Elon Musk's vision for human spaceflight is exciting, timely, and truly fascinating. 100% reusability of rocket components, refuelling in orbit rather than on a planet or moon's surface, and using widely accessible and inexpensive fuels like methane and oxygen are major parts of this vision. Space-X has made huge strides towards this reusability this year. 

The timelines are very ambitious, including setting the year 2022 for 2 cargo ships to go to Mars, but 5 years is also a significant amount of time. The Apollo program's timeline was not very different. Similarly, visions like this can affect major changes in a short time: only 5 days ago the International Astronautical Congress had not yet started in Adelaide and Australia's Government was just about to announce its intention to form a national space agency. This agency will presumably have a broad remit to develop Australia's space research, industry, and national capabilities and to link to international space efforts, whether commercial like Space-X or public-good like NASA, ESA, JAXA, and many other international space agencies. Human spaceflight is likely to be far down this agency's list but the Space-X vision involves plenty of fundamental science, technology, and commercial systems.  

 If even a small part of this vision can be implemented then Elon Musk and Space-X will allow humanity to make major steps to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond much faster than existing plans. Yes, there are undoubtedly major challenges to overcome, including the effects of space weather (e.g., radiation events due to solar flares) and issues with closed life support and maintenance systems, but we should explore the major potential benefits to Space-X's approach and consider supporting the parts we deem viable and transformational.

Elon Musk is impressive. He shows what intelligence and money can do when they are combined. Notice also that Elon Musk is not a committee.

My favourite Musk quotes from his talk are: 'It's 2017. We should have a lunar base by now.'

'Multi-planet species beat the hell out of being a single planet species.'

Reusing and recycling seem to be at the heart of the new approach that Musk is taking. The science behind this is realistic. The unrealistic part - the thing holding us back - has always been finding the political will to invest in space.

Kennedy and the cold war found the money for NASA to get us to the Moon. Musk doesn't need Kennedy's eloquence...or rather Musk's eloquence is in the deep knowledge of the physics and engineering.

Musk's vision and engineering savvy seem to be able to attract the money to build the BFR

Elon Musk is one big step closer to his dream of making humans a multi-planetary species. He wants us to have a better future and be inspired by the potentials that we have as humans.

Elon is famous for his agile and efficient way of running his companies and bringing truly amazing ideas to life. But the cost of interplanetary travel is one of the main reasons humans have not set a foot beyond the Moon, so Elon Mask’s presentation today focused on 'how do we pay for this thing?'

SpaceX started in 2002 and their first three rockets failed, having the first successful launch in 2008. Last year, they overcame some of the hardest hurdles in the rocket business: landing a rocket on a barge and creating a reusable rocket. This year SpaceX launched more rockets than any other space agency.

But these launches, it appears, were just a practice for something bigger. SpaceX is working on making their current rockets and Dragon capsule redundant in place of one rocket to rule them all: the BFR rocket.

The factory is built, the parts are ordered, and production will start soon. The re-usability is fundamental in keeping the costs down, as well as re-fuelling by oxygen and methane in orbit. This one rocket will be able to service the ISS, do a return trip to the Moon without local re-fuelling, and reach Mars. It can carry 150 tonnes of fuel, which is more than the biggest rocket so far, Saturn V. The rocket will be able to land on the Moon or Mars using Falcon's perfected retro-propulsion method. The first cargo mission with 2 BFR rockets is planned for 2022, a human crew mission for 2024, and also setting fuel production onsite.

We have learned to expect the impossible from Elon Mask and SpaceX, and this time-frame is aspirational, but does not seem impossible. And this time we were treated with visions of a lunar and Martian base, which makes the whole package even more mesmerising!

And just when you think that is innovative enough, Elon Musk casually mentions that the same rocket will be able to fly us to wherever we want to go on Earth in under an hour. What else to say but 'the future is now’, and it looks great!

The most significant risk from space radiation comes from the Sun (which ironically is also the most important resource for life) because it throws out enormous bursts of harmful radiation in an unpredictable way.

However, we know how to shield astronauts from this radiation during their journey to Mars and in fact we have developed computer models of this already. On Mars itself, the risk from space radiation is also enormous because unlike Earth, Mars doesn’t have enough of a magnetic field to shield it from the radiation particles constantly being emitted from the Sun (these are the same particles that produce the beautiful aurorae on Earth – so we won’t see these on Mars!).

However, it’s possible we may be able to locate magnetic “anomalies” on Mars – regions where the magnetic field is above average – where we can establish our first bases.