Elon Musk is about to unveil his plan to colonize Mars with SpaceX
He's so concerned, in fact, that in 2008 he bet his last millions to keep SpaceX - his then-nascent aerospace company - in business and developing next-generation rockets.
Despite a recent rocket failure Musk has dubbed "the most difficult and complex" in SpaceX's history, next week he'll unveil a secret plan to achieve his ultimate vision: launching a million people to Mars, colonizing the planet, and turning it into a "backup drive" for humanity.
Musk previously intimated the need for a "Big F***ing Rocket" to get the job done.
He eventually renamed the hypothetical giant rocket the "Mars Colonial Transporter" - and then renamed it again to the "Interplanetary Transport System" (ITS) after his engineers realized it could take people a lot farther than the Red Planet:
Still, the world knows next to nothing about the ITS - only that it must be very big, very powerful, and lean on SpaceX's prior history of rocket development.
Musk has admitted that permanently colonizing Mars and saving humanity is a long-term goal.
He'd first like to land one of his upcoming Red Dragon spacecraft on Mars sometime in 2018:
That timeline may be more difficult to achieve now, given a cascade of launch delays the company now faces, following a recent launchpad explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket, plus the related delay of launching its first and more powerful Falcon Heavy rocket.
SpaceX will reveal all during on a live video feed of their big announcement, which is happening Tuesday, Sept. 27 at 2:30 p.m. EDT, during the 67th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico.
According to an event description on the IAC's site:
[D]uring a special keynote entitled "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species", Musk will discuss the long-term technical challenges that need to be solved to support the creation of a permanent, self-sustaining human presence on Mars. The technical presentation will focus on potential architectures for colonizing the Red Planet that industry, government and the scientific community can collaborate on in the years ahead.
When the time comes, you can watch SpaceX's livestream below, or by clicking over to YouTube.