Telsa founder, Elon Musk and his space company start-up, SpaceX is ready to conquer Mars. Musk recently revealed "mind blowing" details of his 2018 unmanned mission to the red planet, saying that in order to build a space colony on Mars they will have to establish a reliable cargo route.
The route will be used to deliver cargo to the red planet during their planned trip to Mars after every two years starting 2018.
SpaceX is currently affiliated with NASA as the agency's cargo resupply service using Dragon spacecraft that delivers goods to the International Space Station (ISS). Musk plans to conquer the planet earlier in 2018 and he is also set to send the first human on Mars on 2024 with arrival on 2025.
Musk revealed more details about his mission to colonize Mars. It may sound easy in theory but space and renewable energy tycoon, knows what he is getting into, saying that the mission is like to be "hard, risky, dangerous, difficult," said Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, in an interview.
After his 2018 unmanned mission to Mars, Musk said there would be cargo missions to Mars after every two years, in time for when the Earth and Mars are closest to each other.
Earlier this month, Musk announced the "Mars Payload" scheme, a cargo service to deliver goods to Mars. It is open to commercial space companies and official agencies of the different nations for the minimum fee of $62 million. According to Musk, there are commercial satellite operators who already expressed their interests in the cargo service using the reusable space rockets of SpaceX.
But just like NASA, Musk recognizes the difficulties in reaching a planet 140 million miles away from the Earth. Space cargo "routes" should be established.
"It's a regular cargo route. You can count on it. It's going to happen every 26 months. Like a train leaving the station. And if scientists around the world know that they can count on that, and it's going to be inexpensive, relatively speaking compared to anything in the past, then they will plan accordingly and come up with a lot of great experiments," Musk said in an interview with Washington Post.
NASA promised SpaceX with "technical support." Musk is adamant when it comes to landing on Mars in 2018, he was once quoted that SpaceX will proceed with its 2018 mission with or without NASA. Meanwhile, NASA plans to launch its mission to Mars in 2030.