Elon Musk: I'm gonna turn Mars into a $10bn death-dealing interplanetary gas station SpaceX founder Elon Musk has laid out an audacious multibillion-dollar plan to send colonists to probably die on Mars. On Tuesday, he unveiled an Interplanetary Transport System: a fleet of spacecraft capable of delivering people to the Red Planet so they can create a permanent human settlement complete with a fuel-generating …
Average temperature -55C, atmosphere almost 100% CO2. Between 35 and 250 million miles away from the only source of supplies and aid. Yet he thinks "most of those passengers would be looking to permanently relocate to Mars". He might find a few loons wanting to spend the rest of their (possibly very short) lives on Mars, but, no one sane.
Yes. Another potential loon here. But there are unanswered questions about property rights. If I go to Mars as a colonist, can I stake out an area of it and have it be legally mine? Like colonists have in olden days (only with the difference being that this time the land really is vacant rather than displacing people already living there).
Don't worry, Netflix will probably offer to send a preloaded server on the trip. When they get there they can use the very high latency, very limited bandwidth comms to earth to slowly update the local cache of videos rather than do more important things.
Seriously though how do you keep that many people entertained for months?
"Seriously though how do you keep that many people entertained for months?"
You send the ones who like to read.
Have you got any idea how ludicrously little storage you would need in today's terms to store absolutely EVERYTHING that has ever been written, if it were all available in digital.form..?
"He might find a few loons . . ."
Perhaps, but what I think he will find is a strong field of very resourceful, very intelligent, and very brave people willing to devote their lives to the difficult, dangerous and demanding task of helping start the long and laborious process of attempting to gain the a foothold out in the solar system.
And it will be a long task and it will take many generations before any 'normal' people can ever hope to live in anything like comfort on another planet, but that doesn't make the inevitable pioneers 'loons' for helping get us there.
Those people who do accept this challenge will be helping to create a future that neither they nor anyone else alive today will ever experience and for that I will applaud their courage rather than question their sanity!
Quite rightly put. If we stuck with the 'few loons' mentality then Australia could possibly still be free of European influences, not that I am suggesting we ship several hundred convicts to Mars to act as slave labour of course.
"People will have the option of coming back if they get homesick."
Is there a discount for buying a return ticket, just in case?
"And it will be a long task and it will take many generations before any 'normal' people can ever hope to live in anything like comfort on another planet, but that doesn't make the inevitable pioneers 'loons' for helping get us there."
Indeed, it's arguably not unlike the early settlements in the USA with long dangerous journeys to cross the atlantic, unknown dangers and challenges to overcome, the very real possibility of not surviving, and the reality that you'd likely never see your homeland again.
Hopefully it won't be too many more generations until "normal" people can start inhabiting the USA! :)
dan1980, that's possibly the worst possible outcome. Getting resourceful people to sacrifice themselves for a few generations getting a toe-hold on Mars will make it effectively impossible to terraform the place. They'll never be budged, but they will be stuck in a primitive system with little hope of ever taming it. Do you want to be the government that tries to pry them off-world to allow the comet barrage to commence?
The real problem is the lack of resources on Mars. On earth, we sit on the waste products from a few billion years of photosynthesis -- nice amounts of hydrocarbons, metals, amines, and oxygen. As a result we can eat, breathe, and dig up useful resources. It's the basis of stuff we call 'fire' and 'life' on earth.
On Mars, you have iron oxide and CO2 -- it's near the chemical equilibrium and there are few or no spontaneous chemical reactions. Chemistry won't be your friend, you'd have to bring the energy for every single chemical reaction you'd want to drive.
Scarcity of resources is not an issue if your colonists won't likely to survive a trip or arrive with brain cancer
Obviously no-one is going until there is a solution to that. A hard problem, but not impossible. Elon's big booster rocket probably needs to make a few more trips to lift enough shielding material like water, or some hydrogen-rich plastic.
Would rocket fuel do ?
Yes. Some Mars missions outline the use of propellant as shielding, though it depends on the propellant. You don't want to wrap a liquid hydrogen tank around a hot passenger cabin, for example. The SpaceX choice of methane is a bit challenging for space storage because of its very low boiling point, so it might not be suitable for shielding.
The water requirements of 100 passengers offers one shielding option, and even unrecycled solid wastes may be considered for shielding.
Water starts cutting down radiation levels pretty quickly. 10 centimeters should halve the full flight dosage. This .pdf is an excellent look at Mars and Lunar exploration shielding. Figures 11, 12, and 14 assess various materials.
@Schultz - I think you'd have to send solar panels and robots in advance of the people to build the kit that would collect the energy. It would take a great deal of patience. It would be interesting to know if SpaceX are working on calculating how much patience.
> "He might find a few loons wanting to spend the rest of their (possibly very short) lives on Mars"
Well when Mars One was announced, 200,000 people signed up for a 1 way trip. That's a queue of people that would have reached from London to Birmingham! And that programme didn't have anything like the credibility SpaceX does. There'd be millions of applicants for the first Heart of Gold mission to Mars, one way or not.
The reality is that many people would prefer to burn out their lives brightly (possibly literally) and possibly go down in the history books, than continue to fade away in their current insignificance.
"Well when Mars One was announced, 200,000 people signed up for a 1 way trip."
From the Mars One web site:-
"Most people would give an arm and a leg to be allowed to stay on Earth so it is often difficult for them to understand why anyone would want to go.
Yet many people apply for Mars One’s mission and these are the people who dream about someday living on Mars. They would give up anything for the opportunity and it is often difficult for them to understand why anyone would not want to go"
Pretty much confirms what I suggested - that most people think ones that want to go are loons.
Mars or Dole queue.... Hmmmm?
Mars it is. Let's go.
-55 C- Pah, I'm from Inverness, I like the cold.
almost 100% CO2- breathed worse, grew up in a pub before the smoking ban.
250 Million miles- So, delivery companies think anything North of Glasgow is remote and whack a surcharge on delivery, nothing new there.
I'll get packing.
Amen,
Whilst we should all command his eccentricity, this seems somewhat of a pipe dream.
$200,000 rules the average "TOWIE" viewer that wants to be famous.
I can't imagine any real scientists are going to want to be the first ones out there knowing full well it's a death sentence with no guarantee of a legacy.
Here's a list of people signed up to Virgin Galactic flights, the likely candidates for more money than sense. I'm all in favour of sending Angelina Jolie as ambassador of Earth but can't envision her doing anything useful on the red planet.
http://www.agent4stars.com/virgin-galactic-passenger-list/
He might find a few loons wanting to spend the rest of their (possibly very short) lives on Mars, but, no one sane.
Most of the explorers of the last few thousand years (and more) could be classified as "loons". They set out on journeys which most people thought were death sentences (and they probably realised their chances were slim). In fact, most of them did die, but a handful (those we remember) survived their journeys and discovered strange new lands.
Without these explorers, we would not have discovered or colonised many places. I view this mission the same way: Very risky, not something I'd be able to do, has a lot of potential to be a complete disaster, but a very worthy goal which has the potential to benefit all mankind. Kudos!
100% CO2 but at an atmospheric pressure which we on earth would call a vacuum. And you forgot to mention the radiation (no shielding ozone layer or magnetic field).
Inhabitants will have to quickly dig tunnels and get underground and rarely comeback to the surface. Not my idea of fun!
>"He might find a few loons wanting to spend the rest of their (possibly very short) lives on Mars, but, no one sane."
The advertising industry considers this one of the top hundred adverts from 1900-2000:-
Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success." - Shackleton's advert for the north pole expedition.
He got 5k applications. Given the profile of the people interested in going it shouldn't be totally impossible to get enough people who work in a technical field (say, IT) who are both capable of dealing with highly technical equipment, working under pressure and most importantly SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF DEALING WITH IDIOTS.
Ok, maybe we might have been driven insane over the years. Enough so to go to Mars to get away from an endless 9-5 grind which might end with a livable pension, if the pension provider doesn't go out of business and leave you a penniless serf unable to ever retire.
@Peter2
I'd go like a shot. House is worth well over the $200k requirement and wouldn't need currency there. I would require several guarantees though:
1) That I won't have to drive a Tesla out there, will I?
2) That I will never, ever see a Microsoft or Apple product again in my life,
"He might find a few loons wanting to spend the rest of their (possibly very short) lives on Mars, but, no one sane."
I suspect the population would be mainly scientists and engineers with the goal of dedicating their lives and careers to the wealth of scientific research such a base would allow. Pyjama-clad armchair critics with no imagination probably need not apply.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
