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Elon Musk: We Must Put a Million People On Mars To Safeguard Humanity
An anonymous reader writes: Elon Musk's ambitions for SpaceX keep getting bigger. First he wanted to make the trip to Mars affordable, then he wanted to establish a city-sized colony, and now he's got his eye on the future of humanity. Musk says we need a million people on Mars to form a "sustainable, genetically diverse civilization" that can survive as humanity's insurance policy. He continued, "Even at a million, you're really assuming an incredible amount of productivity per person, because you would need to recreate the entire industrial base on Mars. You would need to mine and refine all of these different materials, in a much more difficult environment than Earth. There would be no trees growing. There would be no oxygen or nitrogen that are just there. No oil." How fast could we do it? Within a century, once the spacecraft reusability problem is solved. "Excluding organic growth, if you could take 100 people at a time, you would need 10,000 trips to get to a million people. But you would also need a lot of cargo to support those people. In fact, your cargo to person ratio is going to be quite high. It would probably be 10 cargo trips for every human trip, so more like 100,000 trips. And we're talking 100,000 trips of a giant spaceship."
General "Buck" Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Elon Musk: We Must Put a Million Lawyers On Mars To Safeguard Humanity
There, fixed that for you.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Russian Ambassador: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
Mars does not have a molten iron core, and hence doesn't have the cool magnetic field that earth does. That magnetic field does a LOT to protect our atmosphere from getting stripped off, not to mention protecting us from radiation.
Screw Mars. Spend all that money on making it nice HERE. We have the means. We have the tech. We could have a star trek utopia right here... Free education, opportunity through small businesses, cheap housing, plentiful energy. We could have all that right here if we just put a smidge of effort into it.
Take all that money and just pay off 5% of the population's houses. Those people, now freed from having to grind on the treadmill for their housing, could start small businesses... circulating money in the economy. It doesn't need to be much. Start a taco truck... Employ a few people... We'd have zero unemployment and a lot more happiness. The economic repercussions would be staggering.
A lot of human suffering is because a few assholes ruin it for the rest of us. How about we fix THAT? Screw mars...
General "Slashdot" Neckbeardson: And to mate with these females, would that require talking to them? Like reaching out to hold their hands and stuff?
Dr. Handlove: Regrettably, yes.
General "Slashdot" Neckbeardson: Yiyiyiyiyi
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Entropy. I don't think that word means what you think it means. The time between the events that will end humanity as a species or civilization and the time between the events of a possible heat-death of our universe are separated by orders of magnitude. Entropy should never be used as a nihilistic excuse to do nothing...
In Musk's case, though, I don't think he's crazy. I just think he's a charismatic con man looking to line his own pockets by selling a pipe dream.
Really? The man was independently wealthy. He could have bought his own island and lived in luxury the rest of his life. Instead he plowed his entire fortune into Tesla and SpaceX and was a couple of weeks away from losing everything. If the 4th SpaceX launch had failed like the previous 3 or if they hadn't figured out the drivetrain problems on the Tesla roadster he would have nothing now.
I'd think it's pretty clear that Musk is motivated by other things than money. You may agree or disagree with his dream, but there's no question the man is sincere.
"Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?"
"Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature."
"I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor."
No, in case *SOMETHING ELSE* managed to fuck* up our home planet and wipe out humanity. Does the term "extinction-level event" mean anything to you? Seen any (non-feathered) dinosaurs lately?
* we're adults here, or at least this is the Internet and you can pretend. Swearing is OK
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...