Elon Musk Probably Won't Be the First Martian

pacopico writes: In a new biography on him, Elon Musk goes into gory details on his plans for colonizing Mars. The author of the book subsequently decided to run those plans by Andy Weir, the author of The Martian. Weir's book is famous for its technical acumen around getting to and from The Red Planet. His conclusion is that Musk's technology, which includes the biggest rocket ever built, is feasible — but that Musk will not be the first man on Mars. The interview also hits on the future of NASA and what we need to get to Mars. Good stuff. Weir says, "My estimate is that this will happen in 2050. NASA is saying more like 2035, but I don't have faith in Congress to fund them."

Comments

Re:oh such a disconnect

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

If you want to help, if your dream is space and not some aggrandized ego stroke, then you fund nasa and make mars a reality for everyone.

I got curious so I looked. I know fact checking isn't cool, but really, you couldn't be bothered? Elon Musk's net worth is about $14 billion give or take. NASA's budget for just this year is $17 billion. Mind explaining how he's going to "fund nasa" as you put it when his entire net worth won't fully fund one year?

The problem is that the public doesn't want money spent on NASA "until we fix our problems here". That day will never, ever come. There will always be "problems here". To give you an example, a guy I know at work who likes SciFi and is pretty smart doesn't want to see NASA get even the $17 billion they get now per year because he thinks the money needs to be spent here on those problems that need to be solved. There are a lot more people like him than me who think that NASA needs even more money than $17 billion.

Re:The Moon is the way to go

[invid]

That's nice. And what will you do once you get there? Play some awesome networked FPS games?

I would like to build a Moon base with 2 goal, one as a base for astronomical observatories (radio, visible light, I think it would be a good place to try to detect gravity waves, test some dark matter detection theories) and it would be a good test of how viable it is to live on a very inhospitable world. Lessons learned from a Moon habitat will be useful for an eventual Mars habitat. I have no illusions about a Moon habitat being self sustaining over the long term.