Elon Musk Says SpaceX's New Spaceship Could Go 'Well Beyond Mars' "Mars Colonial Transporter" seems like a pretty cool name for a spaceship, but it wasn't quite ambitious enough for SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. "Turns out MCT can go well beyond Mars, so will need a new name," the billionaire entrepreneur said Friday (Sept. 16) via his Twitter account, @elonmusk, referring to the spaceflight system that SpaceX is building to colonize the Red Planet. Some of Musk's 5.24 million Twitter followers took up the challenge and offered their own suggestions, including "Indestructible II," "Millenium," "Booster McBoosterface" and "Heart of Gold." [SpaceX's Red DragonMars Mission in Images] This last offering was also the name of a ship in Douglas Adams' iconic sci-fi novel "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," which is apparently close to Musk's heart. "That is my favorite fictional spaceship. But, in a series of tweets on Saturday (Sept. 17), Musk announced that he had settled on "Interplanetary Transport System," or ITS.
In one of those tweets, Musk reminded his followers that SpaceX will be unveiling details of the colonial transporter next week at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico. That same tweet also provided what Musk described as a preview of the IAC talk: a link to a clip from 2014's "The Lego Movie" that showed the film's 1980s astronaut character building, and flying, his Lego spaceship with great enthusiasm. (The tiny yellow fellow yells "Spaceship!" quite a bit.) Musk has said repeatedly that he founded SpaceX in 2002 primarily to colonize Mars and thereby make humanity a multiplanet species. The company plans to launch an uncrewed mission to the Red Planet in 2018 using SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Falcon Heavy rocket, then follow that up with additional missions every 26 months for the foreseeable future, Musk has said. (Earth and Mars align to make launches feasible just once every 26 months.) If all goes according to plan, the Interplanetary Transport System will launch people toward the Red Planet for the first time in 2024.
And, based on the new name, SpaceX may also be planning to send astronauts even farther afield in the future. We'll all just have to wait and see what Musk says during his IAC talk, which is scheduled to take place Sept. 27. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. PG for mild action and rude humor. Running time: 100 minutes. Four stars out of four. “The Lego Movie”: Merely a great film, or the greatest film ever in the history of cinema? I asked this question — jokingly, rhetorically — during our What the Flick?! review, but the more I think about it, the more in awe I am of the way “The Lego Movie” works on every level for every possible viewer. “Everything Is Awesome” isn’t just an insanely catchy theme song, one that will be stuck in your head for days if not weeks afterward (and may even drive out “Let It Go” from “Frozen,” if you’re lucky). It’s a statement of fact.
It may even be an understatement. That’s not a typo at the top — I really am giving this movie four stars. You know that old cliched response after walking out of a movie or a play: “I laughed, I cried”? This time, it’s really true. I laughed my ass off — and then I cried. A 3-D, animated movie about a bunch of tiny pieces of plastic made me cry. And you guys who have read me for a while know that I’m cold and soulless and not usually susceptible to the power of tearjerkery. But that’s one of the many reasons I loved “The Lego Movie” so much: It kept surprising me. Actually, my husband, Chris, and I ended up liking the movie even better than Nicolas did — and he’s the one who was super-pumped to go see it, inspired by the ubiquity of marketing all around town. (Warner Bros.: You guys sure know how to reach your target audience of 4-year-olds.) It moves so beautifully, it has such irresistible humor and irrepressible energy, but always feels effortless.
It’s jammed with affectionate, cheeky pop-culture references but never seems hacky or strains for the laugh; so many of the jokes fly by at such a giddily frenzied clip, you’ll probably have to go see the movie a second time just to catch them all. And you probably won’t mind doing that; “The Lego Movie” is the rare film based on a toy or a game that truly feels like its own unique universe rather than a shameless, extended infomercial. Did we mention the voice cast? We haven’t even gotten to the exceptional voice cast yet. So often with animated movies, the A-list stunt casting serves as a distraction and takes you out of the narrative. Here, it provides one of the many opportunities for directors and co-writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller to take established genre conventions and turn them on their heads, similar to their inspired version of “21 Jump Street.” Morgan Freeman, for example, plays a blind mystic whose prophecy sends an ordinary guy on an extraordinary hero’s journey.
But in doing so, he knowingly pokes fun at his propensity for playing God-like figures, his rich voice providing both gravitas and goofy laughs. The increasingly endearing Chris Pratt provides the voice of Emmet, a regular construction-worker drone who always follows the rules and does what’s expected of him in his incessantly perky, if regimented, Lego town. Much of the humor comes from the way in which the characters’ world mirrors ours, with its overpriced coffee, crowded commutes, idiotic sitcoms and overplayed radio tunes. Everything is awesome, as the song goes, but every day is exactly the same. But one day, Emmet stumbles upon a random piece of red plastic that’s unlike the rest of the interlocking bricks that surround him. It is the Piece of Resistance, a crucial component of the prophecy that Freeman’s character, Vitruvius, told of at the beginning. And in finding it, Emmet becomes known as The Special — the one who will save the Lego universe from ultimate destruction.
He gets help from a ragtag band of strangers including a bad-ass Goth chick who goes by the name Wyldstyle (an adorable Elizabeth Banks); Batman (Will Arnett, doing a Batman version of his pompous “Arrested Development” character, Gob); a makeshift pirate captain called Metal Beard (Nick Offerman); and the unflappably happy Unikitty (Alison Brie) which is — you guessed it — half unicorn and half kitty. They must outsmart and outrun the evil President Business, better known as Lord Business, who wants the piece for himself to maintain order and separation between all the Lego realms. So yeah, he’s kind of a fascist tyrant. But in the hands of Will Ferrell, he’s also hilariously self-serious. President Business’ right-hand man is the two-faced Good Cop/Bad Cop (Liam Neeson), who dons whichever persona he must to get the job done and keep everyone in line. “The Lego Movie” message of thinking for yourself and trying new things may sound a lot like theme of “The Croods” last year, but it presents this notion in a much more lively and clever manner.