MAKING LIFE MULTIPLANETARY Five years seems like a long time to me. The area under the curve MARS BASE of resources over that period of time should enable this time frame to be met, but if not this time frame, I think pretty soon thereafter. The base starts with one ship, then multiple ships, then we start But that is our goal, to try to make the 2022 Mars rendezvous. The building out the city and making the city bigger, and even bigger. Earth-Mars synchronization happens roughly every two years, so Over time terraforming Mars and making it really a nice place to be. every two years there is an opportunity to fly to Mars. It is quite a beautiful picture. You know that on Mars, dawn and dusk are blue. The sky is blue at dawn and dusk and red during the day. It’s the opposite of Earth. Fig.15. Initial Mars mission goals Then in 2024 we want to try to fly four ships—two cargo and two crew. The goal of the first mission is to find the best source of water, and for the second mission, the goal is to build the propellant plant. We should—particularly with six ships there—have plenty of landed mass to construct the propellant depot, which will consist of a large array of solar panels, and then everything necessary to mine and refine water, draw the CO2 out of the atmosphere, and then create and store deep cryo CH4 and O2. Fig.16. Mars base buildup progression Fig.17. Mars colony abridged transcript 9/28/2017 © SpaceX 2017 spacex.com/mars 9