Boeing CEO thinks the company will beat Elon Musk to Mars
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg thinks that the first person to step foot on Martian soil will do so courtesy of a Boeing rocket. Elon Musk recently unveiled an audacious plan to travel to the Red Planet, but Muilenburg says that Boeing may be able to get there first.
Image Source: NASA
Boeing is no stranger to space. This is the company that helped the US beat the Soviet Union to the moon, having built the first stage for the Saturn V rocket that put astronauts on the lunar surface. So when CEO Dennis Muilenburg said that Boeing could reach Mars quicker than Elon Musk’s SpaceX, there’s plenty of reason to take him seriously.
Muilenburg made the comments at a Chicago event on innovation, where he outlined a vision of a commercial space travel market with multiple destinations orbiting earth and hypersonic aircraft that could cut down travel time between continents to under two hours.
Boeing doesn’t just build commercial aircraft that hauls you across the Atlantic. Like SpaceX, it has been selected by NASA to shuttle astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and is currently working with the space agency to develop a heavy-lift rocket to explore deep space.
“I’m convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket,” Muilenburg said, clearly expressing confidence in Boeing’s technological prowess and track record.
Musk last week set the industry abuzz with his audacious plan to colonize the Red Planet and the unveiling of a planned spaceship of gargantuan proportions informally dubbed the “Heart of Gold”.
Source: Bloomberg
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