SpaceX chief envisions 1000 passenger ships flying to Mars

Not cheap, but arguably affordable. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO spoke at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico today about his plan to create a civilization on the Red Planet.

How much will it cost? .

Improving the cost by some 5 million percent, Musk said, sounds “virtually impossible”.

He estimated the ultimate cost of a trip to Mars at about $200,000.

With planes being reused, that price is of course significantly less.

That was followed closely by one of the more telling moments of Musk’s appearance. Other planets are too far away, and the Earth’s moon doesn’t have an atmosphere as well suited for a colony as Mars.

The trip would take around 80 days, but that time frame could drop to as little as 30 days in the more distant future.

SpaceX intends to fly to Mars about every 26 months when Earth and Mars are favourably aligned.

What will people do on that flight? .

But 10,000 flights is a lot of flights.

Musk said he settled on the word “system” in naming this architecture because it consists of four parts: the rocket, the spaceship, a fueling tanker, and “propellant depots”.

“The crew compartment is set up so you can do zero g games, float around, there will be movies, a restaurant”, said Musk.

All of this sounds fun and exciting. “It can’t feel cramped or boring”, he said.

Musk said it would be a challenge to fund the endeavor and some funds can come from servicing the space station and launching satellites and government and private investment.

The total cost for SpaceX to develop the interplanetary transport system could be $10 billion.

He characterized the accident, SpaceX’s second in 14 months, as “a small thing on a long road”, adding that the company has not lost a single customer.

Ideally, Musk said a fleet of spacecrafts would then depart en masse – sort of like Battlestar Gallactica.

Once on Mars, humans would have to install a plant to produce propellant by using the planet s methane resources to fuel the spacecraft for its return to Earth.

“The risk of fatality will be high”.

“We want to have millions of people living and working in space in a decades timeframe if they want to”, Blue Origin president Rob Meyerson told AFP. “This system really gives you freedom to go anywhere you want in the greater Solar System”, Musk said.

Getting to Mars has always been an obsession for the billionaire.

On the technical front, Musk has already introduced the world to the Raptor rocket engine he plans to use to take people to Mars, which is different that the engines used for the Falcon rockets that SpaceX has already sent on missions. Instead, the space agency plans to help the company with deep space communication, navigation, landing and ensuring that the spacecraft does not harm Mars’ environment, Phil McAllister, NASA’s director of commercial spaceflight development division, said during a teleconference last week.