Elon Musk reveals the scope of his space Internet plans, connecting the third world

SEATTLE, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Elon Musk is planning to spend $10 billion on broadcasting Internet signals from satellites in space, he said on Friday at a SpaceX event in Seattle, Wash.

"Our focus is on creating a global communications system that would be larger than anything that has been talked about to date," Musk told Bloomberg Businessweek.

Musk has spoken about such an idea before, but he's now revealing how large of a project it could be.

He thinks it will be much more efficient to have computers sending a signal to a satellite that will beam it to its destination, instead of having it passing through thousands of wires on land. "The speed of light is 40 percent faster in the vacuum of space than it is for fiber," Musk said. Such a powerful signal could make it so users could access the Internet from nearly anywhere in the world.

Musk doesn't just want to connect Earth, but he thinks it's important to think ahead and make sure Mars has Internet access. "It will be important for Mars to have a global communications network as well," Musk said. "I think this needs to be done, and I don't see anyone else doing it."