Mars trip for $200k and ‘be prepared to die’
SpaceX is developing a massive rocket and capsule to transport large numbers of people and cargo to Mars with the ultimate goal of colonising the planet, company chief and tech billionaire Elon Musk said yesterday.
Musk outlined his plans for the Mars rocket, capable of carrying 100 passengers plus cargo, even as SpaceX is still investigating why a different rocket carrying an Israeli satellite blew up on a launch pad earlier this month.
SpaceX intends to fly to Mars about every 26 months, when Earth and Mars are favourably aligned. Musk said he would like to launch the first crew as early as 2024.
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 key issue will be getting the cost low enough to attract customers.
‘‘You can’t create a selfsustaining civilisation if the ticket price is US$10 billion per person. Our goal is to get it roughly equivalent to (the) cost of a median house in the United States, about US$200,000.’’
Mars colonists would not have to sign up for a one-way journey since reusing the spaceships will keep 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 US$10b. ‘‘I’m personally accumulating assets in order to fund this. Ultimately, this is going to be a huge public-private partnership.’’
SpaceX, which Musk founded specifically with the purpose of colonising Mars, is one of several private and government-funded ventures vying to put people and cargo on the Red Planet and other destinations beyond Earth’s orbit.
Mars is typically 225 million kilometres from Earth and landing the first humans there, after what 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.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space venture is also designing a heavy-lift vehicle and capsule called New Armstrong, that will be capable of Mars transport, company president Rob Meyerson said.
The US government is also stepping up efforts to venture beyond the moon.
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.