Mars may still be 55 million kilometres away but that hasn't stopped Elon Musk from attempting to bridge the gap between us and the martian red planet.
At the International Astronautical Congress meeting on Tuesday, the SpaceX founder revealed that humans will one day be able to travel to Mars for a meagre sum of $200,000 - if his grand plan succeeds.
The goal of course is colonisation, a motive which Musk says is necessary for the survival of humanity.
“One path is to stay on Earth forever, and there will be some extinction event,” he said.
“The alternative is to become a multi-planetary species, which I hope you will agree is the right way to go.”
With an intricate shuttle and mid-space re-fuel plan set in place, Musk explained that the project will involve 1,000 space ships transporting up to 200 people per ship. A self sustaining Mars city meanwhile will take anywhere between 40 to 100 years to complete.
Musk didn't stop there either, revealing a host of solutions to overcome the exponential cost of space travel and travel times. He will set in place four key criteria which involves reusable spacecraft, re-fuelling in orbit, choosing the right fuel and extracting propellant (methane) from Mars for two-way travel.
It might sound sketchy for now but rest assured Elon Musk has you in safe hands (just ignore that exploding rocket a few weeks ago). He said that being on the spaceship will be “like, really fun to go - you'll have a great time.”
Ok sure, guy who hasn't seen Total Recall.
2023 is the tentative year that Musk plans to take space flight bookings to Mars. As for the future…
“If we have a propellent depot, you can go from Mars to Jupiter, no problem. It means full access to the entire greater solar system.”
[via Gizmodo]