The former NASA astronaut and test pilot opens his suitcase for us. 

Two Tickets to Mars is our brand new series where we quiz some of our favorite people about a trip to the red planet, what they’d take with them, and what exciting enterprises they’d kick start when they got there. 

Michael López-Alegría, Spanish-American ex-NASA astronaut and test pilot, is a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions and one International Space Station mission, and a ten-time spacewalker. He holds the all-time American record for extra-vehicular activity, with a total of 67 hours and 40 minutes, has logged over 42 days in space, and circled the Earth a whopping 674 times.

Michael left NASA in 2012 to become the President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation until the end of 2014. Next on his agenda is launching off from American soil in 2022 as the commander of Axiom Space’s Ax-1, which aims to be the first fully-private crew to go to the International Space Station. “Never has an entire crew been non-professional astronauts,” López-Alegría told CNBC. “This is really groundbreaking, and I think it’s very important that the mission be successful and safe because we’re really paving the way for lots of things to happen after us.”

Follow Michael on Twitter (@CommanderMLA) to keep up with his forthcoming mission, and to enjoy his penchant for space trivia (“#DidYouKnow Until 1970 'computer' was a NASA job title”... neither did we). Read on for Michael’s musings on Mars travel. 

You are allowed to bring one luxury item with you – what’s going in your suitcase? 

Nice noise-cancelling headphones and a lot of music.

We’ve gotten to Mars through human ingenuity and determination…  Why is it that humans are driven to innovate do you think? 

It’s part of who we are – we always want to see what’s over that hill or around that corner.

All settlers perform tasks on Mars – what skills do you have and why might they be important? 

I want to drive.

You have a spare ticket, who are you bringing with you? 

My son, but only if he wants to go.

What would you like to discover on your journey? 

I don’t know – that’s why it’s a discovery!

Now that we are headed to Mars - What does phase two of interplanetary colonization look like? 

Probably a lot like colonizing Mars – but we’ll need even longer supply lines.

Imagine yourself in the future looking back, what do you wish we’d worked out sooner? 

Something beyond chemical rocket propulsion, which has been mostly unchanged since Tsiolkovsky published the rocket equation in 1903.

Previously on Two Tickets to Mars: Sir Richard Branson, Dr Peggy Whitson, and Ron Garan.