Elon Musk is giving a keynote speech at the International Astronautical Congress today, with an hour-long talk titled “Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species.” The talk kicks off at 2:30 PM ET, and we’ll be covering it to bring you all the details of Musk’s plans to get humans to Mars (and beyond?).
Musk doesn’t just want us to touch the face of these extraterrestrial spheres; his intent with SpaceX has been to create a viable way for humans to actually colonize other planets, and to live on Mars (and presumably, other suitable planets as well) sustainably, in the long-term.
SpaceX’s Mars ambitions are no secret, as Musk has been discussing settling the red planet since at least 2012. The initial plan would be to use 10 people to set up a colony that could eventually grow to as many as 80,000, according his preliminary plan as sketched out back the.
A lot has happened since then, including SpaceX successfully running a number of Falcon 9 missions. More recently, Musk has also been teasing progress on the Mars front, first noting that the Mars Colonial Transporter “will need a new name” since it can go far beyond Mars, and then following that up with a test firing of the Raptor engine designed to propel the MCT.
The big questions we’ll be looking to answer today revolve around the specific technical details of how Musk plans to get to and colonize Mars, and how he intends to pay for the tremendous, and likely very expensive undertaking. Watch along above, and be sure to stick around for our follow-up coverage of the news and analysis of what Musk reveals.