The Russian president has praised the entrepreneur’s Mars ambitions and hinted at joint missions
Elon Musk’s ardour for Mars is paying homage to Soviet area engineer Sergey Korolev, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on Wednesday. Korolev led the USSR’s early area achievements, most notably sending the primary human into orbit.
Throughout a dialogue with college students at Moscow’s Bauman Technical College, Putin highlighted Musk’s dedication to exploring the Pink Planet.
“, there’s an individual who lives within the [United] States, Musk, you might say that he’s completely loopy about Mars,” Putin stated. He in contrast the SpaceX CEO’s visionary drive to that of Korolev, the chief engineer behind the Soviet Union’s early area successes, together with Yuri Gagarin’s historic 1961 flight.
Putin famous that people with such extraordinary dedication are uncommon however typically see their visions realized over time. “Simply because the concepts of Korolev, our pioneers, have been realized of their time,” he stated.
The president highlighted the numerous challenges of a crewed mission to Mars. He emphasised the necessity to handle a number of vital points, together with making certain the long-term security of people in deep area, creating new strategies of knowledge transmission, and offering dependable vitality sources for future Martian infrastructure.
Final month, Kirill Dmitriev, the top of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and Putin’s financial envoy, proposed that Russia might provide a small nuclear energy plant and “different superior applied sciences” for Musk’s deliberate Mars mission. He instructed that Russia’s experience in nuclear expertise might help the mission’s vitality wants.
Musk has introduced plans for SpaceX’s Starship to aim a Mars flight by the tip of 2026, carrying a Tesla humanoid robotic named Optimus. He indicated that human landings might start as early as 2029 if preliminary landings go properly.
Russia has expressed curiosity in collaborating with the US on Mars exploration. Dmitriev instructed that discussions with Musk might happen quickly. He famous that cooperation might contain leveraging the experience of Roscosmos and Rosatom to make a Mars mission extra environment friendly and safer.
“Shall 2029 be the 12 months of a joint US-Russia mission to Mars, @elonmusk?” Dmitriev wrote on X in March. “Our minds & expertise ought to serve the glory of humanity, not its destruction.”
Regardless of the Ukraine battle and deterioration of US-Russia relations, area collaboration between the 2 nations has remained largely unaffected. NASA and Roscosmos have continued their partnership and not too long ago prolonged their cross-flight settlement to the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) by 2026.
