SpaceX plans to launch about five uncrewed Starships to Mars in two years, the company’s CEO Elon Musk announced in a post on X.
Also in the social media post, which was published on September 22, 2024, Musk shared that the timeline for the first crewed mission will rely on how well the five Starship launches go.
If the uncrewed mission lands successfully, crewed missions could happen in four years, Musk said. However, if any challenges arise, then the crewed mission will be postponed by another two years, he added.
Currently, it is only possible to travel from Earth to Mars every two years, when the planets are aligned. According to Musk, this “increases the difficulty of the task, but also serves to immunize Mars from many catastrophic events on Earth.”
However, Musk said SpaceX will increase the number of spaceships traveling to Mars exponentially with every transit opportunity, adding that eventually there will be thousands of Starships going to Mars.
“We want to enable anyone who wants to be a space traveler to go to Mars! That means you or your family or friends – anyone who dreams of great adventure,” Musk added.
In the social media post, the SpaceX CEO also expressed that one of his biggest concerns is that the Starship program is being smothered by “a mountain of government bureaucracy that grows each year.”
“The fundamental existential question is whether humanity becomes sustainably multiplanetary before something happens on Earth to prevent that, for example nuclear war, a supervirus or population collapse that weakens civilization to the point where it loses the ability to send supply ships to Mars,” Musk added.
Musk is relying on the Starship spacecraft, the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon and Mars. Starship is also capable of providing point-to-point transport on Earth, according to the SpaceX website, enabling travel to anywhere in one hour or less.
According to SpaceX, the spacecraft will be capable of carrying up to 100 people on long-duration, interplanetary flights. NASA is planning to use the spacecraft to land astronauts on the Moon for its Artemis 3 mission. The mission has been postponed to no earlier than September 2026 from its initial timeline of late 2025.
Most recently, the company launched its Starship for the fourth time on June 6, 2024, from its Starbase location near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas. In total, Starship vehicles have been launched four times in 2023 and 2024, achieving two complete successes and two failures.