Electric car, rocket, and solar panel magnate Elon Musk recently said in an interview with CNBC that he expects his SpaceX company will be able to carry humans to Mars in the next decade.
“I'm hopeful that the first people could be taken to Mars in 10 to 12 years, I think it's certainly possible for that to occur,” he said. “But the thing that matters long term is to have a self-sustaining city on Mars, to make life multi-planetary.”
He added that he will float his SpaceX company on the stock market once the interplanetary mission is underway as a means for funding the project. It might be a bit difficult, he noted, given that the markets rely on quarterly and annual goals to guide them in their decision making, but this bit of unease can be overcome if the technology is perfected.
“We need to get where things are steady and predictable,” Musk said. “Maybe we're close to developing the Mars vehicle, or ideally we've flown it a few times, then I think going public would make more sense.”
Musk’s goal is a bold one, and well ahead of NASA’s, which has spoken about putting man on the red planet by the 2030s. The caveat to the Agency’s plan, however, is that it will only be possible should it get the billions in public funding that is necessary to build a rocket big enough for such travel.
Musk’s Falcon Heavy booster, meanwhile, is already scheduled to fly next year, and will carry enough payload to make assembling a Mars spaceship possible.
Now, while it might seem like Musk is butting heads with NASA, it’s actually the complete opposite. In the interview, he paid homage to the Agency by saying that his SpaceX company wouldn’t be where it is today had it not been for NASA’s pioneering work in the past.
He added that he hopes to continue to work with the Agency, delivering cargo to the International Space Station, and is looking to win a contract to deliver crew there vis-à-vis his company’s updated Dragon capsule.
Should he not win this contract, nor any others, Musk said that he’s confident he will still be able to secure the funding necessary (a la the aforementioned stock market float) in order to make the 2025 Mars mission goal.
Story theregister.co.uk
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