Elon Musk says we're going to Mars, and we're bringing tunneling droids

In September, at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk revealed a grand plan to visit and, eventually, populate Mars. 

The Q&A session after the event was lacking to say the least, but now, during a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) session late Sunday, Musk shared a number of details about the company's ambitious plans to conquer Mars. 

This time around, Musk was able to skip the silliness and focus on highly technical aspects of the mission. For space exploration/rocketry enthusiasts, the AMA session is a gold mine. Musk talks about exotic materials that need to be used for the mission and the properties of the Falcon 9 rocket that will take the first human crew to Mars. He also shares some details about that huge carbon fiber tank SpaceX has built to store oxygen. Read more...