NASA is giving up on colonizing Mars! Only SpaceX can help...

in truth the obsession with colonizing Mars is not something new this concept actually started gaining traction during the last century with several projects created by talented and ambitious individuals working under NASA sharing the end goal of a crude Mission to Mars things started to kick off especially after the Apollo 11 event in 196 69 when the us became the first country to send humans to the Moon with this feat NASA became more confident in its capability to reach destinations beyond the moon specifically Mars however no colonization effort of any sort on the red planet has been carried out so far so what exactly happened to stunt the progress of these long-forgotten projects and can spacex's Starship provide NASA the extra oomph it needs to accomplish its unfulfilled dreams let's find out in today's episode of great SpaceX wner Von Brawn one of the most important rocket developers and champion of space exploration in the 20th century maybe you've heard of them while serving in the Nazi rocket development program he helped design and co-develop the V2 rocket the first man-made object to travel into space on June 20th of 1944 that was during World War II surprise surprise however Von brwn was more passionate about space travel than creating weapons to kill people in war and that led him to secretly moving to the United States in 1945 he signed a contract with the United States Army Ordinance Corps and later worked for the medium-range ballistic missile program that is where bronze stream of reaching the Stars flew further and inspired the Next Generation in 1948 he published a book named Mars project which probably became the most influential book on the subject of the M Mars mission in its era and even for the next Century referring to the content of the book although it is considered science fiction Braun has provided detailed calculations to support his theory and you can see that many ideas in the novel have been used by not only NASA for its later programs it's also being used by modern private space companies like SpaceX for example to serve the Mars Journey the book mentions a number of necessary Vehicles including transport ships cargo vehicles fully reusable space planes booster systems and the Mars Lander in particular the idea of a vehicle returning to Earth after launch motivated NASA to build a reusable space shuttle according to bronze design the ships will be equipped with liquid fuel rocket engines with hypergolic propellants commonly found in today's engines especially the Draco engine of spacex's dragon spacecraft he also noted the effects of weightlessness on the human body radiation from the Sun and cosmic rays hence the need of space suits to move from one ship to another despite being ahead of his time he was wrong about the possibility of alien life on Mars but can you really blame him I mean the public knowledge about Mars back then was quite Limited in fact the atmospheric pressure there is more than 100 times lower than Earth's not to mention a number of other disadvantages that make it a dead Planet indeed no living creature can survive in such conditions while Vehicles will face many difficulties if they wish to land on Mars for that reason alone the Lander in his imagination cannot actually operate in space however this is not the end of the conquest for Mars fast forward to 1950 Braun's colleague Dr Ernest stallinger came up with a new proposal based on Braun's ideas at that time America was on the threshold of the atomic age and nuclear energy began to be applied to missiles not only is it possible to use and man missions but nuclear power also provides greater efficiency at much lower Mass helping to shorten Transportation times additionally it's capable of generating electrical power once on Mars like other contemporary scientists Dr stillinger a colleague of Von braa was interested in the idea of a nuclear rocket engine singer's vehicle is fundamentally much like bronze except for the fact that it will run on nuclear powered electricity and what's more he also upgraded the Mars Lander given that instead of Landing as a glider through the Martian atmosphere as proposed by Braun stillinger's vehicle would land vertically with the help of a parachute above and then the main rocket motor would be at the bottom before touching down on the surface of Mars the motors will fire a landing shot and slow down for a soft Landing this technique is clearly more effective effective than the glider solution so it was later learned and used by NASA for its recent Mars Lander followed by SpaceX for its Falcon 9 rocket but his Innovation led to another challenge it which took a long time specifically it took 133 months to make a complete trip from Earth to Mars spending more than a year inside a spaceship floating in space just to get to a place that we don't even know what will happen is inherently risky it can be said then with certainty that both Braun and stallinger were Pioneers in proposing concept studies for a crude Mission to Mars thanks to that in the 1960s the world witnessed an explosion of new and more practical ideas not only from individuals but also from entire organizations in 1962 the Empire research project which involved the exploration of Mars was commissioned by NASA to three companies Ford's Aeronautics division General Dynamics and and the Lockheed missiles in space company these companies had to propose detailed ideas of their own despite being different with the plan expenditure and time all of them had the common point to suggest the Saturn 5 rocket and a nuclear engine Edition unfortunately none of these projects have ever been funded but they are considered the first detailed analyses of what it would take to complete a human Mission to Mars using data from actual NASA space flight laying the foundation for future research upon the ushering of 1969 the United States marked a new Milestone when it first sent humans to the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 program against its longtime competitor Russia this success pushed NASA further toward goals Beyond Apollo Von Brun later advocated a crude Mission to Mars as a focus for NASA's crude Space Program he proposed two six crew spacecraft that would be powered by nerva rocket engine and launched with Saturn 5 thrusters on a dual mission in the early 80s the Saturn designed evolved from the Jupiter series Rockets which had been created and experimented with by Von Bron's team between 1960 and 1962 the Marshall space flight center designed a series of Saturn rockets that could be deployed for various Earth orbit or lunar missions nerva or the nuclear engine for Rocket vehicle application was a nuclear thermal rocket engine development program that ran for roughly two decades its principal objective was to establish a technology base for nuclear rocket engine systems to be utilized in the design and development of propulsion systems for space mission application it promised to be more effective than chemical ones the original aim of this program was to provide a nuclear powered upper stage for the United States Air Force intercontinental ballistic missiles after the formation of NASA in 1958 it was reoriented as as a civilian project to produce a nuclear powered upper stage for NASA's Saturn 5 Moon rocket in addition to continuing development of the Saturn 5 and nerva his plan included a manned space shuttle in its original form in 1975 and space stations but it lacked one type of Hardware specifically the Mars Lander commonly seen in space missions today the appeal of this setup is the mention of the space station module as a habitat for the long journey toor s the Saturn 5 rocket as an efficient transport vehicle since it performed successfully during Apollo 11 and the nerva nuclear engine then qualified to launch to the ground according to the project schedule testing would have begun in 1978 with the first Mars mission in 1982 the shuttle would be used to refurbish the Mars production space to build a space station that had a capacity of 50 people in 1989 but much like the three proposals by the three companies prior Von bronze project could not Escape the Fate of remaining only on paper due to political reasons in the early 70s the Vietnam War made a massive dent in the US's budget Americans were fed up with the way DC was throwing not only their tax dollars but also their loved ones into a war that served no purpose their biggest concern then was no longer the extremely expensive space exploration missions which are estimated at up to $32 billion or $250 billion in today's money additionally President Nixon was not someone who cared much about NASA and its projects evidently by the end of his administration in 74 NASA's budget had plummeted from 4% of the federal budget to less than a percent as a result the majority of NASA's programs focused on the moon and Mars were cancelled and instead aimed at low earth orbit despite Von Bron's tireless efforts to keep his passionate Mars project alive fortunately things changed when in 2014 then President George W bush announced that the government would again focus on NASA targets Beyond Leo we will give NASA a new focus and vision for future expiration we will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe to gain a new foothold on the moon as a result there have been a number of programs aimed at the moon and Mars such as NASA's constellation program in 2004 the Journey to Mars initiative in 2010 and recently the arabis program however under each new presidential period those projects continuously face the challenge of being cancelled reoriented or delayed so in this Century NASA has not yet done any crude Landing missions so far onto the moon let alone on Mars This has greatly disappointed public opinion on the other hand the emergence of private companies led by ambitious leaders like the Elon Musk Le SpaceX could be a GameChanger musk is pursuing the dream of a self-sufficient City on Mars and a multiplanetary life more interestingly his super powerful rocket the Starship is capable of surpassing all other rockets in sheer power payload capacity and modern features and its construction speed is a heck of a lot faster than processing paperwork at some government agencies such as the the FWS Starship is now under development and still waiting for the launch license for the second test flight in 2024 but with the tireless efforts of both Elon Musk and his talented colleagues the public has raised hope that Starship will soon fulfill the dream of reaching Mars which was sadly halted during the last century and that's all for today folks if you want to support our Channel and get access to exclusive content please consider becoming a patron by clicking the link in the description below we appreciate your generosity and your passion for space exploration as as always this is Kevin from great SpaceX and until next time keep looking up