Musk: SpaceX will put a man on Mars in 2025!

[jimmy olsen]

http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/02/news/companies/musk-mars-2025/

Musk: SpaceX could take humans to Mars in 9 years

June 02 Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

Elon Musk believes SpaceX should be able to land humans on Mars nine years from now.

Musk reiterated confidence in his Mars timeline at the Code Conference on Wednesday night.

"If things go according to plan, we should be able to — we should be able to — launch people in 2024, with arrival in 2025," Musk said.

"That's the game plan," he added.

Musk said he's planning to share an architectural plan for the colonization of Mars at a conference in September.

The tech conference audience was enthralled by Musk's comments. He told interviewers Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg that plotting travel throughout the Solar System, and "ultimately other star systems," provides the kind of inspiration that makes life worth living.

Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, has previously said that he would "like to die on Mars, just not on impact."

On Wednesday night he quipped that he doesn't have a "Martian death wish," but "I think if you're going to choose a place to die, then Mars is probably not a bad choice."
For human travel to Mars, Musk has been targeting the middle of the next decade since at least 2014.

"This will be a very big rocket," he said Wednesday.
He outlined SpaceX's recent breakthroughs with reusable rockets and said the company plans to "re-fly one of the landed rocket boosters" toward the end of the summer.
Musk has missed some self-imposed deadlines before. But he said that he intends to send SpaceX's Dragon Version 2 spacecraft to Mars in 2018.

Related: Boeing falls behind SpaceX in next space race
"It has the interior volume of a large SUV," and the trip takes six months, so it's "probably not ideal" for humans, Musk said with classic understatement.

Oh, and it "also doesn't have the capability of getting back to Earth," he said, stirring laughter from the crowd. "We put that in the fine print!"

But SpaceX's plan is to establish "cargo flights to Mars that people can count on" before launching a larger spacecraft with people on board.

When Matt Damon's film "The Martian" came up, Musk said he "actually enjoyed the movie," and said, "it was like 80% scientifically correct."

Much closer to home, Musk was also asked about the U.S. presidential election, a topic on which he was noticeably less animated.

Without saying anything about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton specifically, he said, "I don't think it's the finest moment in our democracy."

[garbon]

Yet first lines say should and could.

[Barrister]

Yet first lines say should and could.

You know I like Musk, but he doesn't do anything these days without government funding.  I think that's what he's hinting at - we could go to Mars if only the US Goverment would pay us to do so...

[Darth Wagtaros]

No, they won't. Not by 2025 and not by the year 2525. If Man is even still alive. 

[Martinus]

The question is - can they bring the man back once they put him on Mars?

[jimmy olsen]

No, they won't. Not by 2025 and not by the year 2525. If Man is even still alive.

Ridiculous. Mars isn't Alpha Centauri. Most of the technology needed to get there already exists.

[grumbler]

No, they won't. Not by 2025 and not by the year 2525. If Man is even still alive.

If woman can survive...

[Capetan Mihali]

If you believe they'll put a man on the Mars...

[The Brain]

Who let the dogs out? Woof, woof, woof, woof!

[grumbler]

If you believe they'll put a man on the Mars...

If you thought that was the next line in the song...

[dps]

No, they won't. Not by 2025 and not by the year 2525. If Man is even still alive.

Ridiculous. Mars isn't Alpha Centauri. Most of the technology needed to get there already exists.

The technology to do it has basically existed for over 40 years.  That we haven't done it has been due to lack of the will and funding to do it, not lack of technology.

[Berkut]

No, they won't. Not by 2025 and not by the year 2525. If Man is even still alive.

Ridiculous. Mars isn't Alpha Centauri. Most of the technology needed to get there already exists.

The technology to do it has basically existed for over 40 years.  That we haven't done it has been due to lack of the will and funding to do it, not lack of technology.

Will, technology, and funding don't exist in a vacuum separate from one another.

I am not even sure if the technology for this did exist 40 years ago, at least not in a fashion that made it realistic or affordable.

[Josquius]

But we're all still in a simulation right?

[grumbler]

The technology to do it has basically existed for over 40 years.  That we haven't done it has been due to lack of the will and funding to do it, not lack of technology.

Actually, the technology to do it still doesn't exist.  Mars lacks sufficient atmosphere to slow an interplanetary ship that is going to get there in less than decades.  Current rocket technology won't get us to mars with sufficient fuel to slow down using rockets (you need a lot of fuel, which increases the weight of the rocket you are sending, thus requiring more rockets and fuel to get it to speed, thus increasing the weight you need to devote to slowing it again, ad infinitum).

Look at the effort, risk, and weight that went into getting Curiosity to the surface - and Curiosity was under 1,000 kilos.  There's no current technology that could duplicate the Curiosity landing system for the necessary weight of a manned mission.

The entry/landing problem is the log pole in the Mars mission tent, and I have seen no evidence that Elon Musk and SpaceX have solved that problem.  They claim that they will, with a more efficient engine, but can't even start to demonstrate that for some time yet.

[jimmy olsen]

Just crack water into hydrogen and oxygen and make rocket fuel on site.