When last we heard about Red Dragon, SpaceX's plan to land the Dragon capsule on Mars, the company was saying it wanted to land not one but two spacecraft on our neighboring planet in 2020 or so. Well, a lot can change in two months. SpaceX chief Elon Musk confirmed today that the company is putting the Red Dragon plan on hold.

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The project would have involved putting thrusters in the bottom of the Dragon so the capsule could fire them during descent on Mars and touch down gently. It'd be a cool way to land the Dragon on Earth, too. But here's what Musk said to the International Space Station Research and Development Conference, according to Ars Technica.

"The reason we decided not to pursue that heavily is that it would have taken a tremendous amount of effort to qualify that for safety for crew transport," Musk explained Wednesday. "There was a time when I thought the Dragon approach to landing on Mars, where you've got a base heat shield and side mounted thrusters, would be the right way to land on Mars. But now I'm pretty confident that is not the right way."

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Plan is to do powered landings on Mars for sure, but with a vastly bigger ship — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2017

Building those thrusters into Dragon 2 would have meant that capsules returning to Earth from orbit could have landed that way. Not anymore. The Dragon will still have the engines necessary because they're needed for the emergency abort system. But the capsules will continue to land via parachute, unless SpaceX does another about-face.

Meanwhile, Musk also addressed the upcoming Falcon Heavy rocket—and downplayed everyone's expectations for it, according to The Verge.

He'd consider the flight a success if it doesn't burn up the launchpad; the Falcon Heavy likely won't reach orbit during its maiden voyage, according to Musk. He also had an adjective for the customers whose payloads are slated to fly on the Falcon Heavy's first flight: "brave."

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