Elon Musk, the visionary head of SpaceX, has announced that he wants to land humans on Mars within the next nine years, with a subsequent arrival and landing scheduled for 2025.
The Flying Dragon 2 has the interior size of an SUV and is capable of carrying up to seven people and will take 18 months to get there.
“I think what really matters is being able to transport large numbers of people and ultimately millions of tons of cargo to Mars,” said Musk. “And that’s what’s necessary in order to create a self-sustaining, but a growing city on Mars.”
“Hopefully, by the end of this year, we’ll be launching Falcon Heavy, which will be the most powerful rocket in the world by more than a factor of two,” Musk said at the conference. “Falcon Heavy will be on the order of 5 million pounds of thrust on liftoff, which is about two-thirds the size of the Saturn V.”
When asked by Vox Media’s Walt Mossberg if humans abandon earth entirely, Musk replied: “No, I think it’s great.”
There’s a lot more coverage of the Code Conference at Recode.
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