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First SpaceX Missions To Mars: 'Dangerous and Probably People Will Die' (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As we get close to the end of September, when Elon Musk has promised to lay bare his plans for colonizing Mars at an international space conference, it seems like the ambitious founder of SpaceX can hardly contain his excitement. In an interview with The Washington Post, Musk gushed, "I'm so tempted to talk more about the details of it. But I have to restrain myself." SpaceX fandom has speculated for years about details of Musk's ideas, which include the Mars Colonial Transporter concept. The Transporter likely consists of a large first stage rocket and an upper stage spacecraft meant to deliver hundreds of people to the surface of Mars during the late 2020s and 2030s. Unlike NASA, which relies on public money and is therefore risk averse when it comes to "loss of crew" requirements for human missions into space, SpaceX appears to be willing to take some risks with the unprecedented exploration to Mars. Those first explorers would understand the perils, just as the pioneers who explored the New World or the poles of Earth did. "Hopefully there's enough people who are like that who are willing to go build the foundation, at great risk, for a Martian city," Musk told Washington Post. "It's dangerous and probably people will die -- and they'll know that." Eventually it will be safe to go to Mars, Musk said, and living there will be comfortable. But this is many years into the future, he acknowledged.
Go.
At the very least, death or not, it would be interesting. Earth is getting boring.
People will remember Musk and the leader of the expedition, that's about it.
Whom do you remember from the colonization of America? Who laid the first road? Who built the first house?
I think of tens maybe hundreds of countries offering up their best and their brightest for a global national collaboration on a project that may span several generations but promises a lot.
Hundreds of countries? There are only ~180 countries total and the lion's share of them are third world shitholes that can barely clothe, water, and feed their people. When dysentery is still a day to day concern in your country I doubt space exploration is a huge priority. There are only a few dozen countries that can make a meaningful contribution to space exploration. If you consider the EU to be a single country then the number shrinks considerably and we're probably talking about counting them all on two hands. Even in the best of times such international projects tend to be top heavy and inefficient; the ISS has managed to cost many times more than Apollo did, despite relying on existing technology and reaching the same LEO frontier we've been exploring since the 1950s.
Depressed yet? I haven't even touched on geopolitics. The Western World and countries with similar value systems (EU, USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and a few others) can probably be counted on to work together, but if you toss China and Russia (or even India) into the mix the relationship status quickly changes to "It's complicated."
it sucks that this is the case but such is life. So, what do we do? Do we wait for the utopian Star Trek future, where all the problems here on Earth have been figured out, or do we accept that we live in the real world and push forward as best we can? My vote is for the second option.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Don't think that those people selected to go will have to sign a few documents and undergo a few mental evaluations to make sure they really understand that they will most likely die on the mission?
I would imagine that the direct relatives of the crew will have to sign something similar for the member to be eligible.
Then you can send people to probable death so they can build the foundation for realizing your safe and comfortable dreams.
I was just reading a book on the Vikings this afternoon and happened to read the chapters on the settlement of Iceland and Greenland and thinking about space exploration.
Compared to even Norway, Iceland was a lot like Mars. Totally hostile climate, vast stretches of it totally unsuitable for human habitation. Extremely long voyage to get there in an environment -- the North Sea -- that's sure death if anything goes wrong.
Many died trying anyway, and not just all at once. It took several attempts by people who knew that previous ones had failed, fatally, to establish permanent settlements. And the ones that did fail failed for the same reasons Mars is risky -- we bring the wrong stuff and not enough of the right stuff, the climate is hostile, it's far away so you can't easily go back, and sometimes your fellow colonists turn on you and you slaughter each other *and then* die of starvation.
In many ways, at least as far as we know, the one thing we don't have to worry about on Mars is having to fight our way through hostile natives. Not only did previous migrants face long voyages to uncertain destinations, there was also the likelihood they would have to go to war with whoever they ran into -- hey, let's embark on a trip that's likely fatal simply in the conveyance we have available, to a place we might not have the knowledge or stuff to survive in, and let's do it to steal stuff from people who will fight us to the death to stop us.
Yet humans have been doing it for millennia, despite the risks and the repeated failures. It's part of what makes us human. If that wasn't part of our humanity, we'd still be eating mangoes and dipping sticks into anthills on the edge of the forest and the savanna.
....if you started with something like Biosphere 2.
We can't manage a self-sustaining environment that doesn't require CONSTANT maintenance on Earth. To suggest that we'll somehow 'muddle through' doing it 100 million miles away is folly.
"Some people will die" sure, that hasn't caused humans to flinch from trying hard things. And yes, doing hard things costs lives in many cases.
But it's truly a shitty, sociopathic narcissist that is willing to throw away lives to no good end.
-Styopa
Finally someone is going to push us off this rock.
We stopped space exploration in the 1970s and never really returned. It's about time to start doing amazing things again.
Yes- people are going to die. And those who take the risk will understand the possible sacrifice for pushing our species forward.
Thank you in advance.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."