Tesla founder Elon Musk has again pledged to “colonize” Mars in the wake of the first US moon landing in more than half a century and the first by a private spacecraft.
The company’s Nova-C lander, named Odysseus, lifted off shortly after 1 a.m. EST atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket flown by Musk’s SpaceX from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
This achievement prompted Tesla’s
‘I’m going to colonize Mars. My mission in life is to make humanity a multi-planetary civilization,” the tweet said. Musk retweeted the message from his personal account with the accompanying words: “Only if civilization lasts long enough.”
The latter is likely a reference to Musk’s long-held belief that the world is underpopulated, saying in 2023 that falling birth rates were “the greatest danger to civilization yet.” Musk has fathered eleven children with three different women.
NASA’s Nova-C lunar lander, encased in the fairing of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, part of the Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission, lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center
This image from a video from SpaceX via NASA TV shows the Intuitive Machines lunar lander detaching from the rocket’s upper stage and heading for the moon
Walter Isaacsson’s 2023 biography first quoted Musk wanting to colonize Mars
In 2017, Musk said the number of people on Earth is “accelerating toward collapse, but few seem to notice or care.”
In 2017, Musk said that the number of people on Earth is “accelerating toward collapse, but few seem to notice or worry.”
Then in 2021, he warned that civilization is “going to crumble” if people don’t have more children.
And last year, Musk described himself as “always beating the baby drum,” warning that once the birth rate starts falling “it accelerates.”
He has pointed to the decline of Japan’s population as evidence of his concerns, claiming the country would “outright disappear” if the worrying trend continues. And Musk warned that Italy “will have no people” if the low birth rate continues.
Some countries are taking drastic measures to try to encourage their citizens to have more children.
Low-population regions in Finland have awarded $10,000, paid over ten years, for every child a couple has.
According to Isaacson, Musk first made his comments about colonizing Mars while reading a “tattered manual for a Russian rocket engine” in a cabana in Las Vegas during a PayPal event.
Former PayPal CEO Mark Woolway happened to ask Musk what he planned to do.
‘I’m going to colonize Mars. My mission in life is to make humanity a multi-planetary civilization,” he said.
“Dude, you guys are bananas,” Woolway replied.
Meanwhile, on the moon this morning, a live NASA-SpaceX online video feed showed the 25-story two-stage rocket roaring off the launch pad and shooting into the dark sky above Florida’s Atlantic coast, followed by a fiery yellowish exhaust plume.
About 48 minutes after launch, the six-legged lander was shown being released from Falcon 9’s upper stage, about 140 miles (220 kilometers) above Earth, and drifting away on its journey to the moon.
“Separation of the IM-1 Odysseus lunar lander confirmed,” a mission leader was heard saying.
Moments later, mission operations in Houston received the first radio signals from Odysseus as the lander began an automated process to turn on its systems and orient itself in space, webcast commentators said.
Although considered an Intuitive Machines mission, the IM-1 flight will carry six NASA payloads of instruments designed to collect data on the lunar environment ahead of NASA’s planned return of astronauts to the moon later this decade.
Thursday’s launch came a month after another private company’s lunar lander, Astrobotic Technology, suffered a propulsion system leak on its way to the moon shortly after being put into orbit by a spacecraft on January 8. United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket making its launch. debut flight.
The failure of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, which also flew NASA payloads to the moon, marked the third time a private company failed to achieve a “soft landing” on the lunar surface, following ill-fated efforts by companies from Israel and Japan. .
These accidents illustrated the risks NASA faces as it relies more heavily on the commercial sector than it has in the past to achieve its spaceflight goals.
According to plans, Odysseus will reach its destination after a week-long flight, landing on February 22 in Malapert A crater near the moon’s south pole.
If successful, the flight would be the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by a U.S. spacecraft since the last Apollo crewed lunar mission in 1972, and the first by a private company.
The feat would also mark the first trip to the lunar surface under NASA’s Artemis moon program, as the US races to return astronauts to Earth’s natural satellite before China lands its own crewed spacecraft there.
IM-1 is the latest test of NASA’s strategy to pay for the use of spacecraft built and owned by private companies to reduce the cost of the Artemis missions, which are seen as precursors to human exploration of Mars .
In contrast, during the Apollo era, NASA purchased rockets and other technology from the private sector, but owned and operated them itself.
NASA announced last month that it was delaying the target date for a first manned Artemis moon landing from 2025 to the end of 2026, while China said it was aiming for 2030.
Small landers like Nova-C are expected to get there first, carrying instruments to accurately map the moon’s landscape, resources and potential hazards. Odysseus will focus on space weather interactions with the lunar surface, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies and navigation.
Intuitive Machine’s IM-2 mission is expected to land on the moon’s south pole in 2024, followed by an IM-3 mission later this year with several small rovers.
Last month Japan became the fifth country to land a lander on the moon, with space agency JAXA achieving an unusually accurate “pinpoint” touchdown of its SLIM probe last month. Last year, India became the fourth country to land on the moon, after Russia made a failed attempt the same month.
The United States, the former Soviet Union and China are the only other countries to have conducted successful soft moon touchdowns. China scored a world first in 2019 by making the first landing on the far side of the moon.
