Elon Musk claims an uncrewed SpaceX mission to Mars will launch in a couple of years followed by a crewed “Starship” just two years later.
The SpaceX and Tesla owner took to X (formally known as Twitter) on September 7, 2024, to make the announcement, the same day rivals Boeing successfully returned its Starliner spacecraft back to Earth.
“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, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years,” Musk said in a statement.
He went further by claiming that the first permanent, human-habited base on Mars will be completed in around two decades.
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
“Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. 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 unorthodox billionaire added.
Musk admitted that the technology to achieve a permanent base on Earth is not there yet with it costing “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,” Musk posted in a separate statement.