Elon Musk has announced through his ‘X’ handle that the first Starships from earth to Mars should be launching in the year 2027 when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens.
“These will be unmanned rockets deployed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars,” says the Tesla Genius.
If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in four years’ time, which should be between 2029 and 2030.
Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of 9 a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multi-planetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet.
Space-X created the first fully reusable rocket stage and, much more importantly, made the reuse economically viable.
Making life multiplanetary is fundamentally a cost per ton to Mars problem.
It currently costs about a billion dollars per ton of useful payload to the surface of Mars.
That needs to be improved to USD 100,000 per ton to build a self-sustaining city there, so the technology needs to be 10,000 times better.
According to Elon Musk, this is extremely difficult, but not impossible.
“Starship will make life multiplanetary, preserving life as know from extinction events on Earth, so long as it is not smothered by bureaucracy.” He speaks.
Musk feels that there is more government regulatory smothering every year.
“If this continues, all large projects in the United States will be illegal.”
“For example, look at the farcically slow build of the high-speed rail line in California. After spending several billion dollars over many years, there is almost no progress,” Musk maintains.
The Department of Government Efficiency is the only path to extending life beyond Earth.
In response to Musk’s post on Twitter, or ‘X’ Tom Renz from Renz Law firm said perhaps the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) funding would be better used working on projects like this.
That is instead of wasting time on what Renz described as nonsense projects like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) or issues of climate change.
As far as Renz is concerned, settlement on mars would be an incredible step forward for humanity while DEI is a step backwards towards the racism and sexism of the Stone Age.
On his part, Ed Ludlow, who writes for Bloomberg Technology explained that this was the reason they had initially invited Space-X to participate in the Space special event.
Bloomberg technology is organizing the Space Special experience which is taking place in Los Angeles in October 2024.
Ludlow hopes that Elon Musk or someone else from Space-X will be able to attend and agree to an interview.