AI was almost buried under a recent barrage of right-wing insults posted by Elon Musk on the platform he owns, X, was one striking statement that makes space watchers sit up and take notice: a claim that humans could land on Mars in four years and live there in a self-sustaining city in 20.
It seemed like a fanciful boast, even by the standards of the SpaceX founder and world’s richest manwhich changed the logistics and cost of shorter-duration, near-Earth orbit space travel with its fleet of reusable Falcon rockets. The US government space agency, Nasa, which is working with SpaceX on knowledge and technology to get astronauts to the red planet, believes a first crewed landing by 2040 would be “presumptuous”..
Nor was it the first time the enigmatic billionaire had floated such a plan. In 2016, he said he believed those first crewed launches to Mars could take place within six yearsthough a heavy rocket to fly them was still in the concept stage.
Although many may see Musk’s latest proclamation as another example of his braggadocio, following stories that he wanted to help populate an extraterrestrial civilization with his own spermand drive it around the Martian surface in Teslas tough cyber truckssome analysts see a sense of purpose.
If a Mars settlement of a million people in two decades is an impossible goal, the prospect of regular shuttle flights from Earth aboard SpaceX’s next generation Starship rocketscarrying cargo and the first human explorers is absolutely feasible, they say.
And while Musk’s estimated personal fortune of $250bn (£191bn) can’t come close to funding what would be the most expensive and far-reaching venture in spaceflight history, dwarfing the $280bn (in today’s money) Nasa spent on the Apollo program that put man on the moon in 1969, potential investors from both the public and private sectors are enthusiastic.
Musk’s tweet, the experts say, has the discussion about the immediate ambitions of SpaceX and the long-term prospects for humanity itself.
“If I’ve diagnosed now why to set this very aggressive timeline for Mars, it’s partly to show that SpaceX is not slowing down, it’s not resting on its laurels, it’s not becoming some kind of a cracking dominant player in the space, and it’s still the innovative, push-the-envelope startup that it is,” said Matthew Weinzierlprofessor of business administration at Harvard Business School specializing in the economics of space.
“Whether it is Elon MuskGwynne Shotwell [SpaceX’s chief operating officer] or the incredibly deep bank of talent they have, I think SpaceX is really good at two things among many. One is turning market forces into achievements previously considered unattainable, and the other is turning these unattainable visions into market success.
“That’s the core of what the Mars thing is about for them, which is attracting talent, passion, capital and hard work from the people associated with SpaceX. The Mars mission has always been authentically central to what they talk about than why they exist.
“On a broader level, when you’re trying to create a company that’s going to change what we do in space and rethink the future of humanity on a truly unprecedented scale, then a vision of this scale makes so much more possible . “
Weinzierl noted that revenue from Musk’s other commercial space operations, particularly the Starlink satellite internet system and its militarized sister network star shieldis central to the financing of its objectives. But similar to the reusable Falcon rockets and Dragon capsules that made the low-cost ferry of astronauts to the International Space Station almost routine, the SpaceX model of renewal and reuse could also work for Mars.
“It’s always hard to know exactly how SpaceX calculates these things because it’s private, but when they talk about the cost of flying Starship, the numbers are astonishingly low, in the tens of millions, or even $10 million per flight,” Weinzierl said. .
“You can imagine how they think of this as something they can independently finance with income from these lines of business that they will try to keep increasing with extra funding from their many investors and supporters, and possibly more public funding.
“But the establishment of a million people on Mars? That is a completely different question.”
Overcoming practical and technical challenges of such an undertaking is another hurdle, as Starship has flown only four test flights, the first two of which ended in fiery explosions. A scheduled fifth experimental flight was founded this week until at least November due to environmental concerns.
In addition, an as yet undeveloped tanker spacecraft would be needed to refuel Starship in orbit so it can carry a 100-ton payload, or crews of 100 people at a time, on the six-month journey to Mars.
“You’re talking about a significant amount of time of development. While it’s not impossible that it could be done in time for a launch two years from now, it’s a bit of a stretch,” said Robert Zubrin, president of The Mars Society, and author of The new world on Mars: what we can create on the red planet.
“2028 is entirely possible. Now you’re talking about a one-way trip to Mars [but] you don’t want to send people on a one-way trip until there are greenhouses and settlements and everything, a place to live.
“That’s one of the problems I have with Musk’s claim. It is not my sense that they are actually developing the required surface systems for human operations on Mars. They are working very hard on the transport system, but on the system to make, for example, methane, oxygen on Mars on a large scale, they are not doing it.
“It looks like Musk is stretched a little thin right now, and it could be stretched even thinner if Donald Trump wins the election and he’s appointed commissioner of government efficiencyor whatever he talks of becoming.”
Zubrin shares Weinzierl’s confidence that SpaceX will likely eventually deliver most of Musk’s vision for Mars, just not on the timescale he envisions.
“Starship is going to become operational, I think he’s got it far enough to be safe to say,” he said. “To put things into perspective, Musk often exaggerates, both in terms of what he’s going to do and when he’s going to do it, but he does and has done a lot anyway, in addition to the concrete achievement of drastically cutting the cost of space launch through the proving utility of reusability.”
Weinzierl, meanwhile, says SpaceX has grown as a company to the point that, if Musk was no longer leading operations, it might not matter.
“They just have an incredible ability to attract talent and that speaks to a culture that they’ve very clearly built and maintained that may owe a lot, at least initially, to Elon Musk. There is no doubt that he is a unique force in the firm and in society,” he said.
“At this point, my feeling is that that culture is embedded in so many people within the firm that it’s not as dependent on him as we might fear. We don’t want it to depend on any one person, and my feeling is that it’s not.”
