By Martin Cole-
Elon Musk has set a 10 year deadline to complete his mission of taking man to Mars.
He wants to achieve his goal as quickly as possible, to ensure Mars is sustainable before ‘Earth gets too hot for life in about 500 million years.
Now Elon Musk has revealed insight into when those human explorations might take place, and it could be a lot sooner than you think.
Speaking on the Lex Friedman Podcast yesterday, December 28, Musk outlined when humans will be able to travel to Mars and described what those missions might look like when it happens.
The billionaire is worth an estimated $278 billion, and through SpaceX, is building the Starship rocket that will be able to take humanity to the Red Planet.
However, Starship was hit by a setback this week, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) pushed back the release of an environmental assessment of the proposed Starship orbital test in Boca Chica, Texas.
Musk told Friedman that the ‘best case is about five years, worst case 10 years,’ in terms of when the mission will take place. However there may be setbacks in terms of ‘fundamentally engineering the vehicle’.
Musk is currently working on a project called Starship, which he described on the podcast:
I mean, Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket that’s ever been made. It’s a lot. It’s really next level.
The fundamental optimization of Starship is minimizing the cost per ton per orbit and ultimately cost per ton to the surface of Mars.
Along with the project being the most advanced space mission yet, Musk says the cost is a major barrier as well:
There is a certain cost per ton to the surface of Mars where we can afford to establish a self-sustaining city, and above that we cannot afford to do it.
Right now you couldn’t fly to Mars for a trillion dollars. No amount of money could get you a ticket to Mars. So we need to get that above, you know, to get that something that is actually possible at all.
This is now not due to be released until February 28, 2022, making the earliest possible test launch for the giant rocket March 2022.
Musk told host Friedman: ‘best case is about five years, worst case 10 years,’ when it comes to landing a colony on the Red Planet.
Mars has become the next giant leap for mankind’s exploration of space.
Details of a the mission in lunar orbit have been unveiled as part of a timeline of events leading to missions to Mars in the 2030s.
In May 2017, Greg Williams, deputy associate administrator for policy and plans at Nasa, outlined the space agency’s four stage plan that it hopes will one day allow humans to visit Mars, as well as its expected time-frame.