SpaceX to Unveil Humans-to-Mars Plan in Guadalajara Leonard David - SPACE.com
go to original September 20, 2016

Elon Musk started SpaceX in 2006, it grew the company in to what is today, a world class Space Launch Company with nearly a dozen launches each year. (mic of orion)

SpaceX founder, CEO and lead designer Elon Musk is unveiling his humans-to-Mars plan at the 67th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), to be held in Guadalajara, Mexico. The world space meeting runs from Sept. 26-30.

On the second day of the IAC, during a special keynote entitled "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species," Musk will discuss the long-term technical challenges that need to be solved to support the creation of a permanent, self-sustaining human presence on Mars.

The technical presentation will focus on potential architectures for colonizing the Red Planet that industry, government and the scientific community can collaborate on in the years ahead.

In the past, Musk has detailed his intention to use a Red Dragon spacecraft to fly to Mars in un-crewed mode in the 2018 time period. Later flights of the craft would transport humans to the planet.

Using supersonic retro propulsion to touch down on the Red Planet, the Red Dragon may well deploy scientific devices, particularly hardware that could demonstrate made-on-Mars propellant.

Gwynne Shotwell, President of SpaceX, underscored her firm's Mars plans on Aug. 9 at the 30th annual Conference on Small Satellites, held at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

"If you talked about this 15 years ago we probably would have been institutionalized," Shotwell told a standing room only audience. "The conversation has changed … now we can talk about going to Mars," she said.

Read the rest at Scientific American

Related: Elon Musk Scales Up His Ambitions, Considering Going “Well Beyond” Mars (ARS Technica)

Related: SpaceX's Red Dragon: A Private Mars in Pictures (Scientific American)

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