Latest news with #MarsColonization
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Musk unveils major plan amid departing Trump administration
Elon Musk has unveiled bold new plans for SpaceX following his split from President Donald Trump. The billionaire hosted an event on Thursday outlining the company's strategy to colonize Mars, detailing what he called the next phase in space exploration. Musk said SpaceX aims to launch its first crewed Starship mission to the Red Planet in 2026, with a Tesla Optimus robot on board. 'Launching two years later, we would be sending humans, assuming the first missions are successful,' said Musk. The initial crewed launches would likely involve a small number of early settlers, focusing on building and troubleshooting infrastructure on the Martian surface. The ambitious plan hinges on the development of next-generation Starships, which Musk said will feature nine engines, improved heat shields and increased payload capacity. He also revealed that SpaceX's assembly facility in Texas will eventually produce 1,000 Starships a year, describing it as 'the biggest structure in the world,' designed to enable millions of people to travel to Mars. The announcement comes less than a day since Musk quit the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and bid farewell to the White House, saying his 'scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end.' While Elon Musk expressed admiration for President Trump, he didn't hold back criticism of the administration's recent $3.8 trillion spending bill. 'It undermines the work the DOGE team is doing,' Musk told CBS bluntly. 'I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit instead of reducing it.' Despite the fallout, Musk isn't letting his departure from the White House derail his long-standing vision of putting humans on Mars. During the event, he unveiled plans for new 'Gigabays' currently in development, one in Texas and another in Florida. These towering facilities serve as vertical integration hubs where Starship and Super Heavy rockets are stacked and prepped for launch. 'We'll be building as many Starships for Mars as Boeing and Airbus produce commercial airliners,' Musk said. 'Each Starship is bigger than a 747 or an A380.' For perspective, Boeing's 747 measures 231 feet in length, while the Airbus A380 comes in at around 238 feet. Musk also announced that SpaceX will ramp up production of its Starlink satellites to around 5,000 units per year, many of which are destined for Mars. 'Ideally, we'll be able to take anyone who wants to go to Mars,' he said. 'And bring all the equipment needed to make it self-sustaining, to let it grow on its own.' The goal, he emphasized, is to ship enough resources to the Red Planet so that if supply missions from Earth suddenly stop, life on Mars can continue uninterrupted. 'Having two strong, self-sustaining planets will be critical for the long-term survival of civilization,' Musk added. He believes a multiplanetary existence could extend humanity's lifespan tenfold. But Musk does not plan to stop at Mars—he envisions missions reaching the Asteroid Belt, Jupiter's moons, and eventually, other star systems. SpaceX is eyeing the Arcadia Planitia to land Starships due to it being close to ice for water, lack of mountains and not too close to the poles. The first mission would arrive in 2027 and the first human launch would take off two years later. 'Maybe to just be safe, we might do two landing episodes with Optimus and the third one with humans. We will see,' Musk said. He estimated that at least one million tons of cargo will be needed to make Mars self-sustaining, requiring 1,000 to 2,000 ships per transfer window, with the long-term goal of the Red Planet's independence from Earth. Musk finished the event saying that this is 'an opportunity for the Martians to rethink how they want civilization to be.' 'So you can rethink what form of government you want, what new rules you should have. There's a lot of freedom and opportunity in Mars to do a recompile on civilization, which will be up to the Martians,' he added.
Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Business
- Gizmodo
Elon Musk Flaked on His Big Mars Talk. Here's What He Might've Been Doing Instead
Elon Musk opting not to talk about his ambitious plans to colonize Mars, now that's a first. The rocket billionaire was a no-show for a company discussion on establishing human settlements on the Red Planet, which was meant to take place on the same day as Starship's most recent test flight. The megarocket's mid performance may have been the leading cause behind Musk's last-minute change of plans, or maybe he was busy finding ways to avoid paying child support. In an emailed statement on Monday, SpaceX announced that Musk was going to discuss the company's plans for colonizing Mars. The company talk was set to be livestreamed on SpaceX's X page and its website on Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET. Instead of streaming Musk's overly eager ramblings, the webcast remained silent before delaying the start time to 1:10 p.m. and then another time to 1:15 p.m., and finally pushing it until 9 p.m. ET. On that same day, Starship's liftoff was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET, so delaying the talk meant Musk was supposed to speak after the rocket's test flight instead of before. Musk, however, did neither. We're not entirely sure why the world's richest man failed to show up yesterday for the big Mars talk, so we've put together a list of other things Musk might have been doing instead of indulging in his favorite topic—colonizing the Red Planet. Cheating in video games What do you do when you have an accumulated wealth of $400 billion? If you're Musk, you might just pay people to play video games for you. Earlier this year, reports surfaced suggesting that Musk has used boosted characters in games like Diablo and PoE2. The SpaceX CEO often leans into his gamer persona as part of his personal brand, but he later admitted in direct messages on X to a gaming buddy that he does, in fact, pay others to play for him. Healing from his toxic relationship with Trump Musk and Donald Trump were inseparable throughout the president's campaign, to which he generously donated $288 million. He got especially chummy with Trump once he was back in the White House. It seems, however, that the two are drifting apart. This week, Musk admitted that he is disappointed with Trump's 'big, beautiful bill,' which he says undermines the work of the Department of Government Efficiency, which he spearheads. Musk also complained that the administration is using DOGE as a scapegoat. 'DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,' Musk told The Washington Post in a recent interview. 'Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.' It's not like we didn't see this coming, but even rocket billionaires can get tangled up in the wrong relationship. Being a terrible father Musk has been criticized for not being a good father to his 13 children (or whatever the number actually is). The SpaceX CEO is often seen in public with his son X, who he shares with the musician Grimes, but his other kids don't seem to get the same amount of attention. The mother of one of Musk's children, MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair, recently sold her Tesla in retaliation to Musk allegedly not paying enough money in child support. The billionaire's own father, who is also famously known for bad parenting, called Musk a bad father in an interview earlier this year. Musk also has an estranged relationship with his trans daughter Vivian, whom he publicly refers to as 'dead.' Watching Starship flop yet again There was a lot riding on Starship's Tuesday launch. The rocket had suffered back-to-back glitches that resulted in two explosions during the last two test flights. SpaceX reported that it had identified the problem and made 'several hardware changes' ahead of Starship's ninth flight, according to a statement. Starship blasted off from its launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas, a few minutes past 7:30 p.m. ET. Things were going smoothly at first, until around 30 minutes after liftoff when SpaceX announced that Starship had fallen into an unrecoverable spin as the result of the loss of attitude control. SpaceX managed to push Starship further than in the previous two tests, but its latest flight was a rocky affair that failed to achieve a number of key goals. Indeed, the Super Heavy booster—the first to be reflown in a fully integrated test—never made it back to the launch mount. Starship is a key part of Musk's plans to send humans to Mars, which he claimed could happen in 2026. At least, that was part of the announcement for 'The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary' talk, which he flaked on at the last minute. Perhaps scheduling it on the same day as Starship's test flight was a bit of a risk, and anything Musk had to say during his talk would have been nullified by the rocket's less-than-ideal performance. Still, it's rude to leave us hanging like that.
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
SpaceX launch: Elon Musk to outline plans to ‘make life multiplanetary'
Elon Musk is to detail his plans to 'make life multiplanetary' as the billionaire's rocket business SpaceX prepares for the ninth test flight of its Starship superheavy rocket. The billionaire will lay out his vision for colonising Mars from SpaceX's Starbase headquarters in Texas ahead of tonight's mission. His talk is scheduled to begin at 6pm UK time, ahead of the launch which is expected to take place at 11.30pm. Mr Musk has described his plans to colonise other planets as 'life insurance for life collectively' should Earth be destroyed or become uninhabitable. Tonight's mission will be SpaceX's first since the unplanned explosion of one of its rockets sent fiery debris raining through the skies above the Caribbean, grounding flights out of Florida. The latest launch will include several firsts for SpaceX, including a first attempt to re-use a superheavy booster stage that it previously successfully landed back on Earth.
Gizmodo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Gizmodo
How to Watch Elon Musk Unveil SpaceX's Mars Colonization Roadmap
All eyes are on SpaceX as it gears up to launch Starship's ninth test flight. Prior to the launch, CEO Elon Musk will discuss the company's plans for colonizing Mars. The talk will be livestreamed on SpaceX's X page and on today starting at 1:00 p.m. ET. Colonizing Mars is SpaceX's guiding mission and the ultimate purpose for Starship. In an emailed statement, the company said Musk will discuss 'the development work ahead for Starship and how SpaceX will use the world's most powerful and capable rocket to build a human presence on the red planet over the next decade,' adding that the next opportunity to launch a mission to Mars opens in late 2026. Today's Starship test flight—currently scheduled to launch from Starbase, Texas, at 7:30 p.m. ET—marks a critical moment for this heavy-lift rocket. Its last two test flights ended in explosive failures, putting the Starship program months behind schedule. If SpaceX hopes to launch an Earth-to-Mars mission before the end of 2026, it's important that today's launch be successful. For years, Musk has said humanity needs to become multiplanetary to ensure the species' long-term survivability. He argues that Mars can serve as an insurance policy for Earth as our home planet faces existential risks like artificial superintelligence, nuclear war, and engineered pandemics. 'Becoming multiplanetary is critical to ensuring the long-term survival of humanity and all life as we know it,' Musk wrote in an X post last September. In 2016, he said it could take 40 to 100 years to establish a self-sustaining colony on Mars. But according to The New York Times, he told SpaceX employees last year that he expects one million people to be living there within 20 years. President Donald Trump has likewise expressed an interest in Mars‚ likely due to Musk's influence. 'We are going to conquer the vast frontiers of science, and we are going to lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars and even far beyond,' Trump said in a speech to Congress in March, according to Spaceflight Now. He added, however, that going to Mars is not his top priority. During today's talk, many will be watching to see if Musk addresses the numerous technical challenges he will face on the road to Mars, namely the in-orbit refueling of Starship. To make it to Mars, the rocket must first replenish the enormous amount of fuel it will have burned during its ascent. This will require 'tanker' Starships to deliver liquid oxygen and methane propellants to a depot in orbit, according to SpaceNews. A Mars-bound Starship could then use this depot to fuel up before traveling beyond Earth's orbit. But this architecture is a long way away from being operational. SpaceX originally said it would demonstrate in-orbit refueling in March 2025, when two Starships will dock in orbit with one transferring propellants to the other. But Starship launch delays have pushed the timing of that mission back indefinitely. NASA will be closely watching today's launch as the agency plans to use Starship to ferry astronauts to the Moon on the Artemis 3 mission, which is currently scheduled for mid-2027. This mission was delayed from late 2026 partly due to setbacks with SpaceX's Starship program, Spaceflight Now reports. The agency sees returning to the Moon as a critical stepping stone toward future Mars missions, but SpaceX—and Musk—clearly see things differently. Targeting a 2026 launch window for an uncrewed mission to the Red Planet would flout the timeline of NASA's Moon to Mars program, which aims to put astronauts on Mars by the 2030s or 2040s. SpaceX's Mars ambitions should come into focus during today's talk. As of now, it's not clear how Starship could possibly be ready in time for a late-2026 launch window, or how progress toward this goal might conflict with the objectives outlined in the company's NASA contracts.
Daily Mail
11-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Elon Musk's doomsday set for year 1,000,002,021 say scientists
Scientists have pinpointed a date for Elon Musk 's doomsday scenario - when life becomes extinct. The SpaceX billionaire warned this week that eventually our existence on Earth will be destroyed by the sun. Now researchers from NASA and Toho University in Japan They used advanced supercomputers and mathematical models to forecast the sun's long-term evolution. Their calculations suggest life will eventually become impossible as the sun grows hotter and brighter, raising global temperatures and gradually reducing oxygen levels. They also found that in about five billion years the sun will enter its red giant phase - a stage when it runs out of hydrogen fuel and dramatically expands. At that point, the swollen red giant will likely engulf the inner planets, including Mercury, Venus and possibly Earth. While this cosmic end is still far off, it's one of the reasons Musk continues to push for colonizing Mars. ' Mars is life insurance for life collectively,' he told Fox's Jesse Watters on Monday. 'The sun is gradually expanding, and so we do at some point need to be a multi-planet civilization because Earth will be incinerated.' NASA has long warned that, eventually, the Sun will run out of energy, but it also notes that the Sun is still less than halfway through its lifetime and is expected to last another five billion years. Researchers created year-by-year simulations to predict changes in climate and gas composition, according to the study published in Nature Geoscience. They ran more than 400,000 simulations to forecast when the world will end. They found that the increasing brightness of the sun will drive these changes, making Earth's climate unstable. The study, published in Nature Geoscience, determined that the loss of oxygen will lead to a mass extinction on Earth. As a result, oxygen-producing organisms will decline, and this process will continue until only anaerobic microbes - organisms that can survive without oxygen - remain. Using a random-based method, scientists estimated that Earth's atmosphere, with oxygen levels more than one per cent of today's levels, will last around 1.08 billion years, give or take 0.14 billion years. Musk is eager to ensure Mars is 'sufficiently self-sustaining' within his lifetime, describing it as 'the fundamental fork in the road of destiny.' Musk often uses the 'fork in the road' analogy when explaining his big picture plans, including during his takeover of Twitter. President Donald Trump used the same phrase when he began a voluntary redundancy rollout for federal government employees, and Musk hinted at the time that he helped to orchestrate the plan. Musk said on Monday his mission for Mars is for it to one day 'grow by itself if the resupply ships from Earth stop coming for any reason, whether that is because civilization died with a bang or a whimper.' 'If the resupply ships are necessary for Mars to survive, then we have not created life insurance. We've not created life insurance for life collectively. 'So that's the key point in the future where [the] destiny of life, as we know it, will forever be affected, is when Mars becomes self-sustaining.' President Trump took the first step in helping Musk reach this lofty goal by signing off on a massive shift in funding priorities at NASA - including the largest cut to the space agency's budget in its history. On May 1, the Trump administration slashed $6 billion that would have paid for research, operations on the International Space Station, and future missions, including the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. That project has already cost NASA billions and aimed to bring samples collected by the Martian rovers back to Earth to be studied. At the same time, the cuts will allow NASA to allocate over $1 billion to manned space missions, ensuring 'that America's human space exploration efforts remain unparalleled, innovative, and efficient.' The White House proposal emphasizes the importance of NASA beating China back to the moon and putting the first humans on Mars, with the latter being the overarching goal of Musk's spaceflight company, SpaceX.
