Rongqing Dai
Dear Mr. Musk,
As a citizen of the Earth, I appreciate very much your grand blueprint for expanding the boundaries of Earth civilization by migrating to Mars. I recently learnt that you intend to colonize Mars with 1 million settlers in just few years, but I think your current preparations for migrating to Mars are still missing an extremely important link, which is to build a spacecraft assembly yard (SCAY) and a spaceport (SP) in space.
The starting point of a fleet of spaceships to Mars should not be the ground of the Earth where gravity and air resistance are strong, but somewhere outside the Earth’s atmosphere with much smaller gravity. To do this, you need to build a spacecraft assembly yard somewhere in outer space and a spaceport near it.
You can send the parts of the spaceship to the spacecraft assembly yard in batches, and then assemble a super large space mothership there, just like humans used to assemble the space station. When this is done, you do not have to worry about how to send a huge spaceship into space with super powerful rockets; besides, this super large mothership can carry much more fuel than the ground-launched spaceship can carry, but only needs much less thrust than the ground-launched spaceship to start heading to Mars. On this huge spacecraft, you will also need to carry a few smaller ships so that people can board smaller ships for landing on Mars after reaching a low Mars orbit.
Accordingly, you will need to build a spaceport near the spacecraft assembly yard. People from Earth will need to take smaller shuttle flights in batches from the ground to the spaceport, and then board the large mothership. They can also send supplies in batches from the ground to the port, where the supplies will be loaded to the mothership.
With your wisdom, I am sure you will quickly realize that if you want to achieve your ambitious goal of colonizing Mars, the abovementioned construction of a spacecraft assembly yard and a spaceport is an essential step that cannot be avoided. Without this step, there is a serious flaw in your Mars plan that could prevent it from being truly successful! If in the next few years another team emerges to compete with you and they have a spacecraft assembly yard and a spaceport but you do not, it is obvious that you will not be able to compete with them.
Moreover, the construction of the spacecraft assembly yard and the spaceport will change the famous “one-way ticket to Mars” mindset. The first Martian settlers no longer have to embark on a journey with the tragic feeling of never returning. When the first settlers landing on Mars by small spaceships found the condition down there too harsh, they could temporarily return to the mothership for rest and reassessment. If necessary, the entire team could come back to Earth on the mothership. Believe me, the people of Earth your mother planet will welcome you back like triumphant heroes, and you can go back to your journey later after making more adequate preparations. But all of this is contingent upon one thing: you need to build a spacecraft assembly yard and a spaceport from which you can launch the super large mothership to Mars.
Of course, assembling a spacecraft in space is much more challenging than assembling a space station. But if you can’t do that, you might as well forget about going to Mars. No matter how powerful the rocket thrust you have now or will have in the future, you must assemble a super large mothership in space, larger than what your rockets can possibly send into space. Without this kind of determination, you might as well not go to Mars.
In short, assembling a large mothership in space is the necessary first step for humanity to leave Earth and settle on other planets. Without taking this step, human civilization cannot truly become an interstellar civilization. As for where and how to build the spacecraft assembly yard and spaceport, as well as how to assemble a mothership in space and other related engineering technical issues, I believe there are many top experts in your organization who can make excellent choices and outstanding designs. As a philosophy person, I just provide you with a strategic idea, hoping it will be of some help to your Mars plan.
Wish your Mars plan an early success!
Rongqing Dai
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