Elon Musk 'Was Nervous' About Sunita, Wilmore's Safe Return To Earth, Claims Mars Tourism Possible in Next 30 Years

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday in a latest interview with Fox News after the historic splashdown of NASA Crew-9 astronauts back on Earth revealed that how nervous he was about the 17-hour-long journey of SpaceX Freedom dragon from the International Space Station to the Earth. 

Talking about the triumph to the human spirit, human ingenuity, and engineering, Musk said, "Well, I'm actually usually a little nervous about these returns, because there's always some risk that something go wrong." He also thanked the excellent work of the SpaceX team working with NASA for bringing the stranded astronauts safely back home. 

"Congratulations to the SpaceX-NASA teams on excellent work and a huge note of appreciation to US President Trump for prioritising and expediting the return," the chief engineer of SpaceX, Elon Musk, asserted.

Elon Musk On His SpaceX Journey

Sharing his emotions over SpaceX being the first private company to ever make it to orbit, Musk detailed on how it all began. “Quite a long story...in the beginning, we didn't actually know anything about rockets. So our first three missions failed, actually of our Falcon 1 rocket. We almost ran out of money and just barely made it with the fourth launch.”

"If the fourth launch of Falcon 1 had not succeeded, we would have failed as a company. So we just barely made it. So I have to say that, I was not a very good chief engineer in the beginning, but, I did learn over time. I think we've gotten at this point to where the the vehicle is very reliable, and we are going be able to take astronauts to Mars. In fact, we want to take anyone who goes to Mars and ultimately build a self sustaining civilisation on Mars," he added while talking about the vision of SpaceX in near future.

Civilisation on Mars: How long will it take? Elon Musk Answers

As Mars remains the horizon goal for human exploration for NASA, the SpaceX CEO announced that Mars tourism could be possible 'in 20 to 30 years'. "I could always hope. I'd love. I would love to be able to see that. That would be amazing," he said.

Talking about the challenges, dangers, and complications surrounding the homecoming of the Crew-9 astronauts, Musk gave a detailed list of techlical hazards such mission could encounter and how his team overcame those possible roadblocks.

"When it's coming back, it's coming in so fast. It's a blazing meteor and if anything happens to the heat shield, the whole spacecraft is going to disintegrate," Musk told.

Blaming the erstwhile US government led by President Joe Biden for Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore's longest-ever unscheduled stay in space, Musk said that although SpaceX wanted to bring the astronauts back much earlier, their proposal was rejected. "It was rejected for, for political reasons, and that's just a fact," he added.