Adelaide/Sydney — To cut costs, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has shrunk the size of the rocket ship it is developing to go to Mars, and aims to start construction on the first spaceship in the first half of next year, Musk said on Friday. SpaceX plans its first trip to the red planet in 2022, carrying only cargo, to be followed by a manned mission in 2024, Musk, who serves as CEO and lead designer of SpaceX, said at a conference in Adelaide. Nasa’s first human mission to Mars is expected about a decade later. Musk had previously planned to use a suite of space vehicles to support the colonisation of Mars, beginning with an unmanned capsule called Red Dragon in 2018, but he said SpaceX is now focused on a single, slimmer and shorter rocket instead. "We want to make our current vehicles redundant," he said. "We want to have one system. If we can do that, then all the resources ... can be applied to this system. I feel fairly confident that we can complete the ship and be ready for a launch in a...
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