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Elon Musk Wants Space Colonists, Not Just Tourists
An anonymous reader writes "Elon Musk, founder of PayPal and CEO of SpaceX, is not all that excited about space tourism: he wants to colonize Mars. 'I don't think it's a tragedy that people can't have fun in space. People should be able to go if they want to, but it's no great tragedy if they can't. But I do think it is a great tragedy if humanity can't establish itself on another planet. It's the single most important thing we can do to continue the human race.' SpaceX will launch Falcon I in mid to late January 2005."
I don't think we should colonize another planet. Why waste all that energy getting out of this gravity well only to stick ourselves in another one? I think the future of humanity is to create and live in structures in solar orbit. All the problems can be solved through engineering, just like the Mars problems would have to be. And once we have figured it out, there are no limits on expansion, etc!
Anybody with me?
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From the Babylon 5 television series, Capt. John Sheridan:
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People colonize other places because of what they need to do there, not for what they can send back here. Space tourists will be something in space that "locals" will be needed to take care of. Tourism is a lot less risky and expensive to get started than energy/matter mining, so it's a good reason to start colonies, that tourists can visit.
All recent colonization (past few thousand years) has been an effort to connect with other people already living in remote locations, and prior "aboriginal" colonization was apparently due to exhausting resources (or social conflict) in the original location. While planting colonies among alien "people" seems an attractive option, it's unlikely. While waiting until the Earth is used up, or too hostile to stay, is a much less likely way to ensure our species' survival.
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I am thinking more long term. There are problems to be solved on Mars (cold, sand storms, low energy availability, etc.), and (probably somewhat harder) problems to be solved in space (near perfect recycling of air and water, safety, artificial gravity that doesn't make you sick, etc.). My point is that if you solve the problems on Mars, you have less than doubled the space available for humans (or probability of our species survival, if you prefer). Mars colonization doesn't lead anywhere but Mars.
Once we have gone to space, our possibilities are limitless. For example, once completely self contained space platforms are common, one of them will almost certainly get fed up with everyone in the sol system - and take off for another star. It won't matter how far you are going, because the journey (or arrival) would not really change your life style any.
In addition, it will be possible to get with a group of like-minded people and build your own society. This could be an end of terrorism, maybe even an end of some of the other unlpeasant things that happen on Earth. (Not that this will change human nature, it will just reduce the struggle for resources.)
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So the Libertarian Arcology is out in the asteroids, and the Sunni Muslim Arcology is orbiting Mars, and the Shiites are near Venus, while the Baptists are at L5. Maybe the best thing about space is that it's BIG, and these different groups of like-minded people could stay separated.
But somehow I have this feeling that they would feel compelled to park all of their Arcologies in geosynchronous orbit over the Jerusalem/Mecca vicinity, and duke it out.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.