Mission To Mars Launches In 2018, Men On Mars By 2025, Says Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s mission to Mars is tentatively penciled in for 2018, and the SpaceX CEO says that he plans to launch a manned mission to the red planet just six years after that.

In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Elon Musk outlined his plans for an imminent manned mission to Mars that will start with a regular series of unmanned flights to and from Mars. These flights would be timed to launch when Mars is closest to Earth in their respective orbits to cut down on transit time and fuel use.

“Essentially what we’re saying is we’re establishing a cargo route to Mars,” Musk told the Washington Post. “It’s a regular cargo route. You can count on it. It’s going happen every 26 months. Like a train leaving the station.”

With a regular cargo route running between Earth and Mars, Musk plans to launch something he calls the “Mars Colonial Transporter” in 2022 to deliver some sort of preliminary infrastructure that could support the first human visitors to the planet. Although he would not disclose the precise nature of the 2022 mission, he indicated that details will be provided in a press conference next September.

“This is going to be mind blowing,” Musk said of the Mars Colonial Transporter. “Mind blowing. It’s going to be really great.”

The Mars Colonial Transporter mission will be followed up by an initial manned mission in 2024, which should reach Mars by 2025. That mission will only carry a few people to minimize initial risk, but Musk plans to send more if he can find volunteers with the right skills.

“I do want to emphasize this is not about sending a few people to Mars,” Musk told the Washington Post. “It’s about having an architecture that would enable the creation of a self-sustaining city on Mars with the objective of being a multi-planet species and a true space-faring civilization and one day being out there among the stars.”

This is incredibly ambitious. Would be awesome to see though https://t.co/7gA8h706Zt

— Erik Carlstrom (@nirgal2002) June 6, 2016

Musk’s ambitious timetable faces a number of technical challenges. His Mars mission plans depend on a launch vehicle called Falcon Heavy, which won’t be tested until later this year. If it works, it will be the most powerful rocket in the world, by a factor of two, according to SpaceX.

Says super ambitious targets in normal voice, doesn’t plan & arrange his thoughts before putting them out. #Musk

— Sunny G (@ABraveBull) June 7, 2016

The Mars missions will also make use of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which has not yet successfully landed using its own engine thrust. The 2018 mission will involve the Dragon spacecraft, as will the 2020 mission.

If that mission is successful, the massive Dragon capsule will be the largest man-made object to ever land on Mars by a factor of 10, according to Musk.

The catch is that the Dragon spacecraft is not designed to make the return trip.

“It also does not have the capability to get back to earth, we put that in the fine print,” Musk told the Daily Mail. “If you’re going to choose a place to die, then Mars is not a bad choice.”

NASA is aiming for a manned mission to Mars in 2030, which would arrive years after Musk’s Martian mission. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, that could be pushed back even further, if Congress instructs the agency to launch another manned mission to the moon first.

In the meantime, Musk says that NASA is providing SpaceX with technical support for the upcoming 2018 mission in exchange for “valuable descent and landing data.”

Do you think that Elon Musk’s mission to Mars can beat NASA and other governments, or is his timetable overly ambitious, considering that Falcon Heavy hasn’t even flown yet?

[Image courtesy SpaceX]