In an Ask Me Anything session on popular online forum Reddit, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk revealed that geodesic domes and miner/tunneling droids will play a role in the company's plan to colonize Mars.
The AMA session, which was held under the SpaceX sub-Reddit, was noted by Musk to be a followup to the talk that he gave on Sept. 27 at the International Astronautically Conference in Guadalajara, Mexico.
At that event, Musk unveiled the SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System, which would be able to carry at least 100 passengers in flights to Mars. The ITS will have amenities such as a restaurant, movie theaters and lecture halls, with flights to Mars ranging from 80 days to 150 days depending on the day of the year.
The ITS spaceship and booster is said to be capable of flying at least a dozen times to Mars, which would greatly reduce the cost per ticket to the red planet perhaps even lower than $100,000 each.
There will still many questions surrounding the Mars colonization plans of SpaceX after the talk though, and Musk aimed to answer these questions in the Reddit AMA.
One of the biggest questions was how the passengers of the ITS would actually live once they arrive on Mars. According to Musk, geodesic domes will be built on the planet's surface, made up of glass panes with carbon fiber frames.
In addition to these domes, Musk said that there will be a lot of miner/tunneling droids that will accompany the ITS passengers. These robots will be able to build out massive pressurized spaces that will house industrial operations, so that the glass domes will be reserved for green living space.
Musk did not further elaborate on the droids that he envisioned would be part of the Mars colonization missions, which is interesting given his statements from a couple of years ago which suggested that artificial intelligence could prove to be more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
In addition to the envisioned living conditions on Mars, Musk also answered questions related to the ITS itself, such as how the transportation system will be configurable. The earlier missions of the ITS would carry more cargo than passengers as the goal would be to first establish a propellant plant and a power system on Mars.
Musk also affirmed that the true star of the show in his presentation at the International Astronautically Conference was the carbon fiber oxygen tank for the ITS, due to the difficulty of making large parts out of the material.
