BILLIONAIRE ELON MUSK SAYS HE CAN PUT A MAN ON MARS IN FOUR YEARS, HE TELLS “CBS SUNDAY MORNING”

BILLIONAIRE ELON MUSK SAYS HE CAN PUT A MAN ON MARS IN FOUR YEARS, HE TELLS “CBS SUNDAY MORNING”

Musk Tells Jeffrey Kluger: “Sending Crews to Mars in Four Years, I Think That, That Sounds Pretty Doable”

(L-R) Elon Musk and Jeffrey Kluger

Billionaire Elon Musk, who runs SpaceX, was inspired by the Apollo 11 mission and has his sights on Mars in as early as four years, he tells CBS SUNDAY MORNING in an interview to be broadcast Sunday, July 21 (9:00 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network.

Musk is the founder, CEO and lead designer of SpaceX, which is short for Space Exploration Technologies, his privately held company that makes rockets and spacecraft.

He tells CBS SUNDAY MORNING contributor Jeffrey Kluger, co-author of Apollo 13, that “landing on the moon was probably the most inspiring thing in history. It certainly inspired me. I’m not sure that SpaceX would exist if not for Apollo 11.”

Still, Musk says he expected the U.S. to have a base on the moon and to have sent people to Mars by now. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, and it became the first private company to launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft. It is also one of the companies that delivers cargo to the International Space Station.

In addition to Musk, fellow billionaires Richard Branson and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are in the space race. Branson hopes to offer commercial space flights to tourists through his Virgin Galactic, and Bezos, through his company Blue Origin, wants to create colonies on the moon. Musk is thinking bigger and perhaps faster.

“Well, this is going to sound pretty crazy, but we’re certainly with, an un-crewed vehicle, I believe we could land on the moon in two years,” Musk says.

“Sending crews to Mars in four years, I think that, that sounds pretty doable,” Musk says. “Like, internally, we would aim for two, two years, and then reality might be four.”

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