I think Elon Musk accidentaly dropped a big bit of info.

[Rune]

So, they were asking him about a possible IPO on SpaceX for the final quarter of this year. It seems that he considered it at one point, but is now firmly against it. Whatever, that's not the news. The thing is, he replied about it on twitter:

No near term plans to IPO @SpaceX. Only possible in very long term when Mars Colonial Transporter is flying regularly.

His twitter so you can check yourself. (The emphasis is all mine).

Did he just confirm what MCT stands for? What the Raptor is being built for? Ever since he announced the exciting thing about the Raptor was the spacecraft it was bolted to, I have had this vision of a huge single stage rocket (launched to orbit in something else, obviously) able to land on Mars and refuel via ISRU for the trip back to a powered Earth landing. Man, it's silly that I get so excited about a tweet.

Rune. And yet, I do get that excited.

[ShachonianX]

This is promising.

[NovaSilisko]

I saw that. I love how casually he revealed it. Can't wait to see what it is. Certainly not a dragon variant, I believe they've said they won't be sending people to mars on a dragon (nothing about preventing others from doing it though), so it's likely a new vehicle and heavy lift rocket combo.

[ShachonianX]

Now we need pictures. Has he revealed anything new about the Grasshopper? It will probably be the first SSTO.

[NovaSilisko]

Uh, no. Grasshopper isn't coming anywhere NEAR orbit. Max altitude that I remember reading was something like 300,000 feet then coming back in for a landing, but it's just a test for the landing system. On the first F9R launch in July, they'll be equipping the first stage with landing structures and flipping it round after stage sep, doing a retroburn and then a second burn just before it hits the water. Every F9 flight from now on will serve as a test flight for the return system, up until they can actually fly it back and land at the launch site.

Edited June 8, 2013 by NovaSilisko

[Conarr]

Hey sweet find! I wish I was in a position to drop bombs like this casually in an off hand twitter.

[ramses]

Saw this myself on Twitter. How is this not being reported all over the place?

I really wish people took more interest in Human achievements instead of the "Look how we failed as a species today" crap we have to endure everyday.

[NovaSilisko]

It's been rumored to be "Mars Colonial Transport" for some time, and it's nothing even concrete yet - still just a name as far as we know.

[ramses]

I mean I wish more people knew just how serious this guy is about Mars.I believe Elon will be the man who will make this possible.

[Canopus]

I honestly don't think this will happen.

[bsalis]

Best news here is no IPO really.

[Warshawski]

I honestly don't think this will happen.

Why are people so defeatist? Since when does: Billionaire + successful space launch/vehicle design company somehow = not going to happen? Last I checked, the above ingredients usually means it's going to, posthaste.

[Nibb31]

MCT is just a very long term goal. Maybe in 20 or 30 years... but who know what the World will be like in 20 or 30 years.

[Cryocasm]

I'm planning on founding my own company and sending a revolutionary design to Mars. Travel time ~2 months (1 leg of the trip), space for 300 people (although only taking 250, just for spare parts, rooms, n stuff).

That's progressive thinking right there.

I'm completely serious and not even nearly insane. I do my research and my math silently and on my own. I can only say my main inspiration is X³:TC's Osaka class destroyer. Although not that large, but on the pancake-method of construction. Also being built upon a massive cement cradle and launching directly upwards, similar to the movie Wall-E.

The inspiration for the engine comes from the search and finding the most complex and thought-requiring propulsion method known (or possibly theorizing my own).

On topic: Mankind needs to turn away from these puny fights over a few thousand m² on Earth and face towards the stars. Those trillions in wars can be spent exploring our Earth, manipulating it (graviton research, among other force-carrier particles), and optimizing it beyond belief (super-high yield crops with harvest times of 2 months).

Its disturbing and heartbraking to look at mankind kill itself over materialistic values and "money", greed driven and cold.

This Elon Musk guy is a good thinker, and a person with money that he's spending on the advancement of mankind, and that deserves respect.

[magnemoe]

Uh, no. Grasshopper isn't coming anywhere NEAR orbit. Max altitude that I remember reading was something like 300,000 feet then coming back in for a landing, but it's just a test for the landing system. On the first F9R launch in July, they'll be equipping the first stage with landing structures and flipping it round after stage sep, doing a retroburn and then a second burn just before it hits the water. Every F9 flight from now on will serve as a test flight for the return system, up until they can actually fly it back and land at the launch site.

Did some testing of landable first stages in KSP, naturally to do an landing I has to switch back to first stage after decoupling.

My experience was that landing again was pretty cheap, however if you dropped after gravity turn you had to use lots of fuel getting back. this could fast cost more than the 250m/s needed to land.

Does not the same problem apply in real world?

[Nibb31]

My own tests showed that the first stage of Laztek's Falcon 9 needed something like 20% of its fuel to return to KSP after reaching 25000m. I tried to do the gravity turn as late as possible to minimize the return delta-v, but of course, that is suboptimal for the actual purpose of launching a payload. There is a compromise to make, and in the real-world the penalty is probably high once you add the flight-profile, the extra propellant, the RCS and the landing gear.

For the upper stage, it was actually better to go all the way to orbit and to deorbit over KSP on the next time round.

Of course that's with KSP physics, so the actual ratios don't apply to real-world physics.

[GJames]

As the first stage or boosters of a rocket are being used to lift something so much heavier than themselves, as soon as they are separated they don't need much delta-V at all to land again as they are only lifting themselves.

Also, in my opinion Elon Musk is the best thing that's happened to space travel since sliced bread, he definitely knows how to get stuff done. He founded SpaceX only eleven years ago and the company has done so much since then on not a huge budget, so it's fair to say that in a couple of decades there could be manned SpaceX craft landing on Mars.

[Borklund]

He did not accidentally release this information; he's hitting all the right buttons with space geeks with his teasing, that's all.

[Rune]

Did some testing of landable first stages in KSP, naturally to do an landing I has to switch back to first stage after decoupling.

My experience was that landing again was pretty cheap, however if you dropped after gravity turn you had to use lots of fuel getting back. this could fast cost more than the 250m/s needed to land.

Does not the same problem apply in real world?

Yup. And the answer is also tied with the fact that the current first stages were disintegrating once they reentered the dense parts of the atmosphere (they were supposed to be recoverable, remember? Heat protection and everything, only they were getting shredded by air pressure). Apparently (and I'm gong by various hints and tidbits of info here and there, so don't quote me as source), the Falcon 9R will have a different flight profile than Falcon 9. Less delta-v on the first stage and a straight up profile, and a beefier second stage which does most of the job of getting orbital velocity (~7km/s). When I heard it it reminded me of the DH-1 fictional design proposed in the book "The rocket company". It's almost a SSTO with a rocket assisted air launch, frankly, which must make the whole SSTO thingy much easier.

As to news or no news, well, as it has been said, there has been a lot of speculation about what MCT stands for since he dropped the acronym. And if it is Mars Colonial Transport... well, that is a serious declaration of intentions. As if he needed any more.

Size is anyone's guess (he has not made any public declarations as to how big the heavy lifters he is planning are, only that they will be significantly bigger than the Falcon family), but running the rocket equation, LEO to Mars surface (with aerobraking and heatshield) takes about the same as Mars surface to Earth reentry, and is very doable on single stages with chemical engines running on, for example, methane fuel like the Raptor will use. IIRC I got a mass ratio of around 5, which means decent payload fraction. Add ISRU, and you get a sexy operations concept: Reusable HLV takes ship to space, ship goes to Mars, ship refuels and goes back to Earth. Refuel, inspect, restock, and put it on top of another HLV to go again.

Rune. And what's that about F9R flying on July? Perhaps you mean F9 1.1?

[NovaSilisko]

F9R = F9 v1.1

They're redesignating it.

[metaphor]

Did some testing of landable first stages in KSP, naturally to do an landing I has to switch back to first stage after decoupling.

My experience was that landing again was pretty cheap, however if you dropped after gravity turn you had to use lots of fuel getting back. this could fast cost more than the 250m/s needed to land.

Does not the same problem apply in real world?

I looked into this earlier. Apparently the flight profile of the reusable F9 includes a less pronounced gravity turn than the current F9, then a canceling of the horizontal velocity after first stage separation, leading to a high apoapsis, then another burn right before hitting the thick part of the atmosphere, and then the final suicide burn when touching down. Something like this:

And because of the extra mass the first stage needs in fuel and infrastructure, making it reusable would reduce the payload mass to orbit by a significant amount, something like 40% (should still bring down costs per pound overall).

As far as the MCT goes, I think Elon might be getting a little ahead of himself. He might be a billionaire, but even he doesn't have the capital needed to design and build a super-heavy lift rocket as well as a deep space hab and Mars lander. You would need something like Bill Gates' wealth for something of that magnitude. NASA is building a heavy lift rocket made out of recycled Shuttle parts for $20 billion, and while SpaceX can probably do it a lot cheaper, doing it ~20 times cheaper is a pretty big stretch. Maybe if the reusable Falcon 9 posts huge profits for the next many years and Elon puts all those profits into designing a Mars vehicle, but that would still be a long way out. Still hoping for something sooner rather than later though.

Edited June 9, 2013 by metaphor

[Nibb31]

Thanks for that figure!

[Britpoint]

I can't wait to see what happens with this. I imagine we'll hear more concrete plans once Dragon is taking astronauts to the ISS. I like how he's never shy about sharing his vision and planning long term. I have no doubt he has a team in the corner of SpaceX who spend their entire working week coming up with new ideas for the MTC, running computer simulations, feeding him cost estimates. All so he can work it into his long term strategy. I'm not saying I have complete confidence that everything Musk says will happen and will go according to plan, but I will say: if anyone can do it, I think he probably can.

Apparently we'll be hearing more about his proposed 'Hyperloop' system this month. I am excited for that news as well.

[Rune]

F9R = F9 v1.1

They're redesignating it.

Hum. No they're not. F9 1.1 is the upgraded version with the new Merlin 1D and stretched tanks that will indeed start flying this summer. F9R is a significantly different beast, with lower payload capacity due to recovery systems.

Rune. It would be cool, but as far as I know we will have to wait a bit to see a first stage land "like God and Robert Heinlein meant them to".

[Scotius]

Hyperloop sounds very interesting. And impressive. If it can be made to work as advertised...well, i think Mr. Musk will have enough money for his Mars plans