Mulling Martians
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s plans to turn humanity into a “multiplanetary” species grow more ambitious every year — but it’s unclear whether he’ll live long enough to actually see it happen.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, experts are skeptical about the billionaire’s bold plan to take humans to Mars.
In an interview with the newspaper, aerodynamics expert Christopher Combs of the University of Texas said that it may take between 15 and 20 years for it to be safe enough for humans to travel to Mars. Should it take that long, the multi-hyphenate business owner will be in his 60s or 70s by the time he’s able to reach the Red Planet.
“SpaceX has a history of designing iteratively, and we kind of expect things to go wrong the first few tries — if you have to wait two years between iterative attempts, that really stretches out your development cycle,” Combs told the newspaper. “Can they be perfect the first time?”
Of particular concern are the logistics of getting to the Red Planet, which only has a single window every 26 months where that planet and ours are aligned closely enough to send spacecraft with the least amount of fuel. With future launches having to occur on that timeline, there will only be nine windows for SpaceX’s Starships to go to Mars in the next 20 years.
Time Windows
At the age of 53, Musk will ultimately have to pull off at least one crewed Mars mission within the next 20 years to get there himself — and given that the next such window opens in the fourth quarter of this year, he’s clearly not going to be able to launch anything to Mars again before late 2026.
To be fair, Musk himself has made public comments about the fuzziness of the Mars travel timeline as it relates to his own lifespan.
“If we don’t improve our pace of progress, I’m definitely, you know, gonna be dead before we go to Mars,” Musk said during a 2020 conference. “I would like to not be dead by the time we go to Mars — that’s my aspiration here.”
As per recent tweets, Musk is still hoping to send an uncrewed Starship spacecraft to the Red Planet during the next Earth-Mars transfer window in 2026 and claims humans will hitch rides there within the next eight years. Unlike Combs, astrophysicist Peter Hague thinks after crunching the numbers that it can be done.
“2031 for humans is credible,” Hague tweeted. “If not 2033. This is happening and you’ll get to see it.”
Which expert is more correct remains to be seen. SpaceX still has a lot to prove — and Musk is only getting older.
