Mars Travel a Reality Soon? Elon Musk Shares Timeline of Bold Mission to Red Planet

New Delhi: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has been vocal about his aspirations to develop a human colony on Mars, in a series of tweets has emphasised on improving technology to overcome the financial barriers in realising the dream.

Musk's tweet came as a response to a post by Bill Ackman who was promoting a "Make America Healthy Again" ad posted by Robert F. Kennedy's former running mate Nicole Shanahan.

The billionaire CEO said that currently it takes a billion dollars to deliver a ton of payload to Mars. This exorbitant figure highlights the immense financial hurdles in making the interplanetary travel a reality.

Taking to X, Musk tweeted, “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 $100k/ton to build a self-sustaining city there, so the technology needs to be 10,000 times better. Extremely difficult, but not impossible.”

'Self-Sustaining City on Mars'

Hoping to build a self-sustaining city on Mars, the tech mogul said the cost to carry payload to the surface of Red planet must be made economical to realise the historic vision which can further revolutionize the understanding of outer space.

"SpaceX created the first fully reusable rocket stage and, much more importantly, made the reuse economically viable," he added.

Mars Travel Timeline

Announcing his plan aimed at making Mars travel a reality, Musk added that the first Starship Super Heavy mission will be launched by 2026 "when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens."

According to Musk, these uncrewed flights will test the landing reliability on Mars. If the landings are successful, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be launched by 2028.

In his Tweets, Musk expressed that he plans to increase the frequency of flights exponentially so that a  self-sustaining city can be built on Mars within 20 years from now. He believes that being “multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness.” 

"The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens. These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years. Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet (sic)." he wrote in another tweet.