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Colonize Mars Research Paper

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My scientifically accurate science-fiction paper will be about the first trip and attempt to colonize Mars. I will talk about the trip itself, starting on Earth and ending with the landing, what happens once they get to Mars, and how life is once they settle in. I will mainly focus on the struggles and difficulties the colonists will face and how they will deal with and overcome them. I haven’t decided what perspective I’m going to write the paper in but I was considering writing it as either the first person view of either the captain or colonist or as a mission log type format.

SpaceX and Virgin Galactic

There is no definitive border between Earth’s atmosphere and what is considered space but the Karman line, 100 km above sea level, …show more content…

This may sound far-fetched but everything SpaceX is currently doing is helping them set up a future mission to Mars. Reducing the cost of rockets will help make the trip affordable and setting up a satellite based internet network around Earth and eventually Mars will allow for seamless communication between the two planets. Musk’s current vision of how to colonize Mars is to use what he is calling the Mars Colonial Transporter. The plan is for the MCT to be over 100 times the size of an SUV and able to take 100 tons of cargo or 100 people to Mars per trip. The MCT will be powered by the Raptor rocket engine currently under development by SpaceX. The Raptor will be a highly reusable, liquid methane powered engine capable of over ten times as much thrust as the Merlin 1D engines in the latest Falcon 9 rockets (NASA). It is currently speculated that the rocket will be ready for testing in the early 2020’s.
Virgin Galactic, one of SpaceX’s main competitors, is a company whose primary goal is to become the leader in space tourism. It was founded by Richard Branson and the Virgin Group in 2004 and is headquartered in Pasadena, California. Although Virigin Galactic hasn’t gotten any big contracts like SpaceX they have gotten investments in total of more than $680 million including around $200 million from the state of Nevada (Virgin Galactic). Virgin Galactic currently has one aircraft, the White Knight Two, one spaceship, SpaceShipTwo, …show more content…

It is carried by White Knight Two to an altitude of around 15 km where it is released and flies to 110 km (Space). Once into space the two crew members and six passengers will experience approximately 6 minutes of weightlessness before gliding back down to Earth and doing a conventional runway landing at a spaceport. A flight to suborbital space in SpaceShipTwo from liftoff to landing will last a total of two and a half hours and tickets are currently being sold for $250,000 (Virgin Galactic). Virgin has already sold more than 700 tickets with many big name celebrities on the list such as Stephen Hawking and Brad Pitt. The first commercial flight has been delayed multiple times by Virgin Galactic and Richard Branson’s most recent estimation was for its maiden trip is 2016. The most recent cause of delay was a crash of a SpaceShipTwo on October 31, 2014. Virgin was conducting a powered flight test when the spaceship broke apart in flight. The cause of the crash is still being investigated and sadly one of the pilots in the crash died and the other had serious

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