Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, unveiled plans to colonize the Red Planet by 2022. The bare outline of the project was revealed by Musk on 28 September 2016, which envisages loading 100 astronauts on a ship smaller than Washington Monument and jettison it to Mars in a journey which will take months. On landing the craft on Mars, a permanent settlement will be set up.
With this reveal, SpaceX gets a step closer to colonize Mars. Unfazed by recent setbacks like the blowing up of its Falcon 9 rocket, Elon introduced his dream of making a rocket and a spacecraft which is designed to start a self-sustaining city on Mars in the coming 40 to 100 years.
Speaking at the International Astronautical Congress, Musk talked about his lifetime dream of sending humans to Mars and establishing a colony there. Musk is a successful entrepreneur and is also the co-founder of PayPal and also runs Tesla Motors and announced his plans at a packed conference and was accompanied by loud cheering for his dreams.
Musk knew how to make a presentation and was dramatically best in a suit and opened an orb of Mars which slowly metamorphosed into a habitable planet with oceans and greenery. He then showed a video which showed a rocket taking off from the Kennedy Space Center with 100 people on board, on its journey to the red planet. It refueled on the way and after a long journey landed on Mars. The rocket was gigantic and almost 400 feet tall.
The task is enormous and fraught with danger. The chances of fatality are very high as acknowledged by Musk. Therefore he said that anyone who is ready to risk his life could be onboard. The biggest challenge is not to create a massive rocket to carry 100 people onboard but to produce fuel from available resources on the red planet. The cost will also have to be reduced from the present $10 billion per person to $200,000.
