Elon Musk says SpaceX plans to build a reusable rocket ship every 72 HOURS to colonizing Mars 

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Elon Musk says SpaceX plans to build a reusable rocket ship every 72 HOURS to fulfill his dream of colonizing Mars

  • Elon Musk revealed his latest plan to colonize Mars during an all-hands meeting
  • He wants to build 1,000 Starships and wants to make one every 72 hours
  • The ships would be reusable and have a capacity of more than 90,000 pounds

By Stacy Liberatore For Dailymail.com

Published: | Updated:

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has had his heart set on colonizing Mars for quite some time and the billionaire wants to build 1,000 Starships to make it happen.

An Ars Technica reporter took a trip to SpaceX in Texas where they learned the firm could soon develop a new craft every 72 hours to meet the goal.

Musk also noted that each ship would be reusable and have a capacity of more than 90,000 pounds.

SpaceX has also added an additional 225 people to its staff at the South Texas Launch Site in order to construct the factory that will churn out the rockets – bringing to total over 500. 

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has had his heart set on colonizing Mars for quite some time and the billionaire wants to build 1,000 Starships to make it happen. An Ars Technica reporter took a trip to SpaceX in Texas where they learned the firm could soon develop a new craft every 72 hours to meet the goal

Eric Berger with Ars Technica spent the day at the South Texas site to sit in on an all-hand meeting with the CEO himself where he learned of SpaceX’s latest Mars mission plan. 

‘He wanted to know why the Starship factory wasn’t humming at all hours,’ Berger wrote.

‘Why steel sheets weren’t getting welded into domes and fuel tanks, why tanks were not being stacked into rockets, why things weren’t going as fast as he wanted.’

This is not the first time Musk has made, what some may call, an outlandish announcement regarding his colonization of Mars.

January he aimed to put a million people on the Red Planet by 2050, which means, according to his calculations, will require three flights a day – a totally of 1,000 a year.

In the recent meeting Musk told his crew: 'I think we need, probably, on the order of 1,000 ships, and each of those ships would have more payload than the Saturn V—and be reusable' (pictured is an artist impression of a Starship leaving the Mars colony

In the recent meeting Musk told his crew: ‘I think we need, probably, on the order of 1,000 ships, and each of those ships would have more payload than the Saturn V—and be reusable’ (pictured is an artist impression of a Starship leaving the Mars colony

And in 2017, the tech tycoon revealed plans to send two cargo ships to Mars in 2022, followed by four further vessels – two with cargo and two with human settlers – in 2024.

In the recent meeting Musk told his crew: ‘I think we need, probably, on the order of 1,000 ships, and each of those ships would have more payload than the Saturn V—and be reusable.’

The Saturn V was the rocket that took people to the moon and the most powerful during its time – it was designed with a capacity for 90,000 pounds.

Musk continued to explain that in order to live on more than one planet, all of the settlements must be stable and sustainable -this is because ships carrying supplies will be delayed at times and these new homes will need to survive.

ELON MUSKS’S ‘INTERPLANETARY TRANSPORT SYSTEM’ 

Elon Musk recently unveiled his most ambitious project yet – an ‘Interplanetary Transport System’ to take mankind to Mars in 80 days and build a sustainable human colony of a million people there.

‘What I want to achieve is make Mars seem possible, to show that we can do it in our lifetimes, and you could go,’ he said at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico.

However, he warned the trip was likely to be dangerous – and said candidates for the first missions ‘must be prepared to die’.

The Interplanetary Transport System will use a giant rocket booster with a 39 foot (12m) diameter and 49 engines, and a special shuttle with a 56 foot (17m) diameter, making the entire rocket stack 400 feet (122m) high.

They will launch with empty fuel tanks and refuel in orbit.

Once on Mars, they would make more methane fuel for the return journey.