‘I think this is pretty doable,’ says Elon Musk on Mars settlement plans

Elon Musk has been vocal about his aim to colonise Mars one day. The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors has delivered another speech about his off-world fantasy. He gave a "tangible" roadmap to inhabiting the Red Planet.

Musk provided the "overall path to making life multi-planetary" in a presentation to SpaceX employees at the company's Starbase facility in Texas. During the presentation, he said that although Falcon 9 is the primary launch vehicle for Earth's orbit, Starship will ultimately bring life to other worlds. Starship is the aeronautics company's largest and most powerful rocket. However, it hasn't managed to launch into orbit and then, land without destroying it.

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According to Musk, Starship will be capable of ferrying the massive payloads to orbit necessary to carry out large-scale Mars missions. "We need enough people and enough tonnage on Mars such that Mars can survive and continue consciousness even if something were to happen to Earth," he said.

In the past, Starship has suffered many failures, like exploding during several test flights. It had its most successful run in the third and most recent launch last month and reached space for the second time. However, it didn't survive re-entry and crashed into the ocean.

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While the fourth test will require landing the Starship booster on a "virtual tower" in the ocean, the fifth would be to catch the booster with an actual launch tower in Starbase. "My guess is probably next year is when we will be able to reuse Starship," Musk said.

So far, SpaceX has successfully conducted 327 Falcon launches. Musk plans on making a reusable "Starship 2," which will supposedly carry 100 tons of cargo to orbit. "Starship 3 will carry upward of 200 tonnes and cost less per flight than Falcon 1," Musk claimed.

To send millions of tonnes of cargo to Mars, SpaceX estimates that it will need to build several thousand vehicles per year and conduct ten launches every day.

"I think this is pretty doable," Musk said. "We're going to do this."

Some experts have cast doubt on Musk's Martian ambitions. Starship must prove capable of carrying out its role in NASA's mission, Artemis 3, to land on the Moon.

(With inputs from agencies)