Elon Musk said a Trump White House would benefit SpaceX’s Starship program and the optimistic goals it has to bring uncrewed launches to Mars within two years at the Future Investment Initiative Conference in Saudi Arabia.
Starship is SpaceX’s rocket that will make life multiplanetary, and with five successful test launches already, Musk believes it will be taking unmanned missions to Mars in the coming years.
A month ago, Musk said 2026 would be the ideal year to attempt the first launches with the intention of landing on Mars. 2028 would be the first year SpaceX could attempt to take humans to Mars.
SpaceX aces fifth Starship test flight with successful Super Heavy booster catch
Musk doubled down on this timeframe over the weekend at one of his Town Hall events:
“In roughly two years, there will be another planetary alignment, and that’s when we intend to send the first Starship rockets to Mars.”
Things are still moving forward and trending in the right direction, especially as it continues to perform successful test flights and push the limits of what some thought was possible.
But now it seems Musk is very understanding that some things also need to happen in order to keep the timeframe realistic.
Musk, Tesla, and SpaceX have battled some issues with the Biden Administration. Biden refused at one point to mention Tesla as a leader in EVs, and regulatory agencies were delaying a lot of SpaceX’s launches due to bottlenecks in the approval procedures.
Musk said during the conference yesterday that he believes a Trump White House would be more beneficial for SpaceX’s Starship plans because of “overregulation”:
“I feel more optimistic about it under with a Trump White House than a non-Trump white house because the biggest impediment in progress that we’re experiencing is overregulation. It takes longer to get the permit to launch than to build a giant rocket. A lot of countries are getting slow strangulation from overregulation. Unless something is done to push back on that, it’ll eventually become illegal to do almost any large project and we won’t be able to get to Mars.”
SpaceX detailed the issues with overregulation in a blog post a few months ago called “Starships are meant to fly.”
The company detailed the issues with regulation, including “it takes longer to do government paperwork than it does to license a rocket.”
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