But despite that comment, Elon Musk said that their Dragon 2 is capable of sending humans “anywhere in the solar system”.
Advertisement
“It is breaking new ground, and I think it’s a good sign that NASA is even a partner”, said Garver in a Washington Post interview. Its program, known as Red Dragon, is meant to develop the technologies needed for human transportation to Mars, a long-term goal for Mr Musk’s privately held Space Exploration Technologies as well as for NASA.
A Red Dragon mission would use those same thrusters to control the Dragon’s plunge through the Martian atmosphere, which is too thin to rely on parachutes, before a landing on legs. They will be using a spacecraft similar to the Red Dragon since it’s a versatile ship that will be flawless for Mars field trip. SpaceX, on its part, is expected to provide “valuable” entry, descent, and landing data to NASA for its own plans to launch a Mars mission.
The first of these missions, slated for some time in 2018, won’t be manned, and are being called the Red Dragon missions. No astronauts will accompany Red Dragon on this first test flight. They will serve to help the company develop a fail proof plan to send manned missions to Mars in the future that tow larger payloads with the necessary equipment to facilitate colonization.
Musk was very promising and straightforward when he talked with the Time Magazine.
SpaceX recently conducted two premiers in spaceflight history: they managed to bring back to earth and on a barge from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean the first floor of the Falcon 9 rocket, after it had been launched.
Washington Post added that SpaceX is planning to send an empty spacecraft on Mars as soon as 2018. “So it should be at least entertaining”, he said.
Advertisement
He also promised additional details regarding the Mars plan, even discussing his approach on a possible city establishment at an aerospace meeting in Mexico come September.
