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Centibillionare Elon Musk has published a post saying that current bureaucratic hurdles may prevent humanity from getting to the red planet, Mars. The latter is something Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has been working on for more than a decade now.
This week, Musk even announced the approximate timing for when the first uncrewed and then crewed space flights to Mars are likely to take place.
The founder of Spaceshift and now of Venice AI, early Bitcoin investor Erik Voorhees, responded to Musk as if trying to cheer him up with a joking comment.
Here’s big problem for SpaceX, according to Musk
SpaceX founder and CEO Musk reposted a tweet published by Peter Hague, an Astrophysics PhD and scientific software engineer. Hague tweeted that SpaceX is now prohibited from flying its Starship until November at the very earliest.
The screenshot he shared says that during its fourth flight, part of the Starship was jettisoned and landed in the Gulf of Mexico. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) believes that the heated parts that landed in the gulf may be harmful for protected marine species. Therefore, it has set up a 60-day consultation with local environmental authorities. Notably, any issue raised during these consultations may require a consulting period lasting 60 days.
Erik Voorhees responded to Musk’s tweet, jokingly asking: “Has SpaceX even started on its Mars Wildlife Impact Study yet?”
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Elon Musk teases plans for upcoming Mars flights
Earlier this week, Elon Musk tweeted that SpaceX plans to send its first spaceships to the red planet in two years’ time – as soon as a window with the shortest distance between Earth and Mars emerges. This will allow reaching Mars faster since both planets will be aligned with the sun.
This window will last nine months, and it occurs every 26 months, with the flight distance in this case being between 401 million kilimoters and 54.6 million kilometers. Those first flights will be uncrewed to make sure the spaceships can land on the planet intact.
If that first mission goes well, in another two years (four years from now), SpaceX will carry the first crewed missions to Mars with the goal of establishing a self-sustained city there.
