logo
episode-header-image
Oct 2025
1m 40s

Coming soon from Tech Tonic: Mission to ...

Financial Times
About this episode

US President Donald Trump has pledged to “plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars”, China could send its first crewed mission to Mars within a decade, and Elon Musk wants people to actually settle on Mars, transforming the human race into an interplanetary species. 


In a new series of Tech Tonic, the FT’s Peggy Hollinger asks if we’re really about to land, and even live, on the red planet. 


Free to read:


Musk’s mission to Mars


Three days with America’s rocket chasers


Tech Tonic is produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval. The senior producer is Edwin Lane. Flo Phillips is the executive producer. Sound design by Breen Turner and Samantha Giovinco. Original music by Metaphor Music. Manuela Saragosa is the FT’s acting co-head of audio.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Up next
Sep 24
Francis Fukuyama on democracy, AI and his own intellectual journey
More than three decades after The End of History and the Last Man made Francis Fukuyama one of the world’s best-known political thinkers, he is still correcting misconceptions about what he actually meant. In a wide-ranging conversation with host Gideon Rachman, Fukuyama revisits ... Show More
30m 58s
Sep 17
David Miliband: ‘Peacemaking has gone into retreat’
The world is experiencing a record number of conflicts, just as governments retreat from international aid and diplomacy to leave a more politically fragmented international landscape in their wake. That is the view of David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary and president ... Show More
29m 7s
Sep 10
The world at war
War is raging in Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan, while tensions are rising between China and Taiwan. What is driving this surge in global conflict, how should we respond and where, if anywhere, are the prospects for peace? Gideon is joined by Sir John Sawers, former head of M ... Show More
32m 47s
Recommended Episodes
Jun 2025
Trump wants to put humans on Mars: what scientists think of the plan
In this Podcast Extra, we examine President Donald Trump's calls for NASA to land humans on Mars. Although the White House has proposed spending some US$1 billion in 2026 on Mars plans, critics say the final cost will likely be hundreds of billions of dollars spread over a number ... Show More
11m 47s
Nov 2024
Could we really live on Mars?
Space-settling enthusiasts have long had an eye on Mars, and now they have the backing of the world’s richest man. Elon Musk recently claimed that humans could be on the planet by 2030 and be living there in a self-sustaining city within 20 years. But is it really that simple? Ma ... Show More
21m 25s
May 2018
Who's Going to Put a Colony on Mars First?
<p>The Space Race is on! With Elon Musk, NASA and plenty of other countries all hustling to get to Mars, just how long will it actually us to get there? And how hard will it be to build a space civilization? From sucking oxygen from the soil to 3D printing villages to the Dutch r ... Show More
38m 46s
Dec 2023
51. Tim Peake: Will humans colonise Mars?
What is the future of human space exploration? Will people live on Mars in our life time? Are there plans to grow human organs on the moon? British astronaut Tim Peake joins Rory and Alastair to discuss everything from his time in the army, to the geopolitics of space exploratio ... Show More
1 h
Aug 2025
Going to Mars
The president and Elon Musk still agree on Mars. Our close neighbor has captured the imagination of Americans for over a century. This episode was made in collaboration with Vox’s Future Perfect. It was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Jolie Myers, fact checked by Laura Bulla ... Show More
25m 43s
Feb 2022
A new space age?
In 2021, Captain James Kirk, aka William Shatner, popped into space for real for a couple of minutes, transported by space company Blue Origin's tourist rocket New Shepard. Elon Musk's Space X ferried more astronauts and supplies between Earth and the International Space Station, ... Show More
42m 5s