"Together to Mars": is a joint flight of Russia and the United States to the fourth planet realistic?

Kirill Dmitriev, the president's special representative, who had previously had a hand in a major scientific and technological breakthrough, says he will soon meet with Elon Musk to discuss joint flights to Mars. There are two problems. First of all, Russia has nothing to offer today to participate in such a project. If you try very hard, it can be fixed — but over many years. Secondly, Musk's plan itself has a couple of pretty weak points. Will there be a joint flight, or will everything remain just words?

On March eighteenth, 2025, a landmark event took place. Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and special representative of the president, said he plans to hold talks with the head of SpaceX about Russian participation in the flight to Mars.:

"There will be discussions with Musk in the near future. And we believe that Musk is a unique leader dedicated to making humanity move forward together. He is certainly one of the greatest leaders of our time."

The key meaning of these words is not that the Kremlin wants to cooperate with SpaceX on a flight to Mars. This, as we will show below, is not surprising at all. What is really intriguing is the drastic change in rhetoric towards the head of this company.

After all, not so long ago, the head of Roscosmos stated:

"Stories about the colonization of Mars are for illiterate space enthusiasts [sic]. — NS]... Technical people [so in the original. —NS] understands that this is absolutely absurd." Another time, he protested against "this childish delight of these Ilonov witness sects" and said that Elon Musk "is a man completely focused not on Mars. He's not going there for sure."

None of Dmitriev's statements during his entire career was as unexpected as this one. However, it cannot be said that he has not participated in major events before, it is enough to recall his funding by the Sputnik vaccine development fund

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Roscosmos is now run by a completely different person. And then the president's representative suddenly started talking as the head of the "Ilonov witness sects." Moreover, Dmitriev was not the only one who changed his mind: he had already discussed cooperation on the "absolute absurdity" (a flight to Mars) with the new head of Roscosmos.

Just a year ago, it was impossible to imagine such a post in the telegram channel of the special representative of the president. But will anything real come out of all these good intentions?

Image source: Kirill Dmitriev

What's going on anyway? Why such an unexpected change in the position of the Kremlin's representatives?

Dmitriev started talking about this topic after Musk's recent tweet. He stated that at the end of 2026, a Starship with a humanoid robot Optimus would go to the fourth planet. And if everything goes well, in 2029, in the next launch window to Mars, people will fly there. However, he added: "Although 2031 is more likely in this sense."

In the text below, we will answer two key questions. The first: What's wrong with Musk's Mars mission plans? Second: What's wrong with Russia's plans to join this flight?

Castle on the sand

Let's start with the fact that a successful human flight to Mars is unlikely to take place in 2029. To better understand why, we need to understand how rockets fly.

Let's take the best production Earth rocket of 2025, the Falcon 9. The mass without fuel and payload is 29.5 tons. The payload is 17 tons. Fuel — 503 tons. The fuel makes up 96.83% of the mass. Starship has very similar proportions.

Looking at these figures, it is clear that if we launch a rocket to Mars for several people, they will need a lot of fuel to lift off its surface. It takes several hundred tons just to take off. And to return to Earth — one and a half thousand tons at least.

No fuel is being produced on Mars yet. It is theoretically possible to deliver fifteen hundred tons from Earth: send several more Starships to Mars, since they have a payload of at least 200 tons.

But in practice, such an operation is very questionable. It is not feasible to pump liquid methane and oxygen without special heat-insulated pipelines. Laying such pipelines between several grounded Starship tankers and a Starship with astronauts standing next to them is a risky and difficult task.

Therefore, SpaceX has a different idea: astronauts should land on Mars and immediately organize fuel production on site. In the two years between flight windows, they will accumulate so much liquid CH4 and O2 that they will refuel themselves and fly home.

A chemical reactor for the Sabatier process (producing methane from CO2 and water) can be quite compact. This project involved placing one of them in an ordinary shipping container. But if we want the system to produce up to a thousand tons of fuel per year, it will have to become much larger and more massive.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

It would seem that what could go wrong? In general, that's it.

A few years ago, Naked Science already analyzed in detail the main bottleneck of this plan: energy. To generate 1,500 tons of fuel in a couple of years, you either need to have a constant source of electricity for more than a megawatt, or solar panels with a capacity of a couple of megawatts (to compensate for the fact that they do not work at night).

Let's say a solar power plant of this capacity can hardly fit into another one or two cargo Starships. But it will have to be accompanied by another cargo Starship with lithium batteries like the Tesla Megapack — only specially lightweight for space. If this is not done, chemical methane production reactors will not be able to operate 24 hours a day and will be active only during the day, 12 hours a day. Accordingly, they will have to be made twice as large and heavier, otherwise they will not have time to produce the same amount of fuel on time.

Total: to return people from the Red Planet, SpaceX will first have to bring one or two cargo ships with a solar power plant there. Then another one with batteries. Another one is with chemical equipment for producing fuel. Only then will a passenger ship arrive, whose inhabitants will have to unload, assemble and install:

• A megawatt class power plant.
• A power storage station of the same class.
• Chemical and cryogenic plants for fuel production.

Then the gases from it will be sent to the passenger Starship, from which, by the way, they will have to be slightly vented for more than a year. Otherwise, during the waiting time, they will evaporate there and create too high pressure in the tanks.

Anyone who has seen what the construction of power plants and chemical plants looks like on Earth is already smiling broadly. That's because they imagine it to be a huge amount of work that will take months. And during which, as is known from earthly experience, some important parts will definitely be dropped, which is why they will certainly want to refuse to work.

And those who know what physical work looks like in an extravehicular space suit are alarmingly silent. The lack of enthusiasm among the latter is understandable: such a spacesuit weighs at least 110 kilograms and severely restricts the movements of the arms and legs. To assemble factories and power plants on Mars in such a way is a titanic feat.

Knowledge of the features of the fourth planet adds additional elements to this equation. There are regular global dust storms there. After them, the solar panels are covered with a dense layer of dust, which is why more than one terrestrial automaton sent to this planet has already been ordered to live for a long time.

What happens when dust covers the solar panels? It is better not to offer the option of a cleaning robot. They are not very good at cleaning the panels, even on the Ground, where they can be cleaned with automatic sprinklers. On the Red Planet, this option is closed because the water there cannot be liquid.

Obviously, the same people in 110-kilogram spacesuits will start cleaning the panels. Will they quickly clean 240,000 square meters of solar cells?

To more clearly imagine the answer to the last question, we recall that during the moon landings, the astronauts could not even clean their spacesuits and themselves from the local dust. They couldn't, although they tried. This is because the regolith dust is very fine, and the humidity in such places is about zero. Dry fine particles adhere well due to electrostatics, but they do not stick off very well. The images inside the lunar lander clearly show dirty panels, dirty spacesuits and slightly cleaner faces of astronauts.

But they only made two exits outside — and there were zero dust storms on the moon. What kind of masks will the conquerors of Mars wear after trying to clean the solar panels from the effects of the storm? This is unknown. But it is almost certain that they will not be able to clean themselves clean of dust.

It is utopia to base calculations on the fact that all this titanic construction by human forces in 110-kilogram weights will work flawlessly the first time. Even if we force astronauts in space suits to build the necessary power plant and chemical plant somewhere in the terrestrial Atacama, this will in no way guarantee success on another planet.

Let us recall the fact: in 1969-1972, American cosmonauts' spacesuits began to gradually poison the air after the very first exit. Because the dust on the fasteners prevented them from closing properly. People have experience with lunar regolith, it has been well studied in terrestrial laboratories. But no one has delivered a Martian one to our planet yet, so let's face it: it is not known how it will behave with spacesuits.

To summarize: in its current form, Musk's plan for a flight to Mars is a castle in the sand. At least at first glance.

Why does Dmitriev want Russia to participate in the construction of Martian castles?

It is unlikely that what we have described above is completely unknown to Kirill Dmitriev. Why, despite this, does he offer SpaceX cooperation with our country?

If Dmitriev believes in the United States landing on Mars in the next 10-12 years, then the logic of his proposal is that Russia, in theory, can close the two bottlenecks of Elon Musk's Mars expedition.

Let's recall the very statement of the Russian civil servant in the context of the idea of "Together to Mars":

"Of course, Rosatom can play a big role here."

Which one? It's easy to guess: we're talking about an atomic reactor for the Red Planet. If you design it sensibly, then a 2-3 megawatt nuclear power plant for Mars can be literally fifty tons, or at most a hundred. Rosatom is able to build and test it in 8-10 years.

Of course, he won't have such a reactor ready in 2029 or 2031. This is a very difficult task. It is necessary to create a gas turbine operating in rather unusual parameters. The reactor part will also be very difficult (a version of the Soviet Atomic Locomotive project would be logical, only three times weaker). But Dmitriev hardly expects a Starship flight with people on board in 2029-2031. They are too close, and too much work needs to be done in order for it to become a reality.

Secondly, Russia can offer Mask extravehicular spacesuits. The US has a problem with this: the spacesuits left over from the shuttle era are very old and worn out. That's why astronauts who dare to use them on the ISS are periodically flooded with water from the cooling system. As a result, they risk drowning to death. It is clear that no one has any desire to fly to Mars in such a thing. Axiom is trying to create new spacesuits, but the success there has not been that noticeable so far.

On the left: a spacesuit from NASA's draft designs from 2019, shown publicly at the same time.

Image Source: Lifting Contact

SpaceX is developing its own extravehicular spacesuits. And last year, Jared Isaacson, the future head of NASA, even ventured out of the hatch of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. The problem is that so far the SpaceX spacesuit is poorly designed, like the Leonov spacesuit from the 1960s. It is clearly visible in the video that Isaacson could not bend his limbs.

It's like the new AxEMU spacesuit from 2024. If you mentally change the color of the spacesuit in the area of the arms and chest trapeze, it is easy to notice its similarity to the photo of 2019. So far, the spacesuits have not passed either final design approval or tests with a life support system. It is completely unclear when they will be ready. How unclear is their resource and the astronaut's mobility in it

Image Source: Lifting Contact

The company will undoubtedly be able to fine-tune the suit to a normal one, but it will take several years. That is, for now Moscow can offer Musk something that he does not have. And this proposal is most relevant not so much for Mars as for the Moon: SpaceX should return astronauts there in the next couple of years. And from a rocket point of view, she can handle it—but what's the point of flying to Selena if you can't get off the ship because you don't have a working spacesuit?

The Russian extra—ship spacesuit Orlan is structurally a variant of the Soviet Gyrfalcon, created for the royal lunar program. That is, he can support the return of Americans to the moon. After redesigning the heat transfer system, it will be quite suitable for Mars.

SpaceX's spacesuit, unlike AxEMU's, is at least real. But that's where his advantages end: Jared Isaacson, pictured, spent the entire "spacewalk" waist-deep in the Crew Dragon hatch. It's not because he's a coward who's afraid to leave the ship. It's just that the SpaceX spacesuit is technically not far away from Leonov's spacesuit. And he, we recall, almost died in space due to the limited mobility of his suit. Leonov intensively prepared for the exit, squeezing an expander by 90 kilograms for months, which is very good even for a weightlifter. But it didn't do much good: he had to bleed gases out of the spacesuit so that it would have less resistance to movement, otherwise he would not have been able to return to the ship.

Image source: SpaceX

Of course, Dmitriev could have previously talked with Roscosmos employees. If they were convincing enough, in this case he shares the belief of many of them that Americans will not fly to any Mars in the foreseeable future.

In this case, the meaning of his proposals is even more transparent. You can offer Americans anything — even a reactor with a spacesuit, even a ring of omnipotence. And when they can't handle their "rocket" part, we'll just stand up and, as in the joke, say: you see, we did our part, and you disrupted the mission. Let's just fly to the space station again, shall we?

What will actually happen

There is a nuance to the above scenario. The fact is that Musk's ideas have already seemed to Roscosmos many times to be "absolutely absurd", which in principle cannot be implemented. In 2014-2015, not a single Roscosmos specialist with whom I had to contact said anything positive about the Falcon 9 tail landings. On the contrary, everyone claimed that it was economic nonsense. [...] Those NASA employees who had already retired and could afford to express their opinions honestly had a similar attitude.

In 2015, SpaceX's attempts to put the first stages of the Falcon 9 on the tail for reuse were evaluated unanimously by Roscosmos and NASA.: like the whim of SpaceX's chief engineer. Skepticism seems to be understandable: As you know, Elon Musk has no formal technical education.

Image Source: Moscow Speaks

The chorus of experts was so unanimous that at that time there were only isolated publications in the Russian media expressing confidence that Musk would be able to squeeze Roscosmos out of the commercial launch market due to reusability.

Today, SpaceX uses this "economic nonsense" to launch 90 percent of all cargo that Earthlings carry into space. The American company launched 1,860 tons of cargo into space last year, while Roscosmos only com/space/2025/03/ rocket-report-falcon-9-may-smash-reuse-record-relativity-roving-to-texas/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">76 tons, ten times less. And Russia hopes to build a clone of its "economically impractical" rocket (the Soyuz-7 project) by the end of the 2020s.

For the learner, there is a moral to this story. The problem is that if something in SpaceX's plans seems impossible to Russian space specialists, then in the end it turns out that the problem was not so much SpaceX as Russian space specialists. However, it's not about their nationality: NASA experts said exactly the same thing at that time — and they were just as wrong.

What does this mean in relation to Elon Musk's Mars project? A minimally careful analysis shows that for a Starship flight to Mars and back with humans, it is not at all necessary to extract all the fuel needed for the return trip. Technically, the simplest option is the following.

First, the expedition arrives on the planets and works there for two years between the flight windows (such windows occur when Mars and Earth "line up" opposite each other). During this time, the astronauts will have time to explore all the surroundings of the landing point, find water ice, and learn how to extract oxygen and methane from it and the local atmosphere at a pilot installation of moderate power. It is not necessary to build a full-size large plant, since fuel can be obtained on the way back otherwise.

Then, two years later, two groups of unmanned Starships will arrive in Mars orbit. Purely cargo ships from the same group will refuel one manned ship "all the way". After that, he will land on the planet, near the landing point of the expedition.

Landing on Mars requires much less fuel than flying there plus landing. Therefore, the grounded ship will have at least 500 tons of fuel in its tanks. This is enough for astronauts (with samples of Martian soil) to transfer to this ship and fly it into near-Martian orbit.

The second group of cargo ships will be waiting for them here. They will carry 200 tons of payload (fuel) to the vicinity of the Red Planet. And after several refueling flights from them, the Starship with people will go back to Earth.

Optimistic pictures of the first base on Mars can look impressive. But there is no point in relying on successful fuel extraction on the planet before humans set foot there: what if methane production goes wrong?

Image Source: X

This scheme requires the delivery of at least a dozen ships to near-Martian orbit, one of which must be manned (that is, have life support systems). The cargo Starship itself is not more expensive than 200 million dollars, that is, the cost of an additional dozen ships will be about three billion dollars.

The figure looks impressive, but, firstly, it is not particularly large. This is the annual budget of the civilian part of Roscosmos, and the Curiosity rover cost less than the United States. From the point of view of the American economy and budget — pennies, NASA spends so much on flights to the ISS per year.

Secondly, this scheme does not require the delivery of power plants to Mars by separate cargo ships, and chemical reactors for producing fuel by others. It is clear that such a station and chemical equipment will have to be developed from scratch for the mission. That's why they will be in a single copy at first, that is, they are very expensive. It turns out that the option of "getting fuel on Mars" will also be more expensive than the option of "bringing fuel on the way back from Earth."

Could Musk not have thought of this? It is very doubtful: there is no one in the world today who thinks about the Mars expedition more than the chief engineer of SpaceX. Why is he silent about this option?

Why is SpaceX cooking porridge out of an axe

Imagine that you have an important task to do, but the social environment in which you live does not consider that this task is necessary at all. That's how Sergei Korolev used to be: he wanted to fly into space, but the Soviet leadership didn't understand at all why it would be necessary. But they understood why ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads were needed.

Then Korolev began developing a rocket powered by oxygen-kerosene fuel, telling technically naive party workers that such missiles were well suited for nuclear strikes. The reality was different: NDMG + AT toxic fuel missiles were ideally suited for atomic warfare (Korolev brought their development to a separate design bureau, Yangel).

And oxygen-kerosene was suitable for humans. Having brought its oxygen-kerosene project to flight readiness earlier than the NDMG + AT, Korolev pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> suggested that the management fill the pause between the tests of the combat version of the R-7 with a space flight made "on the knee" (Korolev said so ) of Sputnik-1. The leadership did not really delve into all these satellites, so the launch in the USSR took place without much fanfare, speaking with restraint.

Typical Western newspaper editorials the day after the launch of Sputnik 1

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The next day, a storm broke out in the Western media. Khrushchev might not understand why space was needed, but he understood what propaganda was. So money poured into civilian flights in a small but steady stream, which marked the beginning of the space age in the world and in our country.

And this is what the editorials of Soviet newspapers looked like on the same day, October 5, 1957. It is easy to see that Western publications devoted a noticeably large part of their front pages to the event. However, not only the first ones. Soviet newspapers published the same abundance of materials about the launch only on October 6, when the reaction of the West gave the party leadership a clearer idea of the scale of the event, the historical meaning of which the CPSU simply did not understand before the launch.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Let's go back to our days, to the Mask. He wants to create a self-sustaining colony on Mars. Or, as the businessman stated in a recent interview, "civilization." It is clear that for this purpose it is necessary to attract a lot of volunteers with some vivid story. And for this, it is necessary to create a reason for colonization from the very beginning.

In the scenario of running out of fuel to return to the fourth planet itself, it turns out that a flight there "for a flagpole", such as the one that American politicians paid for to the Moon in 1969, is technically impossible.

With the concept that Musk is now publicly promoting, any flight to Mars automatically creates a long-term base there. Because a group of people who have built a power plant and a chemical plant on an alien planet is such a base, even if there are only ten people.

And when you set up a base there on your first flight, you immediately have a powerful media reason to make it a colony. After all, what will happen to a power plant, whether nuclear or solar, if it is left without people for a couple of years? That's right: Martian sand will cover solar panels or nuclear power plant cooling systems. And it will be very, very difficult to start it all again.

It would be much more logical to send a second expedition to replace the first one in two years. She will be engaged in the repair and maintenance of both energy and industry of the local mini-colony. Like, don't waste the good.

The Russian nuclear space tugboat project, which has been talked about in the media for many years. As we wrote earlier, it is unsuitable for manned flights due to its low power. But you can't directly get a reactor for Mars from it either.: The situation with heat removal is completely different, and the class of electrical power is different.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

A modern politician is no smarter than Khrushchev: why go to Mars, he still does not know. But he loves material possessions and is very reluctant to part with them. Telling him, "Well, now we're going to leave the factory and the power plant there," is the same as telling an old woman from a Russian folk tale that you're going to teach her how to cook porridge with an axe.

To do so is to strike at his weakest point. That's exactly where Musk is aiming with his concept of "getting fuel to return to Earth on Mars itself."

Of course, being a technically knowledgeable person, the head of SpaceX is almost certainly preparing a plan "B". In case the spacesuits, as in lunar expeditions, start poisoning the air, or if cutting ice from under the sand to generate fuel does not work out for other reasons. In plan B, he may have provided for the preparation of a dozen additional Starships to be sent two years later "as part of a rescue mission" for astronauts stranded on the Red Planet.

It will be a very media story: a reality show where a human life is at stake in the eyes of a technically naive audience. There's no such thing as a "squid game." Just what a Mask needs to attract maximum interest in a permanently inhabited colony on another planet.

What does this mean for Kirill Dmitriev's initiative?

What is described above means that what seems to Dmitriev to be a win-win offer may actually not produce the results he expects.

After all, how does Roscosmos see this proposal now? No one there hides that they consider the flight to Mars to be just an empty concussion of the air. Here is a recent quote from the manufacturer of Russian space suits dated March 18, 2025:

These are the words not of anyone, but of the administrator, whose institution, in theory, should develop the very spacesuit for Mars that Dmitriev and the Kremlin can probably offer Mask for cooperation in the Mars project. How will such an obviously erroneous opinion affect the chances of the Russian side to create a modification of the spacesuit on time?

For Sergey Pozdnyakov, the head of the state corporation that makes our spacesuits, everything is simple and understandable.: The United States will not go to Mars in the foreseeable future. It seems that the experience of past incorrect forecasts for SpaceX has so far taught the Russian space industry and its suppliers little.

Image source: RIA Novosti

The answer is obvious: negatively. And a serious modification will be required. After all, now the Russian "Eagles" are not at all designed for frequent use: 15 exits outside and that's it, they are being written off. It is logical: astronauts on the ISS go into space very rarely, for them it is a whole event.

But for Martian spacesuits, everything will be exactly the opposite: they will go outside every day, because the Mask has tasks for them to heaven. Fill up the pilot plant for fuel production, then find a new ice deposit, then bring it from there, then fix the Mars rover, then clean the power plant from the raised dust. Just have time to turn around.

A similar story is with Rosatom. After all, he will not build his reactor in the void: first he will ask the specialists (Roscosmos) what year it should be ready for. There, with a high probability, they will answer exactly as the head of the spacesuit builders above. Yes, his NPP Zvezda is not part of Roscosmos, but Roscosmos employees normally still respond the same way in backstage conversations.

Having received such an orientation, Rosatom is unlikely to be in too much of a hurry with a reactor for Mars.

As a result, it may turn out that we will offer a Mask, spacesuits and a reactor. But by the time it gets ready to fly to the fourth planet, we still won't have them ready (this is especially likely for the reactor).

Screenshot from the American press for March 17, 2025. Not only Pozdnyakov or the majority of Roscosmos (or NASA) employees, but also former astronauts, do not believe in a flight to Mars in the foreseeable future. If we take current NASA astronauts, then almost all of them share these misconceptions. If Musk is not killed or imprisoned in the next 10-12 years, life will significantly correct their views.

Image Source: The Hill

From a technical point of view, the most likely years for the first human flight to Mars are between 2031 and 2035. And we can already confidently say that Rosatom will not be able to create and debug a "Martian reactor" by 2031. Not because it doesn't work well, but because the development and testing of a fundamentally new reactor won't be completed in six years.

If it is completed in eight years, the developers will need to erect monuments during their lifetime. If in ten years — to award state awards.

With all this in mind, let's try to imagine the year 2031. We have agreed with the United States to fly to Mars in an American Starship spacecraft, launched into space by the Starship system and refueled in low-Earth orbit by other Starships.

We may have a Russian-designed spacesuit for Mars. But by 2031, SpaceX will have a working spacesuit, simply because six years is a long time for this company, and they act quickly. Suffice it to remember that six years ago she had zero manned spacecraft, and now she takes more people into space per year than any other player on the planet.

But we can't imagine any US reactor at this moment. A space reactor for a "nuclear tugboat" (about the limited prospects of which we wrote here) it will not be suitable for Mars: it will be too massive (a gas primary circuit plus a closed gas turbine cycle). And we don't have it yet in the form tested in orbit.

In such a situation, what now looks to Dmitriev like good politics and good PR can turn out to be a political and PR blow. The Americans will have everything ready, and we will act as those who disrupted the flight to the Red Planet.

Will our country be able to avoid such a scenario? The answer to this question is not at all obvious.