Elon Musk: Is his Mars Shot impossible or inspired?

We now know the full extent of SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk’s Mars colonization plan and his incredible Interplanetary Transport System. To be honest, it sounds insane.

As early as 2024, a group of Mars-bound interplanetary SpaceX astronauts will board a gigantic SpaceX spacecraft likely named “Heart of Gold” to rocket off to Mars, a place from which they may or may not ever return. Musk’s hope, though, is that they stay on the barren red planet and build the infrastructure that will sustain future life.

SEE ALSO: Jeff Bezos just revealed his plans for Blue Origin's biggest rocket yet

Musk methodically ticked off the details of his radical plan on Tuesday at a special presentation, carefully outlining each component, checkpoint and hurdle. The scale of the undertaking is almost beyond comprehension; the virtually insurmountable hurdles from the realm of science fiction.

At one point, Musk casually noted that to succeed, they have to figure out how to reduce the cost of each trip by 5 million percent. Later he explained those who choose to travel to Mars should ask themselves a simple question, “Are you prepared to die? Then okay, you're a candidate for going."

Crazy, right?

Like most visionaries, Musk engenders awe and deep concern. Skeptics call his ideas crazy and insist that he’s doing all this to line his pockets. Believers are deeply in Musk’s thrall. During the Q&A portion of the Mars announcement, one woman asked if she could come up on stage and kiss Musk. He reddened and gently denied her request.

As a longtime Musk watcher and someone who had the pleasure of interviewing him on the cusp of his first commercial SpaceX International Space Station docking operation, I sit somewhere between awestruck and skepticism.

The believer

Back in 2011, Musk explained to me how, in college, he identified three areas that he thought would have the biggest impact on humanity: the internet, renewable energy and making life multiplanetary. Musk was determined to play a role in each sector. The fact that he has done so at a national, global and soon interplanetary scale is truly remarkable.

Whatever you think of Musk — and based on your tweets some of you think he, or at least his ideas, are crazy — his drive is undeniable. He sets unimaginable goals, creates a plan and then executes it. The timelines are ambitious (sometimes too much so) and the results are often spectacular.

The Interplanetary Transport system is big. Everything from the rockets to the human-carrying spaceships and fuel tank are gigantic. The video that accompanied Musk’s announcement was slickly produced. Just the kind of sizzle you use to excite customers and investors. But instead of a Hollywood production or Ralph McQuarrie-style inventions, these designs were real. Musk explained that the spaceship designs came directly from SpaceX CAD systems, and are actually designs for the Mars spacecraft.

What the presentation lacked was a shred of doubt. Listening to Musk outline his timeline for the system, which goes from orbital testing in 2020 to Mars flights by 2023, I didn’t detect a hint of uncertainty. It’s not that Musk believes this schedule is an absolute. He’s quite clear-eyed about how difficult it will be at virtually every stop, but there is the feeling of a certain inevitability to his plan. Musk believes that if his vision doesn't become reality by 2024, it will eventually. And 100 years after the first Mars sojourns, Musk’s dream of a colonized Mars will be real — at least that’s how he frames it.

Why he does it

There were some in my Twitter feed who argued that it’s a profit motive that drives Musk’s vision. 

This discounts Musk’s longtime consistency on the topic, and it's a narrative that Musk himself rejects.

"The main reason I’m personally accumulating assets is in order to fund this," Musk said during his speech. "So, I really don’t have any other motivation for personally accumulating assets except to be able to make the biggest contribution I can to making life multiplanetary."

Musk wants to fund his "Mars shot," in part, by ferrying commercial and government cargo into space.

As audience members repeatedly asked Musk if he would be among the first to travel to Mars, I realized that few really understand that Mars was never really the goal. For Musk, the fourth planet from the sun is a proof of concept, a jump-off point for, as he noted, “going anywhere in the solar system.”

Musk is also a master compartmentalizer: He revealed his grand interplanetary travel plan even as SpaceX still searches for answers to this month’s unexplained explosion of its Falcon 9 rocket just before an engine test.

“Focus on the big picture, the big goal,” Musk seemed to be saying. This was a set-back, but it won’t stop Musk and it won’t derail the grand plan.

The doubters

Considering the sheer scale of what Musk hopes to accomplish in less than a decade, you can’t blame people for doubting him. I love space, crewed space travel and once had a Space Shuttle launch on my bucket list, but I have trouble believing interplanetary space travel, let alone colonization, is possible in my lifetime.

If I step back, though, I see Musk's string of almost unmatched accomplishment in not one or even two, but at least three disciplines. One might argue that Tesla can’t even compare to auto giants like GM and Ford (which is true), but look at what Musk has done – designed and delivered tens of thousands of electric cars to customers around the world. Beautiful vehicles that perform as well or better than cars from the big three. He’s launched PayPal (and sold it), two energy initiatives (Powerwall and Solar City – the latter to soon be part of Tesla) and, obviously, there’s SpaceX.

Musk’s almost unnerving blend of confidence, resolve and quiet reserve can make him seem aloof, even egotistical. I think there’s a bit of that in him, but when Musk isn’t talking grand plans, he can be warm and even wryly funny. I was incredulous when he told me in 2011 that his Dragon space ship was actually a robot that can dock with the International Space Station on its own, but Musk assured me that it was, though it would check in with SpaceX on occasion. He then joked that “it could be like Hal 9000 [in 2011: A Space Odyssey], we ask it to open the pod bad doors, and it doesn’t do it.”

As a creator of his time, Musk uses social media to reveal, promote and defend his products and ideas. His entire Interplanetary Travel presentation was streamed live on the Internet. It’s how Musk controls the message. Unfortunately, that same platform means his plans face instant, knee-jerk scrutiny that previous generation’s innovators, inventors and geniuses might have wilted beneath.

And it doesn't always bring out the best in Musk. Last year, Musk couldn't quite bring himself to congratulate Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the controlled landing of his Blue Origin rocket. Instead, he chose to point out that the feat wasn't quite as "rare" as Bezos claimed.

There was a time when news of inventions spread slowly. There was no hive-mind reaction to the TV set at the 1939 World’s fair, for example. Yes, America was transfixed by the space race in the late 1960s, but so much of what we knew came to us through the media. Aside from traditional television, radio and newspapers, there was no place to gather and pick apart NASA’s moonshot plan.

On the other hand, there haven’t been many singular figures like Musk. You have to go back to Edison to find someone as prolific and seminal. 

Why him?

Back in 2011, Musk was quick to credit NASA with the early strides SpaceX had made in privatized space operations. He mentions them a little less often now, though he did acknowledge that this grand plan will not happen without government support.

NASA's longterm Mars vision also includes putting human life on Mars, or at least exploring the longterm viability of that idea, but it's not something they talk much about. NASA no longer makes moonshot proposals, certainly nothing as bold as what President John F. Kennedy promised in 1962:

Getting the public behind a grand idea of Mars colonization — one that would cost trillions of tax dollars — would require the kind of unity absent from most modern American life.

As the CEO of a private space company, Musk provides a more palatable vision, one that includes wildly ambitious plans and shared expenses. When the public hears "private," they assume "not funded by us." But when it comes to space operations that's rarely the case. In the end, much of the funds for Musk's Interplanetary Transport System will still come from taxpayers, but through collaboration with government-run space programs, agencies and government space contracts awarded to SpaceX.

Still, without Musk standing on a hilltop shouting his crazy Mars colonization plan for all to hear, would we even be talking about colonizing Mars? NASA wouldn't hold a press conference on it. Bezos has his sights set on Mars, too, but I wonder if he'd be aiming that far if it weren't for Musk.

Truth is, we need someone like Musk to, as he said on Tuesday, explore the last frontier. We can call his ideas crazy or impossible, but then few of us are coming up with better ideas.