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So… are we going to Mars?
00:31:17
The race to Mars is the Trump administration’s new moonshot. How soon can the U.S. actually get there?
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- [00:03]
Martine Powers
I want to set up the journey we're going to take today. And to do that, I actually want to play this exchange I had on the show not too long ago. This was at the beginning of February. It was a couple of weeks into the Trump presidency and Elon Musk's project to radically alter the federal government. And I was speaking with Post reporter Fez Siddiqui about what Musk was doing with his new power through the US Doge Service. Thinking about what all this means. What is Musk's goal here? You said that he wants to extremely curtail the amount of spending in the federal government, that he wants the number of people in the federal government to be smaller, that he wants to kind of weed out Democrats or loyalists to anyone other than Trump from working in the federal government. But to what end? What is he trying to achieve here?
- [00:52]
Chris Davenport
So I'll start with to what end? Mars.
- [00:56]
Martine Powers
Really?
- [00:57]
Chris Davenport
I am not joking. I mean, he has said very plainly that he believes this sort of strangulation by regulation is limiting the potential scope of humanity's achievements and preventing us from ever getting to Mars. And that can be seen as sort of like the high level goal.
- [01:20]
Martine Powers
I kept coming back to that exchange, and then I thought about what President Trump said on January 20 after taking.
- [01:28]
Chris Davenport
The oath of office, we'll pursue our manifest destiny into the stars. Launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars. This isn't the first time that a president has talked about going to Mars. I mean, it's something almost like a rite of passage because it's ambitious, it's hopeful, it's optimistic. There's an adventure. It's about science, it's about exploring.
- [02:00]
Martine Powers
Chris Davenport covers the space industry for the Post.
- [02:04]
Chris Davenport
Space traditionally has transcended politics, that it's something that everyone is for. It's sort of like, yes, we're for education and we're against crime and like you're for space. But when it comes to actually funding it and paying for a Mars mission and increasing NASA's budget, that's an entirely different thing.
- [02:25]
Martine Powers
And how long it would take is up in the air, even when there are billionaires with space companies involved. From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Martine powers. It's Friday, March 7th. Today, we're going to explore the new space race for Mars. My colleague Chris Davenport told me this goal is a long shot right now for a lot of reasons, some of which have to do with the moon and whether we want to go back there. Or head straight to Mars. Wait. So, I mean, Trump talked about this with a lot of confidence. We are going to Mars. But you're saying that's actually, that's very much up in the air.
- [03:11]
Chris Davenport
It's very much up in the air. Under Trump's first term, there was the plan to go to the moon, and his vice president at the time, Vice President Pence, moved that up and said, we're going to the moon and we are going to land astronauts there in 2024. And that didn't happen. And so now there's this push to go to Mars, and Trump has not given a timeline, but I think obviously, he would like that to happen within his term. And I think most people would say that that's impossible, that in the next four years, people on Mars is not going to happen.
- [03:44]
Martine Powers
Huh. So then, can you kind of briefly just give me a lay of the land of where our American ambitions to reach Mars currently stand?
- [03:55]
Chris Davenport
Well, right now, NASA has the Artemis program, which was born under the first Trump administration, and that calls for a human return to the moon. And then it does mention Mars at some point in the future, but it's sort of a vague date at some point, but the goal is to get to the lunar surface. And there's this space race with China, and there's a lot of concerns about who's going to get there first, whether the US Returns or whether China's there. And they want to go to the south pole of the moon because that's where their resources, namely water. And now all of a sudden, you have all this talk of going to Mars, but we haven't yet reached the surface of the moon. And I think a lot of people see the moon as a stepping stone to get to Mars.
- [04:39]
Martine Powers
And the fact that we haven't gotten back to the moon in quite a while is a sign that Mars might not be in the immediate picture.
- [04:47]
Chris Davenport
Exactly.
- [04:48]
Martine Powers
Well, let me ask this. Why are we so interested in going to Mars? It's very far away, and it's very hard to get to. What's the appeal here?
- [04:58]
Chris Davenport
I think it's the ambition for Trump. I mean, I think he sees it as something that would go down in his legacy, and it really would. I mean, it would mark a momentous achievement for any nation, company, band of nations, really, that achieves this. It would be remarkable to have human beings on Mars.
- [05:19]
Martine Powers
But beyond the symbolism, like, do we get anything out of it? Is there anything we could mine from Mars or anything we could do on Mars that we can't do?
- [05:27]
Chris Davenport
Here there's a lot of science to be done. I mean, there's a lot that you can do with robots and the rovers that are there. And there's one obviously searching for waters in a place called Jezero Crater where there used to be water flowing and looking for signs of life. And it's one thing to be doing that robotically, it's another thing to be doing that with humans. There's this goal too, in addition to sort of the national prestige aspect of it. If you're Elon Musk, you're looking at this and saying Earth may not be around forever and we do need a place to go. And Mars is, as he would say, a fixer upper of a planet. Not perfect.
- [06:04]
Martine Powers
Not an understatement, right?
- [06:05]
Chris Davenport
Needs a little work. But humanity needs to spread out into the solar system and there's a lot of. Is Mars the best place to do that? Or should we be doing that in more space stations in low Earth orbit? Which is more sort of the Jeff Bezos point of view. But yes, the Moon is seen as a stepping stone to Mars. If you can get to the Moon, you can get there in two or three days. Something goes wrong, you can come home. Mars represents a challenge that is far more difficult than the Moon.
- [06:38]
Martine Powers
Like how much more difficult?
- [06:40]
Chris Davenport
I mean, say you can do it in six months, you're in a cramped spacecraft. I mean, Warner von Braun, who was the architect of the Saturn V rocket in the Apollo era and huge proponent of going to Mars and wrote about would the astronauts kill each other on their way to Mars because it takes so long and you're in this cramped environment, in a weightless environment, at least for now. We don't have spacecraft that can travel for six months with artificial gravity like they had in the movie the Martian. There's a radiation environment. It's very dangerous just to get there.
- [07:14]
Martine Powers
If the Moon is considered to be this very important step in order to get to Mars and is right now the priority for the US Government, why haven't we done that yet? And what are we supposed to be getting back to the Moon?
- [07:30]
Chris Davenport
Great question. It has proven exceedingly difficult to get back, even to the Moon. We've got why.
- [07:37]
Martine Powers
I mean, I know I'm not the first person to ask this, but that blows my mind. Cuz we did it in the 60s, right?
- [07:44]
Chris Davenport
The answer is politics. The answer is funding in Congress and changing political administrations. Right? You had President Obama said, forget the Moon, let's go to Mars. And then Trump comes in and says, forget Mars, we're going back to the moon. And actually, one of the amazing things that you had for the first time since the Apollo era was you had a change of presidential administrations from Trump to Biden, and Biden embraced the Artemis program and the return to the moon. You hadn't had that continuity like that since the Apollo era.
- [08:16]
Martine Powers
Is there a current ETA for when the US Is expecting to get back to the moon?
- [08:21]
Chris Davenport
There is. The next mission that would fly a crew of four astronauts around the moon is tentatively scheduled for 2020 with a crude landing of 2027.
- [08:34]
Martine Powers
Okay, so Elon Musk is one of the reasons we're talking about this today. And you mentioned Jeff Bezos, who of course is also the owner of the Washington Post. These are two of the big players in America's ambitions to get to Mars. Can you talk a little bit more about them and the other figures and companies that are out there who are all part of this endeavor to try to make Mars, Mars happen for the.
- [08:59]
Chris Davenport
US Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the Express purpose of getting to Mars. That was the whole point from the very beginning. When he started it in 2002, he famously went on NASA's website, looked for where the Mars plan was, couldn't find one, and said, this is ridiculous. We should be going to Mars. And eventually founded this company called SpaceX. And the whole goal was to reduce the cost of access to space and eventually get people to Mars. That has been the North Star since the very beginning. And the rocket he is building now called Starship represents. I think a lot of people think the first time you have a vehicle that seems to be what you would need if you were going to build a settlement on Mars, it is massive. It can carry a huge amount of mass into orbit, a large number of people. And if you are gonna get to the Martian surface and live, not just go there to die, but to try to live.
- [10:01]
Martine Powers
Sounds like the better option here.
- [10:03]
Chris Davenport
You need enormous amount of cargo and supplies, because here's the thing. Earth and Mars are only on the same side of the sun every 26 months or so. So you've got that window. That's when you can go. Otherwise it just will take too long to get there. If you're on opposite sides of the sun. And so you look at these windows, this is when we have to go and when you're going to go, you may stay there for two years before you can come home. So it's not like you can go to the moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked around for A few hours and then came home. If you're going, there have to be so many other rockets bringing supplies there. Presumably this would go on for years before you would send the first humans to go. Because in theory, they're going to be there for a long time. And if you want them to come home, they're going to need a lot of food and a lot of materials for shelter and that sort of thing.
- [10:59]
Martine Powers
As you were saying, it seems like as it stands now, the company that it's gone the furthest in developing the technology that you'd need, as you're describing, to get people there and get all the stuff there to help them survive on Mars. That is SpaceX and Elon Musk's vision. Of course, Jeff Bezos is Blue Origin. Boeing is also involved. Where are these other companies and how much is NASA? Do they have a plan or is it just up to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos?
- [11:28]
Chris Davenport
Yeah, so right now, really, the plan is for the moon. That's NASA's plan. That's where they have been directed to go. They are picking out landing sites. They have contracts with SpaceX, by the way, and Blue Origin to build the spacecraft that would land on the lunar surface. And those contracts have already been awarded. They are working on that. SpaceX would use Starship for this. Blue Origin would use a blue moon reusable spacecraft as well. And that's where all the money is. When we talked earlier about all of the support for Mars, we don't have a plan from NASA that says, here are the contracts, here's the funding, here's the timeline, here's the plan, here's who's going to do what. We don't have that yet. Now, we might under the Trump administration, but we don't have that yet.
- [12:16]
Martine Powers
Interesting. So as it stands right now, it's sort of like NASA's saying, we're just trying to get to the moon. We're going to work with these companies to do that. And if these rich guys have these aspirations to go to Mars, great for them. Maybe we'll come along for the ride. But for right now, we don't have a formal partnership with SpaceX or Blue Origin or Boeing for any of them to take us to Mars.
- [12:38]
Chris Davenport
Right. And you could see some sort of involvement from NASA, because what the companies need is funding, and they need government funding to be able to do this because it's really, really expensive. And so you could see perhaps NASA saying, like, well, if you're going to Mars, we're going to help pay for some of this because we want these scientific experiments delivered to the surface of Mars and we're going to give you money. And they're already doing that with the moon. There's a program that NASA's paying commercial companies to go to the lunar surface and deliver payload science experiments for NASA. And you could potentially see something like that happening for Mars as well under the Trump administration. And we do have expertise of landing spacecraft on Mars, which is very, very difficult given how thin the atmosphere is.
- [13:28]
Martine Powers
Well, that kind of leads to my question that I hope doesn't sound silly or reductive, but why is it so hard to get there?
- [13:37]
Chris Davenport
Well, it's a long way away. They have to be able to stay there for about two years. And it's not a very hospitable place. I mean, Jeff Bezos is saying, yeah.
- [13:45]
Martine Powers
But just like pack a bunch of tents and food, isn't that just a question of having the capacity to just put all the stuff that you need to get people to live on this planet for a couple years?
- [13:57]
Chris Davenport
Elon Musk would agree with you. Mars is always trying to kill you when you're on the surface. As someone said to me once, say you get to Mars and you land successfully and you have that seven minutes of terror going through the Martian atmosphere and everyone's watching. You can imagine them gathered in Times Square, looking up at the screens, and the first spacecraft has landed carrying humans is on Mars. Only then you're in, like, pure crisis mode, right? Because you can't breathe the air. It's the radiation environment. It's just a very. Jeff Bezos says, you want to go to Mars? Try living on the top of Mount Everest for a year, right? Or try living like in Chernobyl on the top of Mount Everest. It's a very dangerous place for humans. It's hostile.
- [14:48]
Martine Powers
After the break, Chris digs in on the chances that we actually go to Mars. And we'll hear more about the competition, our new rivals in the space race. We'll be right back.
- [15:08]
Chris Davenport
I'm Thanet Naropil and I'm health reporter for the Washington Post. My job is to cover public health, and that means I'm writing about infectious disease threats like Covid Mpox and birdflox. And I'm also holding the federal government and state government officials accountable for how they respond to these disease threats. So when we write about public health issues, we want to serve our readers by going deep into the science and by making sure that what they're reading is authoritative information. That's been vetted by experts and written by people who've covered these issues for years. We want to empower people to live their best lives and to protect themselves and their loved ones. And that's what subscriber supported work does, is that it gives me the time and resources to really spend on a story. When you subscribe to the Washington Post, you support this kind of journalism and the people behind it. I'm Fennet Neerpil and I'm one of the people behind the Post.
- [16:09]
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- [18:13]
Martine Powers
So, being somewhat realistic here, what do you think is the actual outlook of when it could be likely possible that Americans would get to Mars?
- [18:27]
Chris Davenport
These predictions are always tough. And you have the Elon Musk timeframe where he says in the next window, 2026, he's gonna send a fleet of starships and that's that big rocket and lander that NASA's paying for. And then he wants to send those to Mars in 26. And then humans go in 28. I think most people are doubtful that there can be the infrastructure flown in 26 and then 28 to get humans there.
- [18:55]
Martine Powers
That's three years from now.
- [18:56]
Chris Davenport
Right, where as we said earlier, we were trying to get to the moon in 2024 and couldn't do it. And we'd been there before and that's a lot closer than Mars. The thing is, Mars has always been like 20 years in the future. Even going back to Wernher von Braun, he was like, oh, at the end of the Apollo era, he was talking about the 1980s and then I think the last estimates were sometime in the2030s. But what you have now that we didn't have then was SpaceX was Blue Origin, was this commercial space sector. We have alliances with other countries that are seeing how important space is to their economies, not just their national prestige, but their economies.
- [19:40]
Martine Powers
What do you mean by that?
- [19:41]
Chris Davenport
Building the technologies, rocket technologies, and particularly in satellites. We talk a lot about Starlink and building the Internet in space, but so.
- [19:49]
Martine Powers
Much of that's the SpaceX Elon Musk funded satellite venture.
- [19:55]
Chris Davenport
But there are a lot of other companies we're just dependent on space for so much like gps, that little blue dot on your phone when you're using Google Maps that comes from a government satellite, but that also actually provides the timing signal that the New York Stock Exchange uses for all trades and that banks use as well. Right. And that's all up in space. So you could see nations banding together, harnessing the ability of the commercial space sector. And you've got these advanced technologies like Starship, which is not only massive and powerful and can lift enormous amounts, 100 to 150 tons, to low Earth orbit, but is fully reusable. So that lowers the cost of access to space. It can also be refueled in space, which we've never been able to have that before. Now, SpaceX hasn't done that yet. It's a huge challenge. But if you think you're in Earth orbit and Then you send up a fleet of tanker spacecraft and you can refuel it. Now it's fully fueled and it can go all the way to Mars. You can start to see that infrastructure beginning to come together in a way that we've never had before. So while I think getting to Mars in the next two to four to five years is a real long shot, if not an impossibility, it is starting to come into focus in a way it really never has been before.
- [21:18]
Martine Powers
Hmm. Well, Chris, you mentioned that there is a hunger from US Allies for more to happen in space. What about rivalries? I mean, are there other countries that are trying to get to Mars before us?
- [21:36]
Chris Davenport
China's clearly in the rival category. And there is right now a race to the moon between the United States and China, just as there was during the Cold War with the United States and the Soviet Union. China's ambitions in space are big and they are growing. They have landed on the moon four times. They've been to the far side of the Moon, they've done a sample return from the far side of the Moon. They've operated a rover on Mars, the only other country that's operated a vehicle on Mars beside the United States. They've got a robust space program that now includes a space station that is crewed by their taekwondauts, their astronauts, Mars. They follow a very methodical and diligent step by step approach. And it seems clear that they're focused on the Moon before Mars. And I think there are some people that are worried that if the United States skips the moon and goes straight to Mars, that would cede that territory, that is the moon, to China and represent a disruption and a misstep.
- [22:42]
Martine Powers
Yeah. Tell me more about that symbolism. Like, we've already been there. What would be the problem if China goes to the Moon before we can get back there?
- [22:50]
Chris Davenport
So the Moon has resources, it has water, and water is hydrogen and oxygen, and that's rocket fuel.
- [22:57]
Martine Powers
You can make rocket fuel out of water?
- [22:58]
Chris Davenport
Yeah.
- [22:59]
Martine Powers
Huh.
- [23:00]
Chris Davenport
Hydrogen. You have to mine it and you have to break apart the hydrogen and the oxygen. So it's not easy. But there are people working on this technology. The reason why Blue Origin for its fuel on its upper stage uses hydrogen and oxygen is so that they get used to working with those materials for when they go to the Moon. And they can use the Moon then as a gas station of sorts to go to Mars to go deeper into the solar system. The technological advancements you have to achieve to get there really shows who's got a Faster moving society that's technologically adept, that has stronger engineers, that can pull off the great feats for an economy that does lead to a real strategic advantage.
- [23:50]
Martine Powers
And so it really say something if China was able to achieve that first. So in terms of what Trump could actually change what's within his power, what does he have the ability to influence that could expedite a Mars endeavor happening.
- [24:07]
Chris Davenport
For the US he could direct NASA to essentially establish a crew program and say, we're going, we're going to send astronauts to the lunar surface. Here's the money to do that. So, yes, I mean, he can sort of set the direction for NASA and the priorities. NASA is by nature, it's a very cautious and conservative organization because for all of the ways we romanticize spaceflight, it's really dangerous. NASA knows it. Nobody wants a Challenger at Columbia incident again.
- [24:43]
Martine Powers
So are you saying that that's something that Trump might be able to influence in terms of the risk aversion at NASA or like making America so interested in this as a goal that we as a society are willing to tolerate a greater risk and the possibility of people dying in pursuit of this, of this goal?
- [25:05]
Chris Davenport
I think there has been a lot of criticism of NASA for being too risk averse, that, you know, the safest thing to do is just stay on the ground and don't go anywhere. Right. You don't explore. But if you're talking about government funding and government astronauts, there's always going to be that tension between pushing the envelope and ensuring safety. And if you're talking about something like Mars, you can't ensure human safety. Trump can't change that calculus. But I think it's possible that he and the commercial sector, which wants to move faster and to take bigger risks, may move that needle. And we've seen that to some extent. I mean, Jared Isaacman, his pick to be NASA administrator on his second mission, wanted to push the envelope and went higher in the Dragon spacecraft with his crew of private citizens than any crew had gone since the Apollo era. From our perspective, it was great to go up that high and we got a lot of good data and we're excited about what's going to come thereafter. You know, showing people things they haven't seen in a while, and it gets people excited to go out and do more of them. And then not only that, they came back down to a lower altitude and opened the hatch, exposing the spacecraft to the vacuum of space and put on these SpaceX developed spacesuits and stuck their head out of the spacecraft right and did like a spacewalk, modified version of a spacewalk. We could feel the temperature transient as the vehicle vented down. And then the pressure that you're, you're kind of fighting against is you're opening the hatch. You know, it was a much more intense experience, which is really pushing the envelope. I mean, that is really risky and really dangerous. And I think it was applauded as doing more and moving more boldly.
- [27:04]
Martine Powers
The one other thing that I do feel like I have to ask here is about the money in all of this and the fact that you have Elon Musk, who's clearly encouraging Trump to make this an American priority, this Mars mission. His company would potentially stand to gain a lot of money if they were to get a US Government contract to do that. Talk to me about the apparent conflict of interest here in terms of having the person who owns the company that's most likely to get the US To Mars being this close personal advisor and also actually doing things in the government. When we talk about the Department of Government Efficiency.
- [27:43]
Chris Davenport
Yeah, no, it's a great question. It's a fascinating one because there is an inherent conflict of interest. On the other hand, SpaceX has shown that it can fly reliably. It has won billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon and NASA, and in doing so is actually proven to be a far cheaper alternative than the traditional military industrial base. So, for example, NASA has had in development for years a rocket called the space launch system. NASA's invested something like $25 billion into it. NASA's inspector general and GAO reports have talked about the massive cost overruns of this system. Costs about $2 billion to launch. And this was the rocket we're going to use in the Artemis program to get humans to the vicinity of the moon, even though the Orion spacecraft, which it would use, can't land on the moon. And it's all this money, it's flown once. And so I think they're looking at it and saying that type of architecture, we can't use that. The replacement is Elon's. It's SpaceX. Because up until now, there's not really been any kind of competition. Boeing has faltered. They haven't been able to deliver up until recently. Blue Origin has never been to orbit. They just got to orbit with their new Glenn rocket for the first time in January. And that's a big deal. And they're coming along and they could finally, they're at least on the playing field with SpaceX. So I think a lot of people in the space community not just the SpaceX fans, but in the space community would say it's a huge conflict of interest. It's also maybe the right thing to.
- [29:30]
Martine Powers
Do if we're going to go anywhere right now. Evidence would suggest that if you're trying to do things in space, that the best way to do that would be, in fact, to use SpaceX, despite the fact that there is a significant conflict of interest here.
- [29:46]
Chris Davenport
The concern, of course, is not just the conflict of interest. It's that by continuing to fund them, they are the only provider, they're the only ones who can do it and are edging everybody else out because they win all the contracts, they have all the money, they grow and grow and grow, attract all the talent. And companies like Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Relativity, all these other rocket companies don't really get off the ground and challenge them.
- [30:14]
Martine Powers
That competition might be important here. You might want to cultivate a sense of rivalry between these companies because the US government could benefit 100%.
- [30:22]
Chris Davenport
There'll be competition, it'll drive down costs, it'll increase innovation, and it's really important in space because the main thing is safety.
- [30:29]
Martine Powers
Chris, the vibe I've been getting throughout this whole conversation is some deep skepticism that Mars really is on the horizon. Really anytime in the next 20 years, as you say, space is always 20 years out. Do you have any reason for optimism?
- [30:43]
Chris Davenport
Well, I think 20 years is doable. I think sooner than that. I express deep skepticism of humans on Mars in President Trump's term, but I could see more rockets, starships going and starting to build the infrastructure you would need to put in place before then. Elon says that what SpaceX does is turns the impossible to merely late. And that's true. What they've accomplished is everybody looked at it and says it's impossible what they've done. So I don't think you ever want to bet against him. His timelines are always way off and it always takes longer. And Mars is such an enormous challenge, it's gonna take a lot longer. But I do think that for the first time, it's edging toward the realm of possible.
- [31:34]
Martine Powers
Chris, thank you so much.
- [31:35]
Chris Davenport
Thank you.
- [31:39]
Martine Powers
Chris Davenport covers space for the Post. That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening. In case you didn't hear my announcement earlier this week, I wanted to let you know that this is going to be my last show hosting for a while. I'm going to be spending the next few months doing reporting, working with our White House team at the Post, covering the new Trump administration, which I'm very excited about. And then after that, I'm going to be going on parental leave. So it's going to be be a little while before you hear me in the host seat again. But in the meantime, my colleague and friend Colby Itkowitz will be filling in for me for the next few months. You might have heard her recently as a guest on the show. She is wonderful, so smart. And tomorrow we actually have a bonus episode with Colby so you can learn more about her. Definitely. Take a listen to that. Today's show was produced by Ted Muldoon, who also mixed the show. It was edited by Rena Flores with help from Renita Jablonski and Maggie Penman. Thanks also to Chris Rowland. Our team also includes Lucy Perkins, Alana Gordon, Ariel Plotnick, Bishop Sand, Rennie Svirnofsky, Sabi Robinson, Emma Talkoff, Shawn Carter, Peter Bresnan, Laura Benshoff, Alison Michaels and Alahia Ezadi. I'm Martina Powers. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow with more from the Washington Post.
- [33:23]
Chris Davenport
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