Space X will colonise Mars within the next few years, Elon Musk has said.
He hopes his company can land at least two cargo ships on Mars by 2022. And that humans will come just a couple of years after making use of the power and infrastructure that will be dropped by the autonomous craft.
Humans be carried there by SpaceX rockets – the same ones that he hopes will carry people around the world in less than half an hour, thereby replacing plane travel.
Mr Musk believes SpaceX can finance its Mars ambitions from its current work launching satellites and servicing the International Space Station (ISS).
Musk has previously suggested that he could detonate nuclear weapons on Mars to get its atmosphere ready for human habitation. But, at least at first, the people will live in specially created bases on the red planet.
The billionaire space fanatic announced the plans as part of an update on his hopes for colonising the solar system using rockets. As well as travelling around the Earth and to the red planet.
According to Musk, Much of that work will be done within the next five years, an aim that he suggested might even be a little conservative. “I feel fairly confident we can build the ship and be ready for the launch in five years. Five years seems like a long time for me,” Musk said.
He also unveiled the combo rocket and spaceship at the same conference in 2016, but announced a stripping back of the BFR to contain fewer main engines – 31 – while he also released a concept video showing the spacecraft’s potential journey between New York and Shanghai.
“BFR will take you anywhere on Earth in less than 60 mins,” Mr Musk wrote on Twitter. The video added that “most long-distance trips” would take less than 30 minutes.
Mr Musk also shared concept images of the spacecraft landed on Mars, next to a human settlement, saying he wanted to make the Red Planet “a nice place to be” with a sustainable human population of around one million.
“I can’t think of anything more exciting than being out there among the stars,” said the founder of Tesla.
It adds to the list of Mr Musk’s other outlandish-sounding ventures, which includes Hyperloop, a system intended to carry humans through tubes in pressurised cabins at speeds of around 600mph, and Neuralink – a startup exploring how to connect the human brain to computers.
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