The worlds richest man, Elon Musk, has revealed an ambitious plan to get humans on Mars by 2026 – seven years before NASA aims to land astronauts on the Red Planet.

Speaking on the audio-only Clubhouse app on Sunday, the SpaceX founder told the Good Times Show his goal was to establish a self-sustaining Martian civilisation.

The ambitious deadline gives him five and a half years to get the massive Starship spacecraft off the ground – but there is a long way to go as the massive 160ft rocket is still at the prototype stage – with a second high-altitude test flight due soon.

It currently takes at least six months to get to the planet, but Musk believes that could be down to as little as a month, with flights operating every two years.

He said the first colony will be a tiny, dangerous, ‘frontier-like’ environment as they begin to establish propellant manufacturing, food production and power plants.

NASA plans to put the first humans on Mars by 2033 as part of its Artemis program that will see the next man and first woman land on the Moon in 2024.

The worlds richest man, Elon Musk, has revealed an ambitious plan to get humans on Mars by 2026 – seven years before NASA aims to land humans on the Red Planet

Speaking on the audio-only Clubhouse app on Sunday, the SpaceX founder told the Good Times Show his goal was to establish a self-sustaining Martian civilisation

Although Musk hopes to achieve his goal of landing humans on the Red Planet by 2026, he was realistic and said it isn’t a hard deadline due to the technical hurdles.

Musk says there are a number of technological advances that need to be made between now and 2026 before humans can travel to Mars on Starship.

These include ensuring Starship is fully reusable and that it can reach orbit where it is able to refuel ready for the long six month trip to Mars.

As part of the 90 minute clubhouse conversation, Musk opined on a range of subjects from the GameStop share saga, to his human implant company Neuralink.

Musk said the first outpost on Mars would be a tiny, dangerous place requiring a lot of hard work, a ‘frontier environment’ with far more ways to die than there are on Earth

The fast paced discussion with hosts Sriram Krishnan and Aarthi Ramamurthy started with Musk discussing his plans for Mars and what is required to get there.

‘We’ve got to make Starship fly to orbit and back repeatedly. You need a fully and rapidly reusable rocket. It needs to be like aircraft where the cost of flight is fuel.

‘You can’t just be throwing rockets away every time, you also need orbital refuelling where you send a ship to orbit and then send another to transfer propellant,’ he said.

Musk said if you have a large fully reusable rocket with orbital refuelling and ‘high-efficiency low cost propellant’ then you can go to Mars.

The ambitious deadline gives Elon Musk and SpaceX five and a half years to get the massive Starship spacecraft off the ground and taking humans to another plane

A still image from a game created by Lyubomir Vladimirov that could make use of the SpaceX logo after appeared to give permission on Twitter. The first landing on Mars will be ‘rough’

NASA PLANS TO LAND HUMANS ON MARS IN THE 2030s

Mars has become the next giant leap for mankind’s exploration of space.

But before humans get to the red planet, astronauts will take a series of small steps by returning to the moon for a year-long mission.

Details of a the mission in lunar orbit have been unveiled as part of a timeline of events leading to missions to Mars in the 2030s.

In May 2017, Greg Williams, deputy associate administrator for policy and plans at Nasa, outlined the space agency’s four stage plan that it hopes will one day allow humans to visit Mars, as well as its expected time-frame.

Phase one and two will involve multiple trips to lunar space, to allow for construction of a habitat which will provide a staging area for the journey.

The last piece of delivered hardware would be the actual Deep Space Transport vehicle that would later be used to carry a crew to Mars.

And a year-long simulation of life on Mars will be conducted in 2027.

Phase three and and four will begin after 2030 and will involve sustained crew expeditions to the Martian system and surface of Mars.

He hoped to get the journey time from Earth to Mars down from the current six month minimum to just a single month in the future.

‘One last thing is that on Mars you need local propellant production,’ Musk said.

Adding that for this to work you could ‘take CO2 out of the atmosphere and combine it with water ice to create CH4 methane and oxygen.’

‘If you have those elements life can become multi-planetary and we can have a self-sustaining city on Mars – which is one of the most important things we can possibly do for ensuring the long-term existence of consciousness.’

It currently takes at least six months to get to the planet, but Musk believes that could be down to as little as a month, with flights operating every two years

At the moment starship is at the prototype stage, having completed one high altitude test flight that resulted in an explosive landing, there is still some way to go

He described a ‘great filter’ – a point where Mars could be self-sufficient when it comes to human life on Mars.

‘The key threshold of when we will pass the great filter is – is Mars sufficiently self-sustaining that if ships stop coming from Earth would Mars die out or not?

‘Mars only has to be missing one little ingredient that it would die out – it would survive for a while but would eventually die out.

SpaceX is currently gearing up for the second high-altitude test flight that will see its SN9 Starship prototype go six miles into the air and hopefully land back safely