SpaceX vows to beat NASA to Mars

The head of SpaceX has said that it will defeat NASA by reaching Mars at least 10 years ago.
And the company’s operational director, Gwen Shotwell, expects, in statements to CNBC, that the first manned flight of her will reach Mars before the end of the twenties of this century.
“We should put people on Mars within a decade,” she said. “I think it will be in this decade.”
“I think we need to get a lot of people to the surface of Mars, and then people will start thinking more seriously,” Shotwell said. “I think in 5 or 6 years people will see that is a real place to go.”
NASA plans to land astronauts on Mars by about 2040, or a year or two more.
Shotwell’s comments echo similar predictions made by the company’s CEO, billionaire, Elon Musk, last December, when he said in an interview with the Lex Friedman podcast, that he believed that “in the best case scenario, people will be on the Red Planet in about 5 years, Whereas the worst case would be 10 years.”
He also noted that the company’s biggest challenge is engineering a vehicle that can optimize its payload in orbit and then go to Mars.
He added, “The spacecraft is the most sophisticated and sophisticated rocket ever.”
SpaceX is preparing the first-ever orbital test flight of the “Starship” spacecraft, which will be reusable, and will take crew and cargo to the moon and Mars.