Space & Astronomy

Musk outlines ambitious plan to send humans to Mars as early as 2029

By T.K. Randall
March 15, 2025 ·  13 comments

This is one mission you probably don't want to volunteer for. Image Credit: SpaceX Whatever you might think about Elon Musk's recent foray into politics, it seems that his goal of colonizing the Red Planet within the next few years still remains his top priority.

While his Starship rocket has suffered a few setbacks recently with the latest two test launches ending in explosions (or rapid unscheduled disassemblies as he calls them), Musk still seems to believe that sending the spacecraft all the way to Mars will happen as soon as next year.

In a recent update, he reiterated that he wanted to send Starship to Mars by the end of 2026 with one of his Tesla Optimus humanoid robots at the helm.

This would be a similar stunt to his launching of a Tesla Roadster into space back in 2018.

That's not all, however, as Musk also maintains that his extremely ambitious goal of sending humans to Mars can still be achieved by as early as 2029 - a mere four years away.While he also notes that 2031 is a more likely date, the whole thing seems premature to the extreme.

As things stand, we still haven't seen humans walk on the Moon since the Apollo era and there is absolutely no infrastructure on Mars to support a human crew.

While it may be possible to get Starship to Mars, keeping the crew alive and healthy for several months in deep space - a feat never achieved before - would represent a huge challenge.

On a trip to Mars, if something goes wrong, there is no possibility of help, no option of turning around and no chance of finding shelter at the other end.

Even by 2031, such an undertaking would be incredibly risky, even if it were possible at all.

Source: BBC News | Comments (13)

Tags: SpaceX, Starship