Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, has announced a new timeline for his Mars landing visions via X, formerly known as Twitter, on September 6.
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. If those landings go well, the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years.
Flight rate will… https://t.co/ZuiM00dpe9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 7, 2024
SpaceX’s world’s most powerful rocket, the Starship, will start its uncrewed missions to Mars by 2026 if everything goes right.
Elon Musk shared the timeline for the next 20 years of Mars missions. The first uncrewed starship will launch to Mars in 2 years during the next Earth-Mars transfer window to test landing reliability.
Then, in the next 4 years, the first crewed landings will be carried out if the uncrewed landings are successful.
And in the next 20 years, Elon Musk aims to build a city on Mars and become a multi-planetary species in the long term.
Read: SpaceX launches the historic, billionaire-led Polaris Dawn Mission
SpaceX, a private aerospace company, was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 who is the world’s #1 richest person with a net worth of 24,180 crores USD as of September 2024 as reported by Forbes. The company aims to reduce space transportation costs and ultimately develop a sustainable colony on Mars.
SpaceX has developed revolutionary rockets like the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship and Dragon spacecraft. The company also owns Starlink, the largest constellation of satellites that provide internet connectivity throughout the world.
The Starship is the largest rocket developed by the company that aims to take humans to Mars. The rocket has to date carried out only 4 flights, in April and November of 2023 and in March and June of 2024. The company is now planning for its fifth flight test, which could happen soon.
Starship is a two-stage fully reusable super-heavy lift launch vehicle. The rocket consists of two reusable rocket stages that are equipped with rocket engines.
The body of both stages is made with a stainless steel alloy, making it more lightweight and efficient. As of 2024, the cost of supplying 1 ton of useful cargo to Mars is around 1 billion dollars, which is a mind-boggling cost. This cost needs to be cut down to $100k per ton to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.
And to reduce this cost, much more advanced technology is needed, which Elon Musk said was “Extremely difficult but not impossible” in a post on X.
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… https://t.co/bVQJL8JeV5
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 7, 2024
