 What I really want to try to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible, make it seem as though it's something that we can do in our lifetimes. Elon Musk finally told the world his vision for colonizing Mars, and it turned out to be one hell of a show. His talk in Mexico drew insane crowds. People actually stampeded into the hall where his lecture was in order to get a good seat. They were then treated to a one-hour breakdown of all the vehicles Musk wants to build in order to bring people to the red planet. So let's unwrap all of this and talk about what it means. It starts off like any science fiction. You need a spaceship. A vehicle to carry up to 100 passengers, maybe more, and 450 tons of cargo to Mars. First the spaceship will be launched into Earth orbit thanks to a massive rocket booster. And I mean massive. When completed, this rocket would be bigger and more powerful than NASA's Saturn V rocket. The thing would be powered by a combination of 42 Raptor engines. That's the new powerful engine that SpaceX has been working on. They also did their first full-scale test of the engine the other day too. But unlike the kerosene engines that power the Falcon 9, this one runs on methane. More on why later. So, the booster takes the spaceship into orbit. The two vehicles separate, and the booster comes back to land on Earth. It's one of SpaceX's signature moves, similar to how the Falcon 9 lands post-launch. But once that booster lands, it quickly gears up for its next launch of a propellant tank. That tank then docks with the spaceship in orbit, filling it up with the gas it needs to get to Mars. Musk said it'd take maybe 3-5 propellant tanks to fully fuel the spaceship's trip. Then the spaceship is off to Mars. Once it arrives, the entire thing lands using its engines to lower itself down to the ground. It's a technique called supersonic retro propulsion. And again, it's just like the Falcon 9 landings. It's also a way of getting super heavy payloads safely down to Mars, which doesn't have a very thick atmosphere to help slow falling objects. After letting out its passengers, eventually the spaceship will lift off and come back to Earth. And where will it get the fuel for that return trip? On Mars. You see, that's why SpaceX is using methane, because it can be made using carbon dioxide from the planet's atmosphere or possible subsurface water. That saves SpaceX from bringing the fuel for the return trip over beforehand. Elon and the team at SpaceX have showed really well that nothing speaks for itself quite like results. So I think the most important thing for Elon and for everyone who backs Elon and the team at SpaceX to do is to go out and take some of these technologies that he showed off today, like the giant composite tanks and the Raptor engines, and just keep developing those and keep testing those. So it sounds like he's thought it all through, right? But for all the things that Musk did say, he left out a few key parts of his human settlement idea. Namely, how these people are going to survive. A good analogy for living on Mars is kind of like living in Antarctica, but worse. We have a science base in Antarctica all the time, hundreds of people there all the time. But you don't go there to raise a family, you don't build playgrounds. I love SpaceX. I love what they're doing. It's fantastic. They have changed the way people think of space exploration. But I don't think you want a colony on Mars. I'm open-minded, of course. But if you've ever been to Antarctica, there's nothing to eat. There is nothing to drink. And you can breathe. On Mars, you can't breathe. You can't breathe, everybody. That's serious. Yet Musk said nothing about the types of habitats these people would live in and very little about how they would eat, drink, and breathe. And when asked about the dangers of a space voyage like deep space radiation or solar flares, he had this to say. So I actually think the radiation thing is often brought up, but I think it's not too big of a deal. There's certainly some risk of radiation, but it's not deadly. There is also little talk of in-space life support systems and perhaps the biggest issue of all, microgravity. Living in space can lead to severe bone density and muscle loss. And things at Mars may not be much better. The planet has one-third the gravity of Earth, which could also wreak havoc on the body. We don't know yet. But for SpaceX, these problems aren't the company's primary concern. In fact, Musk said that the first colonists would have to be willing to risk death. The goal of SpaceX is really to build the transport system. It's like building the Union Pacific Railroad. And once that transport system is built, then there's a tremendous opportunity for anyone who wants to go to Mars and create something new or build the foundations of a new planet. But even some of the engineering claims that Musk made were a little ambitious. He claimed that the spaceship could eventually make the trip to Mars in just 80 days if accelerated fast enough. That's an insane estimate given that most trips to Mars take upwards of six months. Getting to such a speed would take a lot of energy, and then a lot of energy to break. He also envisions not just one spaceship going to Mars at a time, but eventually a thousand. Let's do the math there. The launch window for Mars opens up every 26 months, so you'd have to launch a thousand spaceships in that time frame. And then since each spaceship needs at least three fuel launches, that equates to 3,000 launches in 26 months. That's more than 15 times the world's launch rate in an unbelievable amount of reused rockets. And then there's the timeline and cost estimates. Both of which seem super optimistic. Musk hopes to complete the first development spaceship in four years, and then send the first big spaceship to Mars as early as 2024. That's ambitious given SpaceX hasn't ever launched people into space yet. He also says that factors like reusability and propellant production on Mars means the entire thing can be done for way less than current Mars estimates. The ultimate result? One million people living on Mars in 40 to 100 years. But that timeline is very tentative, especially since SpaceX isn't putting a lot of money into the Mars plan just yet. Less than 5% of the company's resources are going into the development of the interplanetary transport system. And even with these low cost estimates, Musk says that he's still probably going to need help either from NASA, the government, or the private sector. So it's clear this is just the starting off point. There are a lot of problems to solve ahead. But Musk says there's only one way to solve them. That technology does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of really strong engineering talent is applied to the problem that it improves. Oh yeah, just join the Planetary Society. Don't forget that. No, so at the Planetary Society we have 52,000 members, and after this meeting I hope we have 53,000, of people who love space and want to explore space. They are all running to the front row today. Those people. It's an exciting time. If we could lower the cost of getting to space, it would be great.