Elon Musk @elonmusk

SpaceX plans to launch about five uncrewed Starships to Mars in two years.

If those all land safely, then crewed missions are possible in four years. If we encounter challenges, then the crewed missions will be postponed another two years.

It is only possible to travel from Earth to Mars every two years, when the planets are aligned. This increases the difficulty of the task, but also serves to immunize Mars from many catastrophic events on Earth.

No matter what happens with landing success, SpaceX will increase the number of spaceships traveling to Mars exponentially with every transit opportunity. We want to enable anyone who wants to be a space traveler to go to Mars! That means you or your family or friends – anyone who dreams of great adventure.

Eventually, there will be thousands of Starships going to Mars and it will a glorious sight to see! Can you imagine? Wow.

The fundamental existential question is whether humanity becomes sustainably multiplanetary before something happens on Earth to prevent that, for example nuclear war, a supervirus or population collapse that weakens civilization to the point where it loses the ability to send supply ships to Mars.

One of my biggest concerns right now is that the Starship program is being smothered by a mountain of government bureaucracy that grows every year. This stifling red tape is affecting all large projects in America, which is why, for example, California has spent ~$7 billion dollars and several years on high-speed rail, but only has a 1600 ft section of concrete to show for it!

While I have many concerns about a potential Kamala regime, my absolute showstopper is that the bureaucracy currently choking America to death is guaranteed to grow under a Democratic Party administration. This would destroy the Mars program and doom humanity.

It cannot happen. Your help would be much appreciated. This is a fork, maybe the fork, in the road of human destiny.

Am 22. September, 2024 um 19:35 via ✕