Joining the Thrillionaires 316
ture is minus 55 degrees Celsius [minus 67 degrees Fahren-
heit] - so the first inhabitants have to endure extreme
conditions. Elon compared it with living in a hotel lobby
in Canada during the winter.^415 “It’s true it’s just rocks
and gas, but we can make it nice,” he said. “You’d have
large domed living areas, where you could create parks
with trees. You’re at a higher level of radiation exposure,
so there would be some increased risk of cancer. I mean
it’s way more difficult than living on Earth. But we have to
do it.”^4
“I think we could potentially send someone to Mars
as soon as ten years, and I’d be disappointed if it took us
longer than twenty,” Elon said in an interview from 2011.
Elon himself will not be one of them. “I used to do quite
dangerous things, like flying a fighter jet at low altitude,”
he said. “Then I had kids and companies and I want to see
them grow up, so I’ve curtailed my dangerous activities. I’d
like to go up, but I won’t be the first.”^314
Maybe Elon remembered his grandfather Joshua’s tragic
aircraft accident when he in 2005 decided to sell his fighter
jet. “Sadly, I don’t pilot myself anymore,” he said. “I have
to work when I fly and have too many thoughts in my
head to pay the necessary attention to the plane – I can
be absentminded at times, which is a really bad habit for a
pilot.”^399
A manned voyage to Mars will probably be a collabo-
ration between SpaceX and NASA. “If we do SpaceX right,
NASA will use it for human exploration of space, and that
is the ultimate goal,” Elon said.^60 In comparison, about half