'First people on Mars in 7-9 years': Elon Musk envisions 1,000 spaceships take off for the red planet

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has estimated that his company will be able to make crewed landing on Mars in the next 7-9 years. Musk said that the pace of the mission to Mars has to increase rapidly once the ability to land on Mars is confirmed.

“The first Starship that will land on Mars, which obviously would not have people at first, I think it's probably within about 5 years. And then we would probably launch several ships and just confirm that they can land on Mars,” Musk said.

In a conversation with Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management, Musk said that SpaceX would also be sending people to the Moon, which would be sooner than the human mission to Mars.

“We'll also be doing the moon simultaneously with that. I think we'll get people back to the Moon I should say within 5 years. And we'll get uncrewed ships landed on Mars within 5 years. And then we will be building up the production rate and improving the design of the booster in the ship. So, the first people on Mars, I think within seven years or so seven to nine years. And from there we need to rapidly increase,” he said.

Musk envisions thousands of spaceships taking off for Mars once they are able to confirm the spaceships can land properly, but the travel has to be seasonal.

He explained: “We need massive numbers of ships going. And Earth and Mars only are in the same quadrant of the solar system roughly for six months every two years. It's only possible to really transfer efficiently from Earth to Mars, I say every six months, but really about a couple months where it's ideal every 26 months.”

“So, every two years, you would see a fleet depart for Mars. And, I think it will be quite a spectacular thing to see a thousand ships depart for Mars all at once like Battlestar Galactica.”

Musk also mentioned that they have all the technology to make this come true.

“I think we have all the tech. We already know all the technology that's necessary for that (to go to Mars). We just need to build. So, no new physics is needed for this,” he said.

Musk stressed on the importance of humans becoming a multiplanet species to preserve human consciousness.  

“I think it's important for consciousness in general. If we wish to maximise the lifespan of consciousness then being a multiplanet species will result in a much longer existence of consciousness than if we're on one planet. If we're on one planet, we're simply biding our time until there's eventually a calamity. It could be soon, it could be a long time but eventually something will happen. It could be a global thermo-nuclear war. It could be simply that civilization merely subsides.”

He said that human life would eventually die on planet Earth, which made it all the more important for humans to migrate to other planets. According to Musk, Mars can potentially be just one of the many planets humans will eventually relocate to.

“Our civilization may not die with a bang, it may die with a whimper. Just gradually falling into obsolescence. But if we're multiplanet species then we've got two planets. And they can support each other and we can go beyond two planets ultimately to the moons of Jupiter, to the beyond, to the outer parts of the solar system and ultimately to other star systems." 

"So this tiny candle of consciousness that we have in this vast darkness can be extended and amplified. And we're just far more likely for consciousness to survive if we are multiplanet species.”