SpaceX will send an unmanned Starship mission to Mars in two years and then send astronauts to the planet within four years, according to billionaire Elon Musk.
He made the prediction of his social-media platform Twitter/X on Saturday, saying that the first flights would be made to assess the logistical difficulties involved, with the ultimate goal being a human settlement on the planet within the next couple of decades.
“The first Starships to Mars will launch in two years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens,” Musk Tweeted.
“These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in four years. Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years.”
Musk added that “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.”
The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 7, 2024
These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years.
Flight rate will… https://t.co/ZuiM00dpe9
Musk was responding to an earlier Tweet In which he described how SpaceX, by pioneering reusable rockets, would make “multiplanetary life”viable.
“Making life multiplanetary is fundamentally a cost per ton to Mars problem,” he Tweeted.
“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.
As reported by The Post Millennial, Musk has brought forward his plans for Martian travel since April, when he said that an unmanned flight to the Red Planet would be five years away, and a manned flight seven.
SpaceX is scheduled to rescue two astronauts stuck on the International Space Station, after the Boeing Starliner that took them there, and was supposed to bring them back, experienced a technical malfunction.