For Starship to land on Mars in any form by Jan. 20, 2029, SpaceX would need to overcome major obstacles.
Former President Donald Trump has touted that if he wins another term as president that the United States will be on the red planet within those four years.
"We will lead the world in space and reach Mars before the end of my term," he said most recently during a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Thursday.
Trump has not specified whether he means landing American astronauts or only spacecraft.
But SpaceX founder Elon Musk -- who appeared with the former president wearing an "Occupy Mars" T-shirt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, earlier this month -- has separately promised to send Starships with astronauts to Mars "in four years." He has also warned that humanity will only make it to Mars under a second Trump presidency.
"We will never reach Mars if Kamala wins," he said of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Earth and Mars pass relatively close to each other once every 26 months. The next such window to head to Mars will be in late 2026, a time frame during which Musk said uncrewed Starships would test landing on the red planet.
The next launch window after that is December 2028 through January 2029. Musk says the first astronauts will set off to Mars then.
Musk's timeline is thus possible, at least in terms of orbital dynamics.
But Musk has a long history of offering unrealistic, overly optimistic schedules for his rocket developments. In 2016, when he first announced his Mars rocket, then called the Interplanetary Transport System, he predicted that the first uncrewed SpaceX missions on Mars would launch in 2022 and that the first astronauts to Mars would be taking off this year.
That has not come to pass.
So far, there have been four test flights of Starship. None has been fully successful, although SpaceX has made progress with each. Even with the achievements of the fifth launch, huge technological hurdles remain, including quick turnarounds between launches and refueling Starships while in orbit. Each Starship headed to Mars would most likely need at least a dozen or more additional Starship launches to fill up its tanks with methane and liquid oxygen.
SpaceX will have to master many of the same technologies in order for Starship to serve as the lunar lander for NASA's Artemis III mission, which aims to take astronauts to the surface of the moon near the South Pole.
The task of sending people to Mars is more plausible if you don't worry about bringing them back alive.
On the International Space Station, toilets still break, but replacements can be sent up within a month or two.
Imagine life in space on the way to Mars without a working toilet.
The life-support system on the Starship would have to reliably work -- scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air, recycling water and performing other tasks to keep it habitable -- for more than a year. SpaceX would also need spacesuits usable for walking on Mars and shelters from the radiation of a solar storm.
If the astronauts successfully landed on Mars, the return trip would require more yet-to-be-proven technologies.
For one, the Starship would have to be refueled with methane and oxygen. An experiment on NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars showed that it was indeed possible to extract oxygen from the Martian air. In two years, it generated 4.3 ounces of oxygen. Starship would need several million pounds of oxygen for the return trip and at least a million pounds of methane, too.
SpaceX could conceivably send additional Starships with the propellants for the return trip, but that adds complexity.
Then there is the question of who would pay for this. These Mars flights would occur at a time when NASA would be busy with its Artemis moon missions. SpaceX already needs two Starship campaigns, an uncrewed test and then the Artemis II mission, to fulfill its contractual obligations to NASA.
There is so far no apparent political groundswell for public financing of Musk's Mars dreams and no obvious business case that would attract the investment of venture capitalists.
Former President Donald Trump has touted that if he wins another term as president that the United States will be on the red planet within those four years.
"We will lead the world in space and reach Mars before the end of my term," he said most recently during a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Thursday.
Trump has not specified whether he means landing American astronauts or only spacecraft.
But SpaceX founder Elon Musk -- who appeared with the former president wearing an "Occupy Mars" T-shirt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, earlier this month -- has separately promised to send Starships with astronauts to Mars "in four years." He has also warned that humanity will only make it to Mars under a second Trump presidency.
"We will never reach Mars if Kamala wins," he said of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Earth and Mars pass relatively close to each other once every 26 months. The next such window to head to Mars will be in late 2026, a time frame during which Musk said uncrewed Starships would test landing on the red planet.
The next launch window after that is December 2028 through January 2029. Musk says the first astronauts will set off to Mars then.
Musk's timeline is thus possible, at least in terms of orbital dynamics.
But Musk has a long history of offering unrealistic, overly optimistic schedules for his rocket developments. In 2016, when he first announced his Mars rocket, then called the Interplanetary Transport System, he predicted that the first uncrewed SpaceX missions on Mars would launch in 2022 and that the first astronauts to Mars would be taking off this year.
That has not come to pass.
So far, there have been four test flights of Starship. None has been fully successful, although SpaceX has made progress with each. Even with the achievements of the fifth launch, huge technological hurdles remain, including quick turnarounds between launches and refueling Starships while in orbit. Each Starship headed to Mars would most likely need at least a dozen or more additional Starship launches to fill up its tanks with methane and liquid oxygen.
SpaceX will have to master many of the same technologies in order for Starship to serve as the lunar lander for NASA's Artemis III mission, which aims to take astronauts to the surface of the moon near the South Pole.
The task of sending people to Mars is more plausible if you don't worry about bringing them back alive.
On the International Space Station, toilets still break, but replacements can be sent up within a month or two.
Imagine life in space on the way to Mars without a working toilet.
The life-support system on the Starship would have to reliably work -- scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air, recycling water and performing other tasks to keep it habitable -- for more than a year. SpaceX would also need spacesuits usable for walking on Mars and shelters from the radiation of a solar storm.
If the astronauts successfully landed on Mars, the return trip would require more yet-to-be-proven technologies.
For one, the Starship would have to be refueled with methane and oxygen. An experiment on NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars showed that it was indeed possible to extract oxygen from the Martian air. In two years, it generated 4.3 ounces of oxygen. Starship would need several million pounds of oxygen for the return trip and at least a million pounds of methane, too.
SpaceX could conceivably send additional Starships with the propellants for the return trip, but that adds complexity.
Then there is the question of who would pay for this. These Mars flights would occur at a time when NASA would be busy with its Artemis moon missions. SpaceX already needs two Starship campaigns, an uncrewed test and then the Artemis II mission, to fulfill its contractual obligations to NASA.
There is so far no apparent political groundswell for public financing of Musk's Mars dreams and no obvious business case that would attract the investment of venture capitalists.
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