San Francisco, Jun 6 (IANS): Billionaire Elon Musk on Monday said his space venture SpaceX aims to build over 1,000 Starships to transport life to Mars.
The Tesla CEO stated that making life multiplanetary will help backup the ecosystems on Earth. He added that apart from humans no other species can transport life to Mars.
Referring to Biblical patriarch Noah who built an Ark that survived the great flood on Earth, Musk said his Starship models will be "modern Noah's Arks", that can save "life from a calamity on Earth".
"Making life multiplanetary expands the scope & scale of consciousness. It also enables us to backup the biosphere, protecting all life as we know it from a calamity on Earth," he tweeted.
"Humanity is life's steward, as no other species can transport life to Mars. We can't let them down," he added.
When a user asked Musk "what's the plan", he replied: "Build 1000+ Starships to transport life to Mars. Basically, (very) modern Noah's Arks."
SpaceX is developing Starship to take people and cargo to the moon, Mars and beyond. The vehicle consists of two elements: a first-stage booster called Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship.
Starship and Super Heavy are both designed to be completely and rapidly reusable, and both will be powered by SpaceX's new Raptor engine -- 33 for Super Heavy and six for Starship.
Musk earlier said that Mars settlement and deep space exploration will see reduced costs due to its reusability.
NASA also sees considerable promise in Starship. The US space agency selected the vehicle to be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis programme, which aims to put astronauts on the moon in the next few years.
However, the Starship programme has not yet been given a green signal by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The FAA, last week, delayed the completion of its environmental review of the Starship by another two weeks to June 13.
While SpaceX has conducted a number of high-altitude test flights of Starship prototypes at Starbase site in South Texas, its plan to launch the system's first-ever orbital test mission needs approval from the FAA and a host of other regulatory bodies.AA