Video | SpaceX: Making Life Multiplanetary

Spaceflight |

September 29, 2017

SpaceX will build a towering rocket with 42 engines, nicknamed the BFG (“Big Fuking Rocket), to carry spaceships to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Once on Mars, people will construct — and live in — contained buildings with compressed atmosphere. Colonizers will also need to build a fuel plant for return trips to Earth.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk told us a little more about the company’s plans to colonize Mars during a presentation at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), currently organized in Australia.

Musk’s latest plan to colonize Mars includes sending two unmanned cargo-carrying spacecraft to Mars in 2022, launched into space using a BFG (Big Fucking Rocket), a new rocket that SpaceX is developing.

The unmanned crafts will carry robots and other things necessary to start building the infrastructure required for the first people to settle on the planet. Already in 2024, SpaceX aims to send up two manned craft with people to land on the Red Planet.

SpaceX plans are usually very ambitious but are also somewhat famed for its tight schedules and time will tell if they will meet their ambitious long-term deadlines. You can view Elon Musk’s presentation from the IAC below.