14 
Elon Musk is brilliant but also a pretty nuts. He has his eye on a piece of real estate on Mars for a colony that would accomodate around 80,000 people. Considering NASA just landed the Curiosity Rover, we might be putting the cart before the horse here.
This colony is still pretty far off from becoming a real thing, but Musk is already talking plans. They’d start small, ferrying just 10 people at a time to see if living on the Red Planet is viable. Hey, if they all croak in space, it’s fine because at least the other 79,990 people avoided certain death. And the willing colonisers would need tonnes of equipment—construction materials to build transparent domes to live in that will be pressurised in a way that allow them to grow crops, as well as machines that will make fertiliser.
In order to actually get people out there, SpaceX wants to build a reusable rocket loosely based on the Falcon 9 booster—the launcher for Dragon. It would have a special staged combustion cycle engine called Raptor that would produce hot high-pressure gasses that push propellant into the combustion chamber of the engine. The whole plan is estimated to cost a staggering £22.5 million, which actually sounds like a bargain, considering there is currently no way to support life on Mars.
Interested? Start saving now. A ticket will cost you $500,000 (around £310,000). The surprising part is that Musk thinks this is relatively affordable. Are there even 80,000 people with enough money and chutzpah to sign up for this? Again, Elon Musk is kind of crazy. But at least it’s in the adorable mad scientist kind of way. [Discovery]
Image credit: Shutterstock/Bruce Rolff
Own a Piece Of Mars Without a NASA-Sized Budget
Mars Colonists Wanted -- Apply Here
Man Builds Man-Sized Hobbit House for £3,000
£310k to potentially be one of the human race’s great pioneers?
OR
£310k for a 2 bed flat in a mediocre bit of London?
Hmmm, tough one…
fit birds in pubs on a night out…. no pubs…
hmmm
First order of business when we arrive.
BUILD A PUB.
They tried building a pub on Mars already, but it wasn’t popular. People complained there was very little atmosphere.
Zing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X6VoFBCE9k
Totally would, the first private citizens on mars if they survive will be the next generation of tycoons. A whole planet that we haven’t mined the crap out of and no need to worry about killing off plants and animals on a dead world.
Not so sure about that. There is, quite literally, nothing there. Mars has zero infrastructure beyond what you bring with you. And I’d think the fact that it’s tectonically dead means mining there wouldn’t be a straightforward business. Ores would likely be buried deeply, and mining is dangerous enough when e.g. you can breathe without a suit as on Earth.
Opposite actually, ores are actually on the surface thanks to its periods of heavy volcanicity before it solidified. And thanks to the lack of major tectonics mining would be safer and less complex. You can also pressurise and underground excavation if you wanted.
However you could open cast vast areas using automated equipment. The surface igneous deposits will be laden with incredibly valuable metals.
And while you have no infrastructure but what you bring you also have nothing in the way of building it. And all the benefits and experience we have of constructing it learned over centuries and millenia. And all you need to do is scale up slowly. The growth will be slow at first but pick up rapidly afterwards and thanks to technology and experience that period of start up should be much shorter than anything in the past.
I don’t have the cash but I’d go in a heartbeat if they needed a telephone engineer.
I’ve been to Phuket and I didn’t enjoy how they treated animals. It was many years ago now and I was only 12 but they a zoo that was the worst kept animals in the world. They had this Lizard they used as bait for a sedated Lion/Tiger (I cannot remember which) and it was just horrible. They kept Elephants chained up, drove them crazy doing tricks and I’m surprised none of them decided to break free and kill a load of stupid tourists.
I despise my parents taking me to such horrible countries as Thailand, even if the food was so good. I mean I was 12 and I was dragged into this kick boxing prostitute bar where I had thai girls around me in seconds before my parents got to me, I only went to buy pirated PC games lol.
What makes me sick is tourists drive that way of life, if we didn’t give them money it wouldn’t happen. I dunno how mindless people like my idiot parents wonder around like it is all fine. I haven’t spoke to them since they left me when I was a kid and I’m never going to, people make me sick.
What?
That escalated quickly.
i love lamp
Ahm getting my ahhhse to maars…..
The kind of people who can either afford, or get a loan (nb : not a mortgage) of £310K are not going to be the kind of people who who would enjoy the conditions they’ll experience on the first Martian colony.
I mean, yeah, I’d do it, but I can’t afford £310K.
“staggering £22.5 million”
I would assume that should be billions as 22.5 million doesn’t cover their yearly wage bill.
This plan is nothing more than a PR exercise and I find it sad Giz is becoming somewhere that repeats the insane ramblings of others without any investigation.
This is also so far from happening I would be surprised is Musk is alive to see it.
This is the problem with private companies promoting space travel like this. They have barely launched a rocket and yet are talking about putting 80,000 people on Mars. Its insulting having to read such tosh and it seems Musk is either losing his mind or he is doing a Richard Branson by making wild statements for self publicity.
These fools have not even put anyone in space yet and building a few rockets is not going to get you safely to Mars, especially for building a colony.