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An illustration of the artist showing SpaceX BFR spacecraft standing at the outpost of the red planet "Mars Alpha Base".
Credit: SpaceX
Humanity could have an outpost on Mars in a decade, said Elon Musk.
The Musk Company, SpaceX, is building a huge duo of reusable spacecraft rockets called the BFR to help our species explore and install the Moon, Mars and other Earths worlds through the solar system.
The long-term vision of the billionaire entrepreneur involves the creation of a city of a million inhabitants on the red planet in the next 50 to 100 years. But we could get the basic infrastructure of such a settlement – an outpost of Musk calls Mars Base Alpha – faster than that, he said. [The BFR in Images: SpaceX’s Giant Spaceship for Mars & Beyond]
"Probably 2028 for building a base," Musk said on Twitter Friday (Sept. 21), in response to a question about when Mars Base Alpha could move from artistic rendering to reality.
Probably 2028 for a base to be built
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 21, 2018
The deadlines of Musk are considered aggressive, and it would take a lot to reach this goal of 2028. After all, the BFR (which means "Big Falcon Rocket") is still in the development phase. The first orbital flights of the 100-passenger spacecraft and its giant accelerator are unlikely to be available until 2020 or 2021 at the earliest, Musk said last week at an event at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. .
This event served mainly to announce the identity of the first paying client of the BFR: the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who plans to fly with six to eight artists on a loop for a week around the moon. This mission, which Maezawa calls #dearMoon, could get up as early as 2023 if development and BFR testing went well, Musk said.
Neither Musk nor Maezawa revealed how much he paid for the flight (although Maezawa confirmed that the artists will fly free – he bought all the seats). But Mr. Musk said that Mr. Maezawa had already made a large down payment and that his purchase went a long way towards covering the costs of developing the WCR. That spending will probably be around $ 5 billion, Musk said on Friday.
"It has done a lot to restore my confidence in humanity – that somebody is ready to do it – to take their money and finance this new risky program, which may not be successful." [and] is dangerous, "said Musk. It finally helps pay for the average citizen to travel to other planets. It's a good thing. "
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @ michaeldwall and Google+. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally posted on Space.com.
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