Why the mega-rich want to move humanity to another planet using a fleet of reusable rockets – The Sun

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is leading the way with his SpaceX company, but he's not the only mogul with cosmic ambitions

YOU might not spend much time thinking about the end of the world, but others are actively preparing for it.

Billionaires are already investing in super-bunkers in case of nuclear war, with some proving to be more luxurious than the hotelsmany of us stay induring our summer holidays.

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But now theres something even more phenomenal in the pipeline, with claims new tech could be used to set up colonies on MARS.

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Muskhas no shortage of world-changing ideas, having launched the electric car firm Tesla and pioneered a new form of public transport called the Hyperloop.

He also founded a rocket company called SpaceXin the hope of cutting the cost of space travel and making it cheaper to bring supplies to the International Space Station.

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How? By developing a way for rockets to be used more than once, according to Business Insider.

That might not sound like much, but at the moment rockets are a one-use affair which cost tens of millions of pounds.

Essentially, a rocket is like a giant firework stuffed with fuel which are attached to asmaller module which carries supplies, satellites or human passengers.

They are designed to provide the thrust to blast other craft into space.

Once theyve done all the hard work, the boosters are jettisoned before burning up in Earths atmosphere.

This process is extremely wasteful and expensive, because a new rocket must be built for every mission.

That changed when Elon's rocket company safely fired off a rocket booster and then steered it back to Earth so it could be used again.

Sadly, not even Musk's boffins have been able to totally nail this and several rockets blew up during testing.

But once the technology is mastered itcould revolutionise space travel by making it millions of pounds cheaper to launch a mission.

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There's another company working on reuseable rockets called Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Both Blue Origin and SpaceX are working to develop rockets which can be used repeatedly, with the main cost coming from fuel needed to power them.

At the moment neither has rockets which can make it very far into space, but both firms are working on much more powerful offerings.

For Elon Musk, the plan is to build a spaceship capable of getting all the way to Mars.

So why is businessman Elon doing this? His hope is to make space travel so accessible that a colony of humans can be set up on Mars, creating somewhere for people to go should Earth eventually be destroyed.

He's very worried about the threat posed by doomsday asteroids, but also fears that killer robots and artificial intelligence could turn on humanity and wipe us out.

If he manages to figure out a way of living on Mars, it's no exaggeration to say that Musk could be the saviour of humanity.

Sadly, this is likely to prove very difficult because we've never even managed to get a human to Mars, let alone set up a colony there.

Could Musk be the man to help us reachthis historic milestone?

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Why the mega-rich want to move humanity to another planet using a fleet of reusable rockets - The Sun