Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, declared that he plans on going into space himself in the next years. He also said that his private space agency plans to send the first manned spacecraft to Mars by 2025.
Musk announced his plans this week during a chat in Hong Kong, at the StartmeupHK Festival. SpaceX's spacecraft that will send settlers on the Red Planet is called Mars Colonial Transporter. The billionaire declared that he will unveil more detailed plans in Mexico, at the International Astronautical Congres in September.
Speaking at the event in Hong Kong, Musk said that he is excited to plan the first flight to Mars and that he is hoping to be able to describe soon the architecture of the Mars spaceship.
According to Fox News, for Musk space travel to Mars is part of a larger vision. The entrepreneur hopes that one day a city will be established on the Red Planet. This will be a necessary human venture not only because it would be an incredible adventure, but also because it's part of ensuring the survival of mankind in the long run.
Musk considers that colonizing Mars it's a fundamental decision for our civilization. We cannot remain forever confined to one planet exposed to some eventual extinction event, but rather we need to become a multi planet species and go out there among the stars.
In this perspective, Mars is the first planet where we could envision a human presence in the short term. Once we establish a self-sustaining city on Mars we can improve our space flight technology to enable us creating "colonies elsewhere in the solar system and ultimately extend beyond our solar system."
According to Geek Wire, in the shorter term, SpaceX is working now to test its Dragon 2 space capsule in order to make it suitable for sending astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX aims to reach this goal by the end of next year.
