TEDxDelft blog: Who is first on Mars: Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sir Richard Branson or Bas Lansdorp?

It is going to be crowded with people on Mars soon. The first guy on the block is no less than Larry Page, CEO of search giant Google and known for his love for Space Exploration. He apparently asked his Silicon Valley neighbour NASA Ames director Pete Worden in 2010 how much it would cost to send people one way to Mars. Pete Worden told him $10 billion, to which his response was, ‘Can you get it down to 1 or 2 billion?’... Find background on Larry Page's story here.

Virgin Group CEO and adventurer Sir Richard Branson is also on his way to colonize Mars. It is one of the things he will go after when his suborbital space tourism venture Virgin Galactic has become normal business in a few years time. See his interview with CBS here.

3 days after Sir Richard's interview on September 18, 2012, Elon Musk, the innovative CEO of electric car developer Tesla Motors and rocket manufacturer SpaceX, stated on CBS he is after the same thing. See his recent interview here. Note that for insiders, this is old news. Elon Musk has a longtime interest in Mars. To the point even that Mars One, the company that actually has the most concrete plans to put humans on Mars, uses Elon Musk's company as one of their suppliers. Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp will be on stage at TEDxDelft in the TU Delft Congress Centre on October 5 2012. I am looking forward to his performance! See below a YouTube video of Googlers Larry Page and Sergey Brin from 2008, making an April fools day prank about what Mars One is actually going to do! How times are changing!