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Elon Musk announces uncrewed mission to Mars within 2 years, warns Harris will destroy Mars program – Firstpost

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Elon Musk announces uncrewed mission to Mars within 2 years, warns Harris will destroy Mars program – Firstpost

If Kamala Harris becomes US president, US bureaucracy would ‘destroy the Mars program and doom humanity’, SpaceX owner Elon Musk says
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Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX will launch uncrewed missions to Mars within two years.

If these uncrewed missions are successful, crewed missions could be launched within four years, SpaceX owner Elon Musk said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Elon Musk is an advocate of the idea that humans are a multi-planetary race and sees the colonization of Mars as essential to achieving this. He has long envisioned the creation of a bustling human city on Mars by the end of the century. Recently, he reportedly envisioned up to 20 million humans on Mars in 20 years.

Musk has now said that five uncrewed Starships, the most powerful rockets ever built by SpaceX, will be launched to Mars within two years.

“If everything lands without problems, crewed missions will be possible in four years. If we encounter difficulties, crewed missions will be postponed by two years,” Elon Musk said.

There is one caveat, however: Kamala Harris. The multiplanetary future of humanity that Musk has long championed depends on Kamala Harris not winning the 2024 US presidential election. If Harris were to win, the US bureaucracy would “destroy the Mars program and doom humanity.”

Elon Musk has endorsed Harris’ rival, Republican Donald Trump, in the 2024 US presidential election. After giving his endorsement, Musk claimed that Harris was a communist and would turn the US into a country even worse than communist states like North Korea.

Regardless of the outcome, SpaceX will increase its Mars missions

When announcing the Mars mission, Musk said that regardless of success or failure, SpaceX would continue to increase the number of Starship flights.

Noting that spacecraft can only be launched to Mars once every two years when Earth and Mars are aligned, Musk said the goal is to eventually launch thousands of spacecraft to Mars.

“No matter what happens with the success of the landing, SpaceX will increase the number of spacecraft traveling to Mars exponentially with each transit opportunity… Eventually, there will be thousands of spacecraft going to Mars and it will be a magnificent sight to behold!” Musk said.

While Musk calls such a project a “glorious spectacle,” he suggests that humanity is in a race against time to achieve it. Over the years, Musk and several scientists have repeatedly stated that being multiplanetary is the only way to ensure the continuation of the human species. If a catastrophic event occurs on Earth, such as an asteroid shower or nuclear apocalypse, the race will continue if humans become multiplanetary by then.

“The fundamental existential question is whether humanity will become sustainably multiplanetary before something happens on Earth to prevent that, such as nuclear war, a supervirus, or a demographic collapse that weakens civilization to the point where it loses the ability to send supply ships to Mars,” Musk said on X.

“Kamala Harris’ bureaucracy would destroy the Mars program”

Musk said that while he had several reasons to oppose Harris, the main reason was that the US bureaucracy under her presidency would destroy the Mars program.

Elon Musk said the bureaucracy that is “suffocating America to death” is expected to grow under Harris.

“This would destroy the Mars program and doom humanity,” Musk said.

Musk’s post was a response to another post by astrophysicist Peter Hague, who also expressed similar concerns that US bureaucracy is harming SpaceX.

Hague said that only Elon Musk’s SpaceX could send humans to Mars in the next 10 years, which is unacceptable to many people. He added that these people are giving the US aerospace agency NASA and other public sector organisations time to catch up, to the detriment of SpaceX.

“By predicting ridiculously long timelines, they’re hoping that this will come true. They want to give NASA and the public sector in general time to take control of the process and run the mission, so that Mars is run by a bureaucracy that is broadly on their side – rather than a lawless frontier where tech-bros can build things without anyone getting in their way with regulations,” Hague said.