Not content with simply blasting civilians into the stratosphere, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, is now aiming his sights towards starting a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people. Once the infrastructure is in place, Musk intends to ferry people to Mars at a cost of $500,000 per head.
According to Discovery Magazine:
“Musk’s vision includes starting off with a pioneering group of around 10 people or less, and they would get to the Red Planet aboard a huge reusable rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane. Going along for the ride would be large amounts of equipment, including machines to make fertilizer, methane, and oxygen. The machines would use the atmospheric nitrogen and carbon dioxide, as well as the planet’s subsurface water ice as resources.”
Musk is the billionaire founder of several companies including PayPal, Tesla Motors, and of course, SpaceX (which recently sent a supply ship to the International Space Station).