Elon Musk Unveils Plan To Colonize Mars; $200,000 Per Ticket
BBC — Entrepreneur Elon Musk has outlined his vision for establishing a human colony on Mars for people that can afford a $200,000 ticket price.
Mr Musk, who founded private spaceflight firm SpaceX, spoke at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Mexico, on Tuesday.
His colonisation plan uses a fully reusable transportation system.
This consists of a spaceship refuelled with methane and oxygen in Earth orbit and also on Mars after landing there.
Mr Musk explained that to achieve the $200,000 price, the entire transportation system has to be reusable.
Earlier this year, Musk teased that he had a plan to colonize Mars. Tuesday was the unveiling of that plan, done via live-streaming online.
He began by laying out two inevitable paths for humanity. One path: we go extinct cuz we’re confined to one planet. Other path: we’re basically the aliens from Independence Day.
All sounds good and well. What could go wrong living on Mars?
(excellent movie, btw)
The biggest challenge here is this: Using traditional methods, it would cost about $10 billion per person just to get there. That’s just the travel. So he introduced some reusable transportation system that includes these four parts:
- Full reusability (of spacecraft)
– Re-fuelling in orbit
– Producing propellant on Mars
– Choosing the right fuel
SpaceX carried out a test for one of the rockets to be used in this whole crazy system this weekend. It was successful. Way more successful than their last rocket launch.
This reusable transportation situation is supposed to bridge the gap between $10b/person and $200K/person. That’s a gigantic gap, but in Elon we trust. Never been wrong before (see above video).
So this begs the question — would you pay $200,000 to go live on Mars? If you’re a young, healthy, single person in a real city in the United States of America, the answer is no. There’s way cooler shit to do here like watch television and communicate with girls on your phone in a desperate effort to some day communicate with them in real life.
If you’re a married dad with 3 teenage daughters, your ass is on the next rocket to Mars. $200,000? Small price to pay. Feel like most would even take the chance just jumping on the side and trying to hold on for the 7 month trip.
PS — Oh yeah here’s the other challenge:
The whole living there thing. Setting up a base. Hit ‘em Newt!