Recently Elon Musk announced his plans to build a spaceship that could take people to Mars, but now Boeing has entered the race as well. The company would prefer to beat Elon’s SpaceX company and be the first to make it happen.
Boeing’s CEO Dennis Muilenburg spoke at an innovation event in Chicago this week, where he said:
“I’m convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket.”
Elon did not seem to be bothered by Dennis’ statement however, he seemed to think that the competition was a good thing.
“I think it’s actually much better for the world if there are multiple companies or organizations building these interplanetary spacecraft. You know, the more the better. Anything, I think, that improves the probability of the future is good. And so multiple companies doing it, I think, would be great. So I wanted to come describe the architecture actually in the hopes that this would encourage companies and organizations around the world to perhaps do something like this.”
SpaceX is currently thinking that their Mars spaceship could take flight by 2024, while NASA and Boeing have been thinking more like 2030. Time will tell.
