From MuskReads
When will humans settle on other planets? Representatives of the firm gave guidance on this after Musk appeared on social networking site Clubhouse Sunday and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell appeared at the Ramon Spacetech Conference last Monday.
- Humans will reach Mars in “five and a half years,” Musk said. That places the deadline around 2026. That’s slightly later than Musk proposed in September 2017, when he suggested 2024, but it does confirm recent comments that SpaceX is aiming for 2026.
- “We’ll see people start settling on other planets” in 10 years, Shotwell said. That would suggest a deadline of around 2031.
- Shotwell also said that within 50 years “we’ll have a path that will allow us to fly to other worlds…we are trying to find a breakthrough in propulsion technology that allows us to go beyond the Moon, beyond Mars, beyond the entire Solar System.” That would mean the breakthrough could take place before 2061, or 100 years after Yuri Gagarin first went to space.
The Starship could enable those first trips to Mars. The Verge reported last week that the firm may find itself in trouble with the Federal Aviation Administration over the December 2020 hop test, which may have violated the terms of its license. This has helped delay the firm’s plans to try another hop test with a new “SN9” prototype.
