"The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk posted on Saturday. "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 grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years."
Two years to land the first Starship on Mars. Two more years to land the first human on Mars.
That's ambitious, to say the least, and does come with caveats. The first is that Starship is still an experimental rocket — bigger and more powerful than Saturn 5 yet fully reusable. Getting a small fleet of them on their way to Mars in two years would make the headlong rush of the Apollo program look like a leisurely stroll.
The second caveat is that hitting that 2028 launch window for a manned mission can happen only if SpaceX hits the 2026 window first and "if those landings go well."
I'm not saying it's impossible, but... wow. Impossible or just close to it, I can't help but empathize with this guy:
The way things are going on Earth, you might want to speed this up
— CatoTheYounger (@catoletters) September 8, 2024
Starship is — or at least will eventually become — so cheap to manufacture and fly that it opens up all kinds of possibilities that are currently science fiction.
Astrophysicist Peter Hague suggested sending fleets of five Starships to Mars at a time but only one has the extra shielding necessary to land on Mars and/or return to Earth. Everybody would land in the first one, while the other four could be strung together to serve as a space station and logistics hub. More Starships could be added as needed on future flights.
You can read more about Hague's ideas — which seem wild now but could become commonplace within a decade or two — in his thread on X.
But getting back to Musk's goals, my advice to you is to always take his timelines with a grain of salt large enough to cause instant cardiac arrest.
Hey, I’ve seen this one pic.twitter.com/Mo05J0EN4y
— Jakub Wiech (@jakubwiech) September 7, 2024
Check out that date. Starship's first flight to Mars was originally hoped to be this year, not 2026.
Tesla's Full Self-Driving mode has been just around the corner for years. Falcon 9, before it became the record-setting, price-smashing success that it is, was years late. Off the top of my head, the last Musk project I recall coming in as scheduled was the Crew Dragon space capsule. And Crew Dragon was an offshoot of the cargo version of the Dragon capsule — a proven design on a 50-year-old concept.
(So what's Boeing's excuse for Starliner? But I digress.)
If SpaceX is somehow able to meet Musk's goals, one closely-held private firm won't just beat NASA and China in putting humans on Mars — by years, if not a decade or more — they'll get to Mars at least a year or two before another human steps foot on the moon.
I'm dubious. Hopeful but so very, very dubious.
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