Photos: Elon Musk's New SpaceX Plans To Get To Mars

The mission to Mars has gotten an upgrade. Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and CEO, presented his new plans for sending humans to Mars at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia earlier this week and they look a bit different than what he presented last time.

The deeper into the planning stages Musk and his team have gotten the plans have needed some tweaking and changing. Those changes were reflected in the presentation Musk gave Friday. The biggest changes he made to the plan was the addition of an intercity rocket an updated version of the Interplanetary Transport System.

The plan originally showed a tall rocket than would launch from Cape Canaveral that refuels multiple times before making it to Mars. This rocket was specifically designed for travel to Mars.

The new plan features a different, smaller rocket for traveling from one city to another on Earth, but that could be used for travel to space. A video of the rocket shows it launching from a floating platform in New York and heading to space and reaching a maximum speed more than 16,000 miles per hour before touching down in Shanghai just 39 minutes later. The end of the video boasts, "Anywhere on Earth in under an hour."

It can carry 100 people and be used to establish a moon base, it's nicknamed the BFR, for big f***ing rocket. The plan is to use it for launching orbits, crew and cargo to the International Space Station, as well as for missions to the moon and Mars.

Those moon and Mars bases also have more developed looks than they did when Musk gave his presentation last year. The moon base is a new plan for Musk, he's mentioned it before as a way to have a point between Earth and Mars but the plans weren't as sophist acted as those for Mars.

Musk also talked about the Mars city he has envisioned. Something he posted a photo of on Instagram after the talk. The plan is to send two of the rockets carrying cargo to Mars in 2022, an aggressive timeline Musk admits. Then two years later the plan is to launch two more cargo loads and two crew loads that will carry the first people to Mars. The first goal is to find water and the second is to build a propellant plant to fuel the rockets. Once mining operations and refining operations are up and running then the base on Mars would be on track to grow into a full-fledged city.

The full presentation Musk made is available to watch here: