We have known for a long time that all the space agencies in the world are immersed in a new kind of space race to get man to Mars. Mainly because there are many problems to solve, which in turn entails the need to invest a lot of money to solve them, for example and from NASA, private companies were asked to help them in some way. Thanks to this today for example we have to talk about SpaceX, a company run by Elon Musk, who are even finalizing details for their first unmanned mission to Mars, which will take place in 2018.
In this sense, today, Tuesday, September 27, Elon Musk himself plans to give a conference taking advantage of the celebration of the 67th International Astronautical Congress held in Gadalajara (Mexico) where he will offer us new details about this unique project that will end in 2024 with what should be the first manned trip to Mars. One of the strengths of this mission is being carried out today as the American company has just started testing its new engines, which will be in charge of driving the rocket that will take man to the neighboring planet.
'Raptor'is the name chosen for the interplanetary engine created by SpaceX.
The engine developed for this project, officially baptized as'Raptor', stands out, among other things for being the size of'Merlin', engine that today power the Falcon 9 although, as announced from SpaceX, this new prototype has up to three times more power while maintaining practically the same size. This basically means that we are talking about an engine capable of offering a pushing force up to 3 meganewtons while 'Merlin' is satisfied with about 0,6 meganewtons approximately.
Returning to the conference that this same evening will offer Elon Musk, titled as'An interplanetary human life', in it we will be told about the long-term technical remains that must be solved as soon as possible in order to achieve a permanent self-sustaining human presence on Mars, a milestone that would go far beyond arrival on the planet, a relatively simple part within the mission, hence, as Musk announces, that from now on we must begin to think and develop the idea of what we will do and how we will survive on Mars once we reach it.
If you are interested in seeing Elon Musk's conference, you can watch it live in the video located just below these lines. Just tell you that it will take place at 13.30:XNUMX p.m. Central Mexico time and 20.30:XNUMX Spanish peninsular time.