Coverage: The business of sending people to Mars

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — who also happens to be Tesla Motors’ CEO — said Wednesday that his company plans to start sending people to Mars in the next decade, drawing tons of coverage.

Matthew Lynley of TechCrunch had the day’s news:

After making a bold adjustment to Tesla Motors’ outlook, saying the company could produce 500,000 cars annually by 2018, Musk now says that he says SpaceX may be able to have people on Mars by 2025. More specifically, he expects to launch a manned mission to Mars in 2024, which would arrive in 2025. He made the comments at Vox Media’s Code Conference.

Of course, all these could be subject to delays. The company had to delay the Falcon Heavy launch — Musk says the company hopes to launch it by the end of the year. But SpaceX has also managed to land several of its rockets, and it hopes to re-use those rockets in the next few months, he said.

Musk’s ambitions to visit Mars — or die there, for that matter — aren’t unknown. But Musk is also known for having an aggressive mentality when it comes to expanding his companies’ efforts to accomplish his goals. “If you gotta choose a place to die, then Mars is probably not a bad choice,” he said. “It’s not some sort of Martian death wish.”

SpaceX plans to start running the second version of its Dragon mission next year, which is capable of sending up to 7 astronauts into space, Musk said. From that, he expects the company to start missions to Mars with the Dragon V2 in 2018 — though it won’t necessarily start carrying astronauts just yet.

Andrew Nusca of Fortune focused on how Musk wants SpaceX to be the Union Pacific of the red planet:

And when might that fantasy actually become reality? Sooner rather than later. Musk says SpaceX wants to be the Union Pacific of Mars—an “entrepreneurial enabler” for the planet. His company hopes to send the second version of its Dragon spacecraft to Mars in 2018, and send humans in 2024 or 2025.

But he won’t be on that flight, he said with a grin. Asked about how that aligns with his earlier remarks on the subject—in 2013, Musk told an audience at the South by Southwest festival in Austin that he’d “like to die on Mars, just not on impact”—Musk grinned.

“If you’ve got to choose a place to die, then Mars is probably not a bad choice,” he said to audience laughter. “It’s not some sort of Martian death wish or something. But, you know–be born on Earth, die on Mars—that’s pretty good.”

Well, hang on, Elon. Are you saying civilization should abandon Earth altogether? Is it really that bad?

“No, no. I think it’s great,” Musk said, stifling a smile. “Why would we abandon Earth? It’s really nice here.”

Brian Stelter of CNNMoney.com wrote that the spacecraft does not yet have the capability of returning home:

He outlined SpaceX’s recent breakthroughs with reusable rockets and said the company plans to “re-fly one of the landed rocket boosters” toward the end of the summer.

Musk has missed some self-imposed deadlines before. But he said that he intends to send SpaceX’s Dragon Version 2 spacecraft to Mars in 2018.

“It has the interior volume of a large SUV,” and the trip takes six months, so it’s “probably not ideal” for humans, Musk said with classic understatement.

Oh, and it “also doesn’t have the capability of getting back to Earth,” he said, stirring laughter from the crowd. “We put that in the fine print!”

But SpaceX’s plan is to establish “cargo flights to Mars that people can count on” before launching a larger spacecraft with people on board.