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Elon Musk: Moving to Mars would cost about $200,000
The CEO once said a self-sustaining Mars colony won't work if it's wildly expensive for each person to make the voyage.
- Musk has said that he wants to keep the per-ticket cost of traveling to Mars roughly equivalent to the cost of a house in the U.S.
- SpaceX plans to send a cargo mission to Mars in 2022, followed by a manned mission in 2024.
- Musk said there's a 70% chance he'll travel to Mars. A recent survey suggests most Americans aren't quite as adventurous.
A ticket to the red planet aboard a SpaceX rocket will likely cost "a couple hundred thousand dollars," according to CEO Elon Musk.
That may be expensive, but it's a price point that would make the voyage feasible for people who aren't incredibly wealthy.
"If we can get the cost of moving to Mars to be roughly equivalent to a median house price in the United States, which is around $200,000, then I think the probability of establishing a self-sustaining civilization is very high," Musk said last year.
The billionaire entrepreneur provided something of an update Sunday to Axios during its final episode of its limited documentary series on HBO, reaffirming that the company was aiming for that price point and denying that the voyage would be an "escape hatch" for the rich.
"Your probability of dying on Mars is much higher than Earth," Musk said, comparing a hypothetical ad for the Mars voyage with Ernest Shackleton's ad for going to the Antarctic, which read: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success."
He added that it's unclear whether Mars inhabitants would be able to return to Earth. As of November 2018, SpaceX has an "aspirational goal" of sending a cargo mission to Mars in 2022, followed by a second manned mission in 2024.
Musk says he might go to Mars "for the challenge"
Musk told Axios there's a "70 percent" he'll make the voyage to the red planet. When asked why he'd in light of the dangers, Musk said, "There's lots of people that climb mountains. You know, why do they climb mountains? Because people die on Mount Everest all the time. They like doing it for the challenge."
Most Americans aren't quite as adventurous. When asked how likely they'd be willing to travel into space if it were free, 35% of Americans said "extremely likely" while 31% said "not at all", according to an Axios survey conducted in November.
- Elon Musk Puts a Cap on Ticket Price to Mars Colony. Here's How ... ›
- Elon Musk will need one million Mars colonists to get the ticket price ... ›
- How much are SpaceX tourists actually paying to fly around the Moon? ›
3D printing might save your life one day. It's transforming medicine and health care.
What can 3D printing do for medicine? The "sky is the limit," says Northwell Health researcher Dr. Todd Goldstein.
- Medical professionals are currently using 3D printers to create prosthetics and patient-specific organ models that doctors can use to prepare for surgery.
- Eventually, scientists hope to print patient-specific organs that can be transplanted safely into the human body.
- Northwell Health, New York State's largest health care provider, is pioneering 3D printing in medicine in three key ways.
- "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose," Sherlock Holmes famously remarked.
- In this lesson, Maria Konnikova, author of Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes, teaches you how to optimize memory, Holmes style.
- The goal is to expand one's limited "brain attic," so that what used to be a small space can suddenly become much larger because we are using the space more efficiently.
Active ingredient in Roundup found in 95% of studied beers and wines
The controversial herbicide is everywhere, apparently.
- U.S. PIRG tested 20 beers and wines, including organics, and found Roundup's active ingredient in almost all of them.
- A jury on August 2018 awarded a non-Hodgkin's lymphoma victim $289 million in Roundup damages.
- Bayer/Monsanto says Roundup is totally safe. Others disagree.
- Our ability to behave rationally depends not just on our ability to use the facts, but on our ability to give those facts meaning. To be rational, we need both facts and feelings. We need to be subjective.
- In this lesson, risk communication expert David Ropeik teaches you how human rationality influences our perception of risk.
- By the end of it, you'll understand the pitfalls of your subjective risk perception system so that you can avoid these traps in the future.
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