How we will travel beyond Mars - shortfilm by Erik Wernquist

Swedish digital artist Erik Wernquist, the author of the stunning shortfilm "Wanderers" which depicts a vision of humanity's expansion into the Solar System, has created another inspirational shortfilm "Go Incredibly Fast" "to identify a few propulsion approaches we might utilize to send humans to the worlds in our Solar System beyond Mars and reach out across the vast distances between stars."

Here you can watch the shortfilm and see some Mars-related images from it:

Astronaut in front of Mars colony:

Space station orbiting Mars:

Watch SpaceX Big Falcon Rocket update livestream here

The livestream will start on September 17, at 18:00 PT

Past evolution of the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) design:

• Official schematics for larger ITS by Elon Musk at IAC 2016 (September 2016)
• Official schematics for BFR by Elon Musk at IAC 2017 (September 2017)
• Updated design for BFR by Gwynne Shotwell at TED 2018 (April 2018)

Official schematics for Interplanetary Transport System by SpaceX

Today SpaceX CEO Elon Musk finally detailed his plan of building an Interplanetary Transport System (formerly known as "Mars Colonial Transporter") for colonization of Mars and beyond. Here are some schematics and images from his presentation.
His full presentation you can watch here and download as PDF here.

Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets (2004)

Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets (2004) is a fictional documentary made by BBC about a manned voyage through the solar system. Five astronauts are traveling with nuclear powered spaceship Pegasus and land on Venus, then on Mars, then they make a close flyby of the Sun for a gravity assist maneuver slingshotting them to Jupiter's system where they visit Io and Europa, then Saturn's icy rings and finally land on Pluto. On their way home they also land on a comet experiencing its destabilization when it closes Sun.

On their voyage they encounter many problems of which the death of one of them (because of a radiation overdose during the flyby of the Sun) is the most depressing one. In all the hardships the landing on Mars where they are delayed only by a sandstorm seems to be one of the easiest one.

There are some scenes from the Mars part of the movie (click to view in full resolution):

The Mars part of the movie can be seen here:

Wanderers - a vision of our expansion into the Solar System

"Wanderers" is a short film by Erik Wernquist depicting "a vision of humanity's expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available." In background of the stunning visuals you can hear the words and voice of Carl Sagan - the famous inspirator of space colonization.

All the scenes seen in film are explained here.

ISECG strategy for long-range human space exploration

The International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) is a forum of 14 most advanced government space agencies - ASI (Italy), CNES (France), CNSA (China), CSA (Canada), CSIRO (Australia), DLR (Germany), ESA (European Space Agency), ISRO (India), JAXA (Japan), KARI (Republic of Korea), NASA (United States of America), NSAU (Ukraine), Roscosmos (Russia), UKSA (United Kingdom). Its main goal is to advance a long-range human space exploration strategy.

On August, 2013 12 ISECG member agencies (including NASA) released the most recent update to the Global Exploration Roadmap. The summary can be seen in this infographic:

On April 10-11, 2014 NASA plans to host a workshop to discuss the updates to this roadmap.

Hope, the private pioneers like SpaceX, Mars One and others will speed up those plans a bit!