SpaceX Shows Off Its Mars Interplanetary Transport System In New Video

There's been a lot of talk about sending humans to Mars, but one big question persists among all of the conversation: how are we going to do it? The idea seems easy enough considering that we've sent humans on manned missions to the Moon, but Mars is an entirely different beast. There seem to be multiple entities out there with a plan, but one – Elon Musk's SpaceX – is visualizing the trip to the red planet in a new video.

Interestingly enough, there is no narrator to walk us through what we're seeing here. Instead, we have only a handful of factoids pop up on screen as we watch a computer-generated shuttle make the trip from Cape Canaveral to Mars.

The video starts us on the very same launch pad that Apollo 11 departed from, and we watch as the SpaceX shuttle lifts off into space. Once the rocket makes it through Earth's atmosphere, the spaceship departs and heads to its parking orbit, while the booster heads back down to Earth to retrieve a fuel capsule. From there, the fuel capsule docks with the spaceship, and once the fuel has been transferred, the spaceship leaves on its long journey to Mars.

Obviously, there's a little more to it than that, but to go through a full step-by-step explanation here would spoil some of the wonder of the video. In short: it's best you just watch to video to see SpaceX's full vision for the future. SpaceX has some lofty goals for our terrestrial neighbor, saying earlier this year that it plans to have a mission to Mars by 2018. That mission won't be manned, but it will certainly pave the way for a mission similar to the one we see in the video here.