SpaceX is one of the few private space companies that’s working on interplanetary colonization. It has often talked about taking humans to Mars and has also been developing technology to make it happen. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is going to talk more about the company’s plans for the colonization of the Red Planet at the 67th Annual International Astronautical Congress tomorrow, and today he has revealed that the company has fired up the Raptor engine which will power its Mars flights.
Musk shared some images from the first firing up of the Raptor engine on Twitter. This engine has been designed to use with SpaceX’s mars Colonial Transporter spacecraft, interestingly, Elon Musk recently revealed that this spacecraft is actually capable of going beyond Mars.
This goes to show that SpaceX is making progress and that it remains committed to the aim of making flights to Mars. It’s obviously going to take a considerable amount of time to take humans up there, but humans will get there eventually.
Musk has always been vocal about SpaceX’s agenda to put people on Mars and has even proposed radical theories like nuking the Red Planet to make its environment suitable for human beings. Clearly, he has a lot of ideas and we might get to hear some of them tomorrow at the 67th annual International Astronautical Congress.
SpaceX propulsion just achieved first firing of the Raptor interplanetary transport engine pic.twitter.com/vRleyJvBkx
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 26, 2016