Elon Musk plans to build fleet of Starships to take humans to Mars

Elon Musk says he is ready to send his Starship rocket to Mars in the next two years. Sharing the news on X, Musk said that the uncrewed missions to Mars will happen in 2026 and will “test the reliability of landing intact” on the red planet. 

Setting a highly ambitious timeline, Musk said that if all the tests go well, then Starship will carry people to Mars for the first time in four years. 

Notably, SpaceX’s Starship has faced quite a few bumps during its test launches. The largest and most powerful rocket ever built exploded during launch tests in the last couple of years.

The SpaceX CEO wrote on X, “The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens.”

“These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years,” he added.

Notably, the Earth-Mars transfer window opens approximately every 26 months. At this time, the two planets are closest to each other.

Musk’s plan to conquer Mars includes manufacturing multiple Starships, and creating a fleet comprising hundreds of them to ferry a million people to the red planet.

“Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years,” Musk said. 

The billionaire added that reaching Mars and settling there would mean that humans would become a “multiplanetary” species, meaning we would be living on two planets. 

“Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet,” he wrote. 

Musk went on to add in another tweet that crewed flights to the red planet will only happen once initial landings of 2026 “are proven to be reliable”. 

He added, “Four years is best case for humans, might be 6, hopefully not 8.”

The stainless-steel spacecraft consists of two elements: a first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50 metres) upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship. When stacked on top of another, Starship stands at about 400 feet (122 metres) tall.

Earlier this year, Musk had said that Starship will ferry massive payloads to orbit necessary to carry out large-scale Mars missions. “We need enough people and enough tonnage on Mars such that Mars can survive and continue consciousness even if something were to happen to Earth,” he said.

Reports suggest that Musk plans on having one million people on Mars within 20 years. In May, he said that it would take less than 10 years to send humans to Mars. However, NASA says that the first humans might not land on the planet before the 2040s.