Could NASA and SpaceX mount a joint mission to Mars?

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has made no secret of the fact that his lifelong ambition is to build a colony on Mars. “I would like to die on Mars, but not on impact,” he is quoted as saying. Everything he has done with his space launch company, including the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, Starlink and especially Starship, has, as the ultimate goal, sending people to the Red Planet to start a new branch of human civilization.

NASA has its own Mars ambitions. NASA has suggested that the Artemis moon landings are a practice for the ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars. The space agency has also gotten serious about creating nuclear propulsion technology, which would shorten the time it takes to send people and cargo to Mars.

Thus, both SpaceX and NASA are developing two initiatives that, if put together, would make for a pretty robust mission to Mars. The SpaceX Starship could move 180 metric tons to the Martian surface. If the Starship is combined with a nuclear engine, it could do so in a matter of weeks and not the months that a conventional rocket would require.

A decision to make the mission to Mars a public/commercial partnership will simply extend the NASA approach to space that began with the commercial replacements for the space shuttle, such as the crewed Dragon, and the commercial lunar landers, SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon. Musk gets help to fulfill his dream of a Mars colony. NASA gets to accomplish its decades-old dream of planting the first footsteps on the Martian surface.

The engineering task of integrating a nuclear component into the SpaceX Starship will be formidable. Should Starship be outfitted with nuclear thermal engines? Possibly the best solution would be for NASA to develop a separate nuclear propulsion stage, launch it separately into low Earth orbit and have the Starship dock with it before heading to Mars. Musk’s estimation that a fully loaded Starship will mass at around 6,000 metric tons compounds the problem. The nuclear thermal stage will have to have commiserate power to move Starship quickly across the interplanetary gulfs.

Still, engineering challenges aside, a joint SpaceX/NASA mission to Mars has many inherent advantages over the two entities conducting separate ventures to the Red Planet. SpaceX brings its outside-the-box thinking and cost-cutting that has benefited the resupply of the International Space Station and has made the Artemis return to the moon program fiscally possible. NASA has the resources of a government agency and its institutional experience. Both have already worked together for mutual benefit.

A joint SpaceX/NASA Mars mission will also likely happen sooner rather than later, perhaps in the early to mid-2030s. The two main tent poles are the nuclear thermal propulsion stage and the technology to sustain astronauts on Mars indefinitely. Ten years should be sufficient to develop these and other technologies needed for the first human interplanetary expedition in history. The run-up to getting humans to Mars can take place simultaneously with other space priorities, such as the return to the moon and the development of commercial space stations to replace the ISS. Sufficient resources from NASA and its international and commercial partners must be made available.

Elon Musk is part visionary and part mystic when he speaks of going to Mars. A few years ago, he tweeted, “This is why we must preserve the light of consciousness by becoming a spacefaring civilization & extending life to other planets.” The idea is that only by expanding human civilization to space, particularly to Mars, can we ensure its long-term survival.

NASA’s motivation for going to Mars is less grandiose but is rooted in its history. The space agency achieved its greatest glory when it fulfilled President Kennedy’s vow to land men on the moon. Mars is just the next logical step. As a bonus, unlike on the moon, life, or at least evidence of past life, may exist on Mars. The discovery of extraterrestrial life would be the greatest in the history of science.

Will Musk’s desire to extend life to other planets and NASA’s mission to look for life out there be compatible? A permanent colony on Mars will change the nature of the Red Planet forever. Scientists’ desire to keep Mars pristine and Musk’s ambition to establish a new branch of civilization there will have to be reconciled, a tough undertaking, to say the least.

Mark R. Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled “Why is it So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and, most recently, “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, among other venues.