Mars is a cool place. In the average millennial’s lifetime thus far, scientists have learned more about our neighboring planet than in all of the past years combined. As we learn more about our BFF circling the sun with us, one thing becomes evident — we need to put an Earthling on Mars. So why haven’t we? Well for most people, the reasons for going aren’t entirely evident. For one man, it’s one of the most obvious things we should be doing. Enter, Elon Musk, the man with the plan.

Elon Musk, founder of Zip2 and PayPal, one day found himself on the NASA website hoping to see when they planned to send humans to our red neighbor. Upon discovering that no such plans existed, Elon Musk decided he would just have to do it himself. He already created two Internet businesses, so the next logical step is to tackle space travel. I mean, it's not like it's rocket science, right?

It’s hard enough to get a satellite into orbit without spending several hundred million dollars, so you might imagine what the cost of sending several people to Mars might be. However, using the money he earned by selling PayPal, Elon decided to push forward with the idea.

In the early stages, Musk was convinced that if he could just land a small greenhouse on the surface of Mars, the sight of it alone would generate enough public interest to force NASA or another nation to consider funding a manned mission to Mars. In order to complete that goal, he was going to need a rocket. Several visits to Russia to purchase an ICBM (without the warhead of course) failed and he quickly found out that the rocket business was not very friendly to young entrepreneurs. Apparently, purchasing a decommissioned missile is frowned upon.

Most people would have given up at this point, but Elon Musk decided the next course of action was to simply create a startup rocket company. How hard can it be for a businessman to create the next NASA, anyway? Ignoring the possibility of failure, Elon Musk created SpaceX.

SpaceX is a name that more people recognize, as they should; it's arguably one of the most successful companies in the United States in terms of difficulty. SpaceX took a market that only fewer than a handful of companies/entities had mastered and decided they could do it better and cheaper. It takes guts to try and convince NASA that your rocket is better than theirs, but that’s exactly what Elon Musk did. The unique (and my favorite) thing about SpaceX is from day one they have only had one goal — to colonize Mars. Over the years as SpaceX grew as a company, they have made a good sum of money launching satellites for companies and delivering cargo to the International Space Station, but they have never changed their main mission to seed Mars with intelligent human life.

After gaining some fame from starting SpaceX and Tesla (another article entirely), Elon now gets more than enough media coverage to explain to the public why he believes we should be colonizing Mars. The biggest reason being that we need to make life multi-planetary; for example, if something devastating should happen to Earth, we would still have Mars as a back-up. There’s still a lot of issues that need to be worked out before the average American could pack up and move to Mars, but Musk first wants to focus on the ship that will take us there. Looking back on his trip to Russia, Elon realized that generating public interest to go to Mars was not the problem, it was the absurd cost of today’s rockets. Before Musk could take humans to Mars, he would have to revolutionize the rocket industry in several ways — rockets need to be a lot cheaper, rapidly reusable and big!

The notion of colonizing Mars sounds like one of science fiction, something to look forward to in the coming decades. The reality is SpaceX has actually completed most of their goals. There are still a lot of people who are not aware of how successful the company is and how close it is to reaching its ultimate goal of sending people to Mars. Just in case you are one of those people, there’s a lot to catch up on. SpaceX now offers the cheapest ride to space by almost twofold. They have a long list of waiting customers because they offer a better and cheaper ride than any other space agency in the world. Since the start of 2016, SpaceX has landed the majority of their rockets back on Earth after delivering their payload. Every other companies’ rockets are destroyed as they fall back to Earth and a new one is built for the next flight. SpaceX gracefully lands theirs on a giant “X” with pinpoint accuracy. It truly is a blast to watch.

Later this year, SpaceX plans to reveal its next rocket, the Falcon Heavy, which is essentially three falcon rockets strapped together.

When SpaceX was first founded, most people didn’t expect them even to succeed as a satellite launcher, let alone follow through with their Mars goals. With the cheapest rocket in town, reusability of those rockets and larger rockets for larger payloads, SpaceX has now become the most successful rocket company in history. They have exceeded most people's expectations, and they haven’t even started their main mission to Mars. SpaceX is an efficient company; they work smarter, not harder (they work pretty hard though). Every satellite launch, every time they dock with the ISS, every time they bring a part of their rocket back from space has all been a testing ground for their plans to colonize Mars. And the plan starts this year. In September, Elon Musk plans to unveil the new rocket that will be used to send humans to Mars. This rocket is expected to be much larger than the Falcon Heavy and is rumored to possibly carry up to 100 future Martians at a time.

By the end of this year or early 2017, they plan to launch their Dragon 2 capsule, which will send astronauts to space. In early 2018, they plan to send their first rocket to Mars. Afterwards, they plan to send a rocket during every Mars launch window. We will watch in awe until then as a small American start up hopefully becomes the leader that will start us on our newest frontier. It’s still a very tough goal to reach, but given how successful SpaceX and Elon Musk have been thus far, colonizing Mars is within their reach.