Elon Musk: City with One Million Residents Can Live on Mars

Billionaire and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has a lot of plans for Mars. Not only will he send humans there, he also plans to build a city with one million residents.

Musk revealed his plans to colonize Mars in his speech "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species". But in a recent entry posted in New Space Journal, Musk further elaborated on his plans to send one million human beings on Mars in a span of 50 years.

Musk agrees with famous astrophysicists Stephen Hawking when the professor said that the only way for humans to evade extinction is to establish a colony outside the planet Earth. Musk believes that mankind may be able to avoid the dreaded "doomsday event" and the extinction by building a sustainable city on the red planet where people can survive.

And when he said he wanted to build a sustainable and functioning city, he meant a community. He wanted a functioning society complete with "iron foundries and pizza joints", according to a report.

Sending one million people to Mars

"The threshold for a self-sustaining city on Mars or a civilization would be a million people, Elon Musk said in the journal. "If you can only go every 2 years and if you have 100 people per ship, that is 10,000 trips."

Initially, each trip will carry 100 people and eventually move up to a total of 200 people per trip to lessen the cost of sending humans to Mars. Sending one million people to the red planet won't be easy, so Musk is looking into the possibility of creating 1,000 ships in order to reach the one million target.

Travel to Mars

What's interesting in Musks recent journal is that he also thought of the travel time. It will take years before a spacecraft reach the red planet. This is the reason why the SpaceX CEO wants to make the journey fun and entertaining for the future Martians. He doesn't want anyone traveling to feel cramped and uncomfortable.

"There will be movies, lecture halls, cabins and a restaurant," Musk added. "It will be really fun to go. You are going to have a great time."

In addition, he will devote a chamber just for zero-gravity games.