Elon Musk has said he’s “fairly confident” that humans will be able to land on Mars in six years, with an uncrewed mission making it in just two.
The SpaceX founder, who was speaking at a virtual awards show, said his prediction is based on the fact that Earth and Mars orbit around the sun in sync every 26 months. This means the next opportunity to get to Mars will be in two years, with Musk declaring that “with luck”, humans might even make it in four.
Musk’s mission is to get the technology to a place whereby we can have “a base on the moon” and “a lot of people (can) go to Mars and make life interplanetary”.
As reported by CNBC, Musk’s 2026 goal is in line with his 2016 comments, in which he said “if things go super well”, landing people on Mars “might be in the 10-year timeframe”.
Not everybody is happy about the entrepreneur’s planned colonisation of Mars, though. Last week (November 23), Werner Herzog said that building cities on Mars would be “a mistake”. The director explained that he disagrees with Musk “when he postulates and preaches about colonising Mars”, adding that humans should “not be like the locusts” and should instead “look to keep our planet inhabitable”.
HBO seems to think differently, however, as the network is developing a limited series about SpaceX, delving into the new era of privately-funded space exploration.
Anyway, at least we can now look forward to 2026 when we start a global pandemic on Mars.