This imaginative drawing liked by Elon Musk reveals just how crazy SpaceX's first missions to Mars will be
Elon Musk, the founder of the rocket company SpaceX, has "aspirational" plans to launch people to Mars in 2024 and ultimately colonize the red planet.
To make the roughly six-month one-way journey, Musk and his engineers have dreamed up a 347-foot-tall launch system called the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR. The spacecraft is designed to have two fully reusable stages: a 19-story booster and a 16-story spaceship, which would fly on top of the booster and into into space.
SpaceX employees are now building a prototype of the Big Falcon Spaceship at the Port of Los Angeles. Gwynne Shotwell, the company's president and COO, reportedly said Thursday that the spaceship may start small test-launches in late 2019.
Several official graphics of the spaceship's internal structure exist, but none show exactly how the ship would be equipped for Mars. So spaceflight-loving artist Nick Oberg created his own illustration of how the vehicle might look and function on the inside.
Oberg is a 29-year-old scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, where he's working toward a PhD in astrophysics. But he used some spare time to make what he calls an "imaginative" cutaway drawing of the BFR spaceship. It includes detailed sketches of hydroponic greenhouses, messy crew cabins, and even a person pooping on a zero-gravity toilet.
Oberg posted the cross-section illustration to Reddit in June, and it found its way onto Twitter - where Musk saw and liked the artwork.
"It was really out of impatience that I made this, because I can't wait to see what SpaceX is going to do with its mission," Oberg told Business Insider. "I was also excited to show other people what was happening, to make it seem more real. It's like a magic trick that's too good: It seems to go over people's heads. You can say, 'We are going to build a giant rocket ship,' but most people don't understand. I thought illustrating it would help."
Here are the key parts of Oberg's full drawing; the captions he gave each one are above the images, and additional explanations from him are below.
Oberg said he based his drawing on publicly released graphics of the Big Falcon Rocket's spaceship.
Airlock: "Ship exterior inspection and repair must be carried out by space-walks. The airlock is used to allow astronauts to step out of the ship while maintaining pressurization elsewhere."
Cargo bay: "All large cargo for Mars is stored here. ISRU [resource extraction] equipment, rovers, suits, solar panels, all the gear needed to start a new life far away."
Crane: "Once on the Martian surface, cargo must be carefully hoisted down from the bay to the ground. A heavy duty swiveling crane feeds out pallets via the cargo bay doors."
Life support system/service bay: "The ship's most important systems are the life support equipment. The temperature is regulated, the water filtered and recycled from waste, the air made breathable once again."
Hydroponics farm: "Far away from Earth, the lack of fresh food becomes demoralizing. The hydroponics farm is more to keep spirits up than it is to provide a sustainable food source."
Sleeping quarters: "Each crew member has a personal space equipped with bed, illumination, a portal window to the outside, electricity, and connection to the ship net. Removable partitions allow for crew to bunk together and expand their private space if desired."
Showers: "Water is pulled through the shower room by powerful fans. Waste heat from the life support system goes into providing hot water. Capacity for up to four crew."
Toilets: "The subject of endless jokes and questions, the space toilet applies suction where and when it is needed. Waste is reprocessed in the life support system and is used for irrigation in the hydroponics lab."
Communal area: "One large open volume dominates the interior ship layout. The area allows for communal activities such as eating, sports and play, musical performances, and movie nights. Exercise and kitchen equipment can be found in this area — and perhaps most importantly, the coffee machine."
The bridge: "All critical ship functions are handled on the bridge. Control terminals allow for manual takeover of navigation and ship systems. Communications with Earth are sent from and received here."
Storage: "Larger personal effects and items which may need to be retrieved frequently can be found in the forward storage compartment. Everything else goes in the cargo bay."
Telecommunications array: "This steerable parabolic dish allows for nearly continuous communication with Earth. A low-gain secondary antenna allows for communication in an emergency."
Guidance navigation and control: "Reaction control thrusters orient the ship for docking procedures, engine burns, and atmospheric re-entry. Navigation computers, radio timing, and star-trackers keep the ship positioned and oriented in space."
Propellant tanks: "Together, liquid Methane and liquid Oxygen are the fuel that powers the Raptor engines. Smaller tanks hold the propellant for landing."
Engines: "The ship is propelled by seven engines; four vacuum Raptors to operate in space and boost the ship between orbits, and three smaller Raptors for landing back on solid surfaces."
Delta wing: "The small delta wings include a split flap for pitch and roll control in a variety of atmospheric conditions. This allows the ship to safely maneuver itself with a range of different payload masses in the nose."
Landing legs: "Four deployable legs at the base of the vehicle allow for a vertical landing."
Crew cabin windows: "Every crew compartment is fitted with a single porthole for exterior viewing."
Main windows: "Two long stripes of shutterable window panels allow natural sunlight to enter the communal area to establish a natural day-night cycle for the crew."
Heat shield: "The underbelly of the ship is coated in heat resistant plates. These sections need to withstand the conditions of atmospheric re-entry from interplanetary velocities and be reusable. For re-entry at high velocities, the shield is expected to partially ablate."
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