Space
Spacex Will Send Unmanned Spaceship On Cargo Route To Mars In 2018
Sam D
First Posted: Jun 14, 2016 05:10 AM EDT
SpaceX Chief Elon Musk had reportedly revealed his plan to send the Dragon to Mars sometime in 2018, earlier this year. At that time, the billionaire entrepreneur had not laid out the details of the plan or mission. However, according to recent reports, Musk wants to send an unmanned spaceship to the Martian surface that could eventually become a regular cargo route, with a spacecraft journey being made every 26 months.
According to a report, Musk compared reaching unknown celestial worlds to crossing the oceans to new lands in the past centuries. The cofounder of PayPal felt that though the mission was going to be difficult, dangerous, risky and hard, he was sure that people would still be interested in going in a manner similar to the establishment process of English colonies in other countries. However, before setting the stage for a human mission to Mars and eventual possibilities of colonization, the owner of SpaceX wants to start unmanned travel and a supply chain to the red planet.
"Essentially what we are saying is that we are establishing a cargo route to Mars. It is a regular cargo route. You can count on it. It is going to happen every 26 months. Like a train leaving the station," Elon Musk said. "And if scientists around the world know that they can count on that, and it is going to be inexpensive, relatively speaking compared to anything in the past, then they will plan accordingly and come up with a lot of great experiments".
Incidentally, the mission will be a private undertaking by SpaceX and won't be funded by NASA or the US government, though the American space agency had previously said that it would offer technical support for the 2018 Mars mission. NASA itself has plans of sending a human mission to Mars sometime by the 2030s, for which it is currently conducting various experiments to see the health impacts of long term space flight on the human body, in addition to many other preparatory tests.
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First Posted: Jun 14, 2016 05:10 AM EDT
SpaceX Chief Elon Musk had reportedly revealed his plan to send the Dragon to Mars sometime in 2018, earlier this year. At that time, the billionaire entrepreneur had not laid out the details of the plan or mission. However, according to recent reports, Musk wants to send an unmanned spaceship to the Martian surface that could eventually become a regular cargo route, with a spacecraft journey being made every 26 months.
According to a report, Musk compared reaching unknown celestial worlds to crossing the oceans to new lands in the past centuries. The cofounder of PayPal felt that though the mission was going to be difficult, dangerous, risky and hard, he was sure that people would still be interested in going in a manner similar to the establishment process of English colonies in other countries. However, before setting the stage for a human mission to Mars and eventual possibilities of colonization, the owner of SpaceX wants to start unmanned travel and a supply chain to the red planet.
"Essentially what we are saying is that we are establishing a cargo route to Mars. It is a regular cargo route. You can count on it. It is going to happen every 26 months. Like a train leaving the station," Elon Musk said. "And if scientists around the world know that they can count on that, and it is going to be inexpensive, relatively speaking compared to anything in the past, then they will plan accordingly and come up with a lot of great experiments".
Incidentally, the mission will be a private undertaking by SpaceX and won't be funded by NASA or the US government, though the American space agency had previously said that it would offer technical support for the 2018 Mars mission. NASA itself has plans of sending a human mission to Mars sometime by the 2030s, for which it is currently conducting various experiments to see the health impacts of long term space flight on the human body, in addition to many other preparatory tests.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone