Americans on Mars By 2029?

I would say it's doubtful, but betting against Elon Musk has proven to be a pretty foolish thing to do.  The thing is, it doesn't seem to be Musk's idea, it seems to be President Trump's.  

Let me back up a little. 

Like every other government agency, NASA is in the throws of changes from President Trump's first weeks in office, along with Musk's department, DOGE.  The NASA folks are a bit rattled by it all.  Jared Isaacman, Trump's pick to lead the organization, hasn't been confirmed yet, and hearings are currently anticipated to be in the second half of February.  In the meantime, an interim administrator named Janet Petro was appointed, and like every other agency, has passed on the Executive Orders to remove diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility contracts and to "report" on anyone who did not carry out this order.  As I'd expect, there are people in NASA upset by that like every other agency we read about.

Isaacman's approval taking until nearly March seems to be more an issue of the large numbers that congress is having to approve and not a sign of likely disapproval.  In his last five years of funding orbital missions, Isaacman seemed to have come to be regarded as an earnest individual, genuinely interested in spaceflight and in advancing exploration for all.  He is seen as the kind of young, dynamic, pro-space leader with the potential to usher NASA into the 21st century and out of the Apollo era it has been stuck in for decades.  Most importantly, the idea of reaching Mars by 2029 is not his idea.  

January of '29 also happens to be the last days of Trump's term and many speculate that's why he talks of "men on Mars by the end of this decade." At this point, I find it hard to imagine the Artemis program will be successful in getting astronauts to the moon by 2030 and putting people on Mars is orders of magnitude harder.  

Artemis still depends on the horrific SLS, the Gateway station in a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit near the moon and more.  It also depends a lot on Starship, and the setback of losing the Starship on Flight Test 7 impacts this schedule when the required numbers of Starship flights are seen.

Going to Mars puts enormous demands on Starship.  There's going to be a need to launch numbers of Starships unlike anything ever launched before.  In a posting on X, Musk said, "Mass to orbit is the key metric, thereafter mass to Mars surface. The former needs to be in the megaton to orbit per year range to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars."  A megaton to orbit?  The current Starship is the highest capacity ever built and the largest Version 3 Starship proposed carries 200 tons to LEO.  Musk calculates that he would have to achieve 5,000 Starships launches of this size per year to support a Mars colony. That's on the order of 14 Starship launches per day.  You think near Earth orbit is crowded now?

All that Musk has said that I can find is that he plans to start launching unmanned Starships to Mars in the next launch window (optimum planetary alignment) in 2026, and, if that goes well, perhaps manned flights by 2028/29.

As hard as 5000 Starship launches a year sounds, there are still many problems out there.  Many of them are related to the "couple of months every two years" launch windows and the problems of being in space that long for a crew.  Crews will be exposed to more radiation from the sun and deep space than any other crew ever has been, and it doesn't get much better than that once they're on Mars.  The planet's lack of a protective atmosphere and magnetic field creates that.  A nuclear engine that could get them to Mars in a very short order and reduced the dependence on those tiny launch windows would help exposure during flight but not on the planet.

Final words to the summary on Space.com

Generally, as laid out by Bob Zubrin in the last century, a Mars Direct approach would begin with successfully landing many uncrewed cargo ships in the same location on Mars with supplies including construction materials, consumables, mining & drilling equipment, electrochemical reactors for production of methane and oxygen, tankage, and the components of a nuclear power plant. Much of this would have to be done 2 years before the first humans were launched.

Actually, in theory, all of this could be done over decades, but 2029 is wildly unlikely, even for a one way, one astronaut suicide mission to plant a flag.

SpaceX first released this artist's conception of a settlement on Mars some years ago.  It shows a domed city surrounded by photovoltaic farms and four Starships. Image credit: SpaceX  I'd love to live long enough to see it, but seriously doubt that's possible.