Elon Musk has captured our imaginations by releasing plans to put humans on Mars by 2022 and establish a colony of 1 million individuals as soon as the 2060’s. SpaceX seems to have worked out a lot of the logistics: fleets of up to one thousand spacecraft in Earth orbit, windows of opportunity for departing toward Mars, and even plans for establishing fuel and supply depots before humans arrive. What’s not to get excited about?
Not to be outdone, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg vowed to beat SpaceX to the Red Planet, saying, “I’m convinced that the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding on a Boeing rocket.” While in the long run it doesn’t really matter whose logo arrives first, competition will be key to establishing ourselves as a multi-planetary species. It got us to the moon, after all.
