SpaceX founder, the world’s richest man Elon Musk in local time on Thursday in the form of video conference, participated in the International Astronautical Congress held in Azerbaijan, and introduced the company is currently developing a giant rocket “Starship” (Starship) progress.
Elon Musk took part in a nearly hour-long question-and-answer session. He told International Astronautical Federation President Clay Mowry, “I think it’s feasible to do an unmanned test landing there [on Mars] in the next four years.”
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According to the New York Times, Elon Musk and SpaceX have a track record of “making major breakthroughs” in space flight: including routine landings, reuse of Space X’s current Falcon 9 rocket, and 70 launches this year alone.
Elon Musk first showed off a Mars rocket at the International Astronautical Congress back in 2016, and then unveiled a larger rocket called the Interplanetary Transportation System. At the time, his prediction was that SpaceX would land on Mars unmanned for the first time in 2022, with a manned first flight in 2024.
While Elon Musk no longer predicts sending humans to Mars in 2024, he still has other ambitious technical predictions for Starships after that: there’s a “pretty good chance” we’ll get a booster next year, and we’ll launch a spacecraft from orbit by the end of next year. Launch a spacecraft from orbit by the end of next year.
Elon Musk tweeted in July that he expects to launch an average of 50 rockets every three days in the future, sending more than 1 million tons of payloads into orbit each year, enough to build a self-sufficient city on Mars. At the same time, he also said last August that he hoped to build a “self-sufficient” city on Mars within 20 years.
