SpaceX has been very vocal about taking humans to other planets. It’s aiming to land humans on Mars within a decade and recently test fired the engine that’s going to power its spacecraft for this purpose. The company’s CEO Elon Musk is due to talk about SpaceX’s interplanetary transport in some detail today but before his talk, SpaceX has posted a video which unveils its Interplanetary Transport System.
The video doesn’t show off any actual rockets or spacecraft, we get to see computer generated concepts of what the Interplanetary Transport System is going to be. SpaceX is going to use this rocket and spacecraft combination to set up colonies on Mars and hopefully beyond the Red Planet.
The combination is made up of a reusable rocket which gets the spacecraft beyond Earth’s orbit while the spacecraft relies on solar sails to effectively coast until it’s time to enter Mars. The booster comes back to Earth after it separates from the shuttle to pick up a tank of fuel. It then returns to orbit where the waiting spaceship is fueled.
SpaceX has now detailed its vision of the journey from Earth to Mars but it’s yet to reveal how humans will be sustained once they actually land on the Red Planet. Perhaps Musk will talk more about that during his keynote at the International Astronautical Conference later today.