SpaceX outlines plans to colonise Mars

Guadalajara(Mexico), Sept 28

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 has said.

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 Israeli satellite blew up on a launch pad in Florida 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, 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 key issue will be getting the cost low enough to attract customers.

“You can’t create a self-sustaining civilisation 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.

Musk said it would be a challenge to fund the Mars effort, with development costs estimated at $10 billion.

Mars is typically 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. — Reuters