He is used to making shocking announcements and sometimes wild promises. Once again, Elon Musk has reiterated his desire to send ships to Mars from Earth. Except this time he gives a timetable and it is tight. On the social network X, the boss of SpaceX explained in a long message that the first launch would take place within two years.
“SpaceX plans to launch about five unmanned spacecraft to Mars within two years, the entrepreneur reveals. If they all land safely, manned missions will be possible in four years. If we encounter difficulties, manned missions will be postponed for two more years.”
A calendar that only offers biannual shooting windows because the distance between the two planets varies by almost a factor of two depending on the position they occupy in their orbit around the Sun. And the distance varies between 55 million and 100 million kilometers.
Whether or not the future mission is successful, Elon Musk remains convinced that it will be a first step towards the democratization of space travel.
“We want to make it possible for everyone who wants to become a space traveler to go to Mars! That means you, your family or your friends – everyone who dreams of great adventures. Over time, thousands of spacecraft will head to Mars and do just that. It will be a magnificent sight to see!”
The entrepreneur says he wants to act quickly before possible civilizing catastrophes occur on Earth, making travel impossible like “a nuclear war, a super virus or a demographic collapse,” he writes in X.
Very political message
The billionaire’s message, his open support for candidate Donald Trump for the US presidential election, is also not without strong political implications.
Lamenting the “mountain of government bureaucracy that grows every year” and the “suffocating bureaucracy” [qui] “It affects every major project in the United States,” Musk points to the Democratic Party’s responsibility for what he sees as dramatic obstacles to innovation.
“I have many concerns about a possible Kamala regime [Harris]What worries me most is that the bureaucracy that currently strangles the United States is destined to grow under a Democratic Party administration, he says. This would destroy the Mars program and doom humanity.
The businessman, a strong critic of the current US administration, intends to dramatize the issue of the upcoming elections by criticizing the voters.
It remains to be seen whether his promise to send spacecraft to Mars is a truly credible project (at least in his opinion) or an electoral argument to sway Donald Trump.
Source: BFM TV
