SpaceX Wants to Go to Mars. Here’s Why Humans Aren’t There Yet.
Elon Musk isn’t the first visionary to set down a road map to the red planet. But will he be the first to succeed?
After months of anticipation, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has at last revealed his plan for making humans a multiplanetary species by sending crews to Mars and beyond.
The announcement, which envisions settlements of up to a million people on Mars by the 2060s, was delivered on September 27 to a packed crowd of aerospace experts at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Excitement for the talk was buoyed in large part by Musk’s charisma and SpaceX’s impressive track record of backing up its lofty rhetoric with action—particularly with the company’s regular cargo missions to the International Space Station and its self-landing, satellite-delivering rockets.
Still, things have not been entirely smooth sailing for SpaceX, with a recent launch pad explosion potentially
