Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk recently announced plans from his company, SpaceX, to send one of his Starship crafts to Mars within a couple of years. Taking to social media over the weekend, Musk claimed that the Starships will be prepared to commence their first mission to the planet in “2 years.” Musk has maintained his commitment to sending astronauts to Mars and colonizing the planet for years.
“The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens. These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars,” the Tesla founder wrote. Musk added that if the unmanned flights are successful, SpaceX will begin preparing to send crewed flights within the next few years. “If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years,” he said.
Musk further described the ambitious goal of constructing a “self-sustaining” city on the planet, which would increase the “probable lifespan of consciousness.” He continued, “Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet.”
Musk’s described in a separate post, the first “fully reusable rocket stage” that SpaceX developed. According to the CEO, this is the first step in tackling the massive economic issue of traveling to Mars and building a sustainable civilization beyond Earth.
“SpaceX created the first fully reusable rocket stage and, much more importantly, made the reuse economically viable. Making life multiplanetary is fundamentally a cost per ton to Mars problem. It currently costs about a billion dollars per ton of useful payload to the surface of Mars. That needs to be improved to $100k/ton to build a self-sustaining city there, so the technology needs to be 10,000 times better. Extremely difficult, but not impossible,” Musk said.
The American Tribune recently reported on other news surrounding Elon Musk’s SpaceX, in which his company’s Dragon craft was selected to fly two astronauts currently stranded on the International Space Station back to Earth. After becoming stuck in outer space when their Boeing Starliner began to malfunction, it was finally decided that Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams would return home on the Dragon craft in early 2025.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson claimed during a recent press briefing, “Spaceflight is risky — even at its safest and even at its most routine — and a test flight, by nature, is neither safe nor routine, and so the decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety.”
Josh Finch, a NASA spokesman, previously shed light on the internal debate at the space agency regarding how to safely fly the astronauts home. “NASA is evaluating all options for the return of agency astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station as safely as possible. No decisions have been made and the agency will continue to provide updates on its planning,” he said.
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