It’s Mars or bust for Elon Musk
• CEO fears that unless SpaceX speeds up its progress, he will be dead by the time it reaches the Red Planet
While others worry about economies slipping into recession and markets melting down, Elon Musk’s biggest concern is that his rocket company, SpaceX, may fail to accomplish its foundational mission — getting to Mars — before he dies.
“If we don’t improve our pace of progress, I’m definitely going to be dead before we go to Mars,” Musk said at the Satellite 2020 conference in Washington this week. “If it’s taken us 18 years just to get ready to do the first people to orbit, we’ve got to improve our rate of innovation or, based on past trends, I am definitely going to be dead before Mars.”
The 48-year-old CEO of Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies has been much more upbeat in past interviews about the odds that humans will become a multiplanetary species. In November 2018, he told Recode that SpaceX was aiming to get to Mars in 2024 and told Axios there was a 70% chance he personally would go.
But SpaceX has had a harder time than expected pulling off its first missions to send astronauts to the International Space Station for Nasa. The first such voyage is expected in the next few months, later than Nasa and its contractor hoped. Boeing, which is also trying to fly astronauts for the US agency, is even further behind.
“Unless we improve our rate of innovation dramatically, there is no chance of a base on the moon or a city on Mars,” Musk said. “This is my biggest concern.”
Musk started speaking on Monday about 40 minutes after Tesla shares closed down 14% at $608, the lowest in about six weeks, amid the worst day for US stocks since 2008. The stock pared losses with the broader market to trade at $639.05 on Wednesday.
The billionaire downplayed the level of attention SpaceX is paying to publicly listing any stock of its own soon. Starlink, the company’s burgeoning satellite business, plans to beam broadband to consumers who don’t have internet or who struggle with slower service, starting in 2020.
While Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s COO, said at a private investor event in Miami in February that Starlink is likely to be spun out and taken public, without giving a time frame, Musk said the company is doing “zero” thinking about an initial public offering. The focus is instead on making sure the service reliant on a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation will work.
“Guess how many LEO constellations didn’t go bankrupt? Zero,” he said, listing companies including Iridium, Orbcomm, Globalstar and Teledesic. “We just want to be in the not-bankrupt category. That’s our goal.”
Morgan Stanley estimates it will cost SpaceX $10bn-$15bn to complete the Starlink network. This and other variables highlight the need for the company to raise capital privately or publicly, analysts led by Armintas Sinkevicius wrote in a report. CNBC reported that SpaceX is raising about $500m in new funding at a valuation of about $36bn.
Musk, who started his keynote about 40 minutes late, said he was tardy because he had travelled from Boca Chica, Texas, where SpaceX has been working on Starship, the nextgeneration launch vehicle he plans to use to eventually transport humans to Mars.
He estimated the annual revenue opportunity related to the company providing broadband is $30bn, about 10 times greater than the potential for its launch business.
STARLINK PLANS TO BEAM BROADBAND TO CONSUMERS WHO DON’T HAVE INTERNET OR WHO STRUGGLE WITH SLOWER SERVICE