How to go to mars elon musk?

A crewed mission to Mars could happen in 2029, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hints.

A tweet on Monday comparing the moon landing to a future Mars landing attached a photo of the moon landing dated 1969, on top of an image of an envisioned Mars landing, labeled "20 --." The tweet, from Space_Hub, an account that posts about space and astronomy, read "What's your guess" and tagged Musk.

Two days after the tweet, Musk replied "2029."

Musk has long seen a visit to Mars as a goal. In 2016, he said he wanted to build a rocket capable of taking people to Mars and supporting a permanent city on the planet.

"It's something we can do in our lifetimes," he told an audience of 100,000 watchers at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. "You could go."

But Musk's older predictions don't necessarily match up with his latest. In 2016, he told the Y Combinator, a startup accelerator, that getting a "meaningful number of people" on Mars was possible "in about 10 years, maybe sooner, maybe nine years."

The SpaceX Mars program is a set of projects through which the aerospace company SpaceX hopes to facilitate the colonization of Mars. The company claims that this is necessary for the long-term survival of the human species and that its Mars program, including the ongoing development of the SpaceX Starship, will reduce space transportation costs, thereby making travel to Mars a more realistic possibility.

Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX, first presented his goal of enabling Mars colonization in 2001 as a member of the Mars Society's board of directors. In the 2000s and early 2010s, SpaceX made many vehicle concepts for delivering payloads and crews to Mars, including space tugs, heavy-lift launch vehicles, and Red Dragon capsules. The company's current Mars plan was first formally proposed at the 2016 International Astronautical Congress alongside a fully-reusable launch vehicle, the Interplanetary Transport System. Since then, the launch vehicle proposal was altered and renamed to "Starship", and has been in development since. The company has given many estimates of dates of the first human landing on Mars.

SpaceX plans for early missions to Mars to involve small fleets of Starship spacecraft, funded by public–private partnerships. The company hopes that once infrastructure is established on Mars and the launch cost is reduced further, colonization can begin.

The program has been criticized as impractical, both because of uncertainties regarding its financing and because it only addresses transportation to Mars and not the problem of sustaining human life there.

Before founding SpaceX, Musk joined the Mars Society's board of directors for a short time. He was offered a plenary talk at their convention where he announced Mars Oasis, a project to land a miniature experimental greenhouse and grow plants on Mars, to revive public interest in space exploration. Musk initially attempted to acquire a Dnepr ICBM for the project through Russian contacts from Jim Cantrell. Russian officials were unreceptive to Musk's approach and on the flight back from Moscow, Musk worked on a spreadsheet and concluded that they could build their own rockets. Over time, Musk's goal evolved from a small publicity mission to generate interest in going to Mars, to a full-scale effort to create an architecture that would enable a self-sustaining human settlement on Mars. This led to the formation of SpaceX.: 30–31

As early as 2007, Elon Musk stated a personal goal of eventually enabling human exploration and settlement of Mars, although his personal public interest in Mars goes back at least to 2001 at the Mars Society.: 30–31  SpaceX has stated its goal is to colonize Mars to ensure the long-term survival of the human species.

Starship's reusability is expected to reduce launch costs, expanding space access to more payloads and entities. According to Robert Zubrin, aerospace engineer and advocate for human exploration of Mars, Starship's lower launch cost would make space-based economy, colonization, and mining practical.: 25, 26  Lower cost to space may potentially make space research profitable, allowing major advancements in medicine, computers, material science, and more.: 47, 48  Musk has stated that a Starship orbital launch will cost less than $2 million. Pierre Lionnet, director of research at Eurospace, claimed otherwise, citing the rocket's multi-billion-dollar development cost and its current lack of external demand.

Starship is designed to be a fully reusable and orbital rocket, aiming to drastically reduce launch costs and maintenance between flights.: 2  The rocket consists of a Super Heavy first stage booster and a Starship second stage spacecraft, powered by Raptor and Raptor Vacuum engines. Both the rocket stages' body are made from stainless steel, giving Starship its shine and strength for atmospheric entry.

Methane was chosen for the Raptor engines because it is relatively cheap, produces low amount of soot as compared to other hydrocarbons, and can be created on Mars from carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and hydrogen via the Sabatier reaction. The engine family uses a new alloy for the main combustion chamber, allowing it to contain 300 bar (4,400 psi) of pressure, the highest of all current engines. In the future, it may be mass-produced and cost about $230,000 per engine or $100 per kilonewton.

Starship is the launch vehicle's second stage and will serve as a long-duration spacecraft on some missions. The spacecraft is 50 m (160 ft) tall and has a dry mass of less than 100 t (220,000 lb). Starship's payload volume is about 1,000 m3 (35,000 cu ft), larger than the International Space Station's pressurized volume by 80 m3 (2,800 cu ft), and can be even bigger with an extended 22 m (72 ft)-tall volume.: 2  By refueling the Starship spacecraft in orbit using tanker spacecraft, Starship will be able to transport larger payloads and more astronauts to other Earth orbits, to the Moon (Starship HLS), and Mars.: 5

SpaceX plans to build a crewed base on Mars for an extended surface presence, which it hopes will grow into a self-sufficient colony. A successful colonization, meaning an established human presence on Mars growing over many decades, would ultimately involve many more economic actors than SpaceX. Musk has made many tentative predictions about the date of Starship's first Mars landing, including 2029.

Musk plans for the first crewed Mars missions to have approximately 12 people, with the goals of "build out and troubleshoot the propellant plant and Mars Base Alpha power system" and establishing a "rudimentary base." He has claimed that, in the event of an emergency during travel, the spaceship would be able to safely return to Earth. The company plans to process resources on Mars into fuel for return journeys, and use similar technologies on Earth to create carbon-neutral propellant.

The program aims to send a million people to Mars, using a thousand Starships sent during a Mars launch window. Proposed journeys would require 80 to 150 days of transit time, with averaging approximately 115 days (for the nine synodic periods occurring between 2020 and 2037).

In November 2005, before SpaceX launched the Falcon 1, its first rocket, CEO Elon Musk first referenced a long-term and high-capacity rocket concept named BFR. The BFR would be able to launch 100 t (220,000 lb) to low Earth orbit and equipped with Merlin 2 engines. The Merlin 2 is in direct lineage to the Merlin engines used in the Falcon 9 and comparable to the F-1 engines used in the Saturn V.

In July 2010, after the final launch of Falcon 1 a year prior, SpaceX presented launch vehicle and Mars space tug concepts at a conference. The launch vehicle concepts were called Falcon X, Falcon X Heavy, and Falcon XX; the largest of all is the Falcon XX with a 140 t (310,000 lb) capacity to low Earth orbit. To deliver such payload, the rocket was going to be as tall as the Saturn V and use six powerful Merlin 2 engines. Around 2012, the company first mentioned the Mars Colonial Transporter rocket concept in public. It was going to be able to carry 100 people or 100 t (220,000 lb) of cargo to Mars and powered by methane-fueled Raptor engines.

On 26 September 2016, a day before the 67th International Astronautical Congress, the Raptor engine fired for the first time. At the event, Musk announced SpaceX was developing a new rocket using Raptor engines called the Interplanetary Transport System. It would have two stages, a reusable booster and spacecraft. The stages' tanks were to be made from carbon composite, storing liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Despite the rocket's 300 t (660,000 lb) launch capacity to low Earth orbit, it was expected to have a low launch price. The spacecraft featured three variants: crew, cargo, and tanker; the tanker variant is used to transfer propellant to spacecraft in orbit. The concept, especially the technological feats required to make such a system possible and the funds needed, garnered a large amount of skepticism.

In September 2017, at the 68th Annual International Astronautical Congress, Musk announced the BFR (Big Falcon Rocket), a revision to the Interplanetary Transport System's design. The rocket was still going to be reusable, but its launch capacity to low Earth orbit was reduced to 150 t (330,000 lb), and its body was smaller. Unlike its conceptual predecessor, the potential applications for the BFR were more varied. Variants of the BFR would be able to send satellites to orbit, resupply the International Space Station, land on the Moon, travel between spaceports on Earth, and ferry crew to Mars. In April 2018, the Mayor of Los Angeles confirmed plan for a BFR rocket production facility at the Port of Los Angeles, but it was cancelled around May 2020.

A year later in September 2018, Musk updated about the spacecraft's new two forward flaps at the top and three larger aft flaps at the bottom. Both set of flaps help control the spacecraft's descent, and the aft flaps are used as landing legs for the final touchdown. Two months later in November 2018, the rocket booster was first termed Super Heavy and the spacecraft was termed Starship.

Starship's development is iterative and incremental, marked by tests on rocket prototypes. The first prototype to fly using a Raptor engine was called Starhopper. The vehicle had three non-retractable legs and was shorter than the final spacecraft design. The craft performed two tethered hops in early April 2019 and three months later, it hopped without a tether to around 25 m (80 ft). In August 2019, the vehicle hopped to 150 m (500 ft) and traveled to a landing pad nearby.

Mk1 was destroyed November 2019 during a pressure stress test and Mk2 did not fly because the Florida facility was deconstructed throughout 2020. SpaceX began naming its new Starship upper-stage prototypes with the prefix "SN", short for "serial number". No prototypes between SN1 and SN4 flew; SN1 and SN3 collapsed during pressure stress tests and SN4 exploded after its fifth engine firing. Starship SN5 was built with no flaps or nose cone, giving it a cylindrical shape. The test vehicle consisted of one Raptor engine, propellant tanks, and a mass simulator. On 5 August 2020, SN5 performed a 150 m (500 ft)-high flight, successfully landing on a nearby pad. On 3 September 2020, the similar-looking Starship SN6 successfully repeated the hop.

SN8 was the first complete Starship prototype and underwent four static fire tests between October and November 2020. On 9 December 2020, SN8 flew, slowly turning off its three engines one by one, and reaching to an altitude of 12.5 km (7.8 mi). The craft then performed the belly-flop maneuver and dove back through the atmosphere. As it tried to land, an issue with fuel tank pressure caused the prototype to lose thrust and impact the pad. On 2 February 2021, Starship SN9 launched to 10 km (6.2 mi) and crashed on landing, similar to SN8.

A month later, on 3 March 2021, Starship SN10 launched on the same flight path and landed hard, crushing its landing legs and exploded, probably due to a propellant tank rupture. Starship SN11, on 30 March 2021, flew into thick fog along the same flight path. During descent, the vehicle exploded, scattering debris up to 8 km (5 mi) away. Starship prototypes SN12, SN13, and SN14 were scrapped before completion, and Starship SN15 was selected to fly instead. The prototype features general improvement on its avionics, structure, and engines, incorporating prior prototype's failures. On 5 May 2021, SN15 launched, completed the same maneuvers as older prototypes, and landed softly after six minutes.

In July 2021, Super Heavy BN3 conducted its first full-duration static firing, lighting three engines. A month later, using cranes, Starship SN20 was stacked atop Super Heavy BN4 for the first time. SN20 was the first to include a body-tall heat shield, made of hexagonal heat tiles. In October 2021, the catching mechanical arms were installed onto the integration tower, and the first tank farm's construction was completed.

On April 20th 2023, SpaceX attempted the first Starship orbital test flight. The rocket lifted off the pad at Starbase in Texas at 8:32 on Thursday 4/20, the rocket hovered on the pad for 8 seconds, sending debris flying. At lift off the rocket became the most powerful rocket ever flown, upon lifting off the pad the rocket had lost 3 of the 33 raptor engines. As the rocket rose through the atmosphere 3 more raptor engines were lost. Around 31km and two and a half minutes into the flight the rocket began to tumble midair. The rocket was unable to recover from this tumble and the flight termination system was activated, ending the inaugural test flight.: 2–4

SpaceX has not detailed plans for the spacecraft's life-support systems, radiation protection, and in situ resource utilization, technologies which are essential for space colonization.

The SpaceX CEO has a long-standing vision of establishing a city on the Red Planet. It would be self-sustaining, would be home to one million people, and would transform humanity into a multi-planet species. It is perhaps Musk’s most ambitious goal, one that could keep him occupied for the next three decades.

"Why are we doing this?" Musk said at the company's February 2022 Starship progress update. "I think this is an incredibly important thing for the future of life itself ... there's always some chance that something could go wrong on Earth. Dinosaurs are not around anymore!"

Musk also explained how, being a simple insurance policy, the plan is aimed at building something inspiring.

"Life can't just be about solving problems," Musk said. "There have to be things that inspire you, that move your heart. When you wake up in the morning, you're excited about the future."

But while fans originally expected to see the first humans reach March by the mid-2020s, Musk revealed on his Twitter page this week that an image with astronauts on the red planet would more likely come to life sometime in 2029.

And as recent research shows, the landscape of Mars is pretty treacherous. Astronauts will face surprise obstacles like dust collecting on solar panels, as well as tiny Mars rocks that have caused havoc with NASA’s Curiosity mission.

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Here is what you need to know about Musk’s mission.

Musk plans to build a full-size city on the surface of Mars. This would be a city open to regular people, not just scientists and researchers.

People interested in moving to Mars could pay for their flight with a loan. Once there, people would be able to pay off the loan by working in anything from iron foundries to pizzerias. Musk declared at a 2016 conference that there would be labor shortages for a long time.

This city would be free to govern itself on its own terms, as indicated by the Starlink internet service terms and conditions released in October 2020. This appears to stand in contradiction to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which states that the launch origin country is responsible for subsequent space activities. David Anderman, who served as SpaceX’s general counsel when the terms were released, suggested to Inverse in 2021 that the two documents may be set on a collision course.

Musk estimated in 2019 that it would take around one million tons of cargo to build a self-sustaining city on Mars. Assuming it costs $100,000 per ton to send cargo to Mars with the upcoming Starship, that would put a Mars city’s price at around $100 billion. At the high end, Musk estimates it could cost around $10 trillion.

SpaceX may not stop with just one city, however. Paul Wooster, principal Mars development engineer for SpaceX, said at the 21st Annual International Mars Society Convention in August 2022 that SpaceX could build multiple cities:

Musk’s stated aim is to transform humanity into a multi-planet species.

Over the years, he has listed reasons as to why humanity would want to expand into the universe. One theme he regularly lists is that a life-ending event on Earth could spell the end of humanity — but humanity could live on if it’s able to set up base on a new planet like Mars.

“Earth is ~4.5B years old, but life is still not multiplanetary and it is extremely uncertain how much time is left to become so,” Musk wrote on Twitter in November 2021. Beyond very worst-case scenario climate change, a surprise meteor strike could also wipe out humanity.

Another reason, as he suggested in September 2018, is because it’s a reason to keep on living:

In February 2022, Musk also declared that a reason for humanity to expand is because we are “life’s guardians...the creatures that we love cannot build spaceships, but we can, and we can bring them with us.”

During an April 2021 appearance covered by CNBC, Musk indicated that another reason to go back was because humanity had barely ventured into space since the lunar landings:

Musk isn’t the first person to call for humanity to colonize another planet — professor Stephen Hawking said in 2017 that humans would need to expand out within 100 years if they hoped to survive. However, astrophysicist Martin Rees said in response to Hawking and Musk that the idea was a “dangerous delusion dealing with climate change on Earth is a doddle compared to making Mars habitable.”

It’s hard to say when he first got this idea — Ashlee Vance’s 2015 biography claims that “by the middle of his teenage years” he’d come to see “man’s fate in the universe” as his “personal obligation.” He was inspired by science fiction novels like Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The book also cites Terency Beney, who went to school with Musk. Beney claims that Musk was already thinking about colonizing other planets in his early years.

In 2001, Musk attended a meeting of the non-profit Mars Society group. During the event, Musk learned about the group’s plans to send mice into space to inspire people. Musk started considering the prospect of sending them to Mars instead, an idea that eventually led to him founding SpaceX.

In 2007, before SpaceX had even launched its first rocket to orbit, Musk told Wired that in 30 years there would be a base on the Moon and Mars.

The idea took on new form in 2016, when he gave a speech at the International Astronautical Congress about his idea to make humanity into a multi-planet species.

Central to the plan is the Starship. This fully-reusable rocket, currently under development in Texas, will enable SpaceX to send humans and cargo to Mars. The ship will be capable of launching over 100 tons or 100 people into space at a time.

Its use of liquid oxygen and methane as fuel, rather than the rocket propellant used in the Falcon 9, means explorers can fly to Mars, refuel using resources found on the planet, and fly back to Earth. The astronauts could even venture out further into space, building a planet-hopping network of refueling stations along the way.

The ship is expected to host its first flight sometime this year. While the company’s primary goal is to fly the ship from the Starbase facility in Texas, Musk has indicated that the team is also preparing to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida should too many delays arise. This backup plan may have led to a delay to a planned expansion to Starbase.

In November 2018, Neil deGrasse Tyson declared that "a whole category of war has the potential of evaporating entirely" with planet-hopping technology. That's because humans would have the ability to venture out further and mine resources from even further away.

"In space, you have no need to fight a war, just go to another asteroid and get your resources," deGrasse said.

It’s not going to be easy. In November 2018, Musk likened the ads for going to Mars to the ads for Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic:

Although the ads probably never existed, recent expeditions to Mars have revealed Musk may be correct about the dangers from the planet.

In December 2021, the Hope mission to Mars hosted by the United Arab Emirates encountered a dust storm. It quickly advanced the thousands of miles wide, passing over the crater containing NASA’s Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter. The storm lasted until January 14.

The events showed how the weather on Mars can be surprisingly brutal, especially in comparison to the weather on Earth. Dust storms that blow over solar panels can render them less effective, depriving a space station of vital electricity.

Dust isn’t the only obstacle the astronauts will face. In April 2022, NASA revealed that the Curiosity rover had to give up its ongoing expedition route due to ventifacts — sharp rocks that could damage the rover’s wheels.

Perhaps rather aptly, the mountain Curiosity was trying to climb is called Mount Sharp.

Not everybody in the space industry agrees with Musk’s vision. Jeff Bezos, founder of rival firm Blue Origin, prefers to build giant orbiting cities near Earth to expand humanity.

In May 2019, Bezos cited research from physicist Gerard K. O’Neill. He asked a key question: is a planetary surface the best place for humans to expand into the solar system? O’Neill decided the answer was no for three key reasons:

Instead, Bezos prefers to build O’Neill-style colonies in Earth’s orbit. This, he claims, could support up to one trillion humans.

Musk responded to Bezos’ vision later that month:

During Musk’s 2017 International Astronautical Congress presentation, he revealed images of how the city may look:

The city would begin initially with a series of bases, gradually expanding out over time.

Musk claimed in 2019 that a return ticket could cost around $500,000 initially, dropping to $100,000 over time. Musk’s goal in 2016 was to reach a ticket price of around the median price of a house in the United States. That would suggest people could sell their house to move to Mars.

Another option, Musk suggested, would be a personal loan. Visitors would pay off the loan by getting a job to help fill the city’s labor shortages. It’s an idea that arguably bears resemblance to 19th-century American company towns, where employees lived in a city owned by their employer. Especially in the early days, Mars may not have many choices for local employment — and you’ll need to pay off that loan for your flight.

Guenter Lang, an economics professor at Kühne Logistics University in Germany, drew this plan into question in a May 2019 interview with Inverse. After all, if you’re rich enough to go, why would you give up that luxury?

In 2017, Musk outlined an “aspirational” plan to send two cargo ships to Mars as early as 2022. It would then send four ships at the next closest approach — two crewed ships and two cargo ships — in 2024.

However, in March 2022, Musk suggested on Twitter that a more likely date for humanity to witness the first humans on Mars would perhaps be 2029. It’s also possible, however, that Musk was referencing the Moon landing that took place in 1969 — making it a round 60 years between the two feats.

Mars and Earth are at their closest around once every 26 months. The distance between the two at this time reduces to around 33.9 million miles.

In March 2019, Musk wrote on Twitter that “it’s possible to make a self-sustaining city on Mars by 2050, if we start in 5 years & take 10 orbital synchronizations.” With 26 months between synchronizations, that would mean it would take around 22 years at a minimum to build the city.

Musk has set himself the deadline of a self-sustaining Mars city with 1 million people by 2050. Musk would turn 79 years old that year.

As SpaceX has yet to even host its first orbital flight with the Starship, it seems unlikely that it will send the first cargo ships this year. If SpaceX adjusts its plans to a more realistic late 2020s deadline, it’s perhaps more possible that Musk could indeed meet his goal.

Probably not in his lifetime, but he does have some ideas.

At SpaceX’s headquarters, next to the lobby, the company has two images that show a before and after of a terraformed Mars:

The current surface temperature on Mars is an average of minus 63 degrees Celsius, or minus 82 degrees Fahrenheit. Musk’s idea is to heat up the planet’s poles to release stores of frozen carbon dioxide. This would use a series of continuous, low fallout nuclear fusion explosions to act as artificial suns.

The idea would be to use the carbon dioxide stores to create a more hospitable atmosphere. Humans could then walk around the planet using just a breathing apparatus.

That’s the theory, at least. In practice, Bruce Jakosky and Christopher S. Edwards published a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy back in 2018 that drew that plan into question. It argued there is “not enough CO2 remaining on Mars to provide significant greenhouse warming were the gas to be emplaced into the atmosphere.”

The paper found that vaporizing Mars’ carbon-rich sedimentary rocks would release enough gas for around 12 millibars of atmospheric pressure. By comparison, Earth’s atmosphere is around 1,000 millibars at sea level.

Jakosky and Edwards publicly discussed with Musk as to whether there was enough carbon dioxide lurking beneath the surface. The three seemed to agree, however, that the technology to terraform Mars is some ways away yet.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has once again said that it is "highly likely" man will go to Mars within 10 years, putting his timeframe down to the fact he is "congenitally optimistic".

Mr Musk on Friday retweeted a video posted by his aerospace firm showing a successful test fire of its Starship prototype's booster rocket. "One day, Starship will take us to Mars," he wrote in the caption of his post. Notably, Starship, at its full capacity, is the most powerful rocket ever developed. As per SpaceX's website, it will "carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond."

On Friday, responding to his retweet, when one user asked Mr Musk about when humans will be able to go to the red planet, the SpaceX boss said, "I must admit to being congenitally optimistic (SpaceX & Tesla wouldn't exist otherwise), but I think 5 years is possible and 10 years is highly likely."

Take a look below:

The SpaceX video showed engineers conducting a static fire test. According to Mr Musk, 31 out of 33 engines at the base of the vehicle were ignited simultaneously. "Team turned off 1 engine just before start & 1 stopped itself, so 31 engines fired overall. But still enough engines to reach orbit," he tweeted. As per The New York Times, had all 33 engines been fired up at full power, this would have been the most powerful rocket ever ignited.

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Meanwhile, Elon Musk has teased when humans will reach Mars for years predicting a 2029 landing most recently. Taking to Twitter last year in March, he said that he now sees 2029 as the earliest date humans might first step on Mars.

More recently, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO even spoke more about his Mars mission. In a tweet addressed to former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Mr Musk said that he was hopeful of getting people on Mars by 2029.