Elon Musk: SpaceX Will Colonize Mars With A Million Settlers By 2060

Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the goal of colonizing Mars and making mankind a multiplanet species and this week he unveiled his plan to establish a major human colony on the red planet.

At the International Astronautical Conference Tuesday, Musk gave humanity two options: stay on Earth and die or launch into space and colonize the stars, according to a Ron Howard interview for National Geographic.

“Either we’re going to become a multiplanet species and a spacefaring civilization, or we’re going be stuck on one planet until some eventual extinction event.”

Here’s what the crew cabin of SpaceX’s Mars ship might look like https://t.co/STaA9Kzv5B pic.twitter.com/v0eLnaQyQr

— Popular Mechanics (@PopMech) September 27, 2016

During his speech titled “Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species” Musk outlined his plan to drop the cost of transporting a person to Mars from $10 billion to the average cost of a house, $200,000.

Eventually, that cost will be even lower thanks to spaceships with reusable parts including Musk’s revolutionary plan of refueling the SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System while in orbit.

The ITS, a huge spacecraft capable of carrying 100 settlers or 100 tons of cargo to the red planet in 80 to 150 days, is essential to Musk’s plan of colonizing Mars; eventually, the ships will hold 200 colonists. Refueling the massive spaceship in orbit will drastically lower costs.

Musk went one step further Tuesday and said in a perfect world, Martian colonists would build a refueling plant on the red planet so spacecraft from Earth wouldn’t need to bring propellant for the return trip.

Musk is a bit fuzzy on his timeline but said he hopes to begin shipping settlers to Mars by the mid-2020s.

The largest rocket ever built by human hands, the SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System standing 200 feet tall, will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

As the spacecraft assumes orbit, the booster will fall back to Earth where it will be filled with propellant and launched into space for use as a refueling tanker. The spaceship will top of its fuel tanks and head into deep space where it will unfurl solar panels used to harvest the sun’s abundant energy.

.@elonmusk pays tribute to 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' with @SpaceX ship name:"The Heart of Gold": https://t.co/3UMhE7gcUr

— Amit Paranjape (@aparanjape) September 28, 2016

Musk envisions a fleet of transport ships orbiting the Earth until the planet lines up with Mars for the quickest travel time, according to National Geographic.

“We’d ultimately have upward of a thousand or more spaceships waiting in orbit. And so the Mars colonial fleet would depart en masse.”

To make the long trip to Mars more endurable, Musk plans to have zero-G games, movies, private cabins, games, and even a restaurant onboard. Then, when the craft reaches Mars, it will fire its rockets and lower gently to the surface where the settlers will establish their colony.

The key to Musk’s plan to colonize Mars is reusability. He wants to recycle each SpaceX rocket booster a thousand times, each fuel tanker a hundred times and each cargo ship 12 times, according to National Geographic.

“I just don’t think there’s any way to have a self-sustaining Mars base without reusability. I think this is really fundamental. If wooden sailing ships in the old days were not reusable, I don’t think the United States would exist.”

With regular trips to Mars, the colony could number a million people in 100 years and be self-sufficient; but Musk insists there should be a way for settlers to return home if they choose, according to the BBC.

“I want to make Mars seem possible, something we can do in our life times… and that anyone can go if they wanted too.”

His plan is a little short on colony details and is missing key information about where the settlers will live and what they’ll eat. Musk also hasn’t addressed the issue of gravity on the trip to Mars or the dangerous solar radiation, which can cause serious cardiovascular disease, according to The Verge.

“The radiation thing is often brought up, but it’s not too big of a deal.”

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[Featured Image by Refugio Ruiz/AP Images]