SpaceX CEO Elon Musk raised the bar on the future of Mars mission update saying that he wants to skip the Moon as it is a ‘distraction’.
In a post on X, Musk emphasised the importance of carrying out higher number of rocket launches to increase payload send to low-Earth orbit and eventually to Mars. Musk was replying to astrophysicist Peter Hague who was dissecting the debate between ‘Mars people’ and ‘space habitat people’.
Replying to a post from the astrophysicist, the SpaceX CEO replied, “Mass to orbit is the key metric, thereafter mass to Mars surface. The former needs to be in the megaton to orbit per year range to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars.”
Hague suggested that Starship will require a lot of liquid oxygen as fuel to reach Mars - about 69 percent of all the mass SpaceX wants to send to orbit for Mars missions. On the other hand, the lunar regolith is about 40 percent oxygen by mass and thus manufacturing liquid oxygen from the soil would make space travel much more cheaper and cost effective.
Replying to Musk, Hague responded, “I wouldn’t put Moon infrastructure on the critical path to Mars - but surely it will develop natural in parallel as launch costs fall. At some point another company will surely develop it for resources that could feed back into the Mars program.”
SpaceX will launch the first Starships to the red planet by 2026 years and the ones with astronauts in by 2028 if the uncrewed landings go well. SpaceX has even proposed a Marslink concept to establish internet network on Mars.
Musk stated that these will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. He added that if those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in four years.
"If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years. Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet," Musk had said.