UP stakes claim to first Martian railroad NEWSWIRE

We call dibs on the first Martian railroad. pic.twitter.com/YaGUnbpvhO

— Union Pacific (@UnionPacific) September 28, 2016

MARS (the planet) — Union Pacific called “dibs” this week on building the first Martian railroad.

The surprise announcement came just hours after SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk unveiled his dreams of building a fleet of spaceships to put humans on the Red Planet by 2025, a task he likened to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.

“It’s like building the Union Pacific railroad,” Musk told the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, this week. “Once that transport system is built, then there’s a tremendous opportunity for anyone who wants to go to Mars and create something new or build the foundations of a new planet.”

Not long after the LA Times reported Musk’s comments, UP took to social media with the quote and wrote, “We call dibs on building the first Martian railroad.”

The post included UP’s normal tagline “Building America” with the addendum “And beyond?”

Union Pacific spokesperson Raquel Espinoza tells Trains News Wire that the railroad is always looking for ways to share its story on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere, and that Musk’s comments provided a perfect opportunity to do just that.

“Union Pacific is constantly looking at media and pop culture trends that resonate with the general public and help us tell our story in fun, colorful ways,” Espinoza says.

Espinoza says the railroad was honored by Musk’s shout out during the International Astronautical Federation’s annual meeting. The federation was created in 1951 as way to establish a dialog between scientists around the world about space exploration.

“We are proud to have a visionary such as Elon Musk recognize the innovation that went into creating the transcontinental railroad, which will celebrate its sesquicentennial anniversary in 2019,” Espinoza says. “That is about a year after Mr. Musk plans to send his first rocket to Mars, and it is only fitting it will take place nearly 150 years after the completion of the railroad that connects our country from coast to coast.”

UP is not the first railroad to propose leaving Earth’s orbit. In 1858, Sylvester Marsh went before the New Hampshire state legislature to get a charter to build a steam railroad up the side of Mount Washington. Officials thought the idea was so preposterous that they gave him permission to extend the Mount Washington Cog Railway all the way to the moon (the railroad fell about 238,900 miles short of that goal and have yet to complete the line beyond the three miles of track up the side of the Northeast’s tallest peak).

So far the only railroad to extend beyond Earth’s atmosphere is a 278-foot line on the side of the International Space Station, dubbed by NASA as the “slowest and fastest train in the universe” (while the train’s top speed is about 1 inch per second, the entire railroad is hurtling through space at 17,500 miles per hour). The ISS Mobile Transporter is a freight-only operation, much to the dismay of railroad mileage collectors.