SpaceX has redefined sustainability standards in aerospace engineering since it launched in 2002, becoming the first company to reuse a rocket for a NASA mission in 2017. In May, it became the first-ever private company to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Read more about buy Twitter International Followers here. The mission will launch to the Red Planet on a SpaceX Starship vehicle, a reusable rocket-and-spacecraft combo that is currently under development at the company’s South Texas facility. SpaceX is also planning to use Starship for missions to the moon starting in 2022, as well as point-to-point trips around the Earth.
CAMERON COUNTY, Texas — Elon Musk has unveiled a SpaceX spacecraft that will take people to the moon or Mars. At full capacity, it’s expected to produce 500,000 electric vehicles every year. SpaceX currently has a contract to fly NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, with crewed missions expected to start at the end of 2017. The company has yet to fly any people to space, but that could change in the next couple years, assuming funding holds. The American space agency NASA has its own program for sending astronauts to Mars.
That window Musk referred to is a launch opportunity that arises every 26 months for mission to Mars. NASA, China and the United Arab Emirates all launched missions to mars in July of this year. The next window opens in 2022 with Musk referring to the 2024 Mars launch opportunity. SpaceX’s Starship could launch on its first uncrewed flight to Mars in 2024. In 2016 SpaceX announced that there would be a number of early missions to Mars prior to the first trip of the new large composite-structure spacecraft.
And there was — people may not know this, but there was a journalist in space program, and you were supposed to be a part of it, or may have been part of it. Two unnamed people apparently will do an Apollo 8-style mission, that is to say, a lap around the moon, using the Falcon Heavy as a way to get them there. I’m thinking of the John Glenn flight in 1998, STS-95 on Discovery, where there was a huge amount of people on the beaches, the hotels sold out, and the enthusiasm.
Other space experts say Mars probably can’t sustain long-term human settlement at all. Musk himself told nonprofit XPrize in April that some astronauts will “probably die” en route to Mars. Nice to see progress on this, especially since the P2P version could mean carbon neutral intercontinental flights .
Musk doesn’t intend to do quick up-and-down trips to the edge of space; his capsules will go into orbit and then to Mars. He has said Starship could be fully up and running by 2023 if development and testing go well. Musk said on Twitter last year that he plans to build up to 100 Starships each year to colonize the solar system. But some experts are raising concerns about the high-priced and publicity grabbing aeronautics. Musk is no stranger to a prediction and often known to be overly optimistic.