Getting to Mars isn't terribly difficult, but scale is the problem. If we're going to set up a colony there, which is Elon Musk and SpaceX's goal, we're going to need to send a lot of people and very heavy equipment out into space, which means we're going to need a much more powerful spacecraft than anything ever launched before. That's going to take some doing, and Musk just revealed how they plan to make it happen.

Getting to Mars is only part of the problem of putting humans on the Red Planet. We're already pretty good at that part, with plenty of robots roaming around up there right now. The tough part is putting a permanent presence in place so that it actually makes sense to go there, and Elon Musk's SpaceX is making progress towards overcoming that difficulty.

A SpaceX rocket—not the one announced just days ago as the first to make a return trip to space—has just exploded on its launchpad in Florida during testing.

Aside from the fact that Mars is a harsh, inhospitable environment that we'd have to drastically terraform—or pretty much just never go outside—to live in, the logistical implications of actually getting people there in the first place provide a pretty sizable obstacle. Luckily, SpaceX is about ready to blow that obstacle away with an impressively powerful rocket, and they're about ready to start testing it on their path to real missions to Mars.

By now, SpaceX has sent a few of its Falcon 9 rockets out of the Earth's atmosphere and then successfully landed them back on Earth—even when the degree of difficulty was incredibly high. Landing rockets is hard enough, but the entire point is to be able to use them again, which means they need to be thoroughly tested to avoid any mishaps. (SpaceX has had a few even with brand new rockets.)

Well, you can't win 'em all. SpaceX has been celebrating a lot of successful test landings lately, but this morning, the streak ended when their Falcon 9 rocket did not operate according to plan.

If the Martians are planning to make good on any War of the Worlds-type scenarios, they'd better do it soon. SpaceX's Elon Musk has already said they're going to send a test flight to Mars in 2018, and he's now mentioned that he's confident they can put human beings on Mars in 2024. Hey, at least we already know Mars' environment will kill us. That should give us a leg up on our invasion—in addition to the fact that no one lives on Mars.

SpaceX's second, most recent rocket landing was an impressive feat that even founder and CEO Elon Musk wasn't expecting, after the rocket propelled a communications satellite into geostationary orbit about 22,000 miles above the Earth. However, increased landing difficulty isn't the only problem with reaching the necessary speeds for that mission—damage to the rocket may prevent even a successful landing from being worth it.

Launch trajectory of Japanese commercial satellite JCSat-14, enroute to 36,000 km above Earth pic.twitter.com/QHiiMdMMJ3 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2016 People like to focus on “firsts” a lot when it comes to science—myself included—because new things just tend to be more exciting. However, the human mind’s lack of interest in something it has deemed […]

SpaceX's planned exploration of Mars will happen very soon. Is 2018 soon enough for you? In two years' time, the private space exploration company plans to put an uncrewed spacecraft called the "Red Dragon" to the Red Planet.

On Friday, SpaceX made history (again) by landing one of its Falcon 9 rockets on a robotically controlled ship in the middle of the ocean. With the private spaceflight company, along with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, landing rockets previously, let's take a few minutes to remember what's so special about this one—aside from the sheer "because we can" of a robot ship playing catch with a space rocket.

The phrase "Mars colony" sounds a whole lot cooler, but NASA would prefer that we use "Mars outpost" instead to describe their planned efforts.

SpaceX has just taken another important step in the race for reusable space rockets. Last night, for the first time, a rocket delivered its payload to orbit and then made a landing back where it came from without falling into the ocean or exploding.

Elon Musk's SpaceX has made several attempts to shoot a rocket into space and land it back on Earth—or on a drone barge in the ocean, anyway. Now, Blue Origin, founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has managed to actually do it, though there's an important difference in what the companies are trying to achieve.

Last night Our company had a party to launch Our TV division. Very exciting. MERC CITY is a show that will follow the Mercs and Bounty Hunters of the Riddick Universe. Next Month, DT begins writing the next Chapter in the Chronicles of Riddick… FURIA. #HappyFurianFriday A photo posted by Vin Diesel (@vindiesel) on Nov […]

Why is it so hard for SpaceX to land a rocket on a drone ship in the middle of the ocean? Well, it's literal rocket science—the thing to which degrees of difficulty are frequently compared, along with "brain surgery." With this web game, you can pretend you're Elon Musk and give it a go for yourself.

Of course, this being Chris Pratt, he couldn't help but have fun with it, so he wrote James Gunn a speech to read verbatim. It's fantastic.