SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has long dreamed of landing on Mars, but the billionaire has admitted that the feat may not be accomplished before he dies.
Speaking at the Satellite 2020 conference in Washington on Monday, Musk explained that the firm is not progressing as planned and noted it has taken ’18 years just to get ready to do the first people in orbit.’
‘We’ve got to improve our rate of innovation or, based on past trends, I am definitely going to be dead before Mars,’ Musk said during the discussion.
The lack of progress seems to have taken a toll on Musk, who previously said there is a 70 percent chance he will personally take a trip to the Red Planet.
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has recently admitted that the feat may not be accomplished before he dies. Speaking at the Satellite 2020 conference, he explained that the firm is not progressing as planned and noted it has taken ’18 years just to get ready to do the first people in orbit’
Musk has shared his plans of colonizing Mars with the public for years.
This past January he was aiming to put a million people on the Red Planet by 2050. He planned for three flights a day – or 1,000 flights a year – with 100 people on each one.
And in 2017, the tech tycoon had the idea to send two cargo ships to Mars in 2022, followed by four other vessels – two with cargo and two with human settlers in 2024.
However, the latest interview revealed that the lack of progress is starting to weigh on Musk.
‘We’ve got to improve our rate of innovation or, based on past trends, I am definitely going to be dead before Mars,’ Musk said during the discussion. (pictured is an artist impression of a Starship leaving the Mars colony
‘If we don’t improve our pace of progress, I’m definitely going to be dead before we go to Mars,’ Musk said at the conference.
‘If it’s taken us 18 years just to get ready to do the first people to orbit, we’ve got to improve our rate of innovation or, based on past trends, I am definitely going to be dead before Mars.’
He added: ‘Unless we improve our rate of innovation dramatically, then there is no chance of a base on the moon or a city on Mars. This is my biggest concern.’
SpaceX, which was founded in 2002, has had its fair shares of bumps in the road when it comes to launching its rockets according to Bloomberg.
On September 1, 2016, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket suffered a catastrophic explosion on the Cape Canaveral launch pad during a routine pre-launch check.
The blast, which shook buildings and windows miles away, occurred shortly after 9am and destroyed Facebook’s $200million Amos-6 satellite that was set to launch on Saturday morning aboard the reusable rocket.
Just last month another the prototype of SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket failed to contain liquid nitrogen during its latest phase of testing.
The rocket exploded, sending the stainless steel cylinder flying off its stand and crashing.
And there were about a handful of other missteps in between.
SpaceX is set to carry out its first manned mission as soon as this spring, which will bring astronauts to the International Space Station.
Musk’s latest concerns come just days after he revealed his new plan to colonize the Red Plant.
He said he plans to build a new Starship rocket every 72 hours until they have a fleet of 1,000 ships.
Musk noted during the visit that each ship would be reusable and have a capacity of more than 90,000 pounds.
SpaceX has also added an additional 225 people to its staff at the South Texas Launch Site in order to construct the factory that will churn out the rockets – bringing its staffing total more than 500.
Eric Berger with Ars Technica spent the day at the South Texas site to sit in on an all-hand meeting with the CEO himself where he learned of SpaceX’s latest Mars mission plan.
‘He wanted to know why the Starship factory wasn’t humming at all hours,’ Berger wrote.
‘Why steel sheets weren’t getting welded into domes and fuel tanks, why tanks were not being stacked into rockets, why things weren’t going as fast as he wanted.’
In the meeting Musk told his crew: ‘I think we need, probably, on the order of 1,000 ships, and each of those ships would have more payload than the Saturn V—and be reusable.’
The Saturn V was the rocket that took the Apollo missions to the moon and the most powerful during its time – it was designed with a capacity for 90,000 pounds.
Musk continued to explain that in order to live on more than one planet, all of the settlements must be stable and sustainable -this is because ships carrying supplies will be delayed at times and these new homes will need to survive.