Suicide Mission to Mars? SpaceX just announced the craziest Mars flight ever!

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:04]SpaceX dropped a bombshell yesterday, May 21st, 2026.

[00:00:10]And who knows, this may be a day that goes down in history. It's the first private manned interplanetary mission in history. A 2-year Starship flyby of Mars commanded by cryptobillionaire Chun Wang, the same guy who just did the Framm 2 polar orbit mission. Two full years in continuous microgravity, bathed in unshielded cosmic rays and solar flares the entire time. No landing on Mars. No 38G relief, just a giant stainless steel can hurtling through deep space on a free return trajectory and crawling back to Earth. This isn't bold exploration. This is reckless maximum risk punishment on human bodies for minimal real return. Frankly, for this guy's benefit and anybody else who's crazy enough to be going along with him, I kind of hope it never actually happens. Future Mars missions, the ones that actually matter, will never ever look like this. And Elon Musk is indulging this instead of talking sense into the guy. I'm the angry astronaut, and today we're breaking this down chapter by chapter. If you're a space advocate like me, please stick around because this could kill the entire dream.

[00:01:36]Good afternoon, spaceflight enthusiasts, and welcome to another angry bulletin.

[00:01:41]So, many of you probably know, I would say most of you probably know that SpaceX had a scrub last night. It was a ground systems related issue. Uh, the quick disconnect arms were having some problems. Apparently, that's quickly rectified, and we may have another launch attempt tonight. But the big news was the announcement of a Mars mission.

[00:02:03]the first ever private Mars mission, humanrated manned Mars mission, uh that was announced. And it's a bit mind-boggling um to think that uh that this is something that SpaceX is actually seriously planning. Or maybe they aren't. Maybe this is complete and absolute hype, just something to get people excited. And the odds of this actually happening are really, really slim. But when it comes right down to it, when we're talking about the technical feasibility of a Mars mission like this, it's actually doable, far more doable than your average Mars mission if you're just talking about the technical rocket science difficulty of it. It's a flyby mission, not a mission that's going to involve entering the atmosphere, landing, trying to survive on the surface of Mars, that sort of thing. essentially the equivalent of Artemis 2 except with Mars. But there's a very important difference here. And frankly, when I first heard the announcement, I was asking myself, how the hell are they going to do this? It will take forever. Given how Mars and Earth interact, given their orbital paths and and how they move away from each other after they're in conjunction, it's difficult enough to work out a mission time frame that's going to take advantage of when these planets are close together. Far more difficult to work out a return mission in the same time frame. In the time that it takes you to get from Earth to Mars, the planets have separated by a considerable distance and they're going to continue separating as you make the journey back.

[00:03:47]So, I was thinking, God, I don't see how they're going to be able to do this in anything less than 18 months. Well, turns out actually it's going to be longer than that according to the mission plan. And that creates some very serious dangers with this mission. And frankly, in my opinion, not a whole lot of advantages. So, what we're going to do is we're going to cover what we know about this mission in detail. I'm going to talk about some hard realities connected with this and why it's really not the kind of mission that's going to help with future manned missions to Mars. It is instead, at least in my opinion, a mission that's similar to the Lord Franklin expedition looking for the Northwest Passage. An expedition that didn't have a happy ending.

[00:04:40]So, here's the announcement as we understand it from SpaceX. Chun Wong after his short Fram 2 polar dragon flight last year with all those health experiments is now signed up for two big private missions. First, a quick circum lunar flyby with Dennis Tito and his wife. Dennis Tito, by the way, has also made journeys to space. He was the pioneer of these things actually when the Russians took him to orbit. Then the big one, Starship's first crude interplanetary flight. They blast out beyond the Earth Moon system, fly past Mars without landing, and take about 2 years total on a free return trajectory back home. Wong himself said in the announcement video, "A lot of people talk about Mars. Let's get it started with a flyby. Sounds exciting on paper, but 2 years in deep space the whole time. This is not a mission profile that anyone who is serious about Mars colonization has ever baselined. It is a test flight on steroids. Here's where I lose my faith in this mission. Every responsible studied Mars mission architecture, NASA's design reference architecture 5.0, Every serious academic paper and even SpaceX's own long-term colonization road map uses something called a conjunction class profile. That's a smart way. You launch in a good alignment window, 6 months or so. Transit to Mars, maybe a little bit longer. Then you stay on the surface for 5 to 600 days. That's over a year and a half. You do real science, build stuff, live in heavily shielded habitats buried under regalith or underground. Then you launch back in the next good window for another 6 to maybe 9 month trip home. Total mission time about 900 to a,000 days. Why this way?

[00:06:42]Because it minimizes your time in the absolute worst environment, interplanetary space. Deep space cruise time is cut to roughly one year total, maybe even less. The rest is spent on Mars in 38G partial gravity with real radiation protection from the planet itself and your habitats. This Starship flyby, it's the polar opposite. No surface time. You're in continuous deep space for the entire 2 years. No gravity break, no regular shielding, just non-stop exposure to the full brunt of galactic cosmic rays and solar particle events. The difference is night and day.

[00:07:26]Sensible plans use orbital mechanics and the natural alignment of the planets to your advantage. They give the crew a physiological reset on the surface before the return leg. This flyby ignores all of that for a pure let's see if the ship survives stunt. It's closer to an asteroid belt cruiser or a trip to the Jovian moons than any practical Mars landing mission that will actually fly in the 2030s or the 2040s. But why is this really such a problem? Is it that dangerous?

[00:08:04]Okay, so now we know about the mission.

[00:08:07]But we know how it differs from traditional NASA Mars missions and others. So why is this so problematic?

[00:08:16]What are some of the hard realities about a mission like this? And what makes it so dangerous?

[00:08:26]So once again, here's the brutal reality. 2 years in microgravity. Your bones lose 1 to 1.5% mineral density per month in weightbearing areas. That's osteoporosis on steroids. Muscles atrophy, especially legs and core. Fluid shifts wreck your vision and heart. And after one year on the ISS, astronauts need months to walk normally again. Two full years with no break. We have zero human data on that.

[00:09:00]And radiation, well, that's even worse.

[00:09:03]Curiosity's RAD instrument measured it clearly. About 1.8 mills per day in interplanetary crews inside a spacecraft. On the Mars surface, only 64 millisevers per day, 1/3 the dose. And that's because the planet blocks half the sky and the thin atmosphere plus the regalith helps. And if you had some habitats, some decent habitats with radiation shielding, that would make an even bigger difference. And you can't take heavy shielding like that aboard a starship. Now, a sensible conjunction class mission totals about one sever or less worth of total radiation. This flyby, you get easily 1.3 severs or more from galactic cosmic rays alone, plus any solar flares you can't hide from. No storm shelter on a ship can match a regalith buried habitat. So, this is worse than camping next to Chernobyl for 2 years because at least Chernobyl has gravity. Your body still works somewhat normally, but here it's radiation plus total freef fall punishment. In addition, we need to consider why this human test is mostly worthless for real Mars missions. SpaceX and Wong say that this gathers critical data for future Mars trips. But give me a break. We can test every single hardware system, thermal control, life support longevity, radiation effects on electronics, propellant management, autonomous re-entry from Mars return speeds. All of that on an unmanned Starship flight. No humans required. And as for human physiology, no future sensible Mars landing mission is planning 2 years of continuous deep space. They're minimizing cruise time with better trajectories, nuclear thermal propulsion, or eventually fusion drives.

[00:11:05]The real work, science, insitue, resource utilization, and building a foothold. All of that happens on the surface in proper habitats. So, this isn't a dress rehearsal for Mars settlement. It's a simulation of something we won't need until we're mining the asteroid belt or heading to Jupiter's moons decades from now when we'll have way better propulsion and understanding of how to carry out successful interplanetary flight anyway.

[00:11:34]Elon has insane money. throw a billion dollars at pulsar fusion or nuclear thermal properly and cut a Mars trip from six months down to maybe 90 days instead of indulging this.

[00:11:52]And then the final thing we need to talk about here is the human cost. Is this the sort of mission that Elon Musk should really be enabling? I'm certainly in support of somebody's right to make decisions for themselves to provide informed consent to realize that they're probably going to take an enormous amount of punishment on their bodies both in terms of radiation, microgravity, etc. I understand that somebody can make a decision if they as long as they know all of the dangers, but at the same time, is this the sort of thing that Elon Musk really just wants to give a green light to without looking at the potential dangers? And on top of that, could there be potential pitfalls to the future of Mars exploration if this mission goes south, way south, which it very well could.

[00:12:49]Chun Wong is wealthy and experienced from Framm 2 and clearly an adventurer.

[00:12:55]But signing up for 2 years of this isolation with 10 to 20 minute comms delays and knowing that one medical emergency or solar flare could be fatal with no rescue. That's not bravery.

[00:13:08]That's a cry for psychiatric evaluation.

[00:13:11]This is the Lord Franklin expedition territory. In 1845, Sir John Franklin led one of the best equipped polar expeditions in history with two advanced ships, HMS Arabus and HMS Terror, 129 trained men, steam engines, and massive supplies of the latest technology, plus tinned food. Their mission was to complete the Northwest Passage. It was meticulously planned and funded by the British Empire. Yet they became trapped in ice. And over the following years, every single one of those 129 men perished from a brutal combination of starvation, scurvy, hypothermia, and lead poisoning from their can supplies.

[00:13:58]Franklin himself died early. The survivors abandoned the ships in 1848 and tried to walk to safety, but none made it. It remains one of the greatest disasters in exploration history. A stark reminder of what happens when even a wellplanned expedition underestimates the raw unforgiving force of nature.

[00:14:21]Deep space is far harsher than the Arctic with zero rescue possible. Elon isn't leading here. He's enabling a billionaire's extreme bucket list fantasy. And here's what terrifies me the most as someone who wants humans on Mars yesterday. If this goes south and the odds are brutally stacked, it could destroy public and political support for all Mars missions. Headlines screaming billionaire guinea pig dies in deep space. Politicians calling it morbid entertainment for clicks. Calls to ban private deep space flights. New laws and setbacks for years. We're not talking exploration. We're watching someone risk everything while the rest of us get the spectacle. That's not how you build a multilanetary future. So, look, I'm a huge advocate for interplanetary exploration. I want us on Mars the right way, smart, safe, and sustainable. But this this is nuts. The risks outweigh any potential benefits. So, what's the solution? Unmanned tests first, then accelerate. real propulsion and design missions that respect the human body. If you agree, smash the like button and comment, "Ban crazy Mars missions" or tell me why I'm wrong. Also, please share this video and let SpaceX and the community hear it loud and clear. Future astronauts deserve better than 2 years in a flying Chernobyl with no gravity.

[00:15:56]I'm the angry astronaut. Please consider supporting this channel on Patreon. All the details are in the description. And until next time, stay angry about space.