Elon Musk's Bold Plan for Starship's First Mars Trip
Okay, so get this: only a couple of days after his huge Mars spaceship, Starship, had another little hiccup during a test flight, Elon Musk said on Thursday that he thinks they'll send it to the red planet for the first time without anyone on board by the end of next year. He even put out a video from his company, SpaceX, showing off all the steps they need to take.
Oh, and this came right after he said he was stepping away from working with President Trump's team to cut down on government rules. He had already mentioned that he wanted to spend more time on his businesses, like SpaceX and Tesla, you know, the electric car company. He's a busy guy, right?
Now, Elon admitted that making it to Mars by late 2026 totally depends on whether Starship can pull off some really tricky stuff during its test flights. One of the big things is getting it refueled while it's orbiting Earth. That's pretty wild to think about!
Why the end of 2026? Well, it turns out that Mars and Earth are closest to each other around the sun only every two years. That's the best time to make the trip, which still takes about seven to nine months! Elon said he thinks they have about a 50/50 shot of hitting that date. If they don't make it, he figures they'll just have to wait another two years before trying again. Bummer, right?
The first trip to Mars would have some cool Tesla robots called Optimus on board instead of people. Then, humans would follow on the second or third landings. Elon's big vision is to send like 1,000 to 2,000 ships every two years to Mars to build a place where people can live and take care of themselves. Imagine that!
Meanwhile, NASA is planning to use Starship to get humans back to the moon as early as 2027. That's over 50 years since the last time we landed there! They see this as a practice run to send astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s. Elon, though, has always been really focused on getting to Mars sooner. He even talked about sending an unmanned SpaceX ship there back in 2018 and a crewed mission in 2024, which obviously didn't happen.
He was supposed to talk about making life on multiple planets during a live stream from their Texas launch site the other night, right after a Starship test flight. But that got canceled because the spaceship went haywire and blew up about 30 minutes after launch. It didn't even reach some of its main goals. The two tests before that, in January and March, were even crazier, with the spacecraft exploding really early on, sending pieces everywhere and making planes change their routes just in case.
Even with all that, Elon just kind of brushed off the latest problem with a quick post, saying they got a bunch of 'good data' to look at and promised they'd be launching more test flights faster now. Idk, it seems like a bumpy road to Mars, but they're definitely trying!
