I’ve been to the Humans to Mars Summit, an annual conference thrown by Explore Mars about speeding up human colonization of the Red Planet, a few times. It’s always fun, but it’s highly theoretical: Mars enthusiasts yell at NASA for not moving fast enough, NASA says it’s working on it, a scientist or startup proposes a wildly optimistic mission involving crowdfunding robotic probes or something.
This year appears to be different.
Last month, SpaceX announced that it plans on trying to send its Dragon spacecraft to Mars in 2018. An official with the Federal Aviation Administration, which gives launch clearance to commercial space companies in the US, said at the summit that theagency is already working with SpaceX to make sure its international mission complies with international law.

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