It’s quite easy to wax lyrical about Elon Musk. He of Paypal, Tesla, and of course SpaceX fame has once again wowed an enthralled audience, by announcing he plans to send humans to Mars as soon as 2024. And, oh, he might also fly to space himself in a few years.
Musk was talking at the Code Conference 2016 in Los Angeles last Wednesday, held by Recode and Vox Media. SpaceX had already announced that they would send an unmanned mission to Mars in 2018, but now Musk has revealed they will launch a mission in every launch window after that – every 26 months – culminating in a manned mission in 2024.
“The basic game plan is we’re going to send a mission to Mars with every Mars opportunity from 2018 onwards,” Musk said. “They occur approximately every 26 months. We’re establishing cargo flights to Mars that people can count on for cargo.”
He added: “I think, if things go according to plan, we should be able to launch people probably in 2024, with arrival in 2025.”
Musk is planning to reveal the full details about SpaceX’s Mars missions in September this year, so we don’t know the full details just yet. But these latest comments provide us with enough to get us suitably excited about that announcement. Musk has even hinted that these missions will be the first steps to creating a colony on Mars.
With NASA not planning to send humans to Mars until the 2030s, SpaceX appears to be doing what no one else can at the moment. Whether this all comes to fruition remains to be seen, but who knows. Perhaps this fledgling company, just a decade old remember, will be responsible for one of the greatest achievements in human history.
Musk also nonchalantly added that he’d go to space himself pretty soon. “I’ll probably go to orbit in four or five years, something like that,” he said, before presumably flying off into the sunset on a jetpack.
You can watch Musk's full interview below.
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