SpaceX’s main goal for the next 10 years is now the Moon, not Mars. This was recently announced on social media by the company’s owner, Elon Musk. However, according to him, he is not completely abandoning his plans to fly to the Red Planet.
SpaceX’s plans
The American space company SpaceX is aiming to conquer the Moon in the long term, rather than Mars. This was announced on Sunday, February 8, on the social network X (which also belongs to him) by American billionaire Elon Musk, who is of South African origin.
According to him, building a city on Mars within the next 10 years is entirely feasible, and efforts should be focused on this task. At the same time, it would take more than 20 years to build a city on Mars, so this prospect is more illusory.
And this statement is very different from what Musk said less than a year ago. At that time, he proposed leaving the Moon and transporting people to Mars within the next four years using the super-heavy SpaceShip rocket he was developing. Even then, experts said these plans were unrealistic.
Musk’s statements
And the main problem here is that this is not the first time Musk has announced grandiose plans for Mars. Back in 2011, in a conversation with journalists, he said that in the best case scenario, a manned flight to the Red Planet would be possible in 10 years, i.e. in 2021, and in the worst case in 15-20 years.
Then came 2016, and Musk assured everyone that with sufficient funding, a flight to Mars could take place as early as 2024. At the same time, his promise that 1 million people would be living on the Red Planet by 2050 is widely known.
That is why his statements that he would send people to Mars by the end of this decade and that everyone should work toward this goal were perceived so naturally, despite the obvious problems with their realism. However, the year was not a very successful one for Starship. Relations with Trump deteriorated, while NASA managed to pull the Artemis program out of crisis.
Trump proclaimed that the return to the Moon should take place before 2028, and the Artemis program plans to achieve this by 2027. And Musk was reminded that he is not only a private space explorer, but also NASA’s main contractor for the Artemis project, and that SpaceX is responsible for developing the landing craft for the third mission. So, at some point, Musk may be to blame for its delay.
That is why he suddenly remembered that the launch window for a flight to Mars opens once every 26 months, and every 10 days until the month. Of course, the second option is more realistic. However, he has not completely abandoned his plans for the Red Planet.
According to phys.org
