Humans will land on Mars within 12-15 years: Elon Musk

The CEO of the U.S. private aerospace entity Space X says he is confident that his company can land humans on Mars using its own technology within 12 to 15 years.

In an interview with ABC TV on Monday, Elon Musk, 41, said, “Even with a rocket Space X is creating, we can send an exploration ship to Mars,” adding, “Our ultimate goal is to develop a rocket that will be used in transporting people and materials, and in constructing a station on Mars.”

The biggest hurdle to travel to the Red Planet is the cost. The overall expenses for a roundtrip to Mars as estimated by Musk are as high as 500,000 U.S. dollars per person.

He said only when in an era when people can ride a rocket and travel to Mars back and forth at low cost just like ordinary Americans riding airplanes can exploration of the Red Planet pick up speed. He said the cost can be handled via the reuse of rockets.

The U.S. space shuttle Discovery is a reusable rocket, but a private company has never developed and operated a reusable rocket.

Space X is considered a success story in which a private company has entered a space development project spearheaded by the government. On May 22, the company sent the unmanned spaceship Dragon on the two-stage rocket Falcon, which it produced on its own in a first for private companies, and got the rocket to dock with the International Space Station.

While NASA’s space development budget is declining every year and with U.S. President Barack Obama scrapping a plan to explore the moon, private companies are expanding their activities to explore space. NASA plans to focus its capacity and efforts on the exploration of the solar system and beyond, and instead outsource to the private sector missions for the International Space Station orbiting the earth.

A native of the Republic of South Africa, Musk is the founder of Paypal, the world’s largest electronic financial settlement company, and doubles as CEO and chief technology officer of Tesla Motors, an electric vehicle company, and Space X. Having gained experience in online business, clean energy and space development, he is widely considered the real-life counterpart of billionaire inventor Tony Stark, the secret identity of the Marvel superhero Iron Man.

baek@donga.com