'Beam Me Up, Musk'

Come 2050, that iconic catchphrase that made its way into popular culture from the science fiction television series Star Trek, could become reality. This time around, the request will not be from Captain Kirk to his chief engineer, Montgomery “Scotty” Scott but to billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk who is pursuing his dream to set up a human colony on Mars. His Raptor engines have achieved their task. All that remains to be done is their attachment to Starship…

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When Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and CEO, recently displayed photos and videos on Twitter of the test firing of the new Raptor rocket engine for SpaceX’s Starship rocket, he was only emphasising that the engine was ‘flight ready’. Musk has been planning to send humans to Mars – possibly as early as 2024 – on Starship and the Raptor engines would do that and begin a city on Mars by 2050.

The Musk plan is, perhaps, one that is likely to beat all others. There is, for instance, the United Arab Emirates that has aimed for a city of 600,000 by 2117. A forecast by astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell, however, mentioned that “while the first human mission to land on Mars will likely take place in the next two decades, it will probably be more like 50-100 years before substantial numbers of people have moved to Mars to live in self-sustaining towns”.

That is why Musk’s Raptor engine is so important. A staged combustion, methane-fuelled rocket engine from SpaceX, the Raptor is powered by cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen (LOX), rather than the RP-1 kerosene and LOX used in all previous SpaceX Falcon rockets which use or used Merlin 1A, 1C, & 1D and Kestrel engines. According to a 2013 announcement, the Raptor was to be “a highly reusable methane staged-combustion engine that will power the next generation of SpaceX launch vehicles designed for the exploration and colonization of Mars”. Musk has pointed out that the Raptor has been specifically designed in such a way that it would be able to achieve full reusability of all rocket stages and, as a result, “a two order of magnitude reduction in the cost of spaceflight”.