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Elon Musk at SXSW: Mars Spaceship Will Be Ready for First Flights by 2019
Elon Musk made a surprise appearance at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference on Sunday where he revealed during a Q&A that his company SpaceX’s Mars rocket could be ready for test flights as soon as next year.
The billionaire entrepreneur has previously said he is aiming to launch a cargo mission to Mars by 2022 as part of a plan to eventually set up a human colony on the Red Planet.
“I can tell you that we are building the first ship, the first Mars interplanetary ship right now,” Musk told a crowd at the conference in Austin, Texas. “And I think we’ll be able to do short flights, sort of up-and-down flights, probably some time in the first half of next year,” he said.
Musk was referring to SpaceX’s next-generation BFR rocket system that will be capable of interplanetary space travel while also being completely reusable if the project is successful.
However, he joked that the timelines for his projects tended to be a little ambitious, prompting laughter from the audience.
A single launch of the BFR would only cost around $5 to $6 million, making it cheaper per flight than even the Falcon I, SpaceX’s first rocket, which was designed to simply launch satellites into Earth’s orbit.
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