Musks giant Starship rocket is to take 150 tons of supply each to Mars. He plans on building 1,000's of these giant rockets, called Starship/Superheavy. He is also taking equipment using solar power and using the Sabatier process to make his own gas on Mars. Natural gas or Methane is one carbon and four hydrogens, CH4. He will make it using Mar's atmosphere which is mostly carbon dioxide and Martian frozen water. The Sabatier process, named after a French chemist, splits water into oxygen and hydrogen, and then blends the hydrogen into the carbon dioxide. Oxygen, and methane (natural gas) come out. This can be used for rocket fuel or other fuel, and the oxygen made for the Mars colonists to breathe.
Anyway, saturday SpaceX launched their Falcon 9 rocket launching 51 Starlink satellites and landed the booster for the 87th time. They are the only space company reusing their rockets causing launch costs to go down. They launched 4 astronauts to the space station last Wednesday.
Elon Musk is a little weird sometimes, but he is probably the smartest man alive today. Engineer and Businessman. He hasn't rode in his own rocket unlike Bezo's, which only goes up and comes right back down. He is a shy guy who doesn't act like Bezo's or Branson. He did say he will probably go to Mars when they get the colony started. He wants to do this in his lifetime. He lives in a 20' x 20' house at Boca Chica, Texas where they build these rockets, and basically sold all his homes and other possessions to put all his money into SpaceX. He dones't have much cash as he doesn't take a salary at Tesla or SpaceX, as he started these companies and owns a huge amount of stock in them. His net worth makes him the richest man in the world but cash poor. He owns factories that make Teslas, lithium ion batteries, solar panels, rocket engines and rockets, as well as satellites. He is moving most of them to Texas because of taxes and left leaning California.
Oh, his Starship rockets are using stainless steel made in Alabama. The Starship superheavy booster is going to be twice as powerful as Saturn V, and have 32 rocket engines on it. SpaceX alone is surpassing NASA, if anything for shear lower costs alone. He reminds me of being the Henry Ford of rockets.
