Hey, if you're going to move to Mars, you might as well do it in style, right?
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk wants to make sure that everyone traveling to the red planet with SpaceX in the future has a really great time while they do it.
A new commentary written by Musk and published in the journal New Space describes SpaceX's plans for a comfortable spaceflight experience on the months-long journey to Mars.
"... The crew compartment or the occupant compartment is set up so that you can do zero-gravity games — you can float around," Musk wrote. "There will be movies, lecture halls, cabins, and a restaurant. It will be really fun to go. You are going to have a great time!"
So basically, Musk's vision for entertaining his interplanetary travelers isn't far off from games on the deck of a cruise ship.
Except, you know, without the gravity.
The whole idea behind making space travel fun is to entice people to get onboard for Musk's journey to Mars, he said.
Instead of just serving the extremely wealthy people, Musk is hoping to attract others who maybe don't have an infinite supply of money.
One day, Musk hopes that SpaceX will help reduce the cost of flying to space so much that a trip to Mars will only cost about the same amount as buying a house or even less.
"In order to make it appealing and increase that portion of the Venn diagram where people actually want to go, it has got to be really fun and exciting—it cannot feel cramped or boring," Musk wrote in the paper, which was based on his September 2016 speech that laid out the company's plans for Mars.
Of course, SpaceX isn't anywhere near sending humans to Mars.
The company is still in the process of developing its interplanetary space system, and it hasn't yet launched people to space at all. However, that could change soon.
SpaceX is expected to start launching astronauts to the International Space Station under a contract with NASA in the next couple years, giving them crucial data needed to figure out how to send people deeper into the solar system than ever before.
The company also plans to launch robotic missions to Mars starting in 2020 to perform science experiments and prove out technology needed for a human landing in the coming decades.
All of SpaceX's plans hinge upon the idea of reusability.
Instead of simply using rockets once and then discarding them, Musk's spaceflight company plans to bring back used boosters to Earth, where they will be refurbished and then launch other missions to orbit.
Musk -- and many others in the industry -- believe that reusability can reduce the cost of spaceflight by a significant amount, making it far easier to launch people and payloads to space.
SpaceX is already putting its reusability plans into action. The company has reused a rocket, and has performed 11 successful Falcon 9 rocket booster landings back on Earth.
