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Wikipedia dixit:

“The Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), formerly known as the Mars Colonial Transporter (MCT), is SpaceX’s privately funded development project to design and build a spaceflight system of reusable rocket engines, launch vehicles and spacecraft to transport humans to Mars and return to Earth. SpaceX began development of the large Raptor rocket engine for the Mars Colonial Transporter before 2014. As of June 2016, publicly-announced company conceptual plans included the first Mars-bound cargo flight of ITS launching no earlier than 2022, followed by the first ITS Mars flight with passengers one synodic period later in 2024, following two preparatory research launches of Mars probes in 2018 and 2020 on Dragon/Falcon Heavy equipment. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled details of the space mission architecture at the 67th International Astronautical Congress on 27 September 2016. The booster will have a diameter of 12 m, the spaceship diameter will be 17 m and stack height of the entire vehicle will be 122 m. The selected fuel type is deep-cryo methalox for 42 Raptor engines on the booster and 9 on the spacecraft.

As early as 2007, Elon Musk stated a personal goal of eventually enabling human exploration and settlement of Mars. Bits of additional information about the mission architecture were released in 2011–2015, including a 2014 statement that initial colonists would arrive at Mars no earlier than the middle of the 2020s. Company plans as of mid-2016 continue to call for the arrival of the first humans on Mars no earlier than 2025.

Musk stated in a 2011 interview that he hoped to send humans to Mars’ surface within 10–20 years, and in late 2012 he stated that he envisioned a Mars colony of tens of thousands with the first colonists arriving no earlier than the middle of the 2020s. In October 2012, Musk articulated a high-level plan to build a second reusable rocket system with capabilities substantially beyond the Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy launch vehicles on which SpaceX had by then spent several billion US dollars. This new vehicle was to be “an evolution of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster… much bigger [than Falcon 9].” But Musk indicated that SpaceX would not be speaking publicly about it until 2013. In June 2013, Musk stated that he intended to hold off any potential IPO of SpaceX shares on the stock market until after the “Mars Colonial Transporter is flying regularly.”

In February 2014, Musk stated that Mars Colonial Transporter will be “100 times the size of an SUV”, and capable of taking 100 tons of cargo to Mars. Also, SpaceX engine development head Tom Mueller said SpaceX would use nine Raptor engines on a single rocket, similar to the use of nine Merlin engines on each Falcon 9 booster core. He said “It’s going to put over 100 tons of cargo on Mars.” In early 2014, it appeared that the large rocket core that would be used for the booster to be used with MCT would be at least 10 meters (33 ft) in diameter, nearly three times the diameter and over seven times the cross-sectional area of the Falcon 9 booster cores. In August 2014, media sources speculated that the initial flight test of the Raptor-driven super-heavy launch vehicle could occur as early as 2020, in order to fully test the engines under orbital spaceflight conditions; however, any colonization effort was reported to continue to be “deep into the future”.

In January 2015, Musk said that he hoped to release details of the “completely new architecture” for the Mars transport system in late 2015 but those plans changed and, by December 2015, the plan to publicly release additional specifics had moved to 2016. In January 2016, Musk indicated that he hoped to describe the architecture for the Mars missions with the next generation SpaceX rocket and spacecraft later in 2016, at the 67th International Astronautical Congress conference, in September 2016. Musk stated in June 2016 that the first unmanned MCT Mars flight was planned for departure in 2022, to be followed by the first manned MCT Mars flight departing in 2024. By September 2016, Musk noted that the MCT name would not continue, as the system would be able to “go well beyond Mars”, and that a new name would be needed: Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), with the first spacecraft named “Heart of Gold” in reference to the Infinite Improbability Drive.”

Video credit: SpaceX