Elon Musk 'Highly Confident' Humans Will Land On Mars Within Six Years

For many of us, our five-year plans might involve buying a house, getting a dog or finally clearing out the garage. But Elon Musk is more ambitious than most - he hopes to have people on Mars within six years, tops. Watch him discuss the plan here:

The SpaceX founder was chatting about his dream of getting people to the Red Planet at the Axel Springer Award ceremony in Berlin on Tuesday, where he accepted the prize 'given to outstanding personalities who are particularly innovative, and who generate and change markets, influence culture and at the same time face up to their responsibility to society'.

The 49-year-old said: "I feel fairly confident about six years from now.

"The Earth-Mars synchronisation occurs roughly every 26 months, so we had one this year, in the summer. That means in roughly two years there'll be another one, and then two years after that.

"So I think six years from now, highly confident, if we get lucky, maybe four years. And then we want to try to send an un-crewed vehicle there in two years."

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Musk added that he might make his first trip into orbit in 'two to three years', but his priority is getting the infrastructure in place to allow 'a lot of people to go to Mars and make life interplanetary, and to have a base on the moon'.

He added: "I think it's important that we aspire to have a self-sustaining city on Mars as soon as possible."

So, who wants to volunteer to head out to Mars in six years? You'd be living something no human has ever experienced, which is very cool, right?

Oh, but you might die. Anyway, off you go.

What, did you think this was gonna be some big holiday? Think again.

PA

Speaking during a virtual 'Humans to Mars' conference in August, Musk said: "Getting to Mars, I think, is not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is building a base, building a city on Mars that is self-sustaining.

"We're going to build a propellant plant, an initial Mars base - Mars Base Alpha - and then get it to the point where it's self-sustaining.

"I want to emphasise that this is a very hard and dangerous, difficult thing, not for the faint of heart. Good chance you'll die, it's going to be tough going, but it will be pretty glorious if it works out."

Death or glory then, who fancies it?

Topics: elon musk, space

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey