The man behind Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk wants to conquer Mars.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX is developing a massive rocket and capsule to transport large numbers of people and cargo to Mars with the ultimate goal of colonizing the planet.
Musk outlined his plans for the Mars rocket, capable of carrying 100 passengers plus cargo per voyage, even as SpaceX is still investigating why a different rocket carrying a $200 million satellite recently blew up on its launch.
SpaceX intends to fly to Mars about every 26 months when Earth and Mars will be favorably aligned. Musk said he would like to launch the first crew as early as 2024, a schedule he said was optimistic.
Musk said there would be no guarantee of survival for anyone signing up with SpaceX for the "incredible adventure" of a trip to Mars.
"The risk of fatality will be high. There's no way around it. Basically, are you prepared to die, and if that's OK then you're a candidate for going," he said at a presentation at the International Astronautical Congress meeting in Guadalajara.
Though Musk said he envisions humans living in a large colony on Mars and possibly terraforming the planet, he added that one of the key issues will be getting the cost low enough to attract customers. "You can't create a self-sustaining civilization if the ticket price is $10 billion per person," he said. "Our goal is to get it roughly equivalent to the cost of a median house in the United States, about $200,000."
Mars colonists would not have to sign up for a one-way journey since reusing the spaceships keeping the transportation costs low, Musk said. "The number of people willing to move to Mars is much greater if they have the option of returning, even if they never do," he said.
Musk said it would be a challenge to fund the Mars effort, with development costs estimated at $10 billion. "I'm personally accumulating assets in order to fund this," he said, adding that "ultimately this is going to be a huge public-private partnership."
SpaceX, which Musk founded specifically with the purpose of colonizing Mars, is one of several private and government-funded ventures aspiring to put people and cargo on the Red Planet and other destinations beyond Earth's orbit.
Mars is typically 140 million miles (225 million km) from Earth and landing the first humans there, after what traditionally has been a six- to nine-month journey, is an extremely ambitious goal. Musk expects his rocket to be able to cut the transit time to as little as three months and released a four-minute video showing the craft.
NASA is supporting SpaceX's first mission to Mars, which is targeted for launch in 2018. SpaceX wants to send an unmanned capsule, called Red Dragon, to the surface of Mars to test descent, entry and landing systems.
