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Life On Mars: Elon Musk Reveals Details of His Colonisation Vision
Elon Musk has put his Mars-colonization vision to paper, and you can read it for free. SpaceX's billionaire founder and CEO published the plan, which he unveiled at a conference in Mexico in September 2016, in the journal New Space. From a report: The paper outlines early designs of the gigantic spacecraft, designed to carry 100 passengers, that he hopes to construct. "The thrust level is enormous," the paper states. "We are talking about a lift-off thrust of 13,000 tons, so it will be quite tectonic when it takes off." Creating a fully self-sustained civilisation of around one million people -- the ultimate goal -- would take 40-100 years according to the plans. Before full colonisation takes place, though, Musk needs to entice the first pioneers to pave the way.
This will work. All we need to do is mine and asteroid for space dust and fill the hull with it. When we land on Mars we will construct caves and live in them to get around the radiation problem. Anyone else have any ideas on how to colonize Mars?
It's not really an adventure if you are dead within 1-3 months.
Going to Mars is not like going to the "Frontier" of old, where conditions may have been harsh, but ultimately survivable because the environment was fundamentally compatible with your biology.
When you consider the levels of technology involved in the two cases, actually it is. I'm just back from Iceland, a place where in 871 CE the first Norsemen landed to find no trees, and the Arctic fox as the only animal. Everything else had to be brought in. And not on the high-tech ships Columbus used centuries in their future, but more like rowboats with sails. Once there, they had to build everything they needed out of stone and driftwood. That gave them the toehold it took to advance their hunting skills so that whale meat and whale bone could be added to their usable resources.
Today we have robot emissaries already crawling around on potential new worlds, pre-experiencing what humans will have to face. Knowing what awaits us on Mars, including being able to test manufacturing essentials, beats lack of atmosphere. In any given era, it is human nature to take any frontier we can take.
That gives us a non-zero probability of surviving if an extinction level event should happen.
We already have a non-zero probability of surviving if an extinction level event should happen. Earth has been hit by extinction level events many times in its history and every single time its still had infinitely more life than Mars has ever had. Even if Earth were simultaneous hit be a nuclear war, global warming and an asteroid, it would still be more hospitable to life than Mars.
Mars IS an extinction level event. Every single second on Mars is a more hostile environment than Earth has ever been since life evolved. That's not a back up plan. That's a cult suicide pact.
The sea dragon was a gigantic rocket designed to be as simple as possible. It was never done full scale, though small scale tests were done and the design was considered viable. It was designed to bring 550 tons to LEO, which is about the same as Musks's super rocket.
A few awesome facts about the sea dragon :
- 2 stages, with a single engine (the same) for each stage
- The first stage of the Saturn V can fit in the engine bell
- It is a pressurized tank design. No turbo-pumps, the engine is basically 2 valves and an igniter
- The first stage burns kerosene + LOX. Regular kerosene, not the more expensive RP-1. The 2nd stage uses hydrogen
- Designed to be launched directly from the sea, with most of the rocket being underwater. The rocket would be powerful enough to destroy any launchpad anyways.
- Made from 8mm sheet steel, in a ship yard, using the same techniques they use to build submarines
- Reuseable. It is designed to be able to resist a fall back into water. No costly delicate parts to break
The whole idea behind this rocket was to make things BIG instead of complex. It is terribly inefficient compared to current designs but it is so huge that it doesn't matter.
Of course I'm ignorant about Mars colonies. Just like I'm ignorant about dragons and magic. Because they are things that only exist in people's imaginations. I don't care if you've fantasized about martian colonies your whole life. Some people fantasize about dragons their whole lives, but that makes those people less realistic, not more credible.