Elon Musk worries SpaceX won’t get to Mars before he dies

An exhausted-looking Elon Musk said Monday he’s unsure his rocket company SpaceX will accomplish its foundational mission — getting to Mars — before he dies. “If we don’t improve our pace of progress, I’m definitely going to be dead before we go to Mars,” Musk said at the Satellite 2020 conference in Washington. “If it’s taken us 18 years just to get ready to do the first people to orbit, we’ve got to improve our rate of innovation or, based on past trends, I am definitely going to be dead before Mars.” The 48-year-old chief executive officer of both Tesla Inc. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. downplayed the level of attention the latter company is paying to a potential...