SpaceX proprietor and Tesla CEO Elon Musk poses as he arrives on the pink carpet for the Axel Springer Awards ceremony, in Berlin, on December 1, 2020.
Britta Pedersen | AFP | Getty Images
Elon Musk thinks SpaceX may help NASA meet its bold goal of landing astronauts on the moon by 2024.
“I feel that may be completed,” Musk mentioned Friday, talking after SpaceX launched the Crew-2 mission to orbit for a visit to the International Space Station.
“We’re going to intention for earlier than that, however I feel this is really doable,” he added. “We’re increase lots of rockets, and doubtless [will] smash a bunch of them, however I feel it should occur.”
SpaceX won a $2.9 billion contract from NASA final week beneath the company’s Human Landing Systems program.
Starship prototype rocket SN11 stands on the launchpad at the firm’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
SpaceX
Under the contract, Musk’s firm will construct a variation of its Starship rocket, prototypes of which SpaceX has been testing in Boca Chica, Texas. The firm has carried out a number of profitable check flights of Starship, though landing makes an attempt after the final 4 high-altitude flights led to fiery explosions.
NASA’s Artemis program, introduced by President Donald Trump’s administration and anticipated to proceed beneath President Joe Biden, consists of a number of missions to the moon’s orbit and floor in the years forward.
Musk mentioned “it is an incredible honor to be chosen by NASA to return people to the moon,” emphasizing his firm’s imaginative and prescient for flying common flights there and past.
“It’s been now virtually half a century since people have been final on the moon. That’s too lengthy, we have to get again there and have a everlasting base on the moon — once more, like a giant completely occupied base on the moon. And then construct a metropolis on Mars to change into a spacefaring civilization, a multiplanet species,” Musk mentioned. “We do not wish to be one of these single-planet species, we wish to be a multiplanet species”
Musk has beforehand estimated that it will cost about $5 billion to fully develop Starship, though SpaceX has not disclosed how a lot it has spent on the program. On Friday, Musk famous that the Human Landing Systems contract win is “actually useful,” as Starship growth has “principally been funded internally so far and it is fairly costly.”
“It’s a troublesome automobile to construct as a result of we’re making an attempt to crack this nut of a fast and totally reusable rocket,” Musk mentioned. “But the factor that is actually vital to revolutionize area is a quickly reusable rocket that is dependable, too.”
