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SpaceX will colonise Mars in the next few years, says boss Elon Musk

The company also hopes to build a moon base

Friday 29 September 2017 11:09 BST

Billionaire entrepreneur and founder of SpaceX Elon Musk speaks at the 68th International Astronautical Congress 2017 in Adelaide on September 29, 2017 (Getty)

Elon Musk will colonise Mars within the next few years, he has said.

The SpaceX boss hopes his company can land at least two cargo ships on Mars by 2022. And humans will come just a couple of years after that, he said, ready to make use of the power and infrastructure that will be dropped by the autonomous craft.

They’ll be carried there by SpaceX rockets – the same ones that he hopes will carry people around the world in less than half an hour, potentially replacing plane travel.

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

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1/30Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Solar Flare

An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking

For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU)

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

A Hubble Cosmic Couple

The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 — more commonly known as WR 124 — and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it

ESA/Hubble & NASA

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant

Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch

The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Earth from the ISS

From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Black Hole Friday

Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead — sharing pictures of black holes

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

NuSTAR

X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Cassiopeia A c

A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Orion Capsule splashes down

The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later — having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Earth Observations From Gemini IV in 1965

This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Frosty slopes of Mars

This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Yellowstone from space

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Saturn

This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan

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Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Worlds Apart

Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Solar Flare

An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy

An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Mars Rover Spirit

Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Morning Aurora From the Space Station

Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station

Nasa/Scott Kelly

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Launch of History - Making STS-41G Mission in 1984

The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

A Fresh Perspective on an Extraordinary Cluster of Galaxies

Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Hubble Sees a Galactic Sunflower

The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower

ESA/Hubble & NASA

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Pluto image

Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with colour data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced colour global view of Pluto

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Fresh Crater Near Sirenum Fossae Region of Mars

The HiRISE camera aboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this closeup image of a "fresh" (on a geological scale, though quite old on a human scale) impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars. This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Hubble Peers into the Most Crowded Place in the Milky Way

This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way

NASA & ESA

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

An Astronaut's View from Space

Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Giant Landform on Mars

On Mars, we can observe four classes of sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges, dunes, and what are called “draa”

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Expedition 39 Landing

A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan

(NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Jupiter's Great Red Spot Viewed by Voyager I

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and perhaps the most majestic. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Chandra Observatory Sees a Heart in the Darkness

This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region

Mr Musk has previously suggested that he could detonate nuclear weapons on Mars to get its atmosphere ready for human habitation. But, at least at first, the people will live in specially created bases on the red planet.

The billionaire space fanatic announced the plans as part of an update on his hopes for colonising the solar system using rockets. As well as travelling around the Earth and to the red planet, he said that we are already too late to be building a moon base, a problem he said he would fix.

Much of that work will be done within the next five years, he said – an aim that he suggested might even be a little conservative.

“I feel fairly confident we can build the ship and be ready for the launch in five years. Five years seems like a long time for me,” Mr Musk said.

SpaceX currently has a fleet of three spacecraft, which the Tesla boss wants to become obsolete.

Instead, Mr Musk told the audience his company will begin stockpiling the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Dragon spacecrafts, and put all of its resources into building the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) – codenamed the BFR, or “Big F****** Rocket”.

Mr Musk believes SpaceX can finance its Mars ambitions from its current work launching satellites and servicing the International Space Station (ISS).

The 46-year-old unveiled the combo rocket and spaceship at the same conference last year, but announced a stripping back of the BFR to contain fewer main engines – 31 – while he also released a concept video showing the spacecraft’s potential journey between New York and Shanghai.

“BFR will take you anywhere on Earth in less than 60 mins,” Mr Musk wrote on Twitter. The video added that “most long-distance trips” would take less than 30 minutes.

SpaceX plans to start building the first spaceship, which Mr Musk said is the company’s cheapest yet, by the middle of 2018.

The ITS would be capable of carrying around 100 people spread out over 40 cabins, including common areas and an entertainment system.

Mr Musk also shared concept images of the spacecraft landed on Mars, next to a human settlement, saying he wanted to make the Red Planet “a nice place to be” with a sustainable human population of around one million.

“I can’t think of anything more exciting than being out there among the stars,” he said.

It adds to the list of Mr Musk’s other outlandish-sounding ventures, which includes Hyperloop, a system intended to carry humans through tubes in pressurised cabins at speeds of around 600mph, and Neuralink – a startup exploring how to connect the human brain to computers.

Additional reporting by agencies

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