Looks like the Red Dragon mission will be postponed till 2020. The original plan was to have a robotic mission on its way to mars next year.
According to mashable.com
Instead of aiming for the 2018 deadline, SpaceX will now try to launch a robotic mission to Mars — known as its Red Dragon mission — two years later, in 2020, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said during a press conference Friday.
Why 2 years later? the best time to make your trip to the red planet is every two years when earth and mars line up for the shortest trip. I always say "you only make that mistake 4-5 times in Kerbal Space Program." Spacex has a long term goal of a human settlement on mars. Elon Musk has touted a very over the top goal of sending a robot to Mars just to show the world Spacex is committed to Mars. Unfortunately for Mars, 2016 was not a good year for falcon 9 launches and the last anomaly on the launch pad set back planed launches and cut into the time schedule of the Red Dragon mission.
On a good note CRS-10 made a successful launch, and return, from the historic NASA Apollo launch pad.
The production value of the launch is ever improving; some of the graphics are a bit Deja Vu of the computer game Kerbal Space Program. Than again the running joke is, Elon Musk is just playing the real life version of KSP. And I will gladly be his kerbal
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/782410047011819520?lang=en
I don't understand why he insists on colonizing mars when the moon is closer, safer and cheaper.
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More gravity and atmosphere. Spacex will gladly sell the same tools going to mars for use on the moon. I hope we see both.
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I just think it's safer to try the Moon and then go to Mars. If anything goes wrong in Mars, anything we didn't calculate since we haven't officially announced to have done this before so I'm sure there would be surprises. I think it's an unnecessary risk, we could simply lose communication and we'd never know about the crew again because they are too far. I can understand wanting to settle where the gravity is similar to that on Earth, but at the very least there should be a station in Mars to recharge, for supplies, so that every time something goes wrong we don't need to ship stuff/people out but help can be found by landing the moon instead.
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we will go to both. Mars will get people exited about going to the moon and other places. What is that old saying? once you are in orbit around the earth you are half way to anyplace in the system.
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I love that quote.
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Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.
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red dragon? what a cool name for a mission
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Cool names in Spacex land are a must. Thanks for stopping by.
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