In a recent interview, Musk said that he wants to bring one million people to Mars by the year 2050. The future of humanity is at stake but the timelines offered by the founder are ridiculous.
Many of the challenges addressed in this article are not impossible. As I have written before, the colonization of Mars will necessitate the transformation of the human species as we know it, and technological feasibility is not my gripe.
It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 I have an issue with this because of the unreasonable timelines under which Musk thinks this will happen. The billionaire talked about his plan to send a million people to Mars in an interview with Chris Anderson.
Musk talked about a plan to send thousands of people to Mars with a thousand rockets. Musk articulated a plan to build 100 Starships each year over the course of a decade in a series of posts from 2020.
The launch interval is to take advantage of the Earth-Mars alignment when the two planets are close to each other. The city of Musk's dreams, with its million inhabitants, could come to fruition in just 22 years.
The goal of one million isn't just a prediction, it's a necessity for a colony on Mars. He told Anderson that the critical threshold was if the ships from Earth stopped coming. Our inability to colonize Mars and transition to an interplanetary species could result in our doom according to Musk. The probable lifespan of civilizational consciousness as we know it is a small candle in the vast darkness of the universe.
Life on Mars, especially in the beginning, will not be luxurious. It will be dangerous, cramped, hard work, and you might not make it back.
It's a pity for the colonists who were forced to eking out an existence in a hostile and unaccommodating world. It's assuming they get there. The CEO of the company said that anyone can work and save up and eventually have $100,000 and be able to go to Mars. Potential Martians could get funding from government sponsors or take out a loan, according to Musk.
It’s as if Musk and NASA inhabit two different realities. And it’s not as if the truth lies somewhere in between. Someone is not just wrong; someone is catastrophically wrong, and that someone is Elon Musk.Musk is getting ahead of himself. NASA hopes to land the first humans on Mars by the late 20th century. A modest human presence would follow, but very slowly and cautiously, with pioneers taking their first tentative steps on this hostile, alien world in the years and decades to come.
There are different visions of how and when Mars might be colonized. It is as if Musk and NASA are worlds apart. The truth doesn't lie somewhere in between. Someone is catastrophically wrong and that person is Musk.
Back-of-the-envelope calculations can lead to incorrect conclusions. It will take significant time and effort for SpaceX to develop, test, and certify Starship and then build these megarockets in the quantities Musk wants.
The fully integrated Starship is still not in space. The heavy launcher, a key element of Musk's Martian plans, doesn't exist yet. The current plan is to send a fully integrated, uncrewed Starship on a super- quick orbital spaceflight later this year, but further testing and refinements will be needed before the vehicle can be put to use.
It's important to note that Starship is meant to be re-usable, meaning that a tower that can catch the rocket in the air is needed. It could take some time for this to become a reality.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are worried about potential environmental damage at the launch site. The FAA has not approved the launch of the two-stage Starship by the company.
The daunting challenge of building these rockets will be faced by the company once they become an actual thing. It is ambitious, but I will believe it when I see it. The company isn't able to produce its engines quickly enough. Musk said late last year that theRaptor production crisis threatens a "genuine risk of bankruptcy" if the company can't launch a rocket every two weeks. We are supposed to believe that, in around six years or so, SpaceX will have solved its engine production problems and figured out a way to manufacture Starships in vast quantities, which will require a steady flow of human labor, materials, propellants, and everything else.
There are still many challenges that need to be overcome if the company is able to transport so many people to Mars. The human factor is the first thing to think about. Our meat suits are not designed to be used for hostile alien worlds. There is no water at the surface, no oxygen to breathe, and no protection from deadly ionizing radiation on the Red Planet.
The risks of setting up a colony on Mars are far beyond those of sending a small group of humans on a round-trip mission. The risks of a relatively small Mars mission, which may include six-month transits to and from the destination and 18-month sojourns on the surface, are already daunting.
He said that the challenges include protecting colonists from radiation and dealing with the effects of extreme isolation. Lang thinks we will eventually find a way to overcome the risks.
Lang said that establishing a one million person colony on Mars still represents a leap into the unknown. Private firms could eventually build the spacecraft and several of the different supporting technologies, but those challenges would be small compared to the challenge of figuring out how to live off the land. Lang said that it was not clear if it could be scaled up to support a large population.
The director of the Environment Studies Program at the University of Southern California thinks about basic human needs. Oxygen, water, and food are the bare necessities for humans, she told me. We couldn't survive without these.
It's clear that it's not possible to alter the atmosphere of Mars. In order to keep the air clean, colonists will need to live in enclosed environments and have efficient recycling systems. It's difficult to provide water to a million people. Water can be made with hydrogen, oxygen, and a lot of energy, but it isn't easy to find on Mars.
It's not possible to bring water that far away from Earth for a large colony. The poles are very cold and far away from warmer areas where a colony might be built. We would need an efficient recycling system to keep ice out of the colony. The waste would need to be captured and cleaned.
It is a difficult challenge. Now, an infrastructure to support a million Martians may eventually be built, but the idea that such an infrastructure will come to be with the arrival of these thirsty colonists is nothing short of a joke.
There is a question of how to provide sustenance to them. In order to feed a colony of that size, the settlers would need over 500 square miles of crop land.
“I’d point out that all of this would only provide the bare minimum of survival for anyone living in a Mars colony, so we would actually need to ask ourselves the question of what we would consider a good life on Mars that would make it worth it for anyone to take the risk.”It is around the size of the city of Los Angeles where she lives. She said that colonists would need good quality soil, water, and some form ofFertilizer, which could be produced through wastewater treatment and composting food. The hard truth is that we don't have a handle on how it will be done.
She said that all of this would only provide the bare minimum of survival for anyone living in a Mars colony, so we would need to ask ourselves what a good life on Mars would be worth.
Serkan Saydam, a mining engineering professor from the University of New South Wales in Australia, says we currently possess the technology required to send people to Mars, but we don't have the tech to establish a Martian colony. Saydam said that to establish an off-earth city, we will need to establish many other off-earth operations.
He said that bringing the required materials from Earth would be extremely expensive and not feasible. Colonists will have to source and extract the majority of the required materials on Mars and possibly from nearby asteroids, as well as establish a system for processing the raw materials and facilities for manufacturing products, he said. Water and food will be required for these activities, Saydam said.
He said that the technology must produce more energy and materials than what is needed for basic survival on Mars, and these elements will need to be stored for future use in the colony. Even our terrestrial mining systems are not fully autonomously yet.
Obtaining a deeper geological and geotechnical understanding of Mars, establishing a reliable power supply, creating markets to support the supply chain, reducing risks for business and other stakeholders are some of the challenges Saydam gave me.
The failed Biosphere 2 experiments reminded me of Sohm's earlier point about our inability to replicate natural processes. The challenges of managing closed ecosystems were shown in the sealed missions. It's doubtful that a large colony on Mars can survive without this ability.
It is not possible to create a completely closed environment in space, according to a physicist at the University of Oxford. He said that a colony needs to become a factory to produce air, water, and fuel.
It's far behind the technology of space flight and habitation construction. The recent experiment involving NASA's Perseverance rover, in which oxygen was removed from the carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere, was an interesting advance. We are not close to turning this proof-of-concept experiment into something practical.
Earth has a magnetic field that protects it from radiation. Our magnetic field is large enough that it provides protection to the International Space Station, so even our long-term stays and radiation experiments in space won't prepare us for the dangers of long-term exposure on a cruise to Mars and life on its surface.
Anderson and Musk talked about a lot of tunnels to protect Martian settlers from dangerous levels of radiation. Migrants will be asked to live like moles and make only brief appearances at the surface.
It is a serious health risk to be exposed to radiation. Lang said that the level of isolation of this community would be unprecedented and that success in this endeavor would ultimately mean establishing a new human civilization.
Lang said that they have data from a number of environments, including nuclear subs, polar research stations, and the Russian-based Mars 500 experiments. What about the social dynamics of a large society in a hostile environment? It could be fatal if a society were to pay for social chaos. To thrive, such a society would have to maintain a high level of togetherness.
Musk told Anderson that he hoped the people of Mars would not fight each other too much and that they would be more educated.
The desire to do it quickly will make it even more dangerous. Governments and the public aren't willing to risk the lives of astronauts in the space industry. He said that setting up a colony will go far beyond the experimentation and exploration we are used to and that we need to be prepared for it to not go smoothly. We will need to treat this project like our other high-risk industries such as commercial fishing, mining, or steel working.
Sohm wondered about the point of it all. Why would you want to build a million-person colony on another planet? We have a planetary crisis here on Earth, and we have a moral obligation to spend our time, effort, and money on helping to solve it for all the 7 billion-plus people that live here now.
Lang says it will take decades to build a colony. Multiple generations of humans will need to support it.
Lang said that the support would be worth it. The establishment of a self- sustaining society on Mars would be a landmark in human history and would set the stage for spreading human civilization across the whole solar system.
Lang and Sohm are correct that we should take care of our business on Earth while also trying to build an existence outside of it. It's wrong to suggest that the goals are mutually exclusive.
We need to be realistic about the future and when we can reasonably expect to do the things Musk is promising. Musk is peddling a false view of the future. Many of Musk's fans and followers take him at his word and there are consequences to this. The world's richest man needs to be more serious about this responsibility than he is.
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