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Elon Musk says he wants to visit the International Space Station aboard his own craft by 2020 -- and he doesn't think it will be "that hard". Speaking at the StartmeupHK Festival in Hong Kong, Musk said the company was also looking further ahead, to Mars and beyond, and could unveil its plan to do so as soon as September 2016.

SpaceX is currently testing systems along with Nasa to enable its Dragon capsule, which is already transporting cargo to the International Space Station (with a few hiccups), to carry human astronauts. Reports had suggested that effort could be delayed, but Musk said the launch of a manned Dragon 2 spacecraft was "currently" scheduled for the end of 2017.


No private spacecraft has ever carried a human to orbit, and Nasa has been without a ticket to ISS since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. It would come after a recent string of successes, including the first successful powered landing by a reusable rocket. But Musk is already looking further afield, to a new generation of spacecraft and rockets.

After that, he said "we'll have a next generation rocket and spacecraft beyond the Falcon-Dragon series, and I'm hoping to describe that architecture later this year at the International Astronautical Congress".

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The IAC takes place in Guadalajara, Mexico, from September 26 to 30, and it would appear Musk wants to unveil his super-heavy rocket and spacecraft for a Mars mission at the event. It would come in a busy year for Musk, who is separately planning to unveil the new Tesla Model 3 car while work also continues on the huge Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada.

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Musk said he personally hoped to travel to the ISS by the end of the decade, or shortly after. "I don't know, maybe four or five years from now, maybe going to the Space Station would be nice. And in terms of the first flights to Mars, we're hoping to do that around 2025. Nine years from now or thereabouts."

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Several paying tourists have already visited ISS, and the SpaceX and Tesla CEO added that he didn't believe the journey would be too difficult. "I don't think it's that hard, honestly," he joked. "You float around. It's not that hard to float around."


Mars, he admitted, was harder. "Going to Mars is definitely going to be hard and dangerous and difficult in every way you can imagine," he said. "But if you care about being safe and comfortable, going to Mars would be a terrible choice."

Musk maintains that the ultimate goal for SpaceX and humanity should be to get to Mars, and beyond. "It's really a decision we need to make as a civilisation," he said. "What kind of future do we want? Do we want a future where we are forever confined to one planet, until some eventual extinction event, however far into the future that might occur. Or do we want to become a multi-planet species, and then ultimately be out there among the stars?" "I think the latter is a far more exciting and inspiring future than the former. And Mars is the next natural step. In fact it's the only planet we have a shot at establishing a self-sustaining city on. Once we do establish such a city there will be a strong forcing function for the improvement of space flight technology that will then enable us to establish colonies elsewhere in the Solar System, and ultimately extend beyond our Solar System."

Musk said that as well as "defensive" reasons to explore space and not extinguish the "light of consciousness", there were also positive reasons to explore for exploration's sake. "This would be an incredible adventure, the greatest adventure ever, it would be exciting and inspiring. There need to be things that excite and inspire people."