits, etc. directly into the engine structure. All critical systems are well encapsulated and protected. Frankly speaking, this is a model of engineering design.
Another technology that is critical to achieving a Mars mission is orbital propellant resupply. You can think of it as similar to "aerial refueling", except this time it is "orbital refueling" and the target is the rocket. This technology has never been realized in history, but it is feasible from a technical point of view.
Although this process always seems a bit "not suitable for children", the propellant must be transferred anyway. There is no other way and this step must be completed.
Specifically, two starships dock in orbit, and one starship transfers propellant (fuel and oxygen) to the other starship. In fact, most of the mass is oxygen, nearly 80%, and fuel only about 20%.
Therefore, our strategy is: first launch a starship full of cargo into orbit, and then launch several "refueling-only" starships to fill up the propellant through orbital replenishment. Once the propellant is full, the starship can set off for Mars, the moon, or other destinations.
This technology is critical and we hope to complete the first demonstration next year.
One of the hardest problems to solve next is the reusable heat shield.
No one has really developed an orbital heat shield that can be used multiple times. This is an extremely difficult technical challenge. Even the space shuttle's heat shield requires months of maintenance after each flight - broken tiles need to be repaired and each tile needs to be inspected.
This is because the high temperature and high pressure during re-entry into the atmosphere are extremely harsh, and there are very few materials that can withstand this extreme environment, mainly some advanced ceramics, such as glass, alumina, or certain types of carbon materials.
However, most materials will either corrode, break or peel off after repeated use, and it is difficult for them to withstand the huge pressure during re-entry.
This will be the first time that humans have truly developed a "reusable orbital-scale thermal insulation system." This system must be extremely reliable. We expect to continue to hone and optimize it over the coming years.
However, the technology is achievable. We are not pursuing an impossible task, it is possible within the limits of physics - it is just very, very difficult to achieve.
As for the Martian atmosphere, although it is mainly composed of carbon dioxide and seems to be "milder" than Earth at first glance, it is actually worse.
When the carbon dioxide turns into plasma during re-entry, it breaks down into carbon and oxygen - resulting in a higher level of free oxygen in the Martian atmosphere than on Earth. Earth's atmosphere is only about 20% oxygen, while Mars' oxygen content may be two or even three times that of Earth after the plasma breaks down.
This free oxygen would violently oxidize the heat shield, almost "burning" it. So we have to do very rigorous testing in a CO2 environment to make sure that it works not only on Earth, but also on Mars.
We want to use the same heat shield system and materials for both Earth and Mars. Because the heat insulation cover involves many technical details, such as ensuring that the insulation tiles do not crack or fall off, etc. If we run hundreds of tests on Earth with the same material, we can have full confidence that it will work properly when we actually fly to Mars.
Additionally, we are working on the next generation of starships, which will have many improvements over the current versions.
For example, the new generation of starships is taller, and the "interstage" between the hull and the booster is more reasonably designed. You can see the new struts, which make the hot staging process smoother.
The so-called thermal stage separation means that the starship's engine will ignite in advance while the booster is still burning. This way, flames from the Starship engines can be discharged more smoothly through these open support structures without interfering with the boosters.
And this time, we will not throw these structures away like before, but let them fly with the starship and make them recyclable.
This version of the starship has a slightly increased height, from the original 69 meters to 72 meters. The propellant capacity, we expect to increase slightly, probably to 3,700 tons in the long term. My guess is that it will end up being closer to the 4,000-ton class.
In terms of thrust, that is, the "thrust-to-weight ratio", we may reach 8,000 tons of thrust, or even eventually increase to 8,003 tons - this is in the process of continuous optimization and improvement. My estimate is that we will eventually achieve a configuration with 4,000 tons of propellant and close to 10,000 tons of thrust.
This is the next generation, or new version of the Super Heavy.
The bottom of the booster may look a little "bare" because the Raptor 3 engines do not need a heat shield, so it may look like something is missing, but in fact, that is only because these engines do not need the original protective structure.
The Raptor 3 is directly exposed to the hot plasma, but is designed to be lightweight and does not require additional insulation.
This system also incorporates a Hot Stage Integration, which I think looks really cool. The new version of the starship is also slightly longer and more capable, with a propellant capacity increased to 1,550 tons. In the long run, it may be about 20% more than this.
The design of the heat shield is also more streamlined, with a very smooth transition from the edge of the insulation layer to the "leeward side", no longer the jagged insulation tiles. I think it also looks very simple and elegant.
The current version still has six engines, but future versions will be upgraded to nine.
Thanks to the improvements made to the Raptor 3, we have achieved lower engine mass and higher specific impulse, which means higher efficiency. Starship Version 3 is a major leap forward. I think it achieves all of our core goals:
Usually, a new technology needs to go through three generations to become truly mature and easy to use. The Raptor 3, the 3rd generation version of Starship and boosters, will have all the critical capabilities we need: rapid reusability, reliable operations, and orbital propellant resupply.
These are all necessary conditions for humans to become a multi-planet species, and all of this will be achieved on Starship 3.0. We plan to launch it for the first time at the end of this year.
You can see that on the left is the current status, in the middle is our target version for the end of this year, and on the right is the long-term development direction for the future. The final height will reach about 142 meters.
But even the intermediate version, which will be launched at the end of this year, is fully capable of carrying out a Mars mission. Subsequent versions will further enhance performance. Just as we have done with Falcon 9 in the past, we will continue to lengthen the rocket and increase its carrying capacity. This is our development path, simple and clear.
But I want to emphasize that this version of the rocket, which is about to be launched at the end of the year, is already sufficient to support humanity's goal of achieving multi-planet survival. What we need to do next is to continue to improve efficiency, enhance capabilities, reduce cost per ton, and make it cheaper for each person to go to Mars.
As I said before - our goal is to make it possible for anyone who wants to move to Mars and want to participate in building a new civilization to be able to do so.
Just think about it, how cool would that be? Even if you don't want to go yourself, maybe you have a son, daughter, or friend who would like to go. I think this would be one of the greatest adventures that humanity could ever take - to go to another planet and build a new civilization with our own hands.
Yes, eventually our starships will be equipped with 42 engines - this is almost destined, as the great prophet Douglas Adams predicted in his book (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy): The ultimate answer to life is 42.
So, Starship will eventually have 42 engines, that's the way the universe is (laughs).
Let’s talk about the carrying capacity. The most amazing thing is that if it is fully reusable, the Starship will have a low-Earth orbit carrying capacity of 200 tons. What is the concept? This is equivalent to twice the capacity of the Saturn V moon rocket. While the Saturn V was a disposable rocket, the Starship is fully reusable.
If the starship is also disposable, its low-Earth orbit carrying capacity can even reach 400 tons.
So what I'm saying is: this is a very large rocket. But if we want to achieve "multi-planet survival of mankind", we must have such a big rocket. In the process of realizing Mars immigration, we can also do a lot of cool things, such as building a base on the moon - Lunar Base Alpha.
A long time ago, there was a TV series called (Moon Base Alpha). Although some of the physics settings in the show were not very reliable, such as the moon base seemed to be able to drift away from the Earth's orbit (laughs), in short, building a base on the moon should be the next step after the Apollo moon landing program.
Imagine if we could build a giant science station on the moon to conduct research on the nature of the universe. That would be really cool.
So, when can we travel to Mars?
The Mars launch window opens every two years, or every 26 months. The next Mars window will be at the end of next year, about 18 months from now, probably in November or December.
We will try our best to seize this opportunity. If we are lucky, I think we now have about a 50-50 chance of achieving our goal.
The key to achieving the Mars mission lies in whether the orbital propellant resupply technology can be completed in a timely manner. If we can complete this technology before the window period, we will launch the first unmanned starship to Mars by the end of next year.
Next you'll see an illustration of how the process of flying from Earth (blue) to Mars (red) is accomplished.
In fact, the distance covered by the flight trajectory from Earth to Mars is almost a thousand times the distance to the moon.
You can't fly directly to Mars in a straight line, you must move along an elliptical orbit - the Earth is at one focus of the ellipse, and Mars is at the other end of the orbit. You also have to accurately calculate the spacecraft's position and timing in orbit to ensure that it intersects with the orbit of Mars.
This is called a Hohmann Transfer, and it is the standard way to travel from Earth to Mars.
If you have a Starlink Wi-Fi router, you can look at the logo above, which is a graphic representation of this orbital shift. The satellite Internet service provided by Starlink is one of the projects that helps fund humans' journey to Mars.
So I want to especially thank everyone who is using Starlink - you are helping to ensure the future of human civilization, you are helping humanity become part of a multi-planet civilization, and you are helping humanity move into the "age of space travel." Thank you.
Here's a rough blueprint: We hope to significantly increase the frequency and number of flights to Mars as each Mars launch window opens (that is, about once every two years).
Ultimately, our goal is to launch 1,000 to 2,000 Starships to Mars per Mars window. Of course, this is just an estimate of the order of magnitude, but in my opinion, in order to establish a self-sufficient civilization on Mars, about 1 million tons of materials would need to be delivered to the surface of Mars.
Only when Mars has such basic capabilities can it truly reach the "civilization safety point" - that is, even if the Earth can no longer continue to ship supplies, Martian civilization can survive and develop independently.
To do this, you can't lack anything, not even a tiny but crucial element like vitamin C. Mars must have everything it needs to achieve real growth.
My guess is about 1 million tons, maybe 10 million tons, and hopefully not 100 million tons, which would be too much. But no matter what, we will make every effort to achieve this goal as soon as possible and provide security for the future of human civilization.
We are currently evaluating several candidate sites for a Mars base, with the Arcadia region being one of our current top choices. There are a lot of "land" resources on Mars, but after taking various factors into consideration, the range of choices becomes very small:
For example, it cannot be too close to the poles (the environment is too extreme), it needs to be close to the ice to obtain water, and the terrain cannot be too rugged to ensure the safe landing of the rocket.
When all these factors are considered, Arcadia is one of the more ideal locations. My daughter’s name is also Arcadia, by the way.
In the initial phase, we will send the first starships to Mars to collect critical data. These ships will carry Optimus humanoid robots, which will arrive first, explore the surrounding environment, and make preliminary preparations for the arrival of humans.
If we can really launch the starship by the end of next year and successfully reach Mars, it will be a very shocking picture. Based on orbital period calculations, that spacecraft will reach Mars in 2027.
Imagine the Optimus humanoid robot walking on the surface of Mars. That would be a groundbreaking moment.
Then, in the next Mars window two years from now, we will attempt to send humans to Mars. This assumes that the previous unmanned missions have successfully landed. If all goes well, we will have humans on Mars in the next launch and really start building infrastructure on Mars.
Of course, to be on the safe side, we may also conduct another Optimus robotic landing mission and make the third launch a manned mission. The specific results will depend on the actual results of the previous two times.
Do you remember that famous photo? — Workers on the Empire State Building eat lunch while sitting on a steel beam. We hope to be able to capture similar classic scenes on Mars. For Mars communications, we will use a version of the Starlink system to provide Internet services.
Even at the speed of light, the delay from Earth to Mars is noticeable - about 3.5 minutes in the best case, and up to 22 minutes or more in the worst case, when Mars is on the other side of the sun.
So, high-speed communication between Mars and Earth is indeed a challenge, but Starlink has the ability to solve this problem.
Next, the first humans will lay the foundation on Mars and establish a long-term outpost. As I said before, our goal is to make Mars self-sustaining as quickly as possible.
This image is our rough idea of the first city on Mars.
My guess is that we'll build the launch pad farther away from the landing zone to prevent accidents. On Mars, we will be extremely dependent on solar power. In the early stages of Mars, because it had not yet been "terrained", humans could not walk freely on the surface of Mars and had to wear "Martian suits" and live in closed structures similar to glass domes.
But it is all possible. Eventually, we hope to terraform Mars into an Earth-like planet.
Our long-term goal is to transport more than one million tons of materials to Mars during each Mars transfer window (approximately every two years). Only when we reach this level can we truly begin to build a "serious Martian civilization" - delivering "millions of tons" of materials per window is our ultimate standard.
At that time, we will need a large number of spaceports. Since flights cannot be carried out at any time and can only be concentrated in the launch window period, we will have thousands or even two thousand starships assembled in Earth orbit, waiting to take off at the same time.
Imagine - just like (Battlestar Galactica), thousands of spacecraft gathered in orbit and set off to Mars at the same time. It would be one of the most spectacular scenes in human history.
Of course, we will also need a large number of Mars landing and launch pads by then. If there are thousands of starships coming, you'll need at least a few hundred landing slots, or be very efficient in clearing the landing zone quickly after landing.
We will solve this problem later (laughs). In short, building humanity's first extraterrestrial city on Mars would be an incredible feat. This is not only a brand new world, but also an opportunity for the inhabitants of Mars to rethink the model of human civilization:
What form of government do you want?
What new rules would you like to see established?
On Mars, humans have the freedom to rewrite the fabric of civilization.
This is a Martian decision.
So, okay – let’s go get this done.
Thank you everyone!
This article is reproduced from: Shenchao
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