Speaking in December last year, Musk had explained his plans: "There’s a window that could be opened for a long time or a short time where we have an opportunity to establish a self-sustaining base on Mars before something happens to drive the technology level on Earth below where it’s possible."
He is planning to schedule the landing and arrival in 2025, along with flying there himself to live out his remaining days.
reuters
For early adopters of Mars as their home, the initial trek out from the space shuttle will be risky.
"Hopefully there’s enough people who are like that who are willing to go build the foundation, at great risk, for a Martian city," Musk told the Washington Post. "It’s dangerous and probably people will die—and they’ll know that."
It’s not like Mars already won’t be scary BEFORE these red planet pioneers show up - Musk has plans to literally bomb the atmosphere with huge fusion bombs into the sky above Mars, which will explode every few seconds, so that the planet can be warm enough to allow humans to live there.
"What I was talking about," Musk said, "was having a series of very large, by our standards, but very small by calamity standards, essentially having two tiny pulg-in suns over the poles. They're really above the planet. Not on the planet." Asked whether the plan would be difficult to make happen, Musk said: "Yeah, absolutely, no problem".
arstechnica
SpaceX plans to send an unmanned Dragon spacecraft to Mars as early as 2018, a first step in achieving founder Elon Musk’s goal to fly people to another planet. U.S. space agency NASA, which is aiming for a human mission to Mars in the 2030s, said it will provide technical support for SpaceX’s first foray, known as Red Dragon.
The SpaceX program is intended to develop technologies needed for human transportation to Mars, a long-term aim for Musk's privately held company, which is formally known as Space Exploration Technologies.
arstechnica
Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur who helped to found Tesla Motors and PayPal, started SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of slashing launch costs to make Mars travel affordable. The company recently has made spaceflight history by returning Falcon 9 rockets to landing pads on land and sea - key to Musk's quest to develop a relatively cheap, reusable launch vehicle.
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