Elon Musk's SpaceX wants to send humans to Mars by 2024, but it has yet to send anyone into space
When Elon Musk makes a proclamation, people stand up and take notice.
At the Code Conference in California on Wednesday, Musk reiterated one of his boldest claims to date, saying that, if all goes according to plan, SpaceX will start flying people to Mars by 2024, a more ambitious goal than any nation or private company has established.
SEE ALSO: Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to send people to Mars by 2024
Musk didn't give away too many details of the company's plan, saying that more Mars colonization plans will be revealed during a conference in September, but he did explain some of the reasoning behind SpaceX's audacious goal. Musk said:
Just going off Musk's remarks, it's unclear if the 2024 mission is designed to have people orbit Mars or actually land there, but either way, it's an incredibly ambitious goal.
Here are some reasons to be skeptical of SpaceX's plan.
SpaceX hasn't flown a human to space
So, here's the deal: It's 2016 and the company is aiming for a crewed mission to Mars in eight years, yet they haven't successfully sent a robot to Mars or even a human to orbit around the Earth.
With human missions comes a level of risk that SpaceX has not had to manage during its time in business. The company simply hasn't been put to the test in that way.
SpaceX is expected to launch astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA starting as soon as next year, so that will offer the firm an opportunity to introduce astronauts into their workflow and risk management programs.
However, to go from those missions to human exploration of Mars in just seven years would be an astonishing feat.
For now, it's difficult to see how a SpaceX-run humans-to-Mars mission might work out.
"Saying that they can reduce the risks adequately to start sending humans to Mars in the next ten years seems to me to be extremely bullish," said John Logsdon, professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, in an interview.
Image: Spacex
The fact is, no matter what, going to Mars is risky.
Only four space agencies have successfully landed robotic craft on or put spacecraft into orbit around Mars, so a private company aiming for that technically challenging ground is ambitious in a whole new way.
The company will attempt to drive down that risk as well as costs by sending an uncrewed Dragon capsule to Mars in 2018 and continuing to test out their methods every two years after that, but problems can always crop up.
History of broken promises
Musk also has a history of making informal promises about timelines that don't pan out.
"They, and especially Elon in his individual pronouncements, have always been much more ambitious on things like schedule than what turned out to be the case," Logsdon added.
In 2011, for example, Musk said that SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket — a booster larger than the Falcon 9 that is in use today — would fly by the end of 2012.
Four years later, the Falcon Heavy has yet to even be revealed to the media, though SpaceX is planning its first test flight for later this year.
Image: spacex
A Mars mission could take up to $150 billion
If SpaceX succeeds in their plan, the company will leap-frog over NASA in the race for Mars. But doing so will require a huge investment of the sort that even NASA is having trouble raising.
NASA isn't planning on launching any kind of crewed mission to Mars until the 2030s. In all likelihood, it will take billions of dollars to actually get humans to Mars, and NASA is stumbling in its attempts to get the money needed for this kind of mission from Congress.
Musk has yet to lay out a plan to fund his idea.
"I've seen numbers anywhere between $80 [billion] and about $120 [billion] to $150 billion," Chris Carberry, CEO of Explore Mars, a non-profit founded to help send humans to Mars, told Mashable in an interview.
"I suspect he's [Musk] planning on doing it for a lot less."
It's possible that SpaceX will want to team up with NASA, other companies or different space agencies to make Musk's dream a reality.
Lockheed Martin has proposed a possible architecture they could build in partnership with NASA that would put an orbital outpost around the red planet by 2028, in anticipation of a full landing in 2030.
Image: SpaceX
SpaceX's funding and design architecture will remain a mystery until Musk presents his ideas more formally in September, but there's a chance SpaceX's plans may dovetail nicely with NASA's or even Lockheed Martin's planning.
"A smart company would not ignore sources of expertise, and most of the expertise in the world on landing on Mars resides at JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory], resides at NASA," Logsdon said.
Of course, with government involvement comes possible slowdowns and less freedom for companies seeking to do something ambitious, but that might be a trade-off Musk and SpaceX are willing to take.
Myriad of technical challenges
Perhaps the most compelling reason to be skeptical is the technological barriers that need to be overcome before any humans board a SpaceX capsule bound for Mars' rust-colored surface.
The company will need to develop a new kind of spacecraft, according to Musk, for the half-year trip to Mars.
SpaceX's Dragon Version 2 is about the size of an SUV and is built to transport humans to the International Space Station, but it won't be a very comfortable astronaut hangout on a long journey to another planet.
The company still needs to work out the kinks of its 2018 mission before any human-rated craft can be flown. In addition, SpaceX still doesn't have a sure-fire method for safely landing cargo — or people — on the red planet, a major hurdle of any Mars mission.
Building and testing a new space system isn't easy, and one of the biggest challenges SpaceX will face on its road to Mars is creating a life support system capable of keeping astronauts alive on the way to and from the red planet.
Image: spacex
"Our experience right now has been on the International Space Station, and that is constantly being repaired, and is constantly getting supplies from Earth, so this is many orders of magnitude more complicated," Carberry said.
"I hope he can really speed things up and motivate everyone else, but I'd be really shocked if he could actually get people alive and back on Mars in 2024," he said of Musk's aspirations.
No matter what, technologically, SpaceX will need to have a near-perfect testing record in order to make it to Mars on such an ambitious time-scale.
As it is, the company doesn't have a perfect record.
In June 2015, a Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX disintegrated in the skies above Florida just after launching with an uncrewed Dragon capsule carrying supplies for the Space Station.
Every new space program has growing pains, and there's no reason to think that SpaceX's will be any different.
Those rocket landings though
Since he founded SpaceX in 2002, Musk has been aiming for Mars.
"Mr. Musk has been very explicit since starting business that he would create successful space business to get to Mars," Logsdon said.
In fact, the entrepreneur has often said that he would be willing to die on the red planet, as long as it's not on impact.
So, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the company is putting its Martian ambitious into high gear now.
Image: spacex
"Elon is a smart person," Logsdon said. "He has smart people working with him, whatever plan they have come up with is not going to be harebrained; it’s going to be executable."
Although SpaceX has a long way to go before getting people to Mars, it isn't like the company is sitting around doing nothing.
In a bit more than 10 years, the company has become a world-class launch provider.
SpaceX is also in the process of making good on another promise, landing four different boosters back on Earth after delivering payloads to space. This allows them to drastically lower the costs of reaching various Earth orbits.
"He has made very ambitious announcements before, and he kind of lives up to what he says, and I have a lot of faith and optimism in what they're doing, and I think it's going to be interesting to see if they beat NASA to Mars," Commercial Spaceflight Federation president Eric Stallmer told Mashable.
