In 2011, billionaire Elon Musk said he would put a man on Mars in 10 years. More than a decade later, the Internet now wants answers.
Musk has often talked about wanting to make humans a “multi-planetary species” and establish a colony on the red planet. SpaceX, his spacecraft engineering company, is already developing a prototype rocket that can carry cargo and crew to Mars and beyond.
In 2011, during an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Musk was asked to give a time frame as to when humans could reach Mars. His best-case scenario was 10 years, while a fallback worst-case scenario was 15- 20 years.
The video has resurfaced online a little over 10 years later. A Twitter user shared a screenshot of Musk’s statement, which has now gone viral. While one user wrote that Musk was doing pretty good so far, adding that normal business predictions were usually a year or two off, another asked him where he was on that mission. A third cut Musk some slack and blamed Covid-19 for the delay.
SpaceX has made progress on its Mars rocket, but not enough to meet the timeline. Earlier in 2022, Musk had said that he had pushed back his target date for reaching the Mars mission. He now sees 2029 as the earliest date for humans to step on Mars.
If Musk’s target date slips much further, it will be very close to when NASA aims to send the first astronauts to Mars.
The Tesla CEO spoke about the mission recently where, in a tweet addressed to former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Musk said he was hopeful of getting people to Mars by 2029. In another interview with Time magazine in December, Musk said he would be surprised if humans didn’t reach Mars within the next five years.
