Culture

Elon Musk: We'll have people on Mars by 2025

The SpaceX chief teases a "very big rocket" that would take off in 2024 and says he wants to send people every 26 months.

Roger Cheng Former Executive Editor / Head of News

Roger Cheng (he/him/his) was the executive editor in charge of CNET News, managing everything from daily breaking news to in-depth investigative packages. Prior to this, he was on the telecommunications beat and wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal for nearly a decade and got his start writing and laying out pages at a local paper in Southern California. He's a devoted Trojan alum and thinks sleep is the perfect -- if unattainable -- hobby for a parent.

Expertise Mobile, 5G, Big Tech, Social Media Credentials

SABEW Best in Business 2011 Award for Breaking News Coverage, Eddie Award in 2020 for 5G coverage, runner-up National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award for culture analysis.

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Connie Guglielmo SVP, AI Edit Strategy

Connie Guglielmo is a senior vice president focused on AI edit strategy for CNET, a Red Ventures company. Previously, she was editor in chief of CNET, overseeing an award-winning team of reporters, editors and photojournalists producing original content about what's new, different and worth your attention. A veteran business-tech journalist, she's worked at MacWeek, Wired, Upside, Interactive Week, Bloomberg News and Forbes covering Apple and the big tech companies. She covets her original nail from the HP garage, a Mac the Knife mug from MacWEEK, her pre-Version 1.0 iPod, a desk chair from Next Computer and a tie-dyed BMUG T-shirt. She believes facts matter.

Expertise I've been fortunate to work my entire career in Silicon Valley, from the early days of the Mac to the boom/bust dot-com era to the current age of the internet, and interviewed notable executives including Steve Jobs. Credentials

Member of the board, UCLA Daily Bruin Alumni Network; advisory board, Center for Ethical Leadership in the Media

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Roger Cheng

Connie Guglielmo

June 2, 2016 7:50 a.m. PT

2 min read

Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the Code conference on Wednesday.
Asa Mathat for Vox Media

Elon Musk's vision of sending people to Mars is alive and well.

The CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla Motors said he plans to launch a rocket to Mars by 2024, with arrival on the Red Planet occurring a year later. His intent is to send people to Mars roughly every 26 months with fresh supplies.

"That's what it takes to sustain a civilization," Musk said Wednesday night at Recode's Code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

His mission to Mars would be the culmination of the investment he's put into off-Earth travel through his SpaceX venture, which is already running supply missions to the International Space Station and hard at work on reusable rockets.

Musk is no stranger to big concepts, from upending the automotive industry with his slick line of electric vehicles to his idea for a "Hyperloop," or super-fast form of transportation that other companies are scrambling to turn into reality. Last year, he floated the idea of dropping nuclear bombs on Mars to kick-start the terraforming process by pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Yet his goal of getting people to Mars may be his most ambitious yet.

"It's really being a multiplanet species and having civilization extend to other planets beyond the solar system," he said.

But there are still plenty of steps before that happens. Later this year, SpaceX plans to launch its Falcon heavy rocket, intended to deliver commercial satellites into orbit. By 2018, the venture will launch Dragon 2, which is supposed to link up with the space station, Musk said.

With his fixation on space, does Musk want to move on from the blue marble we call home?

"Why would we abandon Earth? It's very nice here," he said.