Space Colonization Part 06:The Skylon, the Motherships, My Plan

The Skylon

How many of you, have heard about the Skylon spaceplane? Skylon is a British single stage to orbit space plane. It is proposed by Reaction Engines Limited (REL). The Sabre engine that is currently tested is going to me able to get the spaceplane to speeds up to 5,4 Mach and height of 26 kilometers, after that it will switch the engines to use internal supply of liquid oxygen and take it into orbit. The cost will fall to 650/kg british pounds. Skylon will be able to carry 11 tons of cargo per mission making it easier to start building in space.

The Motherships

The easiest way to colonize our closest planets and moons would be to have a mothership carrying people and cargo to each planet and having hangars on it, which will be able to support/carry Skylons. These Motherships can be mobile space factories or even mini colonies that will be able to choose the right place to start the construction of our future colonies. The cost should be high for such a project but i propose it because it seems to me the safest, fastest, and most cost effective way in long term human presence in space. About 3 Motherships with 3-5 skylons on them each would be easy to create colonies in all the inner solar system.

My plan's Timeline

First tests of Skylon are planned for 2025. Three or four years later it will be used in maybe all missions if all go on as planned. At the year 2029 construction of the first Mothership starts close to the moon, while Skylons get material for both the first Mothership and the Moon Village. Moon Village should be just ready to operate at that time. The first Mothership should be ready for testing by 2032 and finish testing by 2036. Humanity has its first colony an one Mothership, and many Skylons ready. The first Mars mission by Orion already took place and it is time for the Mothership to take action. It will be propelled by many types of engines and Nuclear Fission reactor can power it for its first voyages(maybe it can be upgraded to Nuclear Fusion reactors in the future). It might reach Mars by 2037 or even earlier if tech is better by that time. The first experiments and the first Mars base can be ready in just 1-2 months. The second Mothership is already in the making back in the Moon Village. Scientist are ready to try and create a magnetic field on Mars the year is 2038, smaller spacecraft travel between Mars and Moon to carry Cosmonauts back and forth. The plan for the magnetic field begins the year 2039. The plan is to pass a current to all the surface of the planet and restart its core it will take about 10-15 years. The year is 2040 the second Mothership is ready for testing, the Moon Village now have 40 thousand residents who start working in spinning type colonies. Skylons are upgraded twice by now and are able to travel in the inner solar system. 

Conquered Inner Solar System

The year 2043 the second Mothership is ready for its first voyage to the Asteroid Belt. Mining begins 1 year later. Humanity by the year 2044 has conquered the inner solar system before it reaches 10 billion people. Rotating colonies are constructed, a huge amount of materials are coming from the Asteroid Belt, Mars is already in the terraforming process and the Moon Village is expanding all the time. Over population is still a threat but now it starts looking as a resource since humans are needed to man the rotating colony, the mining sites at the Asteroid Belt, the Mars mission, the Moon Village expansion, the newly funded outer solar missions to Europa and the newly funded colony of dwarf planet Ceres. Welcome to humanities First Great Space Expansion.

Source Links:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/13/sabre_hybrid_rocket_engine_ready_in_2020/

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABRE_(rocket_engine)

Thanks for reading feel free to follow, vote and Re-esteem if you find it useful.

You can find more articles of mine here: https://steemit.com/@diasdr 

Space Colonization Part 01: https://steemit.com/science/@diasdr/space-colonization-part-01-general-idea-and-why

Space Colonization Part 02: https://steemit.com/science/@diasdr/space-colonization-part-02-the-moon-colony 

Space Colonization Part 03: https://steemit.com/science/@diasdr/space-colonization-part-03-3d-printing-the-future-colonies 

Space Colonization Part 04: https://steemit.com/science/@diasdr/space-colonization-part-04-mining-the-asteroid-belt 

Space Colonization Part 05: https://steemit.com/science/@diasdr/space-colonization-part-05-mars-and-the-terraforming-project