Would you pay $500,000 to be a Martian colonist?

[Morreion]

I would!

Huge Mars Colony Eyed by SpaceX Founder Elon Musk (Space.com)

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, wants to help establish a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people by ferrying explorers to the Red Planet for perhaps $500,000 a trip.In Musk's vision, the ambitious Mars settlement program would start with a pioneering group of fewer than 10 people, who would journey to the Red Planet aboard a huge reusable rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane.

"At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big," Musk told an audience at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on Friday (Nov. 16). Musk was there to talk about his business plans, and to receive the Society’s gold medal for his contribution to the commercialization of space.


I get really charged up about subjects like this- I've been a space nerd since I was a little kid watching the Apollo moon landings on TV. I'd love to see a human on Mars in my lifetime, and Elon Musk just may make this happen.

There was another idea floated to make a one-way manned Mars mission into the worlds biggest reality TV show (to fund the mission). Keep these ideas coming!

[dortmunder]

I think they have it backwards.

I might do it, if they paid me 500,000, and that depends how long I have to stay.

Unless it's a holiday or something. Sounds like they are trying to get people to pay to basically go work on another planet for them

On the other hand, if it's basically just go there, and do what you want, then I would pay that much. Provided I had that much cash just sitting around in my sofa cushions.

[Kelryck]

Hmmm, to get a one way ticket to Mars to start a new colony? That sounds tempting, but if all of the people you go with also had to come up with 500K, you could end up with a crew that contains Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, or one of the Kardashians who went just because it would sound cool, and they glossed over the fact it would be 1 way.

Then again, if we got all of them to go to Mars, we could colonize the moon "and the world would be a better place"

[Morreion]

;D

[Regolyth]

I couldn't do it for a one-way trip. I would do it in a heartbeat to go there for like, a year and work or do whatever. I would just miss my family too much. Also, I think I would want to be on the second mission trip, not the first. Too many unforeseen variables could go wrong with the first mission. I think they'd have the bugs ironed about by the second or third.

Nov 30, 2012 10:49:07 GMT -5 Kelryck said:

Then again, if we got all of them to go to Mars, we could colonize the moon "and the world would be a better place"

LOL