Elon Musk-led SpaceX aims to send first unmanned Starship mission to Mars within 2 years
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Sunday said the first unmanned Starship mission to the Red Planet will be launched in two years, when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens.Humans will first travel to the Moon and subsequently Mars using Starship, the most potent rocket in existence.
In a post on SpaceX social media platform, the tech billionaire said that “the first Starship to Mars will be launched in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens”. “These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of intact landings on Mars. If these landings go well, the first crewed flights to Mars will take place in 4 years,” Musk announced.
According to him, the flight rate will increase exponentially from there, with the aim of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. “Being multi-planetary would greatly extend the potential lifespan of consciousness, because now all of our eggs, literally and metabolically, would not be on the same planet,” the X boss said. His aerospace company SpaceX has created the first fully reusable rocket stage and, more importantly, made reuse economically viable. “Making life multi-planetary is basically a cost-per-ton problem on Mars. Currently the cost per ton of useful payload on the surface of Mars is about a billion dollars,” Musk explained. He added that to build a self-sustaining city there, it needs to improve to $100,000/ton, “so the technology needs to be 10,000 times better. Extremely difficult, but not impossible.”
