Elon Musk
Elon Musk
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX who wants to colonise Mars, has set a date for when humanity will reach the Red Planet.
“Starship departs for Mars at the end of next year, carrying Optimus. If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely,” Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, on Friday morning India time.
Starship is SpaceX’s towering, super heavy-lift launch vehicle and Tesla’s humanoid robot is called Optimus.
The news comes as SpaceX celebrates its 23rd anniversary.
Musk, who has long championed the idea of making humanity a multi-planetary species, called the company’s rapid growth “an exponential curve.”
He isn’t wrong. In 2006, SpaceX launched just one rocket. By 2023, that number had soared to 98 launches.
In 2024 alone, the company had conducted 133 launches.
Musk – who also heads US President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency aka DIGE – has repeatedly argued that Earth faces too many existential threats, from climate change to nuclear war.
A self-sustaining colony on Mars, he believes, is essential for civilisation’s survival.
Not everyone shares his urgency. His friend/guide Trump isn’t as enthusiastic about a rapid push to Mars. Earlier, the President had acknowledged public interest in interplanetary travel but suggested that the government has more immediate concerns.
Nasa, too, is significantly less aggressive in its Mars timeline. The agency has stated that it doesn’t expect to land humans on Mars until the 2040s, a decade or more later than Musk’s target, according to The New York Times.
Mars has barren terrains, temperatures that can plunge to -80°F, and dust storms that could last for weeks. Surviving there will require not just courage, but an entirely new way of living.
An investigation by Time magazine, which interviewed over 20 individuals with direct knowledge of SpaceX’s plans, revealed that many insiders doubt Musk will see a Martian colony built in his lifetime. “Mr. Musk has laid out an aggressive timeline for Mars to make them work harder”, some of them said.
Others suspected it’s a way to outshine Jeff Bezos, whose own space company, Blue Origin, envisions a future where humans live in vast space stations throughout the solar system..
Drawings of SpaceX’s proposed Mars colony are sometimes referred to internally as a “hype package,” according to two former employees per reports.
If the mission succeeds, Starship’s second major milestone will be crewed landings.
For Musk, this is more than just business. It’s personal.
In a 2019 interview with Time, he had compared his motivation to Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which said: “The universe is the answer. What are the questions?”