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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."
Ray Walston
Elon Musk is already a Martian. He's just trying to get back home.
but I dont have faith in Congress to fund them.
Then you have no one to blame but yourself. Congress can't approve or even discuss meaningful tax and funding increases to NASA because lobbyists and networks of nonprofits like ALEC work around the clock to justify gutting it and other programs meaningful and important to advancing mankind. These nonprofits get their cash and impetus from people like you, and others whom for which taxation at any level is simply outrageous and not to be tolerated.
You're one man, Elon. Organized systems like NASA are designed to circumvent the single point of failure. Once you shuffle off this mortal coil, your estate will likely take great pains to eliminate this whimsical space travel endeavor of yours and instead re-invest the money into something like oil or war machines, focusing solely on their own profit. 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.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Let China blow a wad of money* on it. I'd rather see our money spent on an unmanned Titan boat probe, an unmanned Europa submarine, and an extra-solar (alien) planet atmosphere spectragraph "artificial eclipsing" telescope.
Approx 10% of the cost, but 5x the science, 30% of the same Wow factor (more if plant life found), and a failure would be only 3% as embarrassing as a dead Marsnaut. A friggen bargain to both Ferengi's and Vulcans: logic and greed favor the bots.
* That they get from lopsided "trade" with us
Table-ized A.I.
As much as I would love to colonize Mars, it would be a lot easier to colonize the Moon. In both cases you need a pressure suit and you're going to be hit by lots of radiation. You'll be spending most of your time underground in both cases. And it's cheaper to get more stuff to the Moon to help people to survive.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Why should we use price signals to determine knowledge and technology advancement? That kind of thinking led the government to stop investing in alternative fuel research when the price of oil dropped to $10/barrel in the 1990s. That is precisely the time government should have been funding more research into alternative fuels, as a hedge against market groupthink.
The government is not a business and should create money for the General Welfare (as the private sector creates money on the order of tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars a year, for personal profit).
Scarcity thinking applied to money throttles progress.