SpaceX founder Elon Musk envisions 1,000 passenger ships flying en masse to Mars well within the next century.
Mr. Musk outlined his zealous plan on Tuesday to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars, complete with iron foundries and even pizzerias. He wants to make humans a multiplanetary species, and says the best way to do that is to colonise the red planet.
“I think Earth will be a good place for a long time, but the probable lifespan of human civilization will be much greater if we’re a multiplanetary species,” he said.
Mr. Musk, who also runs Tesla Motors, received a wildly warm reception at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.
He noted that SpaceX already has begun work on the Mars Colonial fleet, recently test-firing a powerful new rocket engine named Raptor. The system ultimately could take people to the moons of Jupiter and beyond, he said.
‘Are you prepared to die?’ Mr. Musk said it would be a “super exciting” adventure to Mars but also dangerous, at least for the first few trips. His goal is to get the price down so anyone could afford to go, with a ticket costing no more than a house on Earth.
“It would be basically, are you prepared to die? If that’s OK, then you’re a candidate for going,” he told the audience.
