SpaceX targets five uncrewed Starship missions to Mars with exponential growth

Elon Musk has announced via his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that his space company, SpaceX is aiming to send five uncrewed Starships to Mars in two years. He also said if they all land safely, then crewed missions to the Red Planet will be possible in just four short years, or six years if there are any issues along the way.

Musk said that Mars-bound launches will only be conducted every two years when both of the planets are at their closest to each other in their respective orbits around the Sun. He said this increases the difficulty of getting to Mars successfully but also "serves to immunize Mars from many catastrophic events on Earth."

We've already seen over the last couple of years that Starship test launches have failed in the first few attempts and tweaks were needed. Given that the conditions on Mars are different from those on Earth then some of the landings may fail, or they all could.

No matter what happens with the landings, SpaceX will increase the number of spaceships traveling to Mars exponentially every two years. The goal is to send normal people to Mars if they can afford it.

Musk's post on X circled back to other issues that he has aired before. First, he stated that humanity needs to hurry up and become multi-planetary before something happens on Earth to prevent it such as a nuclear war, a supervirus, or a population collapse.

He then moved on to politics explaining that the Starship program is "being smothered by a mountain of government bureaucracy that grows every year."

With NASA attempting to return people to the Moon and Musk trying to get people to Mars, the 2020s could turn out to be a very interesting decade in space travel. However, it should be mentioned that this field is always beset by delays so maybe it'll be the 2030s that turn out to be more exciting.