Sending Humans To Mars: Can Trump Make Elon Musk’s Space Dream A Reality?

Ever since American astronauts landed on the Moon for the first time in 1969, there’s been an appetite to visit our closest neighbor: Mars. Both President Trump and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk have said that landing humans on Mars is a priority for the U.S.

But a number of daunting challenges stand in the way of this goal. At the core of Musk’s plan to reach Mars is Starship, the world’s largest and most powerful rocket ever built. In March, SpaceX conducted Starship’s eighth test flight. While SpaceX was able to successfully retrieve the Super Heavy booster, the Starship spacecraft exploded, leaving a trail of debris in its wake and disrupting commercial flights. Meanwhile, NASA is aiming to return humans to the moon under its Artemis directive and use that as a stepping stone to future human missions to Mars. But Artemis has been hit with delays and cost overruns. CNBC visited the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah to get a behind-the-scenes look at what life on Mars could be like, and spoke to experts about what challenges remain to landing humans on the red planet.

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
2:36 Why Mars?
4:26 The cost of going
6:19 Getting to Mars
12:35 Living on Mars

Produced and edited by: Magdalena Petrova
Camera: Lucas Mullikin
Senior Director of Video: Jeniece Pettitt
Animation: Jason Reginato, Christina Locopo, Mallory Bragan
Additional Footage: Getty Images, NASA, Center for Strategic and International Studies

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