Musk retains plan to fly Starship to Mars in 2026 despite setbacks
Two days after the latest in a string of test-flight setbacks for his big new Mars spacecraft, Starship, Elon Musk said on May 29 he foresees the futuristic vehicle making its first uncrewed voyage to the red planet at the end of next year.
Musk presented a detailed Starship development timeline in a video posted online by his Los Angeles area-based rocket company, SpaceX, a day after saying he was departing the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump as head of a tumultuous campaign to slash government bureaucracy.
The billionaire entrepreneur had said earlier that he was planning to scale back his role in government to focus greater attention on his various businesses, including SpaceX and electric car and battery maker Tesla.
Musk acknowledged that his latest timeline for reaching Mars hinged on whether Starship can accomplish a number of challenging technical feats during its flight-test development, particularly a post-launch refueling manoeuvre in earth orbit.
The end of 2026 would coincide with a slim window that occurs once every two years when Mars and the earth align around the sun for the closest trip between the two planets, which would take seven to nine months to transit by spacecraft.
Musk gave his company a 50% chance of meeting that deadline. If Starship were not ready by that time, SpaceX will wait another two years before trying again, Musk suggested in the video.
The first flight to Mars would carry a simulated crew consisting of one or more robots of the Tesla-built humanoid Optimus design, with the first human crews following in the second or third landings. Musk said he envisioned eventually launching 1,000 to 2,000 ships to Mars every two years to quickly establish a self-sustaining permanent human settlement.
NASA is currently aiming to return humans to the surface of the moon aboard Starship around 2027, more than 50 years after its last manned lunar landings of the Apollo era, as a stepping stone to ultimately launching astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s.
Musk has previously said he was aiming to send an uncrewed SpaceX vehicle to the red planet by 2018 and was targeting 2024 to launch a first crewed mission there.
The SpaceX founder was scheduled to deliver a livestream from the company's Texas launch site on May 27 night, following a ninth test flight of Starship that evening.
But the webcast was canceled without notice after Starship spun out of control and disintegrated in a fireball about 30 minutes after launch without achieving some of its most important test goals. Two test flights in January and March failed in more spectacular fashion, with the spacecraft blowing to pieces on ascent moments after liftoff.
Musk shrugged off the latest mishap saying it produced a lot of 'good data to review' and promised a faster launch cadence for the next several test flights.
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