Musk’s 2022 Martian Space Odyssey
Despite earthly setbacks, Tesla’s Elon Musk says the Starship will send its first payload to Mars in 2022 and its first manned mission in 2024.
DESPITE the high likelihood of dying even before arriving and daily conditions hostile to human life, Elon Musk said in an interview on Sunday that he’ll probably move to Mars.
The Spacex chief executive said there’s a “70% chance” he’ll get to Mars within his lifetime, with plans to permanently resettle on the Red Planet. Musk said his desire to colonise Mars is driven by the same passion that fuels people to climb mountains – for the challenge.
“We’ve recently made a number of breakthroughs that I am just really fired up about,” Musk said during an interview with “Axios on HBO”.
Musk’s remarks are the latest in a series of bold announcements that have defined his career in recent years, from his aim to transform the auto industry with electric vehicles made by his company Tesla to the goal of colonising Earth’s neighbouring planet.
Spacex aspires to send its first cargo mission to Mars in 2022, according to its website, with a manned mission targeted for 2024.
Musk announced last week that the company has renamed its massive Mars vessel the Starship (it was previously dubbed the Big Falcon Rocket). The rocket boosters that will allow the vehicle to escape Earth’s gravity are called the Super Heavy. Nasa, too, has ambitions to send humans to Mars, although sometime in the 2030s. China is also expanding its space programme with the goal of launching a Mars probe around 2020. Scientists are interested in going to Mars for a host of reasons, from learning more about the origins of life to better understanding the rise and collapse of potentially life-supporting environments. The planet was not always the desert world that it appears to be today. Its now empty lakes and channels suggest that liquid water once flowed on the surface, which may indicate that a thicker atmosphere once enveloped the planet, perhaps supporting life.
Scientists see it as a “failed planet”, with conditions hostile to humans.
During the interview, Musk compared the proposition to colonise Mars to explorer Ernest Shackleton’s expeditions to Antarctica.
He said the price of a ticket to Mars would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, with no guarantee of return or even survival during the trip or upon landing but, despite the daunting journey, Musk sees a worthwhile trade-off.
“You know there’s lots of people who climb mountains ... why do they climb mountains? People die on Mount Everest all the time,” he said. “They like doing it for the challenge.”
Earlier this year, Spacex pledged to advance its space exploration efforts by revealing the identity of its first paying tourist who would take a trip around the moon. In 2023, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and six to eight artists are tentatively scheduled to fly to the moon on a week-long trip. Their vehicle, the Starship, at nearly 122 metres tall, is still in development and is slated to complete its first flights to orbit in two to three years.
However, Spacex and Musk’s interplanetary plans have experienced setbacks. The company recently announced a delay in its initial mission to fly Nasa astronauts to the International Space Station. Spacex also delayed its plans to fly tourists around the moon.
Musk has also drawn scrutiny for his personal behaviour. Last week, Nasa ordered a safety review of Spacex after Musk participated in a popular podcast, in which he smoked weed and drank whiskey on an episode streamed online.
His actions rankled some of Nasa’s top officials and, in a months-long assessment, the agency is taking a close look at Spacex’s culture.
Nasa will also conduct a safety review of Boeing, another company under contract with Nasa to transport astronauts to the International Space Station.