Let’s take a look at two major forces in the space race that are vying to colonize Mars. We all know that when Elon Musk founded SpaceX 20 years ago, his plan quickly evolved from sending a greenhouse full of plants to the surface to now becoming a scheme to populate Mars with a self-sustaining city of one million people, essentially making humanity a multi-planetary civilization and pushing us through the great filter, and to accomplish this, Elon and SpaceX are haggling. Meanwhile, China has been rapidly expanding its space program. It was 19 years ago that China launched its first astronaut into orbit around the Earth, and in the time since then, the country has risen to become a global leader in space exploration, while the old guard of America and Russia has largely stagnated.
The Chinese pushed forward in the twenty-first century to establish their own satellite infrastructure, implement a robot exploration campaign on the moon, design and build a brand new space station, and now they’ve set their sights on Mars as well, so we’ve got two incredibly wealthy and well-resourced players working towards the same goal. What might that look like if everything goes according to plan how would elon musk’s vision of mars compare with china’s let’s talk about it this is the space race we’ll start with the chinese side of things mostly because they’re not as open and boisterous about their plans as elon musk and unlike elon china has already started development on what could eventually become their mars base so there are two prototype mars bases in china right now The first Mars base is in Gansu, China, near the gobi desert, which stretches north into Mongolia. This is China’s first Mars simulation base, and it looks like something out of a science fiction film. It was built in 2019 for 61 million dollars. The Chinese publicized the Mars base by airing a reality television show in which celebrities were trained by real Chinese astronauts and scientists to complete fictional space missions. It is now used as a center for education and tourism, primarily to inspire the younger generation to pursue a career in the space program so that they can brave the journey to a real Mars base in the future.
They have large, comfortable sleeping quarters as well as a fancy command center with giant curving screens. They’re growing wheat crops indoors and have pretty much every amenity you’d need outside, which is a simulated Mars environment complete with fancy spacesuits. A massive exploration vehicle, rovers, a landed crew capsule, and, for some reason, the black monolith slab from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s only natural to have Kubrick fans on a project like that anyway mars base number one is like the hype version of China’s space colonizing mission it’s more like a themed hotel than anything which makes sense if you’re going to convince people to fly to mars with the likely prospect of dying millions of miles away from home on a cold dead alien world then this is probably the best way to ease them into it The Chinese refer to the site as a place for scientific learning and what they call patriotic education for young pioneers, so training the next generation to happily risk their lives in space on a ufo. China expects to have gathered all of the necessary data by 2033, when they plan to send the first crude mission to Mars, and it won’t be as simple as planting a flag and then calling it a day. China intends to land people on Mars again in 2035, 2037, 2041, and 2043. There haven’t been many details released, but we do know that the Chinese intended to use nuclear-powered spaceships to allow the first cruise to travel to Mars. This is an idea that NASA is also exploring.
A nuclear thermal rocket engine will have about twice the efficiency of a standard chemical rocket, plus an onboard nuclear reactor can provide constant reliable energy to the crew. This material is composed of a network of nanometer-sized tubes made of hexagonal lattice work of carbon atoms. It’s all very complicated. The main takeaway is that this material is both incredibly strong and incredibly light at the same time and can support structures that are several miles long all of this to say that the Chinese wouldn’t even be talking about this kind of stuff if they didn’t seriously intend to put a massive amount of stuff into space elon musk is working on the same goal his plan is to use a gigantic overpowered rocket to get his stuff up there instead of a space elon musk China has the world’s fastest growing major economy, with annual growth rates of 10% for the last 30 years. China is the world’s largest manufacturing economy as well as the world’s largest exporter of goods. Half of all metal consumed in the world is consumed in China, and yes, this comes at a high cost to both humanity and the environment. There are undoubtedly some absolutely terrible abuses of human rights and freedoms going on over there, as there are in many parts of the world, including our own home country of Canada, where there is still an ongoing and perplexing mistreatment of the native people whose land was colonized to build this country. NASA is targeting 2030 as the date when they will be able to move into a new space station that they expect to be built by a private contractor, though no such construction has actually begun. We know that China can move quickly, build effectively, and are not afraid of trampling people to get ahead, making them a genuine contender to begin populating Mars long before anyone else is capable of doing so. But what about the timeline?
Can Elon beat China to the punch? I mean, maybe Elon does this thing where he vastly underestimates how long things will take to get done in real life. I mean, less than ten years ago, Elon said he would have people on Mars by 2025. We now know that is not going to happen, but he is still hoping to land at least one of his starship rockets on Mars in 2025. That rocket has yet to reach low earth orbit in 2022, but Elon thinks he can get it to Mars in three years and he could be right after that. He’s been talking about going straight from the first successful landing into crude missions to Mars, which could mean as early as 2027, but right now elon seems to be gunning hard for people on Mars by 2030 at the latest. It’s all very existential cosmic stuff anyway there was a recent twitter post where Elon said that he expects it to take between 20 and 30 years from the first human landing to the level of being self-sustaining but he’s also basing that calculation on a pretty staggering population growth so to hit elon’s timeline expectations we would need to put one million people on mars and transfer an average of 100 000 people per year over a two to three decade plan Drop your theories in the comments section and check back here every week for more updates on the aerospace industry and interstellar exploration.
