Musk’s vision for a “fun” time on Mars

Elon Musk must be doing something right: the Paypal founder is the 80th richest person on Earth, with a $14bn fortune. He says he made that money to fulfil his dream of turning man into a “multiplanetary species”; and he has now outlined this vision in more detail. Musk is no amateur in the field of space travel – he has conducted several rocket launches. But his ambitious plans for colonising Mars have left some scientists incredulous.

Musk intends to send outliers to the Red Planet within ten years; he then envisages building a 1,000strong Mars Colonial Fleet that would fly out a million people, and all the materials they need to create a “self-sustaining city” by as early as 2066. He admits Mars is not ideally suited to human habitation, but reckons that can be fixed. “It is a little cold, but we can warm it up,” he wrote in the journal New Space. “It has a very helpful atmosphere, which, being primarily carbon dioxide with some nitrogen... means that we can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere.” Plus, it would be “fun”, because with low gravity, you’d be able to “bound around”.

Yet he doesn’t say how he’ll warm up Mars, where temperatures fall to nearly -120ºc at night; nor how he’ll compress the atmosphere. He admits to other challenges, namely the need to cut the cost of getting people to Mars by “5,000,000%”, but says nothing about how he’ll shield his passengers from radiation on their journey. On the other hand, he does say how he’s going to make it pleasant. “There will be movies, lecture halls… a restaurant. It will be really fun to go. You are going to have a great time.”