Rocket man: Elon Musk's plan to put people on Mars

火箭人:埃隆·马斯克将人类送上火星的计划

Babbage from The Economist

2025-04-02

40 分钟

单集简介 ...

President Donald Trump has announced that he wants to send Americans to plant the Stars and Stripes on Mars. The only rocket which currently stands any chance of making that happen is the enormous spacecraft being developed by Elon Musk, one of the president's new advisors. Mr Musk has pledged to send uncrewed missions to Mars by the end of 2026, ahead of the first astronauts in early 2029—just before President Trump is supposed to leave office. But many challenges remain. Will his company, SpaceX, be able to make its Starship rocket work in time?  Host: Alok Jha, The Economist's science and technology editor, with senior editor Oliver Morton. Contributors: Peter Hague, an astrophysicist who writes the “Planetocracy” blog; Volker Maiwald an engineer at the German Aerospace Centre. For more on this topic, check out an episode from last year which examined Starship's role in the US-China Moon race. Also, as an Economist subscriber, listen to our recent episode of “Checks and Balance” which asks whether Elon Musk is remaking America's government or breaking it. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.
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  • The Economist.

  • It is my honor and pleasure to introduce to you the 45th and the 47th president of the United States of America.

  • In his inaugural address in January,

  • President Donald Trump received a standing ovation after declaring that Americans would finally be making a trip to the red planet.

  • And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars,

  • launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.

  • In the crowd, Elon Musk,

  • one of the new president's advisers, drew the attention of television crews.

  • He grinned with his hands waving in the air, followed by a big thumbs up directly at a camera.

  • The president's announcement, which he repeated to Congress six weeks later,

  • was a vindication for Mr. Musk.

  • Putting Americans on Mars would lay the groundwork for his lifelong ambition of making humanity a multi-planetary species.

  • We don't want to be one of those lame one-planet civilizations.

  • The sun is expanding slowly.

  • It will heat the Earth up, boil the oceans,

  • and Earth will become like Venus, where life as we know it is impossible.

  • So if we do not become multi-planetary, Annihilation of all life on Earth is a certainty.

  • It's no coincidence that the only rocket which stands a chance of getting humans onto the Martian surface any time soon is an enormous craft being developed by Elon Musk's company,

  • SpaceX.

  • Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a vision of decreasing the costs of getting into space.