Backing up the biosphere
After ten years in the business, private-spaceflight pioneer Elon Musk sets his sights on Mars.
The Californian space-technology company SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, celebrates its tenth birthday this year. The company's re-usable, unmanned Dragon spacecraft is due to make its second demonstration flight at the end of April, when it will visit the International Space Station. A version of Dragon that could carry seven astronauts is under development.
Elon Musk, SpaceX's chief executive and chief technology officer, talked to Nature about his plans for the company and his personal ambitions for space flight.
What motivated you to found SpaceX?
The next important step in the evolution of life is that mankind develops a space-based civilization, ultimately becoming a multi-planet species. I think that is incredibly important that humanity is out there exploring the Solar System, and that we have a self-sustaining base on Mars.
But we weren't really making progress in rocket technology, and the United States has no ability to send astronauts into Earth orbit, at least until our spacecraft comes online in a few years. That's a pretty negative trajectory, so I started SpaceX to try to reverse that trend.
It's important that we reinvigorate interest in space. The interest of the public has been lost in recent years, because we haven't been pushing the frontier of space flight, particularly human space flight. We need to do things that are exciting and push the boundaries of technology, and then we will get public interest again...
Do you see a space-faring civilization as a way of defending humanity against a catastrophe on Earth?
Absolutely. We would be backing up the biosphere. We wouldn't just be preserving humanity, we would be preserving much of life. It is certainly possible for some calamity to come along — as we see in the several major extinction events in the fossil record. Humanity has obviously developed the means of destroying itself, so I think we need planetary redundancy to protect against the unlikely possibility of natural or man-made Armageddon.
It is important that we take action now to make life multi-planetary, because this is really the first point in the 4-billion-year history of Earth that it has been possible. That window of possibility will hopefully be open for a long time, but it may only be open for a short time. That's why I think urgent action is required on making life multi-planetary...
Jon Gilbey, Nature.com
Several articles on Elon Musk, who runs Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA), may have two more hot initial public offerings coming down the pipe which are sure to get plenty of media coverage. Anything with the name “solar” has been abysmal as far as a stock is concerned. But what about the privatization of space now that NASA is out of the space launch game?
Musk is planning a sale of shares in SolarCity after additional clarity is made on
lease accounting. The company leases roof-top solar panel systems and recent reports originally put the SolarCity IPO plans ahead of what Musk told Bloomberg in a recent interview. Apparently not all lease accounting is the same.
Another interesting initial public offering could be the planned share sale of SpaceX, which is expected to have satellite launches to carry cargo to the International Space Station with a test launch currently slated for late this month. Bloomberg noted a 2013 timeline for SpaceX...
I'd be more interested in that