From “Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars,” Chris Anderson’s new Wired interview with the SpaceX founder, a discussion about the goals driving the technologist’s privately held space program:

“Anderson: 

Let’s talk about where all this is headed. You’ve brought the cost of rocket launches down by a factor of 10. Suppose you can bring it down even more. How does that change the game? It seems like when you radically reduce the price, you can discover a whole new market. It’s a form of exploration in itself.

Musk: 

Right.

Anderson: 

What glimpses of that new market have you seen?

Musk: 

A huge one is satellites. There are a lot of applications for satellites that suddenly begin to make sense if the transportation costs are low: more telecommunications, more broadcast, better weather mapping, more science experiments.

Anderson: 

So traditional satellite markets—but more of them, and cheaper.

Musk: 

There’s also likely to be a lot more private spaceflight.

Anderson: 

By that you mean tourism.

Musk: 

Yeah, but I think tourism is too pejorative a word. You could argue that much of our government spaceflight has been tourism. But the main thing—the goal I still believe in for the long term—is to make life multi-planetary.”