Lower launch costs have made a Mars mission feasible—but political infighting now threatens SpaceX’s critical role.
In a YouGov/CBS survey conducted in June 2025, as many as 65% of Americans expressed support for a mission to Mars. Recently, Elon Musk announced plans for an unmanned Starship to fly to the Red Planet by the end of 2026: “If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely.”
Will the ambitious visions touted by US presidents and NASA over the last few decades finally become a reality? Musk says he was shocked in the early 2000s when he visited NASA’s website and couldn’t find any specific plans to explore Mars.
Fast forward more than 20 years, and how do things look today? In a lecture delivered in July, Harry Jones from the NASA Ames Research Center highlighted a drastic reduction in launch costs, which has made many things possible that long seemed impossible. He wrote a year ago: “It has seemed there must be overwhelming difficulties preventing our going to Mars. We have not reached Mars even though it has been NASA’s horizon goal since Apollo. We do not have a detailed, feasible mission plan. There has not been sufficient funding to make tangible progress. Mars plans usually propose developing advanced technology before we can begin the mission.”
Between the lines, you can sense the frustration – directed not only at politicians, but also at NASA itself. Missions to Mars have been put off again and again for more than fifty years. Yet there has never been a shortage of plans: over 1,000 Mars missions have been conceived since the 1950s, of which more than 50 have met rigorous scientific standards.
Technological Barriers to Mars Are No Longer Showstoppers
In his analysis, Jones concludes that there are “no showstoppers” anymore. He identifies seven key challenges: hostile surface environment, human performance, life support, medical care, radiation exposure, reduced gravity, and telecommunication delays – and shows that there are viable solutions for each and every one of them.
One key issue is life support. Current systems, such as those employed on the International Space Station (ISS), have been designed to recycle water and oxygen to preserve precious resources. However, Jones argues that, “life support based on the ISS recycling system design is not appropriate for Mars because of its high failure rate and frequent need for troubleshooting and repair.” A more effective approach, he proposes, would be to combine supplies carried on board with more robust recycling technologies.
He explains that radiation exposure is also no longer an insurmountable problem as a small shielded safe haven could be used to protect astronauts from solar flares in transit. According to Jones, shorter transit times and the use of Mars regolith to shield the surface habitat would also reduce the negative impact of cosmic rays. He also highlights solutions to the problem of reduced gravity during spaceflight and on Mars itself – made feasible by the massive decrease in launch costs – such as a rotating spaceship that generates artificial gravity and also a rotating underground wheel on Mars.
Certainly, a mission to Mars, and even more so a mission focused on colonization, as advocated by Robert Zubrin in his compelling book The New World on Mars, will encounter countless challenges – both anticipated and unforeseen.
But, after a thousand plans, the time for decisive action has surely arrived. The dramatic reduction in launch costs is a game-changer. SpaceX has brought costs down by as much as 95% compared to the Space Shuttle program.
SpaceX Has Solved the Cost Problem—But Faces a New Political One
Nevertheless, a new risk has emerged – and it is political in origin. Elon Musk’s previous support for Donald Trump was likely, at least in part, motivated by hopes that Trump would sweep away regulatory obstacles and cut the insane bureaucracy that repeatedly hampered SpaceX during testing of its Starship rockets. However, following the very public feud between Trump and Musk, everything has changed. Trump threatened to cut Musk’s NASA contracts and said he would look into deporting Musk to South Africa.
While it will never actually come to that, the possibility of Trump doing serious damage to SpaceX’s plans cannot be ruled out. For example, shortly after one of his public spats with Musk, Trump withdrew the nomination of Jared Isaacman as the new head of NASA, under the pretext that he had supported Democrats, but surely more because of his friendship with Musk.
Musk would appear to have made a mistake in getting so involved with Trump, who has repeatedly demonstrated just how quickly friendship can turn into enmity. Politically, it looks as if Musk, the most brilliant entrepreneur in the United States, has scored a massive own goal. But Trump would do well to remember that without Musk, America would still be dependent on Russian Soyuz rockets to transport US astronauts to the ISS.
Without SpaceX, the US Will Fall Behind in the New Space Race
Last year, SpaceX was responsible for 134 of the 259 launches conducted globally. If SpaceX were a country, it would be the number one launch nation, ahead of China, Russia, and New Zealand. Without SpaceX, the USA would rank a paltry fourth.
Moreover, without SpaceX, there will be no missions to Mars in the foreseeable future. NASA’s own alternative, the Space Launch System (SLS), is not only considerably more expensive but also years behind schedule. Critics have derisively dubbed the SLS the “Senate Launch System,” because it is less a space program and more a jobs program pushed through by senators looking to secure employment in their constituencies.
Private space exploration is the ace in the USA’s hand in its space race with China, as the two Trump confidants Greg Autry and Peter Navarro state in their book Red Moon Rising. They state, “winning the second space race is all about the private sector. We won’t beat China in a competition of large governmental programs; commercial space is America’s best weapon.”
About the Author: Rainer Zitelmann
Rainer Zitelmann is a historian and sociologist, whose books include Hitler’s National Socialism, The Power of Capitalism, and How Nations Escape Poverty. He has published 30 books, which have been translated into 35 languages. In recent years, he has written articles and been the subject of interviews in leading media such as the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Forbes, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, Le Monde, Corriere della Sera, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and numerous media in Latin America and Asia.
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