Elon Musk Wants to Go to Mars: The head of the US space company SpaceX is planning five unmanned missions at first. If these missions land safely on the neighboring planet, a crewed mission will follow.
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Musk announced on his social media platform X that the unmanned missions are set to launch in two years, while the manned missions will occur in four years. A flight from Earth to Mars is only possible every two years when the planets align. If there are any delays, the manned mission will have to wait another six years to launch.
This places Musk roughly within the time frame he set in 2012 for the landing of the Curiosity rover. At that time, he announced that humans could land on Mars “in about 12 to 15 years,” meaning between 2024 and 2027.
Humanity Should Become Multiplanetary
Musk’s plan is for “humanity to become sustainably multiplanetary,” meaning that people should not live only on Earth. This vision includes himself; in 2015, Musk expressed his desire to fly to Mars and spend his life there, stating, “I want to die on Mars, just not on landing.”
In addition to colonization, Musk is also planning tourist flights to Mars. He said, “Regardless of the success of the landing, SpaceX will significantly increase the number of Starships traveling to Mars with each transit opportunity. We want to enable anyone who wants to be a space traveler to fly to Mars!” He envisions thousands of Starships flying to Mars, creating a magnificent sight.
But he also worries that a catastrophe could happen on Earth, such as a nuclear war or a pandemic that could “weaken civilization to the point that it loses the ability to send supply ships to Mars.” In addition to these major disasters, his Starship program might also be “crushed by a mountain of government bureaucracy” that keeps growing each year.
Musk used the opportunity to criticize the Democratic Party and its candidate, Kamala Harris. He argued that the bureaucracy suffocating the U.S. would worsen under another Democratic-led government, stating, “That would destroy the Mars program and lead humanity to ruin.” SpaceX launched a manned mission with the Crew Dragon in August. This was the first flight since the moon missions that traveled farther than 621 kilometers from Earth. The Crew Dragon, carrying billionaire Jared Isaacman and three other amateur astronauts, reached an altitude of about 1,400 kilometers.