As far as big ideas go, serial entrepreneur Elon Musk has had some pretty monumental ones, particularly around space travel.
Apart from founding his own aerospace venture, SpaceX, Musk was also the co-founder of PayPal and the founder of electric car juggernaut, Tesla.
His latest ambitious goal? Bringing pizza to Mars, baby. SHIT YEAH.
Elon reckons a city on the red planet with a population of 1 million people will be possible within 50 years, with the first trips departing in as little as 10 years. He was also quick to clarify that this would not be just an outpost, but rather a fully functioning society with “iron foundries and pizza joints”.
SpaceX is already planning to send a manned flight to the planet in 2023, a voyage that would surely be the blueprint for colonisation. Musk has even mentioned that he would like to die on Mars, but not from any kind of “impact”. Same.
None of this is particularly surprising given the billionaire’s previous warnings of human extinction. He reckons there are two paths we can go down and as you can imagine, one of them isn’t ideal.
“One path is we stay on Earth forever, and then there will be some eventual extinction. The alternative is to become a multi-planetary species, which I hope you will agree is the right way to go.“
The plan involves sending a whole heap of ships to Mars over the span of 40 to 100 years, each one carrying at least 100 passengers to populate the Martian city, along with all of the necessary resources.
“The threshold for a self-sustaining city on Mars or a civilisation would be a million people,” he said. “If you can only go every two years and if you have 100 people per ship, that is 10,000 trips.”“Therefore, at least 100 people per trip is the right order of magnitude, and we may end up expanding the crew section and ultimately taking more like 200 or more people per flight in order to reduce the cost per person.”
Worried you’d get bored? Don’t even bloody think about it, mate, Elon is gonna make the whole thing a fucking ball.
“It has got to be really fun and exciting. It cannot feel cramped and boring. Therefore the crew compartment or the occupant compartment is set up so that you can do zero-gravity games. You can float around.”
“There will be movies, lecture halls, cabins and a restaurant. It will be really fun to go. You are going to have a great time.”
All that, plus pizza? Sign me the fuck up.
You
Photo: Getty.
