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Who will make it to Mars first?
It was about a year ago that Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg first began saying his company would beat SpaceX to Mars. "I'm convinced that the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding on a Boeing rocket," he said during a Boeing-sponsored tech summit in Chicago in October 2016.
On Thursday, Muilenburg repeated that claim on CNBC. Moreover, he added this tidbit about the Space Launch System rocket—for which Boeing is the prime contractor of the core stage—"We're going to take a first test flight in 2019 and we're going to do a slingshot mission around the Moon."
Unlike last year, Muilenburg drew a response from SpaceX this time. The company's founder, Elon Musk, offered a pithy response on Twitter: "Do it."
The truth is that Boeing's rocket isn't going anywhere particularly fast. Although Muilenburg says it will launch in 2019, NASA has all but admitted that will not happen. The rocket's maiden launch has already slipped from late 2017 into "no earlier than" December 2019. However, NASA officials have said a 2019 launch is a "best case" scenario, and a slip to June 2020 is more likely.
#SLS2020
Also, the next SpaceX flight is an ISS resupply mission and is scheduled for this coming Tuesday (December 12, 2017) at 1646 GMT (11:46 a.m. EST) from SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The plan is for the booster to return to landing at Landing Zone-1, also at Cape Canaveral.
Previously: Maiden Flight of the Space Launch System Delayed to 2019
Elon Musk Publishes Mars Colonization Plan
SpaceX Appears to Have Pulled the Plug on its Red Dragon Plans
SpaceX Putting Red Dragon on the Back Burner
SpaceX: Making Human Life Multiplanetary
Related: VP of Engineering at United Launch Alliance Resigns over Comments About the Space Launch Industry
ULA Exec: SpaceX could be Grounded for 9-12 Months
Commercial Space Companies Want More Money From NASA
Bigelow and ULA to Put Inflatable Module in Orbit Around the Moon by 2022
SpaceX Unlocks "Steamroller" Achievement as Company Eyes 19 Launches in 2017
Trump Space Adviser: Mars "Too Ambitious" and SLS is a Strategic National Asset
SpaceX's Reusable Rockets Could End EU's Arianespace, and Other News
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snow on Monday December 11 2017, @04:15PM (2 children)
Remember when he started SpaceX? People (Including me) laughed. Then he made it into orbit. Then he accomplished the most amazing thing I have ever seen -- landing a 10 story rocket on it's ass. On a floating barge.
SpaceX has already accomplished the impossible. They have made space exciting again.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday December 11 2017, @07:48PM
And it appears they've motivated Boeing to get off it's lazy ass as well.
Competition is good....
(Score: 4, Insightful) by choose another one on Monday December 11 2017, @09:17PM
> SpaceX has already accomplished the impossible. They have made space exciting again.
Actually, the real success is that they've made it boring (as he predicted).
I no longer bother to look for SpaceX launches in the news, or watch the videos - oh look, another rocket landed on it's arse, again, whoop-de-doo. It isn't exciting anymore, it's routine.
Now, Falcon Heavy is exciting, I'll watch that, because it's bigger but mostly because Musk is talking up the probability of spectacular failure (or talking down probability of success - but, same thing) - it's going to be exciting (newer bigger) if it works, exciting (big fireworks) if it doesn't, spectacular either way. But, when they've done a few of them, they'll be boring too.