ELON MUSK, co-founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX, announced in February 2017 that he will launch a crewed mission beyond the moon for two private customers in late 2018.

However the SpaceX Team doesn’t want to stop there! Elon Musk has a vision to colonize Mars by 2020!

 

“I think there are really two fundamental paths...one path is we stay on this earth forever and there will be some eventual extinction. The alternative is to become a space-bearing civilization and a multi-planetary species.”

Why Mars?

The SpaceX team explains that Mars is simply the best suited planet in our solar system. Jupiter and Saturn's moons are promising, but are too far out. Mercury is too close to the sun. And unless you like sulfuric acid, Venus’ atmosphere will not suit you.

Well then, what about our own moon? The SpaceX team believes the size of our moon is not preparing us for achieving multi-planetary civilization. Basically, go Mars or go home.

What are the cons?

It’s gonna cost you a pretty penny.

Currently, if you wanted to buy a ticket to the red planet, you are looking at 10 BILLION DOLLARS PER PERSON. Here's a nice little venn diagram displaying the people that want to go to Mars vs people that can actually afford to go to Mars. (No lie, Elon Musk used these diagrams in his presentation)

SpaceX is trying to reduce that cost by 5 million percent. The goal is to make the average ticket to Mars cost around $200,000 per person (the average price of a house in the US.) With this new ticket price, it bridges the gap...slightly.

How, Sway?

A major way to reduce the price from BILLIONS to a couple hundred thousands is by designing spacecrafts that have full reusability- meaning we can reuse the craft multiple times, within a short period of time. This is the same reason why we can get a flight from LA to Vegas for only $45. Airplanes have full reusability, therefore reduces the cost.

 However, it is difficult to reuse a spaceship as quickly as a plane. Mars is only close enough to travel to every 26 months! This means that we can only send people to the red planet every 2 years!

 How long is the flight?

Depending on the time of year, the trip can be between 80 to 115 days!

The ship they are designing will hold up to 100 passengers. In the future, they hope to increase that to 200 passenger per flight.

One thing about Elon Musk is that he is a futurist. A real-life Tony Stark that is focused on the next way to advance human civilization. With money and imagination... I guess anything is possible. 

Click below to see artist concepts of the SpaceX spacecraft exploring our solar system. 

You can access the full article here!