Boeing chief Dennis Muilenburg believes that his company will be the first to send people to Mars and not SpaceX as everybody thinks. At a Chicago event sponsored by The Atlantic, Muilenberg stated that he's "convinced the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding a Boeing rocket."
SpaceX chief Elon Musk recently disclosed his grand plans to transport people to the red planet aboard the Interplanetary Transport System, a powerful ship the company's already working on.
While Boeing has worked on the same mission quieter, Muilenburg isn't just all talk.
Boeing has been working with NASA on building the Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket yet designed to fly to Mars. Besides, the older corporation has a great track record: it helped the US beat the Soviet Union in a race to our planet's satellite. If you'll recall, the company built the first stage of the rocket (Saturn V) that took astronauts to the Moon back in the '60s and the '70s.
It seems like Musk didn't mind Muilenberg's statement, though. Even more, when he was asked at the same conference if he wanted for SpaceX to be the first to reach Mars, he replied:
"I think it's actually much better for the world if there are multiple companies or organizations building these interplanetary spacecraft. You know, the more the better. Anything, I think, that improves the probability of the future is good. And so multiple companies doing it, I think, would be great. So I wanted to come describe the architecture actually in the hopes that this would encourage companies and organizations around the world to perhaps do something like this."
Last we checked, SpaceX is planning the manned mission for 2024, while Boeing and NASA are aiming to launch their first manned flight in 2030s. If we take possible delays and other factors into account, we will be witnesses of a pretty close fight.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter who gets there first: landing people on the red planet is a gigantic leap for mankind as a whole.
