Mars as a spacecraft fuel station

Colonizing Mars is Elon Musk's dream, but it is also the dream of NASA and in general of all those who wear a space suit and of all space agencies, another thing is that they have the means to achieve it, in short, it is the dream of every scientist or every astronaut fan, although before we get to Mars and be able to see we will have to see humans on the moon again because it will be essential.

The moon is going to be the springboard to then travel to Mars and although I believe we will see humans on Mars in the middle of the next decade, around 2035-2040, it will be expensive, difficult, it will take time and it will involve spending a lot of fuel. and this can be a very important factor, how to reduce costs, perhaps by reducing the cost of fuel, and here comes a study published by the MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This study that was published on September 25 suggests that the surface of Mars could be saturated with CO2, carbon dioxide, and this CO2 can be used by transforming it into fuel. Imagine, for example, that you go on your StarShip to Mars and even if a nuclear engine that is already in it, you are going to need chemical fuel to be able to land and take off from the sea because at the moment we do not know of any method that replaces chemical fuel, to leave a planet.

A nuclear engine gives you thrust, but it does not give you the power and speed necessary to take off from a planet and in the case of the StarShip you will also need fuel to land, in other cases you could use a giant parachute, but in the In the case of StarShip in particular, it uses its rockets to land, so imagine that you arrive with your ship on Mars and you are going to need a lot of fuel to land and also to take off, currently you would need to land on Mars, if the plan is to take a StarShip for the first time, an unmanned ship full of fuel would need to land on Mars to refuel the StarShip that takes off, unless a StarShip is developed in sections and that StarShip in sections takes off leaving behind the tanks and engines that it left for the landing, in this way it could take off being much lighter than the ship that landed.

In both cases they are complicated, they could be used for the first trips to Mars but in the long term something different is needed to reduce costs and if possible obtain fuel on Mars itself, what MIT proposes is to manufacture fuel on Mars and simply recharge the ships that land there, and not only to return to earth, the MIT researchers propose using Martian fuel to charge ships that explore the solar system, since the gravity of Mars is lower than that of the Earth, some 2.6 times smaller, taking loads and fuel into space so that ships can refuel in orbit would be much easier and much cheaper than on Earth.

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