Elon Musk aims to send the first humans to Mars by the year 2028 to settle the Red Planet. But where some space experts believe Mars will not be colonised before the end of the century, the SpaceX CEO has much bolder plans. In March this year, the South African billionaire told his 27.8 million Twitter followers a “self-sustaining city” on Mars could be built by 2050. Now, in a series of tweets, Mr Musk told his followers how much that city would cost.
On Saturday, August 10, the SpaceX boss was asked to estimate the total cost of a self-sustaining civilisation on Mars.
According to Mr Musk, the figure rests somewhere in the ballpark of about £82.8billion to £828billion.
Mr Musk tweeted: “Between $100B and $10T.”
Justifying the exorbitant price tag, Mr Musk said £82.8billion ($100billion) would be the absolute minimum, considering the cost of shipping payloads to Mars.
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When discussing his plans in March, the SpaceX boss estimated the goal could be achieved if started in five years.
The plan also involved 10 orbital synchronisations and factored in approximately 2,000,000,000 pounds or one million tons of cargo being shipped to Mars.
Mr Musk tweeted on Monday: “Approx min payload to Mars to nearest order of magnitude, so at $100k/ton, cost would be $100B.”
Mr Musk then teased the possibility of a Mars-wide internet network by building a Starlink constellation above the Red Planet.
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Starlink is a network of low-Earth orbit (satellites) being developed by SpaceX to cover the entire planet with broadband coverage.
When asked by Twitter user Walter MacVane about connecting Earth’s and Mars’ Starlink constellations, Mr Musk replied: “Will be needed for sure. Bandwidth, no problem, latency is a challenge.”
But before SpaceX can make any claim to the Red Planet, the California-based rocket manufacturer first has to get there.
The goal is to construct a powerful two-stage rocket system dubbed the Big Falcon Rocket or BFR for short.
A prototype of the upper stage of the spacecraft is currently under construction at two US facilities, in Florida and South Texas respectively.
Known as the Starship, the stainless steel construction could one day carry up to 100 people at once on a voyage to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Mr Musk has however teased the possibility of Starship design update before the end of the month, which would be one of many updates the spacecraft has seen since 2016.
The lower stage of the BFR is known as the Super Heavy and it is a reusable booster stage rocket sporting 41 SpaceX Raptor engines.
